In this episode, we discuss the recent assassinations of John F. Kennedy, John Singleton, and Offset, and the impact they have had on the culture of the time. We also talk about the Vietnam War and its impact on the music industry, and what it meant for the culture at the time, and how it changed the way we look at the world as a whole. And, of course, we talk about music and drugs, and why we should all be thankful that we don t have to live in a world where we don't have to listen to music at all. This episode is brought to you by Native Creative, and produced and edited by Riley Bray. Music: and . Art: Macklemore and Ryan Lewis Editor: Will Witwer Producer: Mike Carrier Audio Engineer: Mike McLendon Mixer: Matthew Boll Additional mixing and mastering: Jeff Perla Special thanks to our sponsor, Joe Rogan Experience Thank you for the use of our logo and theme music by our sponsor Mavus White, and thank you to our patron and supporter of the podcast, for making this episode great sound quality and sound design and editing by , and thanks to , & , for making us feel the ambiance, and as always, for making the music we love you, and for all the feedback we get from you, the listeners, for all your support and support, and love, and all the support we get back from the feedback, we really appreciate you, thank you for all of your support, we appreciate you. , thank you, Thank you, so much of you, we can't wait to hear you, back to you, again, back, back again, we'll see you, more, we're back, we love ya back, again and again, more and more, and back again. Thank you again, again & again, bye bye, bye, we see ya, bye! with love, bye. xoxo, bye Bye Bye Bye bye. <3 -Joe Rogan -The Crew. -Migos -Josie - -Jonah & -Sergio -Bobby Ruzellis -Davide -Tavion -Kemal -John Singleton -Crispy
00:00:10.000You know, I grew up in D.C. and I think about the people, you know, who are my teachers and, you know, my parents, my friends' parents and, you know, they're sort of at the forefront of, you know, troops coming home and getting spit on and you got people,
00:00:28.000you know, you're coming out of Jim Crow and people going down south and getting lynched in Meridian, Mississippi.
00:00:47.000You know, if you're talking about the most fucked up time when you think everything is going to complete shit, and it's just Harry Carey.
00:00:55.000I mean, imagine if right now, you know, in the string of next week, like, Kanye was assassinated, Trump was assassinated, you know, like, I mean, I guess you had the thing at Pelosi's house, I mean, I guess that's like, kind of weird, but like, it's also kind of like, it's just weird, right?
00:01:09.000But like, imagine that, like, imagine what, what we'd all be saying.
00:01:14.000I mean, it's like, You know, I think in the last couple of years we really saw how close, how fragile this whole thing is and how close this thing can go to just breaking down and you're kind of on your own.
00:01:26.000But I just, you know, to have like both Kennedys?
00:01:41.000And then also you have, I mean, not to the same extent, I don't know how it would register now, but you had Altamont, you had, you know, and then again, just, you know, scores of, you know, troops coming home.
00:01:55.000Think about how we regard our military now and the reverence and respect that we treat our military.
00:02:02.000And think about these troops coming home getting spit on.
00:02:06.000People throwing red paint at them in the airports.
00:03:34.000We're so aware of the violence now and gun violence in South Central and gun violence in South Side of Chicago and gun violence in Baltimore.
00:03:44.000I think we're probably more acutely aware just because of the news cycle, just because of social media.
00:03:51.000But I think you're right in terms of the turmoil.
00:03:54.000And also you go from the tone of the 50s to the 60s.
00:03:57.000You have like a completely different style of culture is emerging.
00:04:02.000The psychedelic style of culture and the music is different.
00:04:25.000But it's all like these monumental shifts and then everything sort of kind of tries to balance itself out and then you have these new dilemmas and new problems.
00:04:47.000He's got the complete and utter respect of everyone in that department, not just on the east side, but citywide in Baltimore.
00:04:54.000Also, he's got the respect of people on the street.
00:04:57.000Sort of talks about now and I, you know, just talking about these soldiers coming home in the Vietnam era and what that was like.
00:05:03.000I really equate that to kind of everything that law enforcement's going through right now.
00:05:08.000You know, we have these for the first time, you know, with Vietnam, you have these images.
00:05:12.000Look, I wasn't alive, but from what I hear, You know, you had these images coming into people's living rooms of these, you know, horrible situations, people talking about the Milan Massacre, people talking about these things, you know, in Vietnam.
00:05:25.000And to the same extent now, you know, we were just sort of...
00:05:30.000There's so many examples of, you know, crazy and rampant sort of police brutality.
00:05:34.000You have these instances that were then magnified to the point where people who have no experience, you know, in this world would think that this is what all police are doing.
00:05:43.000And all of a sudden you have this unbelievably just strident anti-political.
00:06:13.000It seems like that's always the case, as long as there's not some sort of a catastrophic thing that happens, like a world war or something that literally, like, flattens society and civilization.
00:06:26.000I mean, generally, people try to move things in a better direction.
00:06:32.000It's just setbacks and all these things that happen along the way.
00:06:35.000I think culturally, we're all trying to move towards a better direction.
00:06:39.000I mean, that's why there is so much outrage.
00:06:41.000And, you know, when you have this anti-police sentiment, it is because of all these horrible, egregious examples of police brutality that we see.
00:06:50.000The right way to do it is not defund the police.
00:06:52.000The right way to do it is not like this attitude towards all law enforcement, which is crazy because some of those same people, they're going to find themselves in a situation where they need law enforcement.
00:07:31.000It's just – it seems like there's also this problem of there's so much information to sort through.
00:07:38.000When you're dealing with this 24-hour news cycle and social media, you're dealing with most of the things that people concentrate on are negative.
00:08:08.000And everything's designed to just sort of be delivered in the most un-nuanced, the most just sort of bright lights, hey, pay attention to me.
00:08:21.000The truth gets really lost, and these issues are, you know, they're enormously complicated, and they're not easy.
00:08:29.000And trying to say that they are, or trying to just sort of Deliver an agenda, say I'm on this team or this team, I'm on this side or the other side.
00:08:38.000I mean, for me, I find that enormously un-American and I find it, I think it's a huge mistake and it's not the way I want to live my life or it's not the way I want my kids to live theirs.
00:08:51.000We have a horrible tendency towards tribalism and in this country there's definitely this trend.
00:09:00.000I think that's also exacerbated by social media and the algorithms where people are just they're holing up on teams and attacking people on the other side and All of it is kind of fucked.
00:09:10.000Yeah, and isolating even more and more and I think that I really think that the lines in which we're dividing ourselves, you know, so many people have talked about the polarization.
00:09:38.000There's no value based on those lines ever, in my opinion.
00:09:42.000I think, you know, we miss out on so much by holding people back or saying, you are on this side or you're on that side.
00:09:53.000And I look at it, you know, in terms of...
00:09:58.000The way we, our prejudices and these things that we ascribe to, you know, I look at it, you know, in that movement that we were talking about, you know, to sort of jump to this conclusion, if you've never been in a situation where you've really needed the police to say that,
00:10:18.000All cops are bastards or abolish the police or to say that, you know, folks in these communities, you know, that where the violence is going down, you know, in sort of the most violent cities in America,
00:10:35.000to think that those folks that are from those communities don't want more policing there is just a huge mistake.
00:10:54.000If you had a football team and you felt that, you know what, I just don't want any homosexuals on my football team.
00:11:08.000If that's how you felt, There could be somebody on that—you could have somebody on your team who's 6'5", you know, runs a 4-4-40 and just can demolish people.
00:11:19.000But because of your own stupid prejudice, because of your own just ridiculousness that you ascribe to, you're missing out and your team's got to fail.
00:11:28.000And it's just such a—it's impossible to thrive.
00:11:56.000And I want to talk about things in this sort of nuanced and, you know, objective way.
00:12:02.000Like, what made you decide to do that?
00:12:04.000Because that's very unusual for actors.
00:12:07.000And it's also unusual for actors to do it well.
00:12:09.000Like, you don't come across as someone who's Trying to sort of soften your words or say things in a way that's virtuous so that people like you more.
