Ep 1222 ｜ Zachary Levi on Leaving LA, Childhood Trauma & Church Problems
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 4 minutes
Words per Minute
190.0643
Summary
Zachary Levi is an actor who came out in support of Donald Trump before the last election, and because of that, suffered a lot of consequences. Today, he s here not to talk as much about politics, but to talk about his faith journey. We ll have a good discussion and even a little bit of the debate about some of the things we believe about the Bible and love and mercy and justice and empathy and logic. Also, he will be talking about becoming a dad for the first time, and his new endeavor to create a city outside of Austin, Texas.
Transcript
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Zachary Levi is an actor who came out in support of Donald Trump before the last election,
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and because of that, he suffered a lot of consequences. Today, he's here not to talk
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as much about politics, but to talk about his faith journey. We will have a good discussion
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and even a little bit of the debate about some of the things we believe about the Bible and love
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and mercy and justice and empathy and logic. Really interesting conversation. Also, he will
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be talking about becoming a dad for the first time just a couple months ago and his new endeavor
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to create a city outside of Austin, Texas. So much in this discussion today, this episode is brought
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to you by our friends at Olive. Olive is helping make America healthy again by showing you the
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ingredients that are really in your food. I love the Olive app. Use it all the time. Download the
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Olive app at the App Store today. Zachary, thanks so much for taking the time to join me in person.
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This is so fun. Thanks for having me. And in such an iconic, cool spot. I know. I don't usually record
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my podcast in the Reagan Center. And so this is a special treat. Yeah. It's fun. Okay. I want to
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start from the beginning. I want to hear about your background, your upbringing, and how you became
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who you are. Big question. Big question. Um, okay. Well, I mean, I was, uh, well, I was born in Lake
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Charles, Louisiana, randomly. My dad just happened to be working there when I popped out. Um, really?
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Okay. I didn't know that. And we have family in Lake Charles. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I was two months
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old when we, when we moved away. So I, I literally don't know anything about Lake Charles really. Yeah.
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Sorry to everybody in Lake Charles. I know some people really like to claim me. And by the way,
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I'm happy to be claimed by Lake Charles. Happy to, I really have a lot of love for Louisiana. I've
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spent a lot of time in new Orleans specifically. My sister got married there, all kinds of fun stuff.
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But, um, but Ventura, California, which is just 30 minutes South of where we are right now,
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that was really grand central for me and mine. We, my mom grew up there. We lived there most of my life,
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um, childhood and, and, and even young adult life. And, um, you know, my parents were both, uh,
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my mom grew up Catholic. My dad grew up somewhere in the Protestant world. I'm actually not even
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Methodist. I don't know. I don't know. Presbyterian something. Um, and then they found each other in a
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church in LA in the seventies during the kind of hippie Jesus movement and, uh, and met and married
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and had me and my two sisters. I'm the middle boy between two girls, which was its own adventure.
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Fun. Yeah. Um, and then mom and dad, uh, divorced when I was around six years old or something like
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that. And I, we grew up with my mom. My, my dad was more of the kind of, I don't know, liturgic,
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um, Christian in that, like, you know, very, very, um, by the book in a lot of ways, uh, still
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spiritual. Yeah. Um, but, but would, you know, go to church on Sundays and go to church on Wednesdays
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and, uh, sang in the worship band and taught Sunday school. And, um, but we didn't grow up in
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that. We grew up with my mom who was a, she was far more of the like deeply spiritual kind of like
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speaking in tongues. Oh, really? As a Catholic? That's interesting. Well, no, no, no. She grew up
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Catholic. She wasn't when she was an adult. No, no, no, no. Like a lot of Catholics, she, it was very
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overbearing. It was, you know, she rebelled again. And I, and I don't, I think part of that was also
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rebelling against her mother, who was a very abusive person in her life, unfortunately, and
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wielded, uh, Catholicism in, in a way to do that. And unfortunately a lot of people do that Catholic
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and otherwise they'll wield religion in a way to, um, punish and shame and, and, uh, Catholicism
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definitely comes with a lot of that. And, uh, so my mom rebelled against that and that that's where
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she kind of got, you know, kind of into the hippie Jesus movement and was then Martin, you know, then,
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uh, I guess of the Protestant non-denominational sense after that. Yeah. Um, but we never went to
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church. My mom, my mom and dad went to a church in LA that eventually became a cult as a lot of
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churches in the seventies and all that kind of stuff. It was a weird time. It was a weird time.
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And, uh, but my mom and dad saw the writing on the wall kind of happening and they were like,
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we got to get out of here. But my mom, I think partly because of the abuse of power of her own
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mother and things that she saw growing up, she just had a, she, she had a problem with authority,
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um, and, and abusive authority. And so I don't know, I think that was part of it,
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her not wanting to yield to more pastors who would abuse that power. And many, many have,
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unfortunately. Um, and so, yeah, she was also kind of lazy sometimes. So we just, we didn't,
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we didn't really grow up going to church. Um, but she would constantly have friends over,
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uh, dinner parties, you know, drinking wine, speaking in tongues, praying over each other,
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talking about deep philosophical, theological things. And so I was surrounded by that my whole
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life. And then in, I guess like junior high school, I started going to a youth group and then,
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you know, off and on hot and cold with youth group through high school. And then after I graduated
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from high school, I came to the conclusion, I was like, well, I believe a lot of things.
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I think I believe a lot of things, but I know that I believe a lot of those things because my
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parents first believed them and instructed me in them. And I need to go and find answers for myself.
