Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1222 ｜ Zachary Levi on Leaving LA, Childhood Trauma & Church Problems

00:00:00.000 Zachary Levi is an actor who came out in support of Donald Trump before the last election,

00:00:16.760 and because of that, he suffered a lot of consequences. Today, he's here not to talk

00:00:21.720 as much about politics, but to talk about his faith journey. We will have a good discussion

00:00:26.780 and even a little bit of the debate about some of the things we believe about the Bible and love

00:00:33.500 and mercy and justice and empathy and logic. Really interesting conversation. Also, he will

00:00:39.320 be talking about becoming a dad for the first time just a couple months ago and his new endeavor

00:00:45.680 to create a city outside of Austin, Texas. So much in this discussion today, this episode is brought

00:00:53.780 to you by our friends at Olive. Olive is helping make America healthy again by showing you the

00:00:58.920 ingredients that are really in your food. I love the Olive app. Use it all the time. Download the

00:01:04.540 Olive app at the App Store today. Zachary, thanks so much for taking the time to join me in person.

00:01:18.860 This is so fun. Thanks for having me. And in such an iconic, cool spot. I know. I don't usually record

00:01:25.520 my podcast in the Reagan Center. And so this is a special treat. Yeah. It's fun. Okay. I want to

00:01:31.780 start from the beginning. I want to hear about your background, your upbringing, and how you became

00:01:37.340 who you are. Big question. Big question. Um, okay. Well, I mean, I was, uh, well, I was born in Lake

00:01:46.160 Charles, Louisiana, randomly. My dad just happened to be working there when I popped out. Um, really?

00:01:50.460 Okay. I didn't know that. And we have family in Lake Charles. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I was two months

00:01:55.840 old when we, when we moved away. So I, I literally don't know anything about Lake Charles really. Yeah.

00:02:01.080 Sorry to everybody in Lake Charles. I know some people really like to claim me. And by the way,

00:02:04.760 I'm happy to be claimed by Lake Charles. Happy to, I really have a lot of love for Louisiana. I've

00:02:08.160 spent a lot of time in new Orleans specifically. My sister got married there, all kinds of fun stuff.

00:02:12.980 But, um, but Ventura, California, which is just 30 minutes South of where we are right now,

00:02:17.700 that was really grand central for me and mine. We, my mom grew up there. We lived there most of my life,

00:02:24.100 um, childhood and, and, and even young adult life. And, um, you know, my parents were both, uh,

00:02:32.400 my mom grew up Catholic. My dad grew up somewhere in the Protestant world. I'm actually not even

00:02:38.080 Methodist. I don't know. I don't know. Presbyterian something. Um, and then they found each other in a

00:02:43.680 church in LA in the seventies during the kind of hippie Jesus movement and, uh, and met and married

00:02:51.640 and had me and my two sisters. I'm the middle boy between two girls, which was its own adventure.

00:02:56.840 Fun. Yeah. Um, and then mom and dad, uh, divorced when I was around six years old or something like

00:03:02.080 that. And I, we grew up with my mom. My, my dad was more of the kind of, I don't know, liturgic,

00:03:10.860 um, Christian in that, like, you know, very, very, um, by the book in a lot of ways, uh, still

00:03:19.640 spiritual. Yeah. Um, but, but would, you know, go to church on Sundays and go to church on Wednesdays

00:03:25.440 and, uh, sang in the worship band and taught Sunday school. And, um, but we didn't grow up in

00:03:32.200 that. We grew up with my mom who was a, she was far more of the like deeply spiritual kind of like

00:03:39.320 speaking in tongues. Oh, really? As a Catholic? That's interesting. Well, no, no, no. She grew up 0.56

00:03:43.180 Catholic. She wasn't when she was an adult. No, no, no, no. Like a lot of Catholics, she, it was very 1.00

00:03:49.720 overbearing. It was, you know, she rebelled again. And I, and I don't, I think part of that was also

00:03:53.780 rebelling against her mother, who was a very abusive person in her life, unfortunately, and

00:03:58.340 wielded, uh, Catholicism in, in a way to do that. And unfortunately a lot of people do that Catholic

00:04:04.660 and otherwise they'll wield religion in a way to, um, punish and shame and, and, uh, Catholicism

00:04:12.200 definitely comes with a lot of that. And, uh, so my mom rebelled against that and that that's where 0.97

00:04:16.940 she kind of got, you know, kind of into the hippie Jesus movement and was then Martin, you know, then,

00:04:22.840 uh, I guess of the Protestant non-denominational sense after that. Yeah. Um, but we never went to

00:04:28.520 church. My mom, my mom and dad went to a church in LA that eventually became a cult as a lot of

00:04:34.380 churches in the seventies and all that kind of stuff. It was a weird time. It was a weird time.