00:13:10.000I'm a huge fan of yours, and I listen to your show religiously, and I... I imagine that's similar potentially to how you feel about comedy.
00:13:42.000That's how I look at it, I love it, and I'm beholden to it.
00:13:45.000So anything that kind of gets in the way of that I've been kind of conditioned to think is the enemy.
00:13:53.000And to be honest with you, one thing that I'm quite certain is the enemy of that is putting more of myself I'm really not interested in being more well-known.
00:14:09.000So to be honest with you, there's a lot of trepidation about it.
00:14:35.000You know, the intentionality behind the show is something I genuinely believe in.
00:14:40.000I think this all kind of came forward, you know, in COVID, in sort of the wake of not only George Floyd, but in just all these examples of this police brutality and this rampant police brutality and the fervor that kind of came after it.
00:14:58.000You know, I was really in this situation where, like so many, I was so...
00:15:05.000I'm disgusted and heartbroken and angry watching that video.
00:15:56.000I have, you know, I have black folks in my family.
00:16:02.000I grew up extraordinarily with familial and best friends and ties very much into the black community.
00:16:11.000And I'm very much I think aware of the struggles that black folk have been in through the city and especially their struggles with police.
00:16:21.000I myself have been beaten by the police, but I've also had my life saved by the police.
00:16:28.000And I also believe that so many of the folks that were sort of leading the charge in this anti-police movement and also so many folks that were leading the charge in this anti-Black Lives Matter movement There are folks who really had no experience,
00:17:24.000And I think at that time, the genesis of, you know, I mean, you know, while the podcast started is I looked at, okay, well...
00:17:34.000You know, on one side, you've got, you know, in this anti-police movement, who is the most, you know, who's the archetype that everyone is sort of most afraid of in that?
00:17:44.000And to me, it's the plainclothes unit, aggressive, take the fight to the criminal police officer, right?
00:17:52.000And then on the other side, who's the archetype?
00:17:55.000Okay, well, maybe it's the African-American gang member.
00:17:58.000And, you know, to me, I looked at my life and one of the things I'm most grateful for is I have really, really, really dear, genuine, close friends who fit both of those bills.
00:18:08.000And it's my assumption because they are actually in it.
00:18:16.000Pitted against each other at times, but they are on the same streets dealing with each other.
00:18:20.000There's so many times that they have opportunities to see good in each other, to find things that they respect about each other.
00:18:29.000I find when I spend times when I go out and ride along and I spend time with Planclosed police units, they'll look at their own groups and they'll say who's really about it and who's not.
00:18:40.000They find flaws within their own community.
00:18:43.000With a lot of the guys who have been really successful in the criminal world, it's the same.
00:18:47.000And they're able to reach across this sort of so-called aisle and they're able to say, hey, there's something about that guy I really respect.
00:19:41.000You know, I'm not—I don't think I'm particularly good at it.
00:19:47.000I don't think I'm particularly— That interesting of a guy to be leading these conversations.
00:19:54.000What I think I have is this unbelievable group of friends, both because of how I grew up and because of what I do for a living, that people talk to me.
00:20:05.000I've become really, really close with them.
00:20:07.000And, you know, asking somebody to come on and talk about these things, it's not easy.
00:20:49.000So the first one that we did was exactly what I'm talking about.
00:20:52.000We did it with my friend Jerry Bellesteros, who's, you know, he's a crash unit cop.
00:20:57.000So how does this conversation start, and how do you decide to start doing this?
00:21:02.000How do you say, you know what, I'm going to sit down with people, where you just like, I don't feel like their side's being represented, I feel like I have something to add to this, or I feel like I have a unique position where I can kind of bring people together.
00:21:20.000And, you know, I have friends who, you know, especially if you look at South Central, specifically, you know, Newton Division in South Central, it's historically one of the most violent groups.
00:21:38.000You know, they call it Chute Newton, one of the most violent precincts in the entire city.
00:21:44.000I was enormously close with some of the guys in that precinct, and Jerry Ballesteros is sort of this legendary cop there.
00:21:52.000He's lost people on the street, and he's gone all the way.
00:23:09.000And look, I think at the time, my cousin was in a band called Fountains of Wayne, and right in the beginning of COVID, when it was first sort of popping off, he died way too early, left two daughters behind.
00:23:25.000Only person in my family really that showed me that it was possible to kind of be an artist.
00:24:11.000But then again, when I saw the anti-police movement, anytime I'd go and protest, I'd also stop by Newton Division and just pay my respects.
00:24:18.000And I just was so frustrated that I couldn't be both.
00:24:33.000With these guys specifically, it was really hard to get them.
00:24:38.000Together, there had been an officer-involved shooting at the Pueblos right at that time, and there was an ongoing case.
00:24:45.000And, you know, what was interesting, the way that we came around is Beau, he started an acting school in the Pueblos in South Central with Shia LaBeouf years ago, called Sloss and Rec.
00:25:00.000And Beau himself, you know, is an acting student and an actor himself.
00:25:07.000There's a show that I wrote about Shreveport, Louisiana, and I wanted to do a reading of it.
00:25:13.000And so I got Bo and a bunch of guys from the Pueblos, some of whom were active gang members, to do this reading of the show.
00:25:23.000And I brought in a bunch of industry people and a bunch of agents and managers to come give these guys an opportunity.
00:25:50.000We're setting up a show with Jerry and Beau where they both love fishing, so they're going fishing and they're taking people fishing with them.
00:26:56.000And there's real points of connection that way.
00:26:59.000And then I just think from there, it just, you know, I believed in that thesis and we just kind of kept it going.
00:27:08.000And I got a group of people around me that I think really believe in it as well.
00:27:12.000And yeah, man, so this is what we're doing.
00:27:15.000One of the things that separates people so much is the lack of communication.
00:27:19.000And the fact that you're able to get those two guys to sit down and communicate, that opens up doors to so many other people, and it opens up doors of possibility in people's minds, where they can watch that conversation and go, you know what, at the end of the day, we're all just people, and we all believe in what we believe in,
00:27:36.000and oftentimes we look at the other people on the other side as being the opposite or being the enemy, when in fact they're just other human beings.
00:27:44.000And we have way more in common than we do conflict.
00:27:48.000And I think with how isolated everyone is and everyone wants to say, I'm on this side or on this side, it's like if these two guys can sit down to each other who have, again, lost freedom, lost lives, lost friends, taken lives, you know,
00:28:03.000in this so-called war, but they can actually sit down and strike a real genuine friendship.
00:28:20.000Well, what disturbs me is that absolute lack of nuance that some people have where, you know, it's this side is bad, that side is bad.
00:28:28.000And all that is exacerbated not just by social media but also by...
00:28:33.000Foreign entities that are embedded in social media that continually stir up this sort of strife and stir up this conflict and it's done intentionally to try to divide us.
00:28:44.000That sounds like very tinfoil hat, but it's all been proven that this is going on.
00:29:14.000I took it, I don't know, I took it to a different level maybe.
00:29:17.000But I was really lost as a kid, got into a ton of trouble, went to school, played a little bit of sports in school, but I was getting in a lot of trouble.
00:29:28.000Trouble with the law, trouble, you know, ended up not being able to finish school.
00:29:32.000And I got really into acting in college, almost as a whim, no aim.
00:29:40.000And I met a wonderful woman there named Alma Becker, and she ended up marrying my wife and I. And she was sort of fascinated with Eastern European and Russian theater.
00:29:55.000When I got done sort of like being in trouble and when I couldn't finish school, I had decided this was really what I wanted to do.
00:30:02.000And I really wanted to be an actor, but I had no kind of frame of reference.
00:30:06.000I didn't think it was any different than being a plumber, being a lawyer, being a cop.
00:30:09.000Like, what are the steps I have to do?
00:30:11.000This is what I want to do for a living.
00:30:12.000She sort of explained, well, it doesn't really quite work that way.
00:30:15.000But, you know, she said that, look, if...
00:30:19.000If she were I, you know, she thought that the best theater school in the world was the Moscow Art Theater in Russia.