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I want to know if I believe these things because they are true and because I genuinely believe them,
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or is it just because of the programming? And so I started to go to church, uh, by myself after I
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graduated high school or as I was kind of graduating high school and, uh, I found an incredible church
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actually pretty quickly, uh, inventor. It was called the bridge. And it was, it was like the,
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like the early acts church. I mean, it was just, it was, it was very community driven. Like everybody
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knew each other and we would spend time together and we would serve together. And, um, and I still,
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to this day, I mean, you know, I'm now living back in Ventura with my, my partner and our new born
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son. I'm so grateful for all of that. But part of it is these friends that I made in this church
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are still like really wonderful brothers and sisters of mine. And I now get to spend some more
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time with them 23 years after having left, uh, Ventura. And so it was a powerful time and very
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formative. And, uh, and I did, you know, and then that, and then I moved to LA and then I kicked around
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in LA for a long time, going to lots of different churches and found people or, you know, parts of
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community and different ones, but ultimately wasn't very, um, thrilled or satisfied with,
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with a lot of, I don't know, I think, and I don't think it's just indicative of LA, although I think
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LA had some elements that were even more, um, not, you know, my, my style. And by that, I mean,
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you know, I'm all about, I'm all about serving your constituents and like, and, and, you know,
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giving people an amazing, powerful time when you gather as a church in a building, because the church
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is not the building, the church is the people in the building. And, but when I would go to certain
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churches and it ended up being almost all of them, uh, it was like, you were going to the God
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show. It was hugely like the, the, the worship team going bonkers and, and listen, and I'm not
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judging any one of their individual hearts. I know that plenty of those people were very earnestly
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worshiping God, but when you've got like jumbotrons and full blown light displays and smoke machines
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and a jib camera floating over the audience and do like, what are we doing? And what are we actually
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doing here? Because I don't think this is about God anymore. This is about like, how can we impress
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and how do we, and also then, you know, how do we dress to impress? And I think, by the way, that's
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not, there's a lot of people that go to like, you know, Baptist churches and everything for many,
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many years. And it's like, got to put on your Sunday best for God. You got, it doesn't matter what
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you were all week long, but if you don't put on your Sunday best, you're going to be
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disappointing God. You're going to be, cause you got to somehow look apart in order to go
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and fellowship with other people. And I think that that is so antithetical to God,
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like entirely antithetical to God. In fact, Christ called the Pharisees out for saving the best
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places for the elite and for those that were dressed nicely and all that stuff. In fact,
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I wore flip-flops to a church. I don't know if they're even around anymore. I think it was called
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In His Presence Church. And I ended up going and I was wearing flip-flops and the woman,
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the usher, like, or the person, they were like, I was by myself and, uh, and they saw me wearing
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flip-flops and they're like, yeah, we got a seat right in the front row. I was like, awesome. Great.
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I go up to the front row and I'm worshiping and we're doing the whole deal. And, um, and my feet
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started getting a little warm. And so I just kicked my flops off and I kind of like kicked them under
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my chair. And then, and then I sat through the whole sermon and everything. It was, it was all right,
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whatever. Afterwards, I had an usher come up to me dressed in his Sunday vest. Uh, not an usher,
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like one of the associate pastors or something. And he's like, um, Hey, um, we believe in excellence
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around here. Do you believe in excellence? I was like, yeah. And he says, well, yeah,
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we're not going to be able to have you sit up front wearing those flip-flops anymore. And I was
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so taken aback. I was, I was, I didn't even know what to say at first. I was like, wait, what?
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It's like, is this a joke? Yeah, it was crazy. And so I was like, okay. And I left
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and a friend of mine was actually outside and I was like, hang on a second. I gotta,
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I gotta go address this. So I went back inside and I was waiting for this associate pastor
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to talk to me. And I was waiting patiently. He was talking to somebody else. And while I was waiting,
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the head pastor, he sees me waiting and he goes, Hey, how you doing? He goes to shake my hand.
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And I was like, Hey, um, I was going to, I can talk to you. Your gentleman over here told me I
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can't wear flip-flops in the front row or something like, and I just need to understand
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because it doesn't feel very biblical to me that that would be something we're addressing.
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Didn't Jesus wear sandals? I mean, um, but, and then he made the saying, he goes, well,
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we believe in excellence. You know, we go really gotta, you really want to, you know, put on your
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best, you know, before the Lord and stuff like that. And I was like, you've got to. And I started
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to quote the scripture to him. And as I did that, all these associate pastors started seeing that
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there was like this, you know, confrontation with the pastor and they come in to like protect him.
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And I was like, this is, I don't even know what world I'm in right now, but
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this is, and that's, you know, and that is just one of the myriad, you know, I think issues that
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I have a couple of thoughts. So many thoughts about what you said. One of the things that I think is
00:14:05.400
interesting is that you're talking about some of these churches that really make it about the show
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and really make it about the technology they have trying to impress the people walking in.
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And a lot of those churches are considered seeker sensitive churches. They believe this is what we
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have to do to be sensitive to the secular world. This is what they want. We're going to give them as
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good of a show as, I don't know, whatever celebrity or whatever artists can give them. And the interesting
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thing is that you're saying as someone who was seeking, as someone who was trying to find a church,
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that was actually a turnoff. So I think there's like a good lesson there for churches to realize
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you don't have to have all of those fancy things in order to attract people who are seeking. Would you
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agree with that? Yeah. Well, yes and no. I mean, I wasn't really seeking at that point. Like I was
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already very well. You were already there. You were seeking a church, right? Well, I was seeking
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community. Yeah. That's what the church is. That's what we're called into, I believe. And I think that
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that's what a lot of churches are kind of missing the mark on because you can't sustain real community
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if the community is built on a whole bunch of pretenses and visuals and like, this is how we
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look the part. And then you only meet once a week. Like a lot of people go to church and they know the
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people they go to church with only at church, but they don't really know those people outside of
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church. No, that's not everybody. Obviously there are some churches out there that are very
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community oriented, but I think that's where it has to start. Like who are we as human beings?
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Are we just showing up for each other? Like, do you need help? Can I help you? Like whatever that is,
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Hey, do you want to go and let's go bowling? Let's, Hey, you know, in Ventura, we had this really great
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thing at the bridge church where, and I think to this day, they do it where we would just go down to
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the Avenue, one of the more impoverished parts of Ventura. And we just help clean up people's
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yards and take trash out and be like, Hey, you need some help. Can we help you? Like the amount
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of people I've been told recently, and it bums me out that Frank, that this quote by St. Francis of
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Assisi is not actually an Assisi quote, but for the sake of the conversation, we'll just say it is.
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It's still to me, like one of the most, maybe the most powerful quotes, I think, particularly as it
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pertains to, to those who believe in God and choose to represent God, but it's, it's preach
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the gospel at all times. And if necessary, use words. We don't do that. I don't see a lot of that
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going on in the world. I don't see a lot of that going on in the world of Christianity. I see a lot
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of people talking. I see a lot of people preaching. I see a lot of people judging and shaming and doing
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all manner of things. And, and, and, and a lot of, you know, frankly for a religion that's supposed
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to be so cornerstone on love and the love of God, I don't, I personally find a lot of people
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either find Christianity or at least stay with Christianity, not because of love, but it's
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because of fear because they're ultimately told, well, if you don't, if you don't, if you don't do
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this, then you're going to burn in hell for the rest of eternity. And, oh, that's such a,
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that's a bummer. You know, I have some thoughts. Do you mind if I kind of push back with my
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perspective? Go ahead. Really quick, just to finish the seeker thing. I think it's folly to,
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um, I think it's folly to think that we need to somehow design or engineer an experience
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that's seeker friendly, like being overly seeker friendly. I think what need to happen,
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uh, what need happen is, is tearing down all of the stuff that we've built on top of
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the normal church going experience so that it's just real and authentic. And it's from
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our, our actual earnest hearts of wanting to be conduits of God's love in this world.
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And when you do that, seekers feel that like it doesn't need to be God plus all we don't need to
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sell God. You just need to, you don't need to sell the truth. You just need to tell the truth.
