#2353 - Shaka Senghor

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What's up?

Pleasure to meet you.

Oh, such a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, it's

I heard your story.

Why don't you tell everybody your story?

Because the story's pretty wild.

Yeah, so I grew up in Detroit,

working-class neighborhood.

Dad was in the

Air Force and worked for the state.

Mom was a homemaker.

So on the outside looking in, it really looked like a household where the kids should make it.

But unfortunately, it was a very abusive household.

And I ran away when I was about 13 years old.

And at the time prior to that, you know, honor role, scholarship student, dreams of being a doctor, artist.

I wanted to be a doctor because I felt like that was an occupation where I felt like you can help people.

And unfortunately, you know, when I ran away, I thought that I would basically just kind of get welcomed into the home of someone who would see this kid and be like, oh, you know, this kid just deserves love or whatever.

But I found myself on the east side of Detroit in an apartment with a gun to my head.

And it was my introduction to the street culture.

I was being robbed.

And I was being robbed by this guy who later we would learn his name was Tiny.

even though he was like big, fat, probably about six feet tall.

And him and his partner, Lily, robbed me at gunpoint, took my drugs, took the money.

And I think that was like one of those moments where the innocence of being a kid just was shattered.

You know, it's like, you know, now I'm in this world where my life is in danger.

But I stayed in that culture.

My childhood friend was murdered.

I was beat nearly to death.

And despite that, I just continued to sell drugs.

You know, it's one of the things when I think back to, you know, even that part of my life, you know, there's the glorification of like the hustler, right?

It's like, you know, we're out here making money, we're doing things, but the reality is it's a kid navigating a very dangerous adult world at the time that crack is just penetrating the community.

And one of the things that always go back to this image of the first time I made a lot of money, and I just had this wad of cash, like it's like all singles, $5 bills, $10 bills.

And I went to the store on the corner and I bought all the cereal that I can think of.

Like all the cereal that I could not.

You know, my parents, even though, you know, my dad made decent money, like we couldn't always get all the cereal because it was like all these kids.

And then I bought like chocolate milk and strawberry milk.

And then I went back to the crack house.

Wow.

And you were like, what, 13?

Literally like 13 years old.

And so, you know, I stayed in that culture.

And then then when I was like 17 years old, I was standing on March 8th, I'll never forget that day, I was standing on the corner and I got into like a minor conflict

and then I got shot multiple times

and that was probably the most serious turning point in my life.

After I got shot, They called Amalanz and the Ambulance never came.

At this time, I'm on the west side of Detroit, and I'm just sitting on the porch bleeding.

And my friend, he was like, look, I'm going to have to take you to the hospital because the ambulance is just not going to come.

And I remember getting in the car and he's just like,

you know, breathe.

Like, you got to take these deep breaths.

You know, this is how you're going to navigate the pain.

And the reason he was able to do that, he had got shot the year prior.

You know, so it's just like he got shot.

His friend got killed.

So the gun violence was just, you know.

it was so much a part of like the culture and and that I grew up in that I didn't think about what was happening inside of me as I got shot.

And so I get to the hospital, they take two of the bullets out of my leg, and they leave one bullet in.

And basically,

they patch me up.

And you know, I remember my dad coming to the hospital, and at this point, I was the third of my brothers to be shot.

And

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

it was almost a look of

like defeat, you know, of like,

how do I save my boys, you know?

And so when I left the hospital, like

nobody,

like the doctor, the nurse, nobody just was like, hey, you're going to have all these feelings.

And so I get back and I'm in the neighborhood.

And, you know, I'm angry because I really want to get revenge on this guy who shot me.

Like, that's the number one priority for me.

It's like, you know, I got to get, I got to retaliate.

And then I'm standing outside.

This is probably like day two.

I had crutches.

So I'm like literally in the neighborhood crutches, patched up bullet wounds.

I'm standing on the corner.

And

I remember a car coming down the street.

And like my body almost seized up.

And I was like,

why am I feeling this kind of like anxiety?

Now it's anxiety back then.

There was no name for it.

But I couldn't tell my friends that I really was afraid of standing outside and being exposed.

Wow.

Yeah, and so that was 17 years old.

And so

what happened after that was I began to tell myself this story that if I found myself in conflict again, I would shoot first.

And I began to literally carry a gun every day.