00:30:25.000And she said, you know, I can get you an audition for that school.
00:30:28.000The best theater in the world is in Russia?
00:31:19.000What Stanislavski came up with, what you hear in his method, which is not, you know, like sitting in your own shit or having people call you your character name.
00:31:54.000All of the sort of great American theater training, you know, from the group theater with Strasburg and Nudahagen, it all came out of their exposure to this one play.
00:32:03.000Nobody had ever seen acting like that.
00:32:29.000Who, you know, look in the Eastern European world and, you know, Chekhov to Russia is very much what Shakespeare is to us.
00:32:38.000You have this guy who is writing in this unbelievably realistic way who, you know, examined human behavior.
00:32:45.000He was a doctor and he really looked at it.
00:32:49.000He really looked at life sort of in this sort of like omnipotent or omnipresent way like he was looking down on it.
00:32:56.000For example, You would have somebody who was, you have a love story.
00:33:02.000The seagull, there's always some confusion because it's called a comedy, but it's really, ultimately, the lead character takes his own, like, kills himself at the end, and it's very tragic.
00:33:11.000But from a doctor, there was something really funny about all these people who were in love with the wrong person.
00:33:16.000I'm spending my life wanting to love this person.
00:33:20.000Yeah, but right next to you is a person who really loves you, and you're ignoring that, and just sort of the feebleness and the fragility of human behavior and really examining it.
00:33:29.000These small characters giving them real emotional life on stage.
00:33:35.000So you had this in the writing and then you had this brilliant actor-director, Stanislavski, who just thought, you know, what if we actually play this for real?
00:33:46.000And it was a completely revolutionary thing.
00:36:08.000I'll definitely explain to you sort of why that is, especially coming out of communism and how important theater was and the role it played.
00:36:14.000But if you graduate from one of those schools, it's not like in America where a lot of theater training is very coddling and it's very like, okay, you can't really play sports, you're not the best student, but come to the theater where you can be a tree and everybody's kumbaya and we get along.
00:36:28.000If you can get through one of those schools, you're funneled into one of the major theater companies.
00:39:06.000So it was just like partner stretching, stretching the shit out of yourself and then learning how to do, you know, have people kind of climb up your body, learning how to, you were either a support.
00:39:15.000I guess the equivalent would be like gymnastics or some sort of like, you know, high level tumbling, but you had to do all that and ballet as well.
00:39:24.000And, yeah, I mean, not until the second year are you actually, you know, speaking text.
00:39:29.000You know, all of it is just movement-based, observation-based.
00:41:37.000And for me, again, thinking I'm this kind of tough kid from D.C. and that I knew what the hell I was talking about.
00:41:46.000Being around that, being around people...
00:41:49.000That we're operating with that set of stakes, where the history, the palpability of the tumultuous history that is alive in every breath in that city, again, the beauty and the brutality,
00:42:29.000I spoke no Russian at all when I first went over there.
00:42:34.000My translator, Max, came and picked me up where I was living.
00:42:37.000And he took me to the Moscow Art Theater, which is on Tverskaya, right across the street from Red Square.
00:42:42.000It's a few subway stops in a couple different directions to get there.
00:42:46.000And once we got there, the one thing that they tell you that's absolutely essential at all times is you always have to have your papers back then.
00:42:52.000At that point, the mayor ran the mafia.
00:42:55.000The mayor's police, they didn't really have a salary.
00:42:57.000They made their money by what they could sort of shake people down for.
00:45:16.000I contact with me and they're pulling her out of the side.
00:45:19.000They're pulling her out of the backseat.
00:45:21.000She's not fighting them, but she's not helping them either.
00:45:23.000She's just like completely limp and just being dragged.
00:45:26.000They take her over to this building and they just start like opening her head up against the side of this building and start smashing her head.
00:45:33.000So I like forgot where I was and like I ran at this guy and I grabbed him in English.
00:45:40.000I'm like, man, what the fuck are you doing?
00:47:14.000And yeah, it really, you know, Alma and that place really saved my life.
00:47:19.000How bizarre is it for you now to see this conflict that we're going through with Russia and Ukraine and the United States involvement, having spent time there?
00:48:59.000I had a friend who was in the FSB, a young guy, and...
00:49:04.000If there was an issue with the police, if we were being loud or somebody was trying to shake us down, I had this 21-year-old friend who was in the FSB, and this 21-year-old kid could yield such unbelievable power.
00:49:17.000Put the fear of God in soldiers with guns, like that.
00:49:23.000I don't know that we have an equivalent of that.
00:50:24.000I'm heartbroken for all the young men that have fled and left and the families that are being torn apart.
00:50:30.000I'm heartbroken for what's going on in Ukraine.
00:50:34.000But I guess I'm not that surprised, you know?
00:50:39.000The strong leader that is such a big part of Russia, and to have this powerful leader who leads with an iron fist, that seems to be something that they embrace.
00:50:58.000And making hard decisions and understanding that things, you know, aren't clean.
00:51:04.000I mean, look at, you know, I think many Russians would look at, you know, World War II and the way that they handled that war and the way that they approached that war militarily was – I don't know.
00:51:24.000But look at what they're doing in Ukraine when they have these mobile crematoriums and they're just taking the Russian soldiers to die and just – They don't even have a count of the bodies.
00:51:36.000There's not even an accurate count of casualties.
00:51:39.000And look, I think, you know, one gun for every five guys in World War II, you know, pick up, you know, when that guy dies, pick up the gun.
00:51:51.000You know, but look, you know, you look at the way Patton approached, you know, the armor units in World War II. You know, our tanks, you know, couldn't compete with the Germans' tanks.
00:52:14.000So, yes, that's an unbelievable opportunity.
00:52:18.000Unbelievable achievement of American industry, an unbelievable achievement of the war effort back home, an unbelievable achievement of the engineers that were on the front line fixing those tanks.
00:52:45.000You know, that means we have to put in five times as many people and that when they go, we got to get a new unit out there, you know, and that's it's it's it's very similar.
00:52:54.000You know, it's a totally different mentality that we're accustomed to.
00:53:18.000I mean, like, I don't know, you know, I've had one friend of mine, I can't use his name, but I've had him on the podcast a couple of times, you know, from Russia, and he's Ukrainian, and his family's in Ukraine, sort of just telling us what's going on on the ground and what the sentiment is in Russia at the time,
00:53:38.000You know, I think for a lot of people there who are able to sort of like ignore the propaganda and look beyond it and try to get to the truth, it's...
00:53:48.000I mean, he looks very much at his own culture and his own government as a cancer.
00:53:54.000And he looks at Putin as an absolute criminal.
00:53:59.000And, you know, he's saying that, you know, he's risking his life by saying that.
00:54:03.000And how Putin deals with his political foes.
00:54:08.000Even as I say this to you, man, my gratitude to that place and to that culture, it's limitless to me.
00:54:24.000Again, I'm able to do what I love and And feed my kids and have a family.
00:55:01.000And again, look, I want to be—I'm no expert.
00:55:05.000I've talked to the people that I've talked to, and I know for this—for my one dear friend, he is able to access— Free internet, you know, real internet, open internet, and that's how he's getting his information.
00:55:23.000But I don't think that that's an easy thing to achieve.
00:55:26.000And contact with people in Ukraine, the disparity in what the propaganda and the national sort of news outlets are saying versus what people are saying on the ground.
00:55:42.000You know, and then I think what was huge is this draft, you know, that this was just supposed to be a military exercise.
00:55:50.000And then all of a sudden people are being, you know, called out.
00:55:56.000One thing I'll say about being there that really affected me as well is, you know, I've been to so many countries, as I'm sure you have, and everybody has this sort of nationalistic, people love their country, people want to celebrate their country.
00:56:12.000You know, in Russia, I'd never seen anything like it, except for here.
00:56:16.000You know, like, if you're a strong man, okay good, then you're a Russian man.
00:56:21.000I played pro baseball while I was there, which is definitely not a big achievement at all.
00:56:29.000But, you know, you're a good baseball player, you're a Russian baseball player.