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You don't need to sell the, the, the, the virtues of a relationship with God as much as you just need
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to talk about it authentically and share that. And I think that anybody who's genuinely seeking
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will feel that. So anyway, that's my, on the, on the seeker bit of it, but by all means,
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what were you going to say? I appreciate, I appreciate that. And I agree about the seeker
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sensitive model. I think a lot of times it just leads to compromise and superficiality.
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Um, and like you said, that's not really what people are looking for. You can get a light show
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anywhere, but as you said, it's hard to find that true community that is based on God's
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unconditional love. Um, my thought about that quote, cause I've heard that quote a lot
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that preach the gospel, use words if necessary. And while I understand its sentiment and definitely
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Christians are called to action-based love. And we read in James that faith without works
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as dead. And we see the model in Christ that he fed the hungry and he helped the poor and
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he reached out to the truly vulnerable and marginalized, but also like Christianity is
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based on words. It is based on the call of Jesus in Matthew 28 to go out and make disciples
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of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, the son, and the Holy spirit,
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preaching to them, telling them the gospel. And in fact, in John one, we read the name for
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Jesus's logos, the word made flash, who dwelt among us, who came and became light and darkness
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by telling us the gospel and telling us what frees us from sin. And so Christianity is very
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different than say Judaism or Islam, who uses a certain method to try to bring people to the
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faith. And Judaism is an evangelistic Buddhism, which value silences holiness. Christianity says,
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no, go out and preach the gospel, go out and tell people the truth. I'm not saying that actions
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don't matter because they do, but Christians, um, we necessarily have a public and a word based faith.
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And that is one, I think really important distinction about what Christians believe.
00:20:22.700
Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I don't, I don't know that personally. Um, I don't think it's a word
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based faith. I think it's a love based faith. And I, and I, I think that's where it has to start.
00:20:41.840
Well, God is love. First John four, eight, we know that. And the word is God. So that's John one.
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And so to me, it would seem that it's both like if God is love and Christianity is based on God is
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based on Christ and he is love. And he shows us that how one way we can love other people is tell
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them the truth about what can free them from sin. To me, it seems that those are kind of
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inextricably intertwined. Well, I mean, okay. And one could argue that nobody cares how much
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you know until they know how much you care. And if you're not leading first and foremost with that
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love, then all the words that you tell somebody are in one ear and out the other. And quite frankly,
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this is one of the problems I think with, there are so many people who have already rejected Christ
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because of Christianity, because of Christians. I think Gandhi has this great quote. I, I, I love your
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Christ, but I cannot stand your Christians or something I'm paraphrasing, but I, what he's
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trying to say is that there are plenty of people that stand in the name of Christianity. Christianity.
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I mean, there are a lot of things that people have done historically, the inquisition and all,
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all that kind of stuff. That wasn't love. That was a lot of punitive damage. That was a lot of shame
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and blame and, and, and death. And even now there's a lot of people who carry themselves and profess
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to be Christians who I don't think are leading with love at all. They, they lead with the shame.
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They lead with the, Oh, this person's not doing this right. And that person's not doing that right.
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And you know, this is what God says. It's like, well, yes, according to the Bible, according to
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the scripture, according to the document that you believe to be the right document, that's what that
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says. But you're talking to a bunch of people that don't know that don't believe that. So how do you,
00:22:33.600
you can't just, I mean, honestly, I think this is a, this is a big folly within a lot of Christians
00:22:38.600
and Christianity is when you just start quoting scripture to people that don't know it and don't
00:22:44.680
believe in it, because that doesn't resonate with them. What resonates with them is when you go and
00:22:48.400
say, Hey, how you, how can, forget anything I believe. You don't have to believe anything I
00:22:53.380
believe, but I'm going to show you that I believe it by my actions. I'm going to show you the power of
00:22:59.400
what this did in my life without ever telling you these things. And that opens up someone's
00:23:05.480
heart to want to receive the things that you believe, that you believe in this document.
00:23:09.900
So I think it has to start that way. And, and that allows the conversation to be a genuine one
00:23:16.260
because when it doesn't happen that way, again, what I find is that a lot of people convert to
00:23:21.400
Christianity, but it's, it comes at this because they're afraid. They're afraid that they're going to
00:23:28.080
burn in hell. They're afraid of this eternal damnation. Well, there is one element of the
00:23:33.180
fear of consequences that does come with Christianity. And I don't think that's bad,
00:23:38.680
but I agree with you. It should be motivated by love. And I agree with so much of what you're saying
00:23:45.760
that words, we both agree that words without action and posturing without the life behind it.
00:23:53.700
You mentioned the Pharisees, um, that Jesus called out the Pharisees, but not because they were wearing
00:23:59.540
fancy clothing, not because they were praying, but because they were like whitewashed tombs. And so on
00:24:05.380
the outside, they looked great, but they were decaying on the inside, not because they followed the law
00:24:10.280
too closely or they preached the law too ardently, but because their hearts weren't in alignment with
00:24:16.020
what they were saying. So I think that we agree. I think that at least in Christianity, that the word,
00:24:23.600
that the evangelism, that saying what is right and what is wrong is actually important. It doesn't mean
00:24:29.200
that we have to, you know, preach scripture in every situation to someone who doesn't believe
00:24:34.640
scripture. There might be a time and a place, although the word of God never returns void,
00:24:39.260
but also we do back that up. We do couple that with living a life of integrity and love and service
00:24:48.180
and self-sacrifice and generosity. I would say, I would say most Christians actually do that really
00:24:54.540
well. Yes, there are going to be sinners. There are going to be people who use religion for power and
00:25:01.020
for leverage and for abuse. And I think that's especially egregious, but in general throughout history,
00:25:08.240
I would say it's been a huge net positive what Christians have done for the world and Western
00:25:13.180
civilization in comparison to paganism. I'm not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
00:25:18.600
I believe religion writ large, I mean, even outside of Christianity, other religions God used to help
00:25:26.400
bring structure, to bring order, to bring civilization to that which was uncivilized prior. So I'm totally in
00:25:36.300
agreement with that. In Corinthians, and I won't even begin to butcher it, but in fact, you can pull
00:25:44.040
it up. It's in 13, right around the verses that everyone loves to have at weddings, love is patient,
00:25:53.180
love is kind. Yeah, 13. But before that, it's to me some of the most powerful verses in the Bible,
00:26:03.180
in the New Testament, which is you can have all of the knowledge and speak in all of the tongues and do
00:26:09.220
all of those things, but have not love and you are nothing. You're missing the entire point. And then
00:26:15.720
he finishes, Paul finishes, I'm pretty sure Paul wrote Corinthians, finishes 13 with, but these three
00:26:23.260
remain faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. Like there are so many moments
00:26:29.240
throughout, specifically in the New Testament where it's driven home over and over and over and over
00:26:32.860
and over and over and over and over again. It's love usurps all of it. Love is more powerful than
00:26:39.040
all of it. So if you're not starting from there, if you're not starting from this place, I don't know
00:26:43.420
what the point of going and trying to preach is because you're preaching from that place that
00:26:51.640
is kind of there, is kind of not. I don't know. You know, so that's why I'm so passionate about that
00:26:57.940
kind of stuff. Yeah. Next sponsor is Good Ranchers. I love Good Ranchers. We make it almost every night.