00:04:39.480 And, uh, but my mom and dad saw the writing on the wall kind of happening and they were like,

00:04:43.220 we got to get out of here. But my mom, I think partly because of the abuse of power of her own 1.00

00:04:49.080 mother and things that she saw growing up, she just had a, she, she had a problem with authority, 1.00

00:04:54.840 um, and, and abusive authority. And so I don't know, I think that was part of it,

00:05:00.200 her not wanting to yield to more pastors who would abuse that power. And many, many have,

00:05:07.900 unfortunately. Um, and so, yeah, she was also kind of lazy sometimes. So we just, we didn't,

00:05:13.220 we didn't really grow up going to church. Um, but she would constantly have friends over,

00:05:18.840 uh, dinner parties, you know, drinking wine, speaking in tongues, praying over each other,

00:05:23.260 talking about deep philosophical, theological things. And so I was surrounded by that my whole

00:05:27.600 life. And then in, I guess like junior high school, I started going to a youth group and then,

00:05:34.180 you know, off and on hot and cold with youth group through high school. And then after I graduated

00:05:37.900 from high school, I came to the conclusion, I was like, well, I believe a lot of things.

00:05:43.660 I think I believe a lot of things, but I know that I believe a lot of those things because my

00:05:46.760 parents first believed them and instructed me in them. And I need to go and find answers for myself.

00:05:53.020 I want to know if I believe these things because they are true and because I genuinely believe them,

00:05:57.380 or is it just because of the programming? And so I started to go to church, uh, by myself after I

00:06:03.020 graduated high school or as I was kind of graduating high school and, uh, I found an incredible church

00:06:08.920 actually pretty quickly, uh, inventor. It was called the bridge. And it was, it was like the,

00:06:14.160 like the early acts church. I mean, it was just, it was, it was very community driven. Like everybody

00:06:18.740 knew each other and we would spend time together and we would serve together. And, um, and I still,

00:06:25.360 to this day, I mean, you know, I'm now living back in Ventura with my, my partner and our new born

00:06:31.660 son. I'm so grateful for all of that. But part of it is these friends that I made in this church

00:06:38.020 are still like really wonderful brothers and sisters of mine. And I now get to spend some more

00:06:42.380 time with them 23 years after having left, uh, Ventura. And so it was a powerful time and very

00:06:49.020 formative. And, uh, and I did, you know, and then that, and then I moved to LA and then I kicked around

00:06:54.220 in LA for a long time, going to lots of different churches and found people or, you know, parts of

00:07:01.920 community and different ones, but ultimately wasn't very, um, thrilled or satisfied with,

00:07:10.500 with a lot of, I don't know, I think, and I don't think it's just indicative of LA, although I think

00:07:17.060 LA had some elements that were even more, um, not, you know, my, my style. And by that, I mean,

00:07:26.300 you know, I'm all about, I'm all about serving your constituents and like, and, and, you know,

00:07:33.360 giving people an amazing, powerful time when you gather as a church in a building, because the church

00:07:38.840 is not the building, the church is the people in the building. And, but when I would go to certain

00:07:43.920 churches and it ended up being almost all of them, uh, it was like, you were going to the God

00:07:50.300 show. It was hugely like the, the, the worship team going bonkers and, and listen, and I'm not

00:08:00.140 judging any one of their individual hearts. I know that plenty of those people were very earnestly

00:08:03.780 worshiping God, but when you've got like jumbotrons and full blown light displays and smoke machines

00:08:11.000 and a jib camera floating over the audience and do like, what are we doing? And what are we actually

00:08:17.800 doing here? Because I don't think this is about God anymore. This is about like, how can we impress

00:08:22.660 and how do we, and also then, you know, how do we dress to impress? And I think, by the way, that's

00:08:26.640 not, there's a lot of people that go to like, you know, Baptist churches and everything for many,