It wasn't the first time I had carried a gun, but like I began to carry a gun like every day.

Like it didn't matter what I was doing.

Using the bathroom, gun is on the sink.

I'm going to sleep at night, gun is up under the pillow probably wasn't the smartest place to sleep with a gun but that was the nature of how I felt you know what I was dealing with and so I started to tell myself this narrative and about 16 months or so later maybe 14 months

I was DJing a party And, you know, I love music.

You know, I come from Detroit.

It's one of the greatest music cities, you know, in the world.

And so I'm DJing this party and shots ring out.

People are running, scrambling, you know, getting away.

And, you know, the people whose party I was DJing, they come to the back.

They're like, somebody got shot in the front.

So we got to shut everything down.

So we shut the party down.

We were on like super heightened alert.

You know, we're getting, making sure everybody, we got headcount for like our crew.

And, you know, it's me and my girlfriend, and we're going back.

to my home.

And I remember us walking, we had walked around to the party, we were walking back and this truck pulls up.

And this, you know, it's a car full of guys.

And so, you know, I'm on edge.

I got a pistol on me.

So I'm like, you know, what's happening?

And he was like, oh, no, we just, you know, y'all know that Derek was the guy who shot the guy in front of the house.

So now we got at least some idea of who, what the shooting is was.

We get back around.

And when they get on our block, cars coming up the street and there's a guy inside the car.

And he's like, yo, you know, he calls me over.

And I'm like, you know, what's happening?

He's like, yo, I want to make a deal, blah, blah, blah.

He got two guys that I don't know.

And

I'm like, no, I don't want to do the deal right now.

Like, it's a lot going on.

And, you know, so I'm a little amped up.

You know, it's, you know, a lot going on.

And so we get into this verbal altercation where he's like adamant about me selling some drugs to him.

I'm adamant about him like, you know, getting off the block.

And so that escalates into like a full-blown argument.

And one of the guys in the car with him, he joins into the argument.

So we're like all back and forth, back and forth.

And there's a moment where,

you know, I turned to

some moment I turned to walk away.

And I like literally took what

probably like one or two steps.

And I thought I heard one of them trying to get out of the car.

And I turned and fired four shots that tragically ended the man's life.

You know, it's one of those moments that

I always think about that moment.

Like, what if I'd have just took like a second step?

You know, what if I would have just like, I mean, it was a series of what-ifs, you know,

but when I tragically ended this man's life,

and it wasn't the first time I had been in a gun battle, it wasn't the first time I had been in any of of that, that lifestyle.

I felt it.

I felt like I did something that was like, you can't undo.

Like, I just, like, I felt it in my spirit.

Like, at 19 years old, I'm like one month into

being 19.

And I was just like, I fucked up.

Like,

I've done something that's not.

You can't repair that.

You can't come back and say, I'm sorry.

You can't come back and be like, you know, I made a mistake or

whatever.

And so, you know, the car screeches off.

You know, people are running inside the house.

Everybody's just like, you know,

what is happening?

I made everybody leave.

And then I

was like, I got to go on a run or something.

Like, I don't, you know, I don't want to get arrested.

I don't want to be accountable.

But I was arrested probably a day or so later.

I was charged with open murder, and I was eventually convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 17 to 40 years in prison at the age of 19.

Wow.

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So

take me through what it's like when you got convicted.

You know now you're going to jail.

What is this feeling like?

So when I got arrested, got charged, the first thing I went to the county jail, Wayne County Jail.

And

going into the county jail, you are introduced to just this other world.

You know, I had heard about it, you know, growing up on the streets, you hear about like, you don't want to go to the county jail.

It's the worst shit ever, right?

And so going into the county jail was like, you know, it's going into a war zone.

You know, it's fights every day.

It's like, you know, people are testing you.

Can they fucking take your breakfast and lunch?

So going in, I knew that that was just the reality of like, you know, anticipating like at some point I'm going to have to prove myself and i'm gonna have to stand up for myself and and so

i get into the county jail and i end up the guy who i'm in the cell with he's serving life but he's back on appeal um and so he's you know he's kind of telling me all the the kind of what to expect in jail and you know this guy right here on the cell block he likes to fight all the time or whatever You know, I also grew up like in the city, right?

So I'm, you know, I tell people this all the time.