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00:28:04.520
Don't you think it's important that we define love as God defines love? Like if God is love and
00:28:10.060
he's the one that's telling us to love? Because you might agree that the culture today kind of
00:28:14.100
defines love however they want to. Like is love lust? Is love, I don't know, predation? Is it romantic
00:28:20.220
infatuation? Or is it something else? And I think it's really important for us to distinguish what that is
00:28:25.760
because if God is love, then it makes sense that he gets to define it, right?
00:28:31.100
Certainly. The best definition of love that I've ever heard, I think, comes from Thomas Aquinas,
00:28:43.940
who, if you follow it far enough back, it goes to like Aristotle or something like that. But
00:28:48.660
to love is to will the good of the other. It's to will the good of the other. You want
00:28:57.380
whatever person is across from you, on the other side of the world from you, you want their good.
00:29:05.660
We, I think all too often, we categorize people into who is worthy of that love and who is not
00:29:12.660
worthy of that love. I think God calls us into that kind of love. This is, which is why Christ
00:29:17.420
says to love your enemies and pray for your persecutors. It's easy to love those who love
00:29:23.460
you. That's not really what we're being called into. We're being called into something that requires us,
00:29:30.200
I believe, to see every single person, every enemy, every persecutor, every friend, family,
00:29:37.240
everyone in between, people, terrorists, murderers, everything, to be able to see them as a beloved
00:29:45.840
of God, a beloved. And if you can truly see that, if you can see that once upon a time,
00:29:53.560
they were a child that had all these different possibilities in their life, but the route that
00:29:59.420
they're on, which by the way, doesn't ever absolve anyone of the responsibility for the route that
00:30:03.960
you're on or the decisions that you make or negate justice. But, but how we implement that justice
00:30:09.300
must come from a place of some empathy where we recognize that that person is in fact a product
00:30:16.320
of their environment. They were, well, did you have a choice in who your parents were?
00:30:21.500
Well, I'm, my only, my only hmm is whether or not that should factor into our like legal justice
00:30:28.460
decisions. But, oh, that's, that was my only hmm. Well, let's put the legal justice to the
00:30:33.880
side for a second. I'm just asking, I'm asking, how does God see us? Does God see murderers or does
00:30:39.840
he, does he see someone that is his beloved or why are we singing in church when we're kids?
00:30:45.380
Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Yes. But God obviously has consequences
00:30:52.400
for sin. Yes. But both eternal and temporal, even if, even if he loves us, which he does. Cause like
00:30:58.860
you said, we're all made in the image of God and I'm not even arguing that we shouldn't see,
00:31:03.040
you know, the situation that someone is in and try to understand that. My only like aside,
00:31:08.860
and maybe we'll get into this later is whether or not that should affect the legal justice that
00:31:13.560
we implement. No, that's why I said, it doesn't absolve anyone of their decision-making. We're
00:31:17.100
still responsible for the decisions we make. That's part of how we learn as part of how we grow,
00:31:21.100
right? I'm, I'm with you on that, but that must be informed. However, we decide to
00:31:27.280
reprimand this person should be informed through the filter of God's love of us loving, not looking
00:31:35.220
at people like they're monsters and villains and horrible. Yes. People commit, commit heinous,
00:31:41.380
vile, horrible acts. Those acts I believe are the darkness. But I think that we, I personally believe
00:31:49.320
that if we were to look at everyone through the lens of that God looks at us through, we would see
00:31:54.080
that child. That's what we need to practice more. We need to see the little five-year-old and everyone
00:31:58.280
and go like, wow, you've done some crazy bad stuff. But I also recognize that what led you to doing
00:32:05.020
those things isn't because you're sitting around this five-year-old twisting their little Machiavellian
00:32:09.800
mustache and being like, how can I go mess some stuff up in this world? They didn't choose the
00:32:15.980
parenting that they got. They didn't choose the community that they got, the society they were born
00:32:20.500
into, the religion that they were forced to go oftentimes to believe in. The genetics, the nature
00:32:28.880
and the nurture, they didn't choose any of that. And I think it's folly for us to not consider that
00:32:34.660
as we view people, because I think God who knows all sees all of that and judges very fairly through all
00:32:43.660
of that. If God is in fact a just God, and I believe that God is a just God and knows everything,
00:32:49.400
then clearly God in his eternal love is looking at any one of these people that does heinous,
00:32:54.960
horrible things and still sees the beloved in that person. I have to believe.
00:33:00.480
Yes. I think that God has immense compassion for people more than we can even understand because
00:33:05.080
all the factors that you just listed, I mean, God not only knows those, but knows every single
00:33:11.420
secret private moment of whatever it is, violence or oppression or injustice that that person has
00:33:17.780
endured. And so I completely agree with you. And maybe we're not even having a conversation about
00:33:22.400
legal justice at all. Maybe we're only talking about interpersonal relationships in which I would
00:33:27.460
agree with you, but at the same time, something's got to give, especially when it comes to legal justice.
00:33:33.320
So what do you think it looks like practically? Say you have someone, and I'm genuinely asking what you
00:33:38.760
think. Like if you've got someone who did have a really difficult upbringing and you're like,
00:33:43.480
wow, they only knew violence. They were abused by their parents. They joined a gang when they were 12
00:33:48.220
because that's the only thing they knew. And now they're 21 and they just, you know, committed
00:33:53.060
double homicide. Like sadly, I still think the result needs to be maximum punishment for the lives that
00:34:00.580
he took because ultimately those are the victims and those people were image bearers of God too.
00:34:05.500
And their lives matter. It doesn't mean we don't have compassion for them. But when I start hearing,
00:34:10.220
we have to think about their background. And I just see, I just see that as kind of mitigating or
00:34:17.240
inhibiting legal justice and the protection of victims and potential victims.
00:34:22.220
Right. And this is where I think, uh, and this is, I thank you for wanting clarification on it,
00:34:27.920
because I think this is, this is where a lot of these conversations break down.