00:08:32.440 many years. And it's like, got to put on your Sunday best for God. You got, it doesn't matter what

00:08:36.180 you were all week long, but if you don't put on your Sunday best, you're going to be

00:08:38.860 disappointing God. You're going to be, cause you got to somehow look apart in order to go

00:08:42.760 and fellowship with other people. And I think that that is so antithetical to God,

00:08:47.640 like entirely antithetical to God. In fact, Christ called the Pharisees out for saving the best

00:08:52.160 places for the elite and for those that were dressed nicely and all that stuff. In fact,

00:08:57.660 I wore flip-flops to a church. I don't know if they're even around anymore. I think it was called

00:09:02.920 In His Presence Church. And I ended up going and I was wearing flip-flops and the woman,

00:09:08.140 the usher, like, or the person, they were like, I was by myself and, uh, and they saw me wearing

00:09:13.580 flip-flops and they're like, yeah, we got a seat right in the front row. I was like, awesome. Great.

00:09:16.640 I go up to the front row and I'm worshiping and we're doing the whole deal. And, um, and my feet

00:09:21.720 started getting a little warm. And so I just kicked my flops off and I kind of like kicked them under

00:09:24.880 my chair. And then, and then I sat through the whole sermon and everything. It was, it was all right,

00:09:29.260 whatever. Afterwards, I had an usher come up to me dressed in his Sunday vest. Uh, not an usher,

00:09:36.900 like one of the associate pastors or something. And he's like, um, Hey, um, we believe in excellence

00:09:43.000 around here. Do you believe in excellence? I was like, yeah. And he says, well, yeah,

00:09:47.300 we're not going to be able to have you sit up front wearing those flip-flops anymore. And I was 0.93

00:09:51.500 so taken aback. I was, I was, I didn't even know what to say at first. I was like, wait, what?

00:09:56.960 It's like, is this a joke? Yeah, it was crazy. And so I was like, okay. And I left

00:10:01.640 and a friend of mine was actually outside and I was like, hang on a second. I gotta,

00:10:07.300 I gotta go address this. So I went back inside and I was waiting for this associate pastor

00:10:10.500 to talk to me. And I was waiting patiently. He was talking to somebody else. And while I was waiting,

00:10:15.060 the head pastor, he sees me waiting and he goes, Hey, how you doing? He goes to shake my hand.

00:10:20.100 And I was like, Hey, um, I was going to, I can talk to you. Your gentleman over here told me I

00:10:25.760 can't wear flip-flops in the front row or something like, and I just need to understand

00:10:28.960 because it doesn't feel very biblical to me that that would be something we're addressing.

00:10:33.360 Didn't Jesus wear sandals? I mean, um, but, and then he made the saying, he goes, well,

00:10:37.960 we believe in excellence. You know, we go really gotta, you really want to, you know, put on your

00:10:41.280 best, you know, before the Lord and stuff like that. And I was like, you've got to. And I started

00:10:45.480 to quote the scripture to him. And as I did that, all these associate pastors started seeing that

00:10:49.860 there was like this, you know, confrontation with the pastor and they come in to like protect him.

00:10:54.120 And I was like, this is, I don't even know what world I'm in right now, but

00:10:57.740 this is, and that's, you know, and that is just one of the myriad, you know, I think issues that

00:11:04.460 I find in, in church, in the modern church.

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00:14:00.860 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

00:14:11.680 and really make it about the technology they have trying to impress the people walking in.

00:14:16.460 And a lot of those churches are considered seeker sensitive churches. They believe this is what we

00:14:21.540 have to do to be sensitive to the secular world. This is what they want. We're going to give them as

00:14:26.740 good of a show as, I don't know, whatever celebrity or whatever artists can give them. And the interesting

00:14:33.020 thing is that you're saying as someone who was seeking, as someone who was trying to find a church,

00:14:38.200 that was actually a turnoff. So I think there's like a good lesson there for churches to realize

00:14:43.260 you don't have to have all of those fancy things in order to attract people who are seeking. Would you

00:14:48.920 agree with that? Yeah. Well, yes and no. I mean, I wasn't really seeking at that point. Like I was

00:14:54.300 already very well. You were already there. You were seeking a church, right? Well, I was seeking

00:14:58.700 community. Yeah. That's what the church is. That's what we're called into, I believe. And I think that

00:15:05.140 that's what a lot of churches are kind of missing the mark on because you can't sustain real community

00:15:11.100 if the community is built on a whole bunch of pretenses and visuals and like, this is how we

00:15:17.920 look the part. And then you only meet once a week. Like a lot of people go to church and they know the

00:15:25.080 people they go to church with only at church, but they don't really know those people outside of

00:15:28.700 church. No, that's not everybody. Obviously there are some churches out there that are very

00:15:31.460 community oriented, but I think that's where it has to start. Like who are we as human beings?