Like, you can, I don't, I don't do scare straight when I talk to kids about like not going to jail jail.

Cause to me, it's not about, it's not about being afraid.

If you're from the hoods, you've probably had a fight or two.

You know what I'm saying?

But I get in there and, you know, we get into our dust-ups.

And, you know, eventually it's kind of like a hierarchy of like, you know, who's going to stand up for themselves.

And typically guys kind of back down.

But early on, I'm like, I don't want to be in jail.

I want to be in prison.

So I ended up trying to escape from the county jail.

And what happened was there was a guy on the cell block with me.

He was already sentenced.

He's about to go upstate and do a lot of time.

And one day he went to recreation and came back with like a long pole he had smuggled from the rooftop gym.

And his idea was that he would blunge in the officer, take the officer's uniform, and then let us out the cell and take us out.

And I'm like, dude, this has got to be the dumbest fucking idea ever.

Like,

we're not making it out of the cell block, right?

But I was like, but what if we take this pole and we bust the window out and bend the beam?

And so we plot over the next couple of weeks, we like would take people's like sheets, like we would bully people out of their sheets.

Like you can only have one sheet, you're going to take the other one.

So we took all these sheets and we probably ended up with probably about 60 or 70 sheets.

And we can get out of our cells.

So we would basically, you, you tie the sheet up into a knot, slide the knot under the door and pull it up into the door jam.

And if you shake it and keep rocking it while you're pulling it up it'll pop open and so we would just pop out we'd be out on on like literally in the day room you know this back you could smoke cigarettes in the building that's the only way we can get a light because the lighter was on the walls so we would do that all the time anyway so when it was time for us to do the escape plan it was about five of us we all had agreed we're gonna go for it and basically pop the doors we're like busting out the the glass in the in the in the window and we're starting to bend the beam what we didn't anticipate was that they actually do perimeter checks like around the jail you know we're dumb kids we're not like thinking about this and so as we're bending it next thing you know there's a light flashing up to the window and you can hear like the lady on the radio like what the fuck are y'all doing

we're trying to get out so now we're like we're we're busted so we just throw everything on the on the tier everybody goes back you know in their in their cells and so it took them probably about a half hour before they even discovered which which unit we were on that was trying to escape they came up there like gangbusters like literally it's you know it's 20 30 depths they just came in snatching us out the cells slamming us on the wall you know

and where they messed up is because they did that now everybody has glass in their shoes and so they couldn't even differentiate between who had been out who wasn't

And so they, you know, they put us in solitary for that,

charged us with attempting escape.

And during that time, I was actually getting sentenced.

And none of us would snitch and talk about, like, none of us would tell who it was.

So they really was just kind of going on what they thought.

So we served that little time in there, but I was getting sentenced.

And, you know, when I went in front of that judge, I just remember standing there and listening to them walk through that night.

you know, the prosecutors telling what happened that night.

And it was the it was a one-dimensional telling of that story.

It was the, you know, it was the very factual, like, hey, this guy, you know, shot, killed this man.

It was no context to none of my life.

And when the judge sentenced me, you know, he said 15 to 40 years for the homicide and two years for

the felony firearm.

At 19,

I thought my life was over.

Like, I thought that was it.

Like, at 19, I couldn't even imagine, you know, 17 years down the line.

You know, at that age, I couldn't even imagine, like, two weeks down the line.

It felt like a lifetime.

So

when he sentenced me, I was like,

this is it, man.

Like, my life is over.

And so I started my prison sentence with the mindset that I was never getting out of prison.

How much time did you wind up doing?

I did a total of 19 years

and out of that 19 years, I did seven of those years in solitary confinement.

What is that like?

It is the

when I tell people it is the most barbaric thing that we do to people in this country.

And it's a combination of reasons of why I believe believe that.

One, a lot of people who are in solitary confinement have pre-existing mental health challenges, meaning that they have diagnosed bipolar schizophrenia.

And it's 23-hour lockdown.

23-hour lockdown, five days a week, 24-hour lockdown, the other two days a week.

And it is the most chaotic environment you can imagine.

The guys there, you know, to wage war with each other would just like the steel foot locker, they would bang it for hours.

Like these guys would just have,

I mean, the endurance to do that for hours to antagonize a person next to you.