00:56:32.000You're a good actor, you're a Russian actor.
00:56:35.000I mean, it's just like good and quality.
00:56:40.000And I've never really quite seen that sort of unadulterated, just absolute, you know, love and reverence for their country than I had really in America.
00:56:58.000The unique quality of their combat sports athletes speaks to that culture.
00:57:05.000Because, I mean, Fedor Emelianenko, if not the greatest heavyweight of all time, came from Russia.
00:57:12.000I mean, the Dagestan region that produced Islam Makachev and Khabib Nurmagomedov.
00:57:19.000And, you know, Ankulaev and so many elite fighters and the caliber of the athlete that comes out of there, both in wrestling, other combat sports, boxing.
00:57:30.000I mean, they're just very, very exceptional, which speaks to the quality of the character of the people that come from that culture.
00:57:41.000I think, too, when you talk about the traces of Soviet times, you owed it to your country.
00:57:55.000You weren't there for your own sort of achievement or your own money that you're trying to put on the table, your own glory.
00:58:42.000But a big part of it is about the doping that went on during the Sochi Olympics, which was all completely state-sponsored, where they swapped out.
00:58:53.000Put performance enhancing drugs in all of their athletes every single one of them They were the the ultimate goal was to achieve the highest level of performance in the Sochi Olympics to elevate Russia and to show Russian superiority and They managed to do this through this Gregory Rychenkov guy and he just by total happenstance Runs into this guy who produces this documentary,
00:59:23.000who's a cyclist, and he decides that he wants, Brian Fogel, he wants to do this race completely clean, and then he's going to go to Gregory and tell him what his goals are, what he wants to do,
00:59:38.000and this guy's supposed to be the head of the anti-doping agency in Russia, but really he's...
00:59:46.000And so he tells them exactly what to do and how to do it and how to cycle off.
00:59:50.000And during that time, then it gets revealed while they're in the middle of filming the documentary.
00:59:55.000Brian, who's a brilliant documentarian, brilliant filmmaker, just steps in shit, just totally gets lucky.
01:00:01.000And finds himself in the situation where Gregory and the Soviet Union or, excuse me, Russia is getting exposed for doping and he has to flee the country because he's a part of it.
01:00:15.000So he comes to America and just completely spills the beans.
01:00:18.000Tells them exactly how they did it, what they did, and now to this day he's in witness protection and they're hiding him and there's assassination attempts on him.
01:00:27.000He's completely fucked and they've, you know, taken his family and taken all their money and pulled them out of their homes and it's a wild, chaotic thing, but it shows what kind of commitment they have to this idea of Russian exceptionalism and Russian conquering in sport.
01:00:49.000And how far they'll take it if you reveal and if you go against them.
01:00:53.000Look, I was in a car the other day when I landed here yesterday from Savannah, and we were just talking about Austin, we were talking about Texas, and the guy was from El Salvador, and he was just like, people in this country just don't appreciate anything.
01:01:12.000It's the greatest country on earth, and they just have no idea.
01:01:16.000And that really also was and is my big takeaway for spending time over there.
01:01:23.000You know, just how unbelievably lucky we are here.
01:01:27.000And I know, I mean, we started the conversation from out there about just how fucked up everything is, and of course it is.
01:01:33.000But, like, look, man, I'm like a guy who fucking puts on makeup and says lines for a living, and I can come on here, you know, biggest platform in the world, and we can talk about it.
01:02:13.000Humans, we're filled with all sorts of flaws.
01:02:17.000And this culture and this, the way our civilization is run, it's filled with all sorts of flaws.
01:02:22.000But it's the best example we have for a free society currently on Earth.
01:02:27.000Which is hard for people to believe, especially people that look at all the inequality and look at all the chaos and look at all the things that are wrong with this country.
01:02:39.000Because it's the best place to communicate.
01:02:41.000It's the best place to openly communicate.
01:02:43.000That's why things like what we were talking about, like with the FBI being embedded in Twitter, trying to suppress certain narratives, it's so dangerous because that's what leads you to Communist China.
01:02:54.000That's when the state has total control over the narrative and then the people that are involved in financing all that and profiting from all that are the ones that put these people in power and then control how the masses behave and think and communicate.
01:03:12.000It's leading us down this slippery road.
01:03:14.000And that's what scares the shit out of people.
01:04:43.000There was a real sort of, like, hedonistic...
01:04:46.000I mean, look, I think probably a lot of it was me being kind of self-important, and I was on this kind of, like, acting pilgrimage, and I took myself super seriously, but, you know, there's a lot of people that were going over there to, you know, be with as many Russian women as they could, and there's a lot of people going over there to sort of...
01:05:06.000that they were exploiting, and, you know, I... There was very distinct, different Moscos when I was there.
01:05:17.000You know, there was the Western version of Moscow, which was just, you know, totally different.
01:05:23.000And then there was, you know, for me, I just – what I think was so lucky is I was going to school with Russians, you know, with people.
01:05:32.000You know, you'd have – You'd have kids who would bring their entire families down from the mountains.
01:05:39.000You'd have, like, nine people in a little apartment, and the whole family would be, like, cooking on a hot pot because this one kid had this opportunity to go to school there.
01:05:47.000And it was this, like, level of support and encouragement.
01:05:49.000And, you know, the relationships that I formed, you know, with these people.
01:06:27.000I mean, one thing I've noticed that, you know, when I come home, you know, when I'm around Russian people, I always try to speak a little Russian.
01:06:36.000You know, there's just this, I don't know whether it's pride, I don't know what it is, but I'll throw out a couple words and they'll just answer in English.
01:06:44.000I don't want to hear your fucking pig brushing me butchering her.
01:06:47.000Who do you think you are, motherfucker?
01:06:49.000You know, like, and, but, you know, like, while you were there, like, people, there were people that you knew spoke English and they just would refuse to speak it over there.
01:08:42.000It's such a hard thing to encourage, too, because it requires discipline.
01:08:46.000And if you're not raised with discipline, if it's not incorporated into you very early, it takes a monumental shift in the way you think about life to incorporate that.
01:08:56.000How do you do that with your children?
01:08:59.000Well, fortunately, my kids have been around me when I've been, you know, during the time that they're alive, I've been at my most disciplined and most best.
01:09:12.000You know, thank God they weren't around me when I was 21. And they're seeing the example of someone who works hard and works all the time.
01:09:21.000And it has a lot of discipline and also wants to talk to them about things.
01:09:26.000And I want to talk to them about the value of difficult things and about failure and about like sports.
01:09:35.000They're involved in sports, which I think are very important to kids.
01:09:38.000You certainly can develop assholes through sports, but I think there's something about winning and losing and effort and reward for that effort that's a vital part of being a human being and through that, through sports and through any difficult thing, you develop your human potential.
01:09:53.000I think you only find it through struggle.
01:09:56.000You only find it through a difficult thing to acquire or a difficult thing to accomplish and then doing that and recognizing that your boundaries are actually movable and that the boundaries that hold you back now are not permanent.
01:10:10.000They speak to your state at the moment.
01:10:12.000But that state, you can advance that state.
01:10:14.000And you can do things to make your perspective more nuanced and enhance it.
01:10:21.000And hopefully they can learn from that.
01:10:24.000But there's also the problem that they're growing up in a loving household.
01:11:06.000Yeah, it's like if you get a hundred kids and you thrust them into horrible environments, very few of them come out to be this person who has forged themselves through the fire of adversity.
01:11:31.000When I think about the inequality in this country, I mean, one of the main themes in what I'm trying to do with this podcast is just I've seen firsthand how the legal system, how so many of the systems that are in place, people who don't have that infrastructure,
01:11:49.000And they don't have an example to go off of.
01:11:52.000One of the things about human beings is we imitate our atmosphere.
01:11:54.000And we become accustomed to seeing people work hard, achieve things, and people that are kind and ethical and honest.
01:12:01.000And we look at that as like, that's a value that I want to aspire to achieve.
01:12:05.000And if you don't have that around you and all you have around you is crime and Drug-ridden streets and gang violence, and you don't know any other way to think or behave.