00:15:36.900 Are we just showing up for each other? Like, do you need help? Can I help you? Like whatever that is,

00:15:41.760 Hey, do you want to go and let's go bowling? Let's, Hey, you know, in Ventura, we had this really great

00:15:46.460 thing at the bridge church where, and I think to this day, they do it where we would just go down to

00:15:51.540 the Avenue, one of the more impoverished parts of Ventura. And we just help clean up people's

00:15:54.980 yards and take trash out and be like, Hey, you need some help. Can we help you? Like the amount

00:15:58.440 of people I've been told recently, and it bums me out that Frank, that this quote by St. Francis of

00:16:04.980 Assisi is not actually an Assisi quote, but for the sake of the conversation, we'll just say it is.

00:16:12.060 It's still to me, like one of the most, maybe the most powerful quotes, I think, particularly as it

00:16:20.140 pertains to, to those who believe in God and choose to represent God, but it's, it's preach

00:16:26.840 the gospel at all times. And if necessary, use words. We don't do that. I don't see a lot of that

00:16:35.100 going on in the world. I don't see a lot of that going on in the world of Christianity. I see a lot 1.00

00:16:39.640 of people talking. I see a lot of people preaching. I see a lot of people judging and shaming and doing

00:16:43.480 all manner of things. And, and, and, and a lot of, you know, frankly for a religion that's supposed 0.71

00:16:52.380 to be so cornerstone on love and the love of God, I don't, I personally find a lot of people

00:16:59.580 either find Christianity or at least stay with Christianity, not because of love, but it's

00:17:04.600 because of fear because they're ultimately told, well, if you don't, if you don't, if you don't do

00:17:10.120 this, then you're going to burn in hell for the rest of eternity. And, oh, that's such a,

00:17:14.540 that's a bummer. You know, I have some thoughts. Do you mind if I kind of push back with my

00:17:18.740 perspective? Go ahead. Really quick, just to finish the seeker thing. I think it's folly to, 0.99

00:17:25.060 um, I think it's folly to think that we need to somehow design or engineer an experience

00:17:31.880 that's seeker friendly, like being overly seeker friendly. I think what need to happen,

00:17:38.140 uh, what need happen is, is tearing down all of the stuff that we've built on top of

00:17:46.820 the normal church going experience so that it's just real and authentic. And it's from

00:17:53.220 our, our actual earnest hearts of wanting to be conduits of God's love in this world.

00:17:59.400 And when you do that, seekers feel that like it doesn't need to be God plus all we don't need to

00:18:07.220 sell God. You just need to, you don't need to sell the truth. You just need to tell the truth.

00:18:10.900 You don't need to sell the, the, the, the virtues of a relationship with God as much as you just need

00:18:16.560 to talk about it authentically and share that. And I think that anybody who's genuinely seeking

00:18:22.020 will feel that. So anyway, that's my, on the, on the seeker bit of it, but by all means,

00:18:27.340 what were you going to say? I appreciate, I appreciate that. And I agree about the seeker

00:18:30.840 sensitive model. I think a lot of times it just leads to compromise and superficiality.