00:34:31.060
I am by no means, listen, I think that God wants us to all act in really deep empathy and really deep
00:34:40.880
logic simultaneously. If you have too much empathy, it's toxic empathy. And you're like, well, they were
00:34:46.300
abused and it doesn't matter that they bombed and blew up all these people or they murdered double
00:34:50.500
homicide. Like you got, you know, give them a break. It's like, hang on a second. You're not
00:34:55.080
balancing the empathy that we should have with logic, which is you can't just do that. There are
00:35:00.620
repercussions. There are consequences to our actions. And when there are not consequences to
00:35:05.000
our actions, then people who are still lost in darkness in their flesh and who want to take
00:35:10.120
advantage of systems will go hog wild. I mean, look what happened in California when all of a sudden
00:35:14.740
they said, Hey, if you steal less than a thousand dollars worth of product, then we just aren't going to
00:35:20.240
go after you and we'll let you out of jail and all that stuff. It was wildfire and not the actual
00:35:25.260
wildfires in California, but a wildfire of crime spree. San Francisco to this day right now is still
00:35:31.040
reeling from it. CVS is closing left, right, and center. Cause they're like, we can't sustain this.
00:35:36.660
Right? So obviously there have to be guardrails. There have to be things.
00:35:40.640
When we go and we sentence someone, let's say maximum is life in prison.
00:35:45.180
Let's say there's a way to go and sentence someone to life in prison where you stick them in a hole
00:35:53.120
and you treat them like garbage and a, and a, and a monster for the rest of their life. Yeah. Or
00:35:59.480
they can still be in a prison away from the general population, keeping other people safe, whatever it
00:36:06.480
is. And you can minister to that person through love. And by the way, there are lots of organizations
00:36:12.680
that do this. They will go to prisons and they will intentionally go to these people that have
00:36:17.220
been cast away by society and said, you're done with your gross, your evil, your vile. Eh, you should
00:36:22.980
have died. You're lucky you got life in prison. And they go to this person and say, I still see the
00:36:27.620
child of God in you. Yeah. And I think that you are worthy of love.
00:36:30.780
And they pray for them and they love them. They love that kid inside back to life so that that,
00:36:52.420
First of all, it's not ours. It's his right. And yes, we have to be used to bring order. I don't
00:37:00.060
disagree with that. And I do think people are need to be held accountable for their actions,
00:37:03.760
but again, through the filter of that love, which doesn't negate consequences. It just means it's how
00:37:09.580
we ultimately treat that person in the midst of that, hoping to will the good of that person,
00:37:16.820
that they are not so far gone that their soul can't experience that love right now on earth.
00:37:23.900
And I believe with everything in me, that is what brings more healing and forgiveness and closure
00:37:32.020
to that double homicide. Those families that were affected by those people dying,
00:37:38.400
do they get some kind of closure because some earthly justice has been done and this person was put in
00:37:44.820
prison for the rest of their life? Maybe. Yeah. But do they get real closure, real, real healing
00:37:51.360
in the same way that if that person who, let's say in court, and I've seen just, oh, just horrible
00:37:57.160
videos of people that are on trial for doing something heinous. And they're just like laughing
00:38:02.020
and the pain that that family must be feeling because that person feels no contrition whatsoever.
00:38:07.520
And they don't get the, they don't get it. But when somebody can actually down the road,
00:38:14.640
come to this family and in true repentance and apologize for what they've done, that that's what
00:38:23.780
we need more of because punishment on punishment on punishment on punishment. If we just pass, that's
00:38:30.860
like it's generational trauma. We just keep throwing down the line that person. Maybe they don't get
00:38:35.300
life in prison. Maybe they get 40 years in prison and then we just treated them like a junkyard dog.
00:38:39.460
So when they get out of prison, they're far more likely to go back to the same horrible life that
00:38:43.520
they were already killing people in. That's not stopping the cycle. That's not helping the process.
00:38:48.900
I don't think. Yes, there are consequences, but may we try to do them in a way where we're actually
00:38:54.960
wanting to will the good of that other and, and, and see the child of God in them,
00:39:01.320
the beloved that they are and help them to get back to the light.
00:39:05.240
Yeah. And love is better than empathy. Empathy I think is neutral. It's neither good nor bad.
00:39:10.140
It can lead you toward love or it can lead you towards cruelty. It really depends upon what
00:39:15.200
you're submitting your empathy to because empathy is so powerful. I was just talking to another guest
00:39:20.500
about this, that Abigail Schreier wrote this amazing book. And I wrote a book called toxic empathy,
00:39:25.060
but I talked to her, um, about this first and she cited this study by someone named Paul Bloom,
00:39:32.220
who was a Yale psychologist. And he wrote actually a book called against empathy. And he's not really
00:39:37.860
against all empathy, but he looked at this study that the more empathy is emphasized in schools,
00:39:45.000
the meaner kids are to the out group. And I know that's not what you're talking about. I just think
00:39:50.940
that's interesting because when we focus so much on how we feel or how someone else feels,
00:39:57.020
whoever we think is against the person that we are feeling so strongly for. And I think this actually
00:40:03.020
agrees with what you're saying. And I think this is actually a reason for the political divide in some
00:40:07.920
ways, whoever we see as against our chosen victim, the person that we're caring for, we become,
00:40:14.400
we can become cruel to them. We can become mean to them. And we refuse to see their experience
00:40:19.000
or where they're coming from. We only see the perspective of the person we perceive as the
00:40:24.580
victim that we're taking care of. And I think that explains at least a lot of progressives who I
00:40:29.600
think are highly empathetic. A lot of why you see them feel so deeply for someone who is say an
00:40:35.300
immigrant, but they cannot feel at all for someone who is like, yeah, well, I'm a legal immigrant and
00:40:40.200
I'm against illegal immigration. No ability to see that perspective, not saying the right doesn't have
00:40:44.740
our own issues. But in particular, that like deep feeling empathy that can blind you to objective
00:40:50.240
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fieldofgreens.com. Code Allie. Tell me about fatherhood. What has it been like since your son
00:42:19.440
was born? Boy, it is just, it's like to say it's the best thing that I've ever experienced in my,
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I mean, he's only just over two months old and I can already tell you. And I think a lot of parents
00:42:39.020
can, um, it's powerful from even before they're born, but certainly once they're in the world,
00:42:44.540
like the profundity of what it means that a God gave us the ability to actually create that life
00:42:50.360
that he imbues and that you are fully responsible for and to, but that's so much, uh, uh, the blessing
00:43:01.880
that you are given. Like we don't grow and evolve and become better us, better us's because we weren't
00:43:10.780
challenged. It's, it's in those challenges. It's in those like, Whoa, you know, this is, this is massive.
00:43:18.040
This is so big. Um, but I've always, I've always known that deep down in my heart. I think I came
00:43:24.300
into this world. I think we all do. We were imprinted with so much, uh, in our psyche, in our
00:43:30.400
soul, in our calling, in our purpose. And, and certainly an aspect of my calling and purpose in
00:43:35.400
this life was to always be a father. I always knew it. People, my whole life would tell me like,
00:43:40.240
why don't you a dad? I'm like, it hasn't happened yet. All those things. But I will say though,
00:43:44.560
I'm very grateful that, um, I didn't have a child and didn't become a father until this point in my
00:43:50.380
life, because even eight years ago, I had a massive, massive mental breakdown, like didn't
00:43:55.820
want to live legitimately anymore. And thank God I found the therapy that taught me to love myself
00:44:01.700
for the first time in my life and heal so much of the unhealed trauma that I'm, that I still continue
00:44:06.340
to, you know, like, like layers of an onion work through. But if I would have had a child before
00:44:11.560
I had that breakthrough in my life, the amount of unknown trauma, unhealed trauma that I would
00:44:16.960
have been spilling off onto them their whole lives, just like my mom did and didn't mean to.