01:12:19.000And there's very little effort done to change those neighborhoods.
01:12:23.000I mean, if you look at the amount of effort and the amount of resources that we pump into other countries, we pump into the military, pump into all these various things, we always seem to have money for it.
01:12:33.000Imagine if you're a child and you're being raised in this community that it's essentially been the same way for decades and decades with no help.
01:12:52.000And I think, you know, in terms of our children, it's, you know, how do you get them to see that Understand that, experience it, experience it a little bit, but also understand those inequities and try to inspire them to do something about it.
01:13:18.000I think for me it's just, again, you know, people talk about, you know, like masculinity and, you know, this term that gets thrown around all the time, like this toxic masculinity and whatever the fuck that means.
01:13:31.000And, you know, I just think that, again, it's like what are the examples that we're putting forward?
01:13:41.000You know, as fathers, what kind of men are you surrounding yourself by?
01:13:45.000What are the things that are important to you?
01:13:47.000And I think it's not, to me at least, it's not some sort of rejection of these classically masculine traits.
01:13:58.000I think that having the ability and understanding you have the responsibility to keep your family safe It is absolutely essential in being a man, in providing.
01:14:11.000I think having a healthy relationship with violence, having an understanding of it.
01:14:15.000I think teaching your kids to have a relationship with violence where they're not being ruled by fear or shame, but they can have some sort of understanding, some sort of understanding.
01:14:29.000Some sort of, you know, they can touch it.
01:14:36.000And I also think, you know, being accepting, being kind, being open, you know, being generous, being empathetic are also, you know, part of being a man.
01:14:47.000And I think that, you know, oftentimes, because so many of the people, I think, who...
01:14:54.000We're kind of leading the charge and who have so much of the platform at their disposal are kind of leading in these sort of toxic ways where it's all a bunch of bombast and bullshit.
01:16:04.000And I think that's something that I've really...
01:16:06.000You know, on this thing that I'm trying to do, I'm really just trying to put up examples of that.
01:16:13.000Men and women who, again, really, really walk that walk and are not leading with sort of just, you know, and trying to give whatever platform I have to those kinds of people who are real examples of that.
01:19:14.000And the guy's like petting my dog and kind of like roughing up my dog a little bit, just kind of like manhandle him because he's a big pit bull, whatever it was.
01:19:20.000And I called my dog back and the guy held on to him and didn't let him come back to me.
01:19:31.000Some part of me wanted this to kind of happen, you know, and I went over to him and I grabbed my dog and I was like, boss, let's go.
01:19:41.000And I pulled my dog away and he's like, hey, man, get off my dog.
01:19:44.000And, you know, one thing kind of led to another, but I started to walk away and him and a couple of his friends started to follow me and he pushed me in the back.
01:19:53.000And I turned around and I hit him with a right hand.
01:21:06.000And, you know, they were kind of giving me shit about, you know, what's going to happen if this guy doesn't wake up.
01:21:13.000And I remember sitting there on that bench...
01:21:17.000That, you know, if this guy doesn't wake up and I'm going in that direction now, I knew, and it was as clear as any thought I've ever felt, I was going to have to sort of get in touch.
01:22:42.000And I know, again, you asked me about Walking Dead, but literally one year after that, July 3rd, 2010, I was on set of my first season of Walking Dead.
01:23:26.000But yeah, you know, like, getting to then kind of play a role like that, that had a real beginning, middle, and end kind of, like, built in.
01:23:37.000And at a time in my life where I just totally stripped all the fat out of my life, the people I was hanging out with, the way I was behaving, I got ridiculously disciplined pretty much about every part of my life.
01:23:54.000Yeah, sorry it's such a grandiose answer, but it's Walking Dead, but it was also that time at Walking Dead and the people that I was around and what that all meant.
01:24:03.000But yeah, it was, you know, my life completely and utterly changed there.
01:24:08.000And I think the sad thing is, man, it's not like that was the first time that happened.
01:24:16.000And because I had some wiggle room, because I had people looking out for me, because I came from a family with a father who was engaged and had the means and the ability to help me out.
01:24:31.000And it's a reason why now, I mean, it's like...
01:24:34.000On the show, it's like why we're hanging out and spending time with so many people in this LWOP community, with the Life Without Parole community in prison.
01:24:42.000And these guys who, you know, like me, like fucked up, you know, made a horrible mistake, did something without a doubt inexcusable.
01:24:53.000But you talk to some of these guys and they have this fluency with their shame, this fluency with They've spent so much time living in the vileness of what they've done that they've spent so much time empathizing and putting themselves in their victims' shoes.
01:25:25.000They are different people 20 years later than the crime that they committed.
01:25:30.000And their entire life now is dedicated to service.
01:25:35.000It's dedicated, you know, this Elwha community in Calipatria Prison that we hang out with, you know, they've really changed so much of the culture in that prison.
01:25:43.000That was one of the most violent prisons in all of the state of California.
01:25:47.000And California prisons are notoriously violent.
01:25:49.000And this community, they broke down the racial Walls, you know, this LWAP community, this group, these guys who basically have a living death sentence, they've all banded together.
01:26:01.000It used to be, you know, you're in a different race.
01:27:09.000Father, and he puts all his life now into helping other people who are coming in with this sentence that, you know, if you go into prison and you have that sentence, what are you going to do?
01:27:49.000It's so true what you're saying about there's moments in your life where things could have tipped one way or the other, and that's a giant percentage of the people that are locked up.
01:27:59.000That they could have had an opportunity to turn their life around, but there was nothing there for them.
01:28:06.000And they didn't have the infrastructure, the people around them, or the power, the money, or, you know, they've been generations of people that have been held down.
01:28:29.000A couple weeks ago, Richard McKinney, he was a Marine, he was forced recon, and he was overseas during 9-11, and he developed this unbelievable hatred for Muslims.
01:28:49.000There's a beautiful documentary coming out called Stranger at the Gate that's about his life.
01:28:57.000So he, you know, even the guys in his unit were like, hey man, you gotta calm down with that shit.
01:29:01.000And then, um, I believe he got injured and then he came home.
01:30:04.000She gave him a Koran, and he really wanted to read it.
01:30:08.000He thought that he was going to find proof in this Koran that all these people just wanted Americans dead.
01:30:16.000I mean, that's just what his mindset was.
01:30:17.000So he felt like he had sort of won, so he decided to leave that day and come back still with this plan to blow up the Islamic Center on a Friday where there would be 200 people there.
01:30:25.000Then the woman invited him into her home and cooked for him.
01:30:30.000Now, years later, he's a devout Muslim.
01:30:33.000He's the president of that Islamic Center.
01:31:06.000I think your capacity for going in that valley again is directly relative to your capacity to lifting others out of it and your capacity to create havoc.
01:31:19.000Directly relates to your capacity to create good and connection and growth.
01:32:20.000Like when you see them together, there's like nothing put on.
01:32:24.000There's nothing, you know, he's not like, you know, it's so easily to sort of dismiss people as bonkers or like, but, you know.
01:32:35.000It's very easy to write people off but Even people that are capable of great evil are also capable of great love.
01:32:43.000It's just people People are oftentimes a victim of the thoughts that bounce around their own mind and of circumstance and of momentum It's crazy how one moment of meeting one person Starts a totally different path in this guy's life.
01:35:36.000He had tried to get the show on HBO. They said no.
01:35:39.000AMC had, like, Mad Men and Breaking Bad.
01:35:41.000They're like, all right, we'll do your shitty little zombie show.
01:35:43.000We'll pick it up for six episodes, which basically means we don't really believe in this thing at all, you know?
01:35:49.000But he got these group of people together, and it was so humble.
01:35:54.000And the thing that's crazy about, like, a zombie show and about, like, living in a different world like that There are rules, right?
01:36:02.000So if you put a bunch of actors in the woods and you have six people walking through the woods and if you make any noise, the zombies could come.
01:36:09.000If one fucking actor is sitting there thinking about, okay, like, do I look cool here?