00:18:35.340 Um, and like you said, that's not really what people are looking for. You can get a light show

00:18:39.960 anywhere, but as you said, it's hard to find that true community that is based on God's

00:18:45.400 unconditional love. Um, my thought about that quote, cause I've heard that quote a lot

00:18:50.080 that preach the gospel, use words if necessary. And while I understand its sentiment and definitely

00:18:58.640 Christians are called to action-based love. And we read in James that faith without works 0.58

00:19:05.160 as dead. And we see the model in Christ that he fed the hungry and he helped the poor and

00:19:11.120 he reached out to the truly vulnerable and marginalized, but also like Christianity is

00:19:17.540 based on words. It is based on the call of Jesus in Matthew 28 to go out and make disciples

00:19:23.520 of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, the son, and the Holy spirit,

00:19:27.560 preaching to them, telling them the gospel. And in fact, in John one, we read the name for

00:19:33.200 Jesus's logos, the word made flash, who dwelt among us, who came and became light and darkness

00:19:39.360 by telling us the gospel and telling us what frees us from sin. And so Christianity is very

00:19:46.640 different than say Judaism or Islam, who uses a certain method to try to bring people to the

00:19:53.720 faith. And Judaism is an evangelistic Buddhism, which value silences holiness. Christianity says, 0.90

00:20:00.260 no, go out and preach the gospel, go out and tell people the truth. I'm not saying that actions

00:20:07.140 don't matter because they do, but Christians, um, we necessarily have a public and a word based faith.

00:20:17.240 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

00:20:36.880 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.

00:20:51.420 And so to me, it would seem that it's both like if God is love and Christianity is based on God is

00:20:58.100 based on Christ and he is love. And he shows us that how one way we can love other people is tell

00:21:05.440 them the truth about what can free them from sin. To me, it seems that those are kind of

00:21:10.380 inextricably intertwined. Well, I mean, okay. And one could argue that nobody cares how much

00:21:15.120 you know until they know how much you care. And if you're not leading first and foremost with that

00:21:19.580 love, then all the words that you tell somebody are in one ear and out the other. And quite frankly,

00:21:24.220 this is one of the problems I think with, there are so many people who have already rejected Christ

00:21:31.860 because of Christianity, because of Christians. I think Gandhi has this great quote. I, I, I love your

00:21:39.440 Christ, but I cannot stand your Christians or something I'm paraphrasing, but I, what he's 1.00

00:21:45.800 trying to say is that there are plenty of people that stand in the name of Christianity. Christianity.

00:21:50.820 I mean, there are a lot of things that people have done historically, the inquisition and all,

00:21:56.180 all that kind of stuff. That wasn't love. That was a lot of punitive damage. That was a lot of shame

00:22:01.920 and blame and, and, and death. And even now there's a lot of people who carry themselves and profess

00:22:07.560 to be Christians who I don't think are leading with love at all. They, they lead with the shame. 1.00

00:22:12.500 They lead with the, Oh, this person's not doing this right. And that person's not doing that right.

00:22:16.560 And you know, this is what God says. It's like, well, yes, according to the Bible, according to

00:22:21.240 the scripture, according to the document that you believe to be the right document, that's what that

00:22:28.160 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 1.00

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, 0.85

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 0.67

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

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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 0.82

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 0.99

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 0.99

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 0.89

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 1.00

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,

00:36:43.760 that version of them gets to live.

00:36:50.520 And here's the thing about justice.

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 1.00

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 reality. It's a very pervasive issue. Next sponsor is Field of Greens. So I love meat and potatoes.

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00:42:08.800 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,

00:42:34.940 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 0.95

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

00:53:09.480 dear pregnancy centers are to my heart. That's why we raise so much money and donate so many items to

00:53:15.400 pregnancy centers. This audience has been so generous, but these pregnancy centers rely on

00:53:21.420 pre-born, uh, to be able to serve their clients, to serve these moms in need because pre-born supplies

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00:53:42.260 woman to make the decision that affirms the life and the dignity of her child. Because when a woman 1.00

00:53:47.360 sees that life inside her body, she knows it's not just a clump of cells. That is a living human

00:53:52.920 being that she needs to protect. And if you donate $28 to pre-born, you are covering the cost of one

00:54:00.040 ultrasound session, but whatever you can donate, maybe it's $2.80, maybe it's $28,000 and you

00:54:07.000 contribute to saving the lives of thousands of babies, whatever you can contribute that will echo

00:54:12.280 in eternity and can contribute to saving a life here on earth. So go to preborn.com slash Allie to 1.00

00:54:18.620 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.

01:04:10.840 Yeah.

01:04:11.840 Thank you so much.

01:04:12.840 Awesome, great. Thank you.

01:04:16.840 Thank you.

01:04:21.100 Thank you.

01:04:30.980 Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - July 25, 2025

Ep 1222 ｜ Zachary Levi on Leaving LA, Childhood Trauma & Church Problems

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