00:44:22.500
Um, so yeah, so I've been, I've been preparing for it and been readying for it and wanting it
00:44:28.400
my whole life. And so it's so dreamy. My son, Henson Ezra Levi Pugh is acronym of help. Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:36.760
Thank you. I appreciate that. Um, and Ezra means help helper. And, uh, he is just the
00:44:43.380
grooviest little nugget. I just love him so much. And Maggie, my partner is an incredible
00:44:49.420
mom. And, and, you know, we're just, we're journeying through this and, and every parent
00:44:55.740
will tell you it is a rollercoaster of all the emotions and everything, but it's been so
00:45:00.820
already like the amount of, um, I don't know, just revelations that God has, has, has given me,
00:45:06.440
uh, as soon as he was born, I was holding him minutes after he's born. I'm looking down to his
00:45:10.380
little face and immediately transported to my parents looking down on my little newborn face
00:45:16.380
and with all the hope and all the promise and all the love and all of the things that I know that
00:45:21.240
they wanted for me and wanted to do for me in my life, regardless of how, however, all that ended
00:45:26.920
up going, that's where that started with so much love. So it gave me just even more. I mean, I tear
00:45:35.020
up because it's, it's just, it's cathartic. It's like, it's like letting go of so much fear and so
00:45:39.980
much anger and so much unresolved trauma and unforgiveness and all of those things that weigh
00:45:45.520
us down. That is darkness. It weighs us down and God wants us free of all of that stuff. It's all of
00:45:50.500
that stuff. So having a child has been a huge, hugely important, uh, modality of that type of
00:45:57.460
therapy in my life, you know, just giving me more grace, more love for my parents.
00:46:02.660
Um, yeah, you do have a lot of grace for your parents. I mean, I have wonderful parents, but
00:46:07.760
you have a lot of understanding when you have your own kids and that's not to excuse. Like I know that
00:46:13.580
you said that you were psychologically abused. No, no, no, no. It doesn't excuse. No, I didn't want you
00:46:17.400
to hear me saying that, but it just does give us a little bit more perspective and proper empathy
00:46:23.580
for, you know, what our parents were thinking and feeling at the time and all the complicated layers
00:46:29.100
of that. Can you talk a little bit more about, you said you had a breakthrough that had to do with
00:46:33.980
your upbringing and your mom. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yeah. I mean, I, uh, because of
00:46:41.140
my life up to, you know, 37, I was 37 when it all kind of came crashing down, but
00:46:46.660
you know, it was a, it was a long, it was a childhood full of lots of psychological, uh, not
00:46:52.440
physical, um, abuse, thank God. Um, but lots of just mental, emotional, psychological abuse from a
00:46:58.500
mother who, like I said, was highly abused herself prior to that. And it doesn't absolve her of her
00:47:04.160
actions, but it explains them and gives me more empathy for how that came to be. And also therefore
00:47:08.740
allows me to forgive and let go because it wasn't personal. It literally wasn't. It was her trying
00:47:14.020
to survive her own mental illness that she was unaware that she had and was fighting with.
00:47:19.400
And, um, but so that was a whole lifetime of that. And being the only boy in my family,
00:47:25.140
my parents divorced, and I'm the only boy between two girls and my mom and my aunts and my grandma
00:47:28.960
and my cousin and family outings would be like, go shopping at JC Penney's. I mean, it was like,
00:47:33.260
you know, I'd go find the circular clothing rack and make a little fort and go hang out. Cause I'm like,
00:47:37.040
or beg my mom for another Nintendo game. Um, but I, but I knew very, very, very early on,
00:47:43.400
like four years old, I knew the calling on my life to go be an entertainer. And that's exactly
00:47:48.340
where God brought me. And, but then I ended up in a, just a very broken industry. You know,
00:47:54.500
I could see the writing on the wall when I first jumped into it, I assumed it was probably going
00:47:57.960
to be a pretty inhumane. Um, I assumed incorrectly though, that the inhumanity was somehow like this
00:48:03.720
price that everyone in the industry paid to be a part of this industry that like makes these great
00:48:07.740
movies and TV shows. But the reality is that certainly since I started working in the, in the
00:48:12.460
industry, um, that is a miracle to make great things in Hollywood because most of not all, but
00:48:19.480
most of the ruling class of executives and producers, and they're, they don't, they might,
00:48:26.440
they might, they might say that they care about making a great movie, but at the end of the day,
00:48:30.500
they don't really care about making a great movie. They just care about making a movie and
00:48:34.380
then using whatever marketing propaganda they can to get people to go buy tickets. And that's it.
00:48:39.140
So it's just about money for most of the people in Hollywood. Yeah. Unfortunately,
00:48:45.520
do you think that's gotten worse? Because me just as a viewer, it seems like there's just not a whole
00:48:51.120
lot of original storylines out there. Everything seems to be like a remake or a repeat. And it's kind
00:48:58.400
of sad to me. Yeah. No, I mean, listen, I, I think it's, I think that, like I said earlier,
00:49:06.480
the model's been broken since the very beginning, Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks,
00:49:10.280
all those like Titans of the silent era. They started United Artists Studio because they saw
00:49:14.780
it was all really broken. You have a lot of people that are lost in power, money, hungry egos that
00:49:20.180
aren't really the visionaries or creatives, but they are telling the creatives what to do. And oftentimes
00:49:25.700
in doing that, screwing up the creative process. And if they happen to not, or if let's say they
00:49:31.260
might have a decent note here or there or whatever, but let's say they don't screw it up, that's a
00:49:35.720
miracle. And then for it to succeed, it succeeded in spite of their meddling. And yet they still take
00:49:42.180
the lion's share of the money and the win and everything else and the artists and, you know, they can get
00:49:46.640
the scraps of, of the rest of that. That's been going on since the beginning. Yeah. There have been
00:49:52.860
studio heads, visionary maverick leaders that were creatives throughout the years. There's no doubt
00:49:59.140
about it. And they were responsible for finding and fostering great directors and producers and
00:50:04.900
writers and actors and crew. And, but unfortunately that was few and far between. And now it's pretty
00:50:10.500
much all gone because since the eighties, it's all just become way too commoditized and corporatized
00:50:16.940
and run by lawyers and accountants. And it's like, what are the bottom lines, right? Once you go public
00:50:22.240
and you have shareholders, the whole game just becomes, how do you please shareholders? And that's
00:50:27.860
always better margins and better bottom lines. And if that's the thing that drives whatever you make,
00:50:33.600
you're going to start making a thing that is worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. That's math
00:50:39.860
guys. That's literally what's happened to every industry because you don't have industrialists that
00:50:45.760
just hold the line and say, I don't care about if the shareholders want to sell their stock, then they can
00:50:49.540
sell their stock. I'll let them sell it to people who understand that this is a long play and that
00:50:53.800
their stock is going to value in a slower rate and become far better because we're making something
00:50:58.700
that actually means something in the world that actually has value in the world. I think Elon Musk
00:51:03.140
has actually been a perfect example of doing that. Nobody was making anything great as far as electric
00:51:08.160
cars. In fact, the car companies and oil companies were all basically conspiring so that we wouldn't have
00:51:13.620
electric cars. And by the way, there's a whole other conversation about if they're even greener for the
00:51:17.780
environment, but that's another conversation. The point is electric cars, nobody wanted to do
00:51:22.560
anything about that. And Elon was like, I'm going to do that and I'm going to make them awesome.