01:37:19.000And I really, I... I'm asking myself that a lot now, you know, because there's a lot, you know, how the conversation started doing this podcast with me where, you know, I'm like, why am I doing this?
01:37:33.000Like, what, you know, and I keep on having to go back to that thing because it does, man.
01:37:37.000It comes with a cost and especially as the thing grows.
01:37:42.000But I keep going back to it's the people that I have on.
01:37:48.000They're the people I want my kids listening to.
01:37:51.000Well, you're doing an amazing job with it.
01:37:53.000And I think having these crazy life experiences and these journeys that you've gone on in your own mind, it really works well because of that.
01:38:03.000Because you're very charitable and you're very compassionate and it comes through.
01:39:18.000And, yeah, I think it comes also just in the way that I work as an actor and...
01:39:27.000The greatest thing about what I get to do is I get to go and You know, we go do Fury, and we get to talk to, you know, guys who are really in tanks in World War II. I mean, there's, like, not that many of those.
01:39:40.000Those guys are the best among us, you know?
01:40:02.000And it fucks me up sometimes because I'm actually way less interested in what the director or the producer kind of think about what I'm doing.
01:40:09.000I'm just on those people and that opportunity to learn from those folks.
01:40:16.000You have somebody, whether you're a vet or a police officer or anything.
01:40:39.000It gives you a North Star in this kind of malleable, weird thing where you've got so many different agendas at play and what people kind of want.
01:40:49.000A film is super collaborative and everybody's got their own kind of agendas there.
01:40:54.000But if you can find some truth, it's like, man, just go try to do that.
01:42:34.000Ultimately, what I'm trying to do, you know, there's the Silverback Chronicles, which are two career police officers in Baltimore that we had on.
01:42:42.000Their group of cops in Baltimore called the Silverbacks are a bunch of all-black cops, a unit there that are just totally policing for the right reasons, respect to the community.
01:43:23.000I don't know how to really think that way.
01:43:33.000Ultimately supporting these folks and giving them this platform and then providing them that infrastructure, that I can get behind and believe in.
01:43:43.000And as long as people are still coming to us and wanting to come on and There's people that I'm really interested in speaking with.
01:44:53.000Shreveport's, I wrote a show about Shreveport.
01:44:57.000I've been going down there for about 10 years.
01:44:59.000Bam Bam was in Supermax at Florence, Colorado.
01:45:02.000He was in prison with Larry Hoover, with El Chapo.
01:45:05.000You know, he was part of a, he's part of a A Rico case in Shreveport in this little neighborhood called The Bottoms, sort of legendary street guy who, you know, was extraordinarily violent in prison, ended up in Supermax.
01:45:22.000And, you know, people don't get out of Supermax.
01:46:30.000I don't love the word, but he's sort of a gang leader down in Shreveport in Louisiana in this community called The Bottoms and got busted on RICO charges, ended up doing almost two decades in prison.
01:46:42.000Since he's been out, he's lost two of his daughters to gun violence since he's been out.
01:46:52.000He's the kind of guy that, you know, back in the day...
01:46:58.000He could have you taken off the face of the earth really easily.
01:47:03.000Now, when this young man Killed his daughter, he testified on behalf of him and said putting another black boy in prison is not going to bring my daughter back.
01:47:17.000I want to show you that there's a better way.
01:47:19.000And again, that level of forgiveness, that level of empathy, that level of rehabilitation, The potential that guys like Bam Bam and Goat and Big Don, Reg, these guys down in the bottoms, their commitment to changing this cycle,
01:49:51.000I mean, the only people, you know, we do it a little bit differently, you know, like I, since I've done, you know, I've been a part of so many interviews as an actor, you know, you're always, you know, there's all these forces at play where you got to be like careful about what you say, which I just find just so ridiculous and so much the antithesis of being an artist and,
01:50:11.000you know, so I say to everybody that comes on, hey man, we're going to We're going to give you the episode, and anything that you want out, it will take out.
01:50:19.000And the only people that have sort of given me a hard time about that is actors, obviously.
01:52:25.000You know, it's kind of like what I was saying, you know, on a much smaller level with me and my own bullshit.
01:52:30.000You know, you can take all this stuff that's held you down that maybe you've...
01:52:34.000Cause pain to people, you hurt people, you fucked up, or you disappointed your family, whatever it is, disappointed yourself, you're an awful member, so you can use all that.
01:53:17.000I mean, one of the shows we had, we had, you know, a father and son, and the father was in that life, and now the son is.
01:53:24.000And they were just talking about, like, what that felt like, what that felt like to, you know, have the police say, when he was one years old, you're never going to see your son again.
01:53:32.000And now this young man, you know, Rick, he's got a little baby girl, you know?
01:53:37.000And it's like, by talking about it, and then maybe potentially putting that out into your own sort of creative...
01:53:44.000Forum, you know, your own creative Expression, you know, maybe, you know, maybe that will Maybe that will be, you know, being on mission, you know, maybe that will do something Well, it certainly has the potential and it's certain there's there's certainly a door open for good and a door open to give people a chance potentially yeah,
01:54:06.000that's it's a Well, that's where it all comes from, right?
01:54:10.000That potentially, that word potentially, that's hope.
01:54:28.000And you've got to think of the hundreds of thousands of people that have watched that and taken that in.
01:54:34.000And then they can incorporate a piece of that in their own life.
01:54:36.000Like inspiration through things like that is so vital.
01:54:40.000It's so important for people to see how a person can make these charitable decisions and make these views of people in the best possible light and give them an example or give them an opportunity to show their best possible self.
01:55:26.000I really appreciate you saying that, man.
01:55:28.000And look, I mean, not to just throw it back your way, man, but if you look at this incredible, monumental, unprecedented thing that you've built, I mean, I think, yes, it's deeply entertaining, but you're also like,
01:56:43.000With other people, like with certain scientists or certain people that are dealing with human rights situations, I want to get an understanding of the scope of the problem that they're addressing and what they've been able to do.
01:56:56.000I had this guy, Siddhartha Kara, on the other day who is exposing cobalt mining in the Congo.
01:57:04.000And it was probably the heaviest podcast I've ever done.
01:57:08.000It's so intense because it's such an insane problem.
01:57:14.000It's such an insane problem that powers all the electronic devices that we use, including electric cars.
01:57:20.000And it's all essentially coming from slaves.
01:57:23.000At the bottom of the supply chain is the poorest people on Earth with no electricity, breathing in toxic fumes because they're banging cobalt out of these mines with hammers while they have babies on their backs.
01:57:59.000What do I... You know, what more information can I extract from him?
01:58:03.000And he's just such a deeply committed person that has spent years of his life researching this and risked his life exposing this.
01:58:15.000And I was really aware of this, first of all, through Coltan, which is the first thing that I was aware that they extracted from the Congo, through the stuff that the early days of Vice, when they worked on it.
01:58:29.000And that was when I was first exposed to it, that this is such a huge issue.
01:58:33.000But I had no idea the scope of it until I started researching this in regards to that podcast.
01:58:42.000You know, that's one that requires a lot of thinking about the problem and a lot of, like, looking at what it's actually like there and these people that have...
02:01:04.000The passion in his message to try to get this out to people, to try to illuminate this problem and to try to shed light on this situation is unprecedented.
02:02:50.000Because, like, as a listener, it's very hard to follow along.
02:02:53.000And so I'm trying to, like, pick up the page, trying to do something aware of my own attention span to try to just juice it up and keep it going.
02:03:03.000Are you thinking about the audience, or are you thinking about you in the moment, like, fuck this is miserable, bro?
02:03:08.000I'm like, if it's miserable for me, it has to be miserable for other people, because I'm here, I'm looking in this person's eyes, and also I'm curious about what they're talking about, so I wanted to bring them in here because I have a personal interest in whatever this subject is.
02:03:25.000You know, the weird question that people always say is, like, who's your favorite guest or who is a person that you would want to get on the most?
02:04:59.000That that came out of a laptop in my office fucking around and having comedians come over and we'd do hits out of this volcano vaporizer and get so obliterated we literally didn't even know what we were talking about while we were talking.
02:05:15.000Just having fun with no pretense and no thought whatsoever that one day this is gonna be the biggest media platform in the world.
02:05:25.000If I ever said that to them back then They would have fucking laughed in my face.
02:05:29.000They thought I was an idiot even for doing it.
02:06:05.000I think, for me, when I have the mask, when I have the armor of going out there as a character, man, I'm like, fucking, I'll go, I'll do anything.
02:06:24.000I'm like, you know, my acting style is like I want to create as much danger and I want it to be wild and I want it to be unexpected.
02:06:34.000And my only way of judging whether we had a good day of work is whether like I completely...
02:06:41.000You know, created havoc on set and that it was electric and just like I live for that shit.
02:06:46.000And so I always want to go as far as I can.
02:06:49.000And the process, the movies that I've been a part of or the shows that I've been a part of where I've been able to push that envelope to scare people, scare myself, surprise myself, tap into that wildness, that's how I, that's my only sort of barometer of success.
02:07:04.000But now, you know, like going out there With this, again, with no aspirations of it even going out there, you know, which is very fucking weird.
02:07:13.000For the first time, you know, getting real, real blowback.
02:07:24.000You know, I think that, you know, look, I had Shia LaBeouf on, you know, after these allegations came out of him and, you know, You know, being physically and emotionally abusive to his girlfriend at the time.
02:07:45.000And, you know, what was crazy was I never wanted to have any actors on.
02:09:10.000I also saw a guy who grew up as a child star, a guy who felt like he needed to bleed out for his art, felt that he needed to live wildly out on the street in real life in order to maintain that danger in his work.
02:09:26.000And I'm coming from a guy, me at this point, where I did all that when I didn't have the umbrella of being a big movie star and I didn't have that.
02:09:37.000But now I'm a guy who's absolutely a committed husband and father.
02:09:43.000Like, my life is my family and what I've found is the well, the things that I can tap into and my emotional sort of accessibility of being a dedicated father and husband It's so much greater than when I was sort of this wild animal.
02:10:00.000And I care about people way more than I care about myself.
02:10:06.000So I really wanted to be there for him.
02:10:10.000And the first thing I remember seeing him and seeing this, like, raw nerve and this unbelievable talent, I would say I think he's the best actor I've ever worked with.
02:10:21.000I really wanted to protect him, and I think more than anything else, I really wanted to show him what a real friend was like.
02:10:28.000I just remember, like, saying that to myself.
02:10:30.000I want to show you what a real friend is like.
02:10:31.000I feel like you've never really had a real friend.
02:10:35.000And my friends, the guys that I grew up with, they've been my best friends my whole life.
02:10:40.000They, you know, couldn't do anything without them.
02:10:45.000I just, like, I value that so much, right?
02:10:48.000So we had him on the podcast real early on and before this stuff came out.
02:10:55.000And it was right at a time when he had gotten in trouble down in Georgia and he went to rehab and he wrote this movie sort of about his own life called Honey Boy.
02:11:44.000And I'll say, man, when I heard that he had done those things, you know, for me, there really is a red line with people that I need to look at with myself.
02:11:54.000And through all the shit that I've seen, all the shit that I've done, man, I can't be down with you if you put your hands on a woman.
02:12:01.000If you put your hands on a woman or a child, dude, I just, like, I can't, man.
02:12:58.000Again, you go back to the intentionality.
02:13:01.000And I really looked at this role that you have of being a friend.
02:13:07.000And being a friend is not about turning your back on somebody when they're When they do something that you find fucking deplorable, or when you find disgusting, your job as a friend is to make sure they don't do it again.
02:13:19.000And your job now, as this guy's being a father, is to step in there and say, hey man, where are you at?
02:13:42.000And then, you know, he came on, man, and we spoke.
02:13:47.000And, you know, it was weird because I found so many of the same themes and so many of the same, the heart of what I found in that LWOP community, I found in Shia.
02:14:05.000The level of disgust, the level of work, the level of commitment, the level of shame.
02:14:10.000The level of time spent, this fluency with his victim.
02:14:19.000I had no interest in exonerating him or saving him in any way.
02:14:25.000I wanted to check on him and I wanted to see how he was doing.
02:14:28.000And I felt that that was an honest thing.
02:14:33.000Just the fact that I had him on, I got an enormous amount of backlash, an enormous amount of—for really the first time kind of as like a public person, just like kind of hatred.
02:14:47.000And the fact that I had given somebody who may have done these things that this woman says— That really hurt people.
02:14:59.000And I felt fucking terrible about that, man.
02:15:06.000Because after talking to him and then going around and talking to women who had been victims themselves, talking to this one woman specifically who we were going to have on, but she had health issues and couldn't,
02:15:23.000but You know, what I've found is so many people have reached out who said, like, I was in that place.
02:15:31.000Like, I was in that place where he was.
02:15:34.000I was in that place where I was, whether I was abusive or not abusive, I was getting there.
02:15:40.000And the drugs and the alcohol were getting the better of me.
02:15:42.000And I mean, really, you know, he was two years sober at the time that I had him on.
02:15:53.000I thought really what it was was like a real meditation and shame, you know?
02:15:56.000And I thought that, you know, what this woman said to me was, you know, with all, there's so many places and platforms for Women to go to their shelters.
02:16:09.000There's places to go to to talk about the abuse, to be there to help people after the fact.
02:16:14.000But who is talking to these fucked up young men who are committing the abuse?
02:16:19.000Who is talking to them and saying, dude, don't do that.
02:16:32.000I just, you know, I ultimately felt, you know, that what he said could have a real positive effect.
02:16:42.000And I believe looking back on it now, again, man, it's like, you know, what are you going to do?
02:16:47.000You can weigh the comments of people, I've told you, you know, you're the worst guy on earth for doing it, or you can weigh the comments of the people and say, hey, man, that thing saved my life.
02:17:13.000And, you know, uncomfortable conversations with people where you think that what they did is horrific, they're still important conversations.
02:17:22.000It's a part of being a human being, just like having these people that have committed murder and have gone to jail and have been drug runners and criminals.
02:17:32.000Having conversations with them about their journey and about retribution, about their emerging from this and to become a better person.
02:17:44.000And I think, I don't know, man, I don't know how you feel about this, but I often, I'm not sure exactly how to articulate it, but sometimes the tenor or the quality of kind of like the threat or the punishment Kind of tells you all you need to know.
02:18:01.000And let me try to explain what I'm saying.
02:18:03.000All these people that were saying, you know, definitely don't have him on, definitely don't, you know, the same people that before, you know, were saying like, hey, just get me a meeting with him, you know, are now saying stay away from him at all costs, right?
02:18:17.000But without listening to him or what he sort of has to say.
02:18:22.000And the same people that were sort of applauding him We're good to go.
02:20:32.000Everybody that saw him was like, dude, he's on fire.
02:20:35.000It's like old school Bring the Pain, Chris Rock.
02:20:38.000And I think it's because he got awoken to what he got into this for in the beginning.
02:20:44.000For a lot of comics, being able to host the Oscars is like, you're not just in, you're in with the most important crowd possible.
02:20:54.000You are not just one of the greatest comics of all time, but you're also the guy that can host the Oscars.
02:20:59.000And it's just like this Unachievable honor that such a small handful get to get to that spot and he got to that spot and was humiliated and I think it just reignited what made him a comic in the first place.
02:21:56.000My perspective on it is that Will's just a person that was in an impossible to understand scenario.
02:22:04.000To be a guy who's a child star, who goes from that to become one of the most loved, beloved actors in the world, blockbuster films, everybody loves you, to this one thing where everybody fucking hates you.
02:22:19.000Everybody thinks you're a piece of shit.
02:23:53.000And what was crazy is, you know, I'm an enormous fan of Chris Rocks, you know, and, you know, but I know Will, you know, and...
02:24:06.000I know that Will would hate the fact that my son had that feeling.