00:51:27.120
And he made them so awesome by creating a company that actually values the awesomeness and the
00:51:31.580
excellence of that and treating his employees well. Shocker, that's boded well for the bottom line of
00:51:36.680
those shareholders, right? Again, you can argue him recently being political wasn't great for
00:51:42.560
these stocks, but I don't think that that's not going to rebound on some level because if you hold to
00:51:47.680
the ethics of the integrity of make great things and take care of the people that are helping you
00:51:53.340
make those great things, that's the company that you want to build. Okay. So tell me how you're
00:51:58.180
about to do that or you're wanting to do that in Texas, right? Yes. Yes. Um, sorry, just because
00:52:04.700
we went off on a tangent and I just wanted to land the plane with you. So after the lifetime of
00:52:08.940
whatever my childhood was and all that stuff, then I went into Hollywood and it was very broken. And
00:52:12.860
there's lots and lots of trauma that comes from that too. And it was all these things that I
00:52:16.780
hadn't resolved. And I didn't know I didn't resolve until it all caught up with me when I moved to
00:52:20.860
Austin to eight years ago to go and buy land, to build what I believe has been my calling that God
00:52:30.040
has put on my life, my whole life, which was not just to go and be in the entertainment industry, but
00:52:34.480
to be a leader of positive change, wherever God calls me. And he happened to call me there
00:52:39.760
and to fight for a better world for as many people as I possibly can and use my platform to do that.
00:52:47.040
And so when I got my first look behind the curtain and I saw how all the sausage was made
00:52:51.020
in Hollywood 25 years ago, I was like, God, I don't know how to do this. This is so broken. He's
00:52:55.840
like, aha. Last sponsor is pre-born. You guys know how much pre-born life matters to me, how near and
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donate today. That's preborn.com slash Allie. I know that you just kind of explained the shareholder
00:54:28.380
problem, but I don't want to gloss over. We were talking before the camera started running about
00:54:33.800
that brokenness specifically. What was it that you saw that you were like, yeah, nope, don't want to be
00:54:39.180
a part of that. Going to do something else. Well, again, so it's the, the value structure is
00:54:43.400
entirely, uh, uh, upside down. They're not valuing the product and they're not valuing the people
00:54:49.800
making the product. They're valuing the bottom line. So that's, it's, it's profit over people
00:54:54.180
and not the other way around. You've got to value people over profit. If you want genuinely, if you
00:54:58.640
want to make a company, uh, in any industry that, that leaves a really, you know, ROI, not just of
00:55:04.840
investment, like return of impact, like to actually have a great impact on this world. And, and, and
00:55:10.240
hopefully, you know, if we're remembered at all in 10, 20, a hundred years, whatever it is that
00:55:15.020
that's what you're remembered for, because you didn't just take the money and run. You were like,
00:55:19.240
yeah, I made a bunch of money. And also I can, I want to keep reinvesting it into this area,
00:55:22.560
into these people, into the state, into this country, into this world. I want to go, I want to do that.
00:55:27.120
So, but I saw that wasn't Hollywood right out of the gate. And then on top of that,
00:55:31.420
you have lots of other issues, like part mixed up with all of that bad, you know, financial
00:55:36.860
valuing and structuring. You have an entirely opaque backend, meaning you could have a deal
00:55:43.380
that says you make, you know, X percent, 10% of the backend of the, of the receipts of a movie
00:55:48.380
or a TV show or whatever it is. The chances of you ever seeing that money are so slim because
00:55:56.160
what a lot of creatives, what a lot of executives who might not be creative, what they're very creative
00:56:00.460
at is a creative accounting. And they constantly just claim poverty. And they're like, Oh no,
00:56:05.340
we didn't really, well, this, there was so much money in PNA that we, you know, we barely made
00:56:08.320
the money back and nobody made any money. I mean, everybody, since I was 18, 19 in the business
00:56:12.760
for 25 years, everybody complains about this, but nobody really did anything. Cause it's just this,
00:56:18.340
this, this, you know, it's, it's its own system. It's very difficult to do anything outside of that
00:56:23.060
entire ecosystem. Yeah. As, as well as, you know, when I started in the industry, I was very blessed that,
00:56:28.720
you know, the first 10 years of my career, I got to work on two shows that shot in LA,
00:56:32.860
but I was watching all my friends and all these other people constantly getting shipped out to
00:56:36.740
all these other places, living this like oil rig life, like, you know, saying goodbye to their
00:56:40.500
wife and kids and community and saying like, see in a few months and the amount of marriages that
00:56:45.180
suffer from that, the amount of communities, children's relationships with their parents,
00:56:50.900
like there's gotta be a better way. This, we, we shouldn't have to just chase incentives
00:56:54.720
because then, you know, like I'll go do a film and there's 300 people on that crew.
00:57:00.300
I want to be able to know all of them. I want to be able to know their children. Like when I was
00:57:03.880
doing TV, I was able, I knew my whole cast and my whole crew and we knew each other's families.
00:57:08.120
That was a community. And I wanted to do that forever. But with films, you meet like 300 people
00:57:13.560
and it's like, see you never after like two, three months, you're like, see you never, maybe,
00:57:16.840
maybe we'll get to work together again. That is not good for our soul. We were not built
00:57:21.520
to not be in community and community, in my opinion, is not who you necessarily live next to.
00:57:28.540
There are plenty of us that live in neighborhoods that have no community because you don't know
00:57:32.300
your neighbors. And therefore, by the way, you don't trust your neighbors. If you don't really
00:57:34.620
know your neighbor, then that's why so many people want to helicopter their parents now
00:57:38.540
or helicopter their kids nowadays, because you don't really know your neighbors. So I was like,
00:57:43.460
I don't know, can, can little Billy go run it, ride his bike until the lights come on? That's what I
00:57:49.200
did, right? I don't know if I want Billy doing that because I don't know any of these people.
00:57:54.400
Community is really more, in my opinion, who are you co-laboring with? Who are you co-working with?
00:58:00.440
Who are you co-creating with? This is how we were built for thousands of years of hunter-gatherer
00:58:05.380
ourselves. We were bands predominantly of men off doing the hunting and women doing the nurturing
00:58:12.220
and the gathering. And we had community, even went apart. We had community and we could rely on each
00:58:18.120
other and know each other and trust each other and knew each other's kids because we helped bring
00:58:21.400
them up together in the world. Obviously cities are a little more complicated than groups of 150
00:58:28.620
people or whatever a tribe would be before it would normally break off. But there's got to be a way to
00:58:34.740
get back to the heart of that. And so that was one of the things that I felt God tapping me on the
00:58:40.020
shoulder and being like, Zach, this is what you need. This is what you need to go and do. You're not
00:58:45.040
just going to go create a better movie studio that values the artists and values the art and
00:58:49.720
therefore values the audience. You're going to create a movie studio that's also a living community
00:58:54.100
because our communities are broken. We all believed for far too long, this nonsense
00:58:59.640
American Western dream, which is if you have the right job and make the right amount of money and
00:59:05.340
you have the right spouse and they have the right job and they make the right amount of money and you
00:59:07.960
have the right house and the right neighborhood and you have the right cars and you have the right
00:59:11.060
amount of kids and they go to the right schools and you go on the right vacations and all the
00:59:14.420
the right things and you're going to be happy. Then you did it. Then you won. And so many of us
00:59:18.660
have fallen victim to this lie and the propaganda that we're constantly hit with every day with
00:59:22.820
more ads for, don't you want the new this? And don't you need the new that? And you don't need
00:59:26.560
any of that stuff. You don't. We can all live far more minimalistic lives and live in a tighter
00:59:32.840
community. The Amish who people have mocked for so long, the Amish have been doing so much right
00:59:39.060
for so long because that's what we were called to, at least on the community aspect and working
00:59:45.240
together. They can build barns. I mean, have you seen what they're doing in Western North Carolina?
00:59:49.100
Those people are saints. They are stepping up when an entire government failed them. Fortunately,
00:59:54.180
Donald Trump has tried to fill some of that gap and he's been helping the people of Western North
00:59:58.200
Carolina. But anyway, that's another tangent. So what, so what God called me to do wasn't it's,
01:00:03.320
it's not just go fix the broken Hollywood system. It's like, those are humans that make up that system
01:00:09.760
fix as many things for their lives as you possibly can. So give them better schools for their kids,
01:00:15.100
get them, you know, that, that are actual education and not indoctrination. And by the way,
01:00:18.620
as we're moving into this new world of AI, what are we teaching our kids? Like every parent out there,
01:00:25.900
my kids two and a half months, I got a ways before this habit, kids that are in school right now,
01:00:30.640
make sure that you are, they're at a school where they're learning something that will be valuable
01:00:36.700
once all of these AIs and robots that are, you know, motivated through AI, they're all going to
01:00:43.240
start taking all of the jobs, guys, all of the jobs. I don't mean to be a doomsday person about it
01:00:48.760
legitimately, but yeah. So anyway, so schools for their kids and further adult education for anybody
01:00:55.680
who wants to keep learning new things, new crafts, new trades, whatever.
01:00:58.260
Okay. So this is beyond just an entertainment studio. You were thinking really big.
01:01:02.800
I'm thinking in, I mean, yeah, it's like an intentional city. I mean, we're starting with
01:01:06.240
just the one, the first phase we're raising $40 million in equity. If anybody out there wants
01:01:10.820
to be a part of it, let me know, go to wildwoodaustin.com. We have all the information there.
01:01:15.780
And some of this, and you have to go, and I promise I would keep you on schedule for your next
01:01:19.960
obligation. I'm good. I'm good. But, and part of this was inspired by all of the stuff that
01:01:25.760
happened with the vaccine mandates in Hollywood too. Right. And just like your desire for freedom
01:01:31.340
and autonomy. Was that a part of this at all? I mean, uh, I guess on some level, this all
01:01:37.400
truthfully, I just think that what we, what we need across the world is we need to be able to live
01:01:45.140
actually truly free lives to be able to have actual liberty and autonomy within your life.
01:01:54.720
Like I'm more libertarian than anything else in that regard. Like I, if someone wants to go do
01:02:00.260
something weird and wacky in their life, like I'm not go do that. So long as your liberty doesn't
01:02:05.380
affect my liberty. So that's what I'm trying to build in the ethos of wildwood. Like I welcome
01:02:11.980
diverse opinions and thoughts. So long as those people are being driven by both empathy and logic
01:02:17.720
so that if we have a difference of opinion, we can sit down and actually hash through it and talk
01:02:21.440
about it and we can learn from each other. Yeah. So, you know, but yes, as far as like,
01:02:26.240
I don't think anybody should have been mandated to get the vaccine. Certainly I can only speak for my
01:02:30.920
industry. And there were lots and lots and lots of people that were mandated essentially said you
01:02:35.620
either get it or you don't work on. That's a mandate, you know? Yeah. So through fear,
01:02:39.860
through coercion that was forced on a lot of people. And I think that was egregious. And I
01:02:43.680
think that that quite, quite frankly is illegal and technically is illegal, particularly when you
01:02:49.740
break down all of the fact that what we were being, uh, you know, coerced into taking, if you go look
01:02:56.420
at the data now and you see it's ineffectuality that it didn't help anybody, it didn't keep you from
01:03:00.880
getting sick and it didn't keep you from spreading it. So ultimately then why were we shaming people
01:03:06.180
for not joining in that? That was really tragic. That was really tragic. So I don't think that was
01:03:13.000
right. But that aside, yes, I think people should have the autonomy to either, if another one floats
01:03:18.740
around the world, God forbid, I would want people to have the freedom to say that's for me or that's
01:03:24.160
not for me. I choose to believe this data or I choose not to believe that data. We should be able
01:03:29.060
to have that. And also, yeah, not be blacklisted because we say, hang on a second, I have some
01:03:34.000
questions and I have some concerns, questions and concerns. If, if brought politely and respectfully
01:03:38.760
should always be engaged with, what have you, what do you have to lose other than people who
01:03:44.560
are building their argument on really, really thin ice and they know it deep down, they haven't really
01:03:49.460
thought through everything. Those are the people that don't want to entertain any question or concern
01:03:53.020
because they don't know how to answer those questions or concerns. And they certainly don't want
01:03:56.900
to let this ice break because their whole identity goes down in the water with it.
01:04:00.840
Hmm. Okay. I think we have to end there. We got to end it. Oh, I know. Well, thanks
01:04:05.180
everybody. Thank you so much, Zachary, for taking the time to share your thoughts. I really appreciate
01:04:09.100
it. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.