02:24:12.000And, you know, for me, you know, working for a whole year with him on that movie and then going on the press tour and the awards circuit, like, look, man, like...
02:24:24.000I've never in my life seen someone who's like kinder or more generous.
02:24:30.000It was such an insane moment that revealed such unhealth.
02:24:37.000Just like a lack of health in that moment.
02:24:59.000So there's like, there's all, there's all that.
02:25:01.000But look, I, you know, I think it's like, you know, it's, it's, it's odd because it's like, you know, for, for me with my friends, it's like, I, I, you know, I try to judge them not, not for their worst moments, for their best and, and, and try to get to the bottom of, of, of what's going on, you know?
02:25:15.000But yeah, it was, it was, um, you, you know, I just remember really palpably feeling that.
02:25:21.000Like, when my son saw it, like, fucking Will would have hated that.
02:25:23.000Like, the Will I know would have hated that.
02:25:27.000I'm sure he thinks about it every day.
02:25:29.000I'm sure he's, like, brushing his teeth going, FUCK! What did I do?
02:25:33.000And, you know, I think it also was an accumulative event of the public humiliation that he felt going on his wife's show and her talking about her relationships with other men, including men that were friends with her son.
02:25:46.000The whole thing was just for him to deal with that publicly had to be so torturous that I think that he just felt this need to stand up for himself in a very Poorly thought I'm not thought out at all,
02:26:02.000you know, just impulsive impulsive Yeah, yeah horribly impulsive just and also just speaks to the ego Like where his ego had gotten him to this place where he thought he could do that And he thought he could yell keep my wife's name out your fucking mouth in front of the Academy the world the world all the cameras saying it to Chris Rock who made the most innocuous joke of All of it is so crazy.
02:26:28.000But the other part about it is to me, like as a human that enjoys a little bit of chaos, I like when things get fucked up because it lets people know that all this bullshit about tuxedos and clapping and horns playing and the curtains drawn and open and closed and it's all bullshit.
02:26:50.000And as you said about Chris Rock's comedy now, There is a potential here for both of these men that that could have been, in a way, in a strange way, the most important, potentially best moment in either of their artistic life.
02:27:07.000I think, again, I go back to me hitting that guy.
02:27:12.000You know, a year later, July 3rd, 2010, I wrote that guy a letter saying that, you know, the person that I hit that night, that wasn't you.
02:27:20.000That was a part of me that I needed to fucking squeeze that shit out of.
02:27:23.000Did you ever meet him again after that?
02:27:24.000I mean, I met him in court, you know what I mean?
02:27:28.000Whatever happened with the court case?
02:27:30.000Well, you know, I got off in a way criminally, you know, because it was, you know, felony assault, man, and, you know, attempted manslaughter.
02:27:41.000But there were so many people there that had seen that there was 10 of them and one of me that it got reduced down to a misdemeanor battery causing serious bodily harm.
02:27:57.000And look, you know, I mean, it's one of those cases of the legal system, you know, really providing, you know, sort of, you know, it's all carrots and sticks, right?
02:28:07.000And for me, I was just, I was placed on this probation for three years that said, you know, had I be, not even arrested, but like had I been present at a violent crime any time in those three years, Mandatory year in LA County Jail had I get charged for a crime.
02:28:27.000So for a guy, unfortunately, and I'm disgusted to say this about myself, but that was not that crazy of an event for me at that point in my life, which is so fucking disgusting.
02:28:54.000But then you walk around with this fucking hole and everything that made people laugh, everything that made people that you think like you and then that want to be around you and that made you attractive or that made you you, it's gone.
02:29:04.000So then you gotta start filling it with other shit.
02:29:07.000You gotta start filling it with good shit.
02:29:20.000Well, what ended up happening, man, it was crazy.
02:29:22.000He ended up suing, you know, I had just done, probably gonna get in so much trouble for this, but I had just done Night at the Museum 2. I played like Al Capone in Night at the Museum 2, like, you know, and the posters were like everywhere around L.A. And I was one of the,
02:29:39.000so I was on the poster, so my face was everywhere.
02:29:41.000So he saw that, and he was like, oh, he sued me for two million dollars, and I had like no money back then.
02:29:47.000And so, you know, when I was starting a family, you know, with my wife, you know, I had to figure out, you know, I had these legal fees and these deposits.
02:29:58.000He had this big lawyer who's just like, you know, coming to the boxing gym that I train in, like, you know, following me around, you know, putting me on camera in these depositions, you know, saying he's going to...
02:30:09.000Come into my house and grab my pregnant wife and depose her, you know, serve her, you know, trying to get a rise out of me.
02:30:16.000It was the biggest acting performance of my life.
02:30:20.000I wanted to reach across the table and choke this guy.
02:30:23.000And I was like, well, why would you do that, sir?
02:30:30.000I don't know, but even that, man, there was so much shame and so much disgust for the way that I was living my life.
02:30:40.000Man, I got away scot-free and ended up having to spend a ton of money that I didn't have and really set us back as we were trying to start a family.
02:31:16.000And if you encounter something as bad as what you encountered, all the things that you described and the way you described it, I probably would have done the exact same thing today, unfortunately.
02:31:28.000When you're confronted by something, that part of you is triggered, and you realize that this piece of shit is pushing you from the back, and you can just flatline them, it's very difficult to not do that.
02:32:09.000You know, for me, you know, I mean, it sounds crazy, but I mean, just for people out there that might be dealing with that kind of stuff, like keeping an anger journal, like figuring out what pisses you off, like figuring out like how long it pisses you off, figuring out what triggers you, figuring out what it makes you think you really want to do to people,
02:33:33.000There's nothing more powerful than changing.
02:33:37.000I completely support and believe in anyone's ability to do that.
02:33:43.000I think the more we write people off and we use these unbelievably insignificant sort of means to not be forgiving or to put people in these boxes, it's a huge mistake, man.
02:33:56.000It's a huge mistake for the person that's doing that, too.
02:34:13.000But we lose sight of that because these kind of conversations where people get to fully express all the emotions and thoughts behind that, they're not that common.
02:34:24.000They're very recent, in fact, in humanity.
02:34:28.000We really haven't had enormous platforms where people can express themselves the way you just did.
02:34:38.000And it can affect so many people in a positive way.
02:34:43.000That's one of the beautiful things about what you're doing, what you're doing with your show, is that you're giving a voice to these thoughts and circumstances and situations and people It's not easy to hear that voice.
02:35:02.000And even if it is, you're not going to read it.
02:35:05.000It's just you put it in a very digestible way that is impactful to many, many people.
02:35:13.000And there's people out there that I'm sure are listening to this right now and listening to your story and realizing that they have an opportunity in their life to enact the same kind of change and the same kind of positive change of direction that you did for yourself,
02:35:31.000that they can do it for themselves, too.
02:35:55.000And he either wasn't loved or was abused or was in this terrible situation and through bad life choices and bad circumstances surrounded by the worst people.
02:36:38.000Because it's like, you know, people, oh, parenting changes you.
02:36:42.000You say that to someone who doesn't have kids, they really have no fucking idea what you're talking about.
02:36:46.000But I've seen it in so many of my friends, that they have children and all of a sudden there's this softening of who they are and this understanding of what's really important, you know, and that what's really, it's so cliche, but love.
02:37:45.000But, you know, while I'm gone, you know, the reason why, you know, I'm not like fucking eating Chinese food and like at the bar is because, you know, I'm away from my kids and I'm putting my kid's name on my work.
02:37:55.000So it's like, I'm going to be committed to whatever I have to do for that.
02:37:58.000Like that, that really fucking matters to me.
02:38:00.000Like I really want them to look back and, And say, you know, Dad put it all in there, you know?
02:38:06.000You know, one of those guys from Shreveport, Rich Wilson, you know, he told me, like, right when I was having my second kid, you know, guy grew up on the streets, you know, and really seen an unbelievable amount.
02:38:21.000You know, I asked him, you know, what advice would you give me, you know, being a father?
02:38:26.000He was just like, all that shit that you're doing that you know you shouldn't be doing, just stop doing that.