They would have what is full-on shit wars, like where the, I call them weapons of ass destruction because these guys would like concoct ways to throw feces on each other.

So if they get into a beef, like the way that they would go to war is they would literally, I mean, and it's, there's a,

there's an ingenuity that happens in prison that's unlike anything that most people can comprehend.

We can make weapons out of anything.

We can make, you know, tools out of anything.

So these guys would literally figure out how to get feces

into a toothpaste tube, which means that they would like have to like literally go in the toilet, pull this stuff out, stuff it into a thing, and then they would smuggle it out to like the cages, right?

So five days we can go out to these cages.

Just imagine a dog kennel, like a dog run, right?

Where it's like kennel after kennel after kennel.

So that's how they would take us out.

And, you know, you're in a cell, they come and they handcuff you to these handcuffs attached to a leash.

And they walk you down the tier, take you out to this dog kennel, and they let you out.

And so they have to give you at least an hour of that a day.

And so these guys would come out and they would be, you know, know, beefing with their neighbor.

And now it's a full-on, they're just squirting shit on each other.

Like it's fucking insane.

And there was this one guy, man.

I remember this one guy.

He had a coloscomy bag.

I mean, this was like the equivalent of having a fucking AK-47.

He's like, this guy.

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And he, man, we were like, cool.

So he would tell me today, it's like, don't come out.

He would like send me a note over like, don't come out the yard today.

I'm about to shoot this bitch up.

I'm like, dude, what are you talking about?

So he would like go out there and whip the coloscomy bag off and just literally take the yard hostage.

Like, don't nobody say shit.

You say something almost to store shit everywhere, right?

And so that's how they would wage war.

And so that's what, that was the chaos of the environment.

And then like, you know, we get into it with the officers, guys would like flood the cell block.

So they would put sheets in the toilet and just flush, flush, flush.

And now the whole tier is just flooded.

And so it's definitely a biohazard issue minimum right your your health and well-being is always being threatened by you know

I mean you get

I think we got three showers a week and the showers are like they're just back to back so you're not like they're not cleaning them out in between showers so you're literally handcuffed they take you down to the shower cage you go in there and it's fucking snot on the wall and it's fucking you know somebody's shaving because they they will give you like the little erasers to shave

and then you got the guys who we call them cutters So, these are guys who like self-maim.

Um,

and they would take-I mean, anything you could think of, they would take and just kind of carve up their skin,

you know, swallow like one guy swallowed batteries, so they stopped us from like even getting at one point.

We can get like a little tape player,

and a guy ended up swallowing a battery, so they banned all batteries, so then we couldn't listen to music anymore.

And so, it was just like complete chaos.

And, you know,

it's one of the darkest places, you you know in in the world um

and i've been in different solitary you know in prison out of 19 years i was transferred a total of 19 years to 11 different prisons and so i've done solitary in like a super old prison more of a modern prison but the one i did the most time in which was from 1999 to 2004

um

It's called Oaks Correctional Facilities.

It's one of the more modern prisons.

And so, you know, in in the midst of that chaos, I decided, like, I gotta,

there was a couple of things.

So one, I had read this book about what's supposed to happen to your mind when you're in that environment.

And it talks about like how it will cause you to hallucinate.

It talks about how it will cause you to not feel like you have like any agency over your life.

It affects how you communicate.

Because in order to talk, you got to lay on your floor and like scream under the door and try to hear a guy, or you got to try to talk through like the electrical socket.

So it's all these different things that I kind of knew going in.

And so I set up for myself because I didn't want to like the only thing I feared about being in prison was losing my mind.

I was never worried about my physical safety.

You know, I grew up fighting.

I grew up with brothers.

You know, I grew up on the east side of Detroit.

So I knew how to like take care of myself.

Losing my mind was the one thing that I was like, that was, I was afraid of that because I saw guys who were like normal guys and five years in, they're not the same.

You know, they're not the same.

And you see this like glossed over look in their eyes and it's the scariest shit ever to see somebody start to hallucinate, start to make up a life that

you know is not true.

And so I set my days up like I was at university.

And I always say this,

Joe, this is like super important.

I was lucky.

And I was lucky because I was literate.

And like the average reading grade in prison is about third grade.

And

I wouldn't be here with you right now if I didn't know how to read.

Like I would not be the person that I am today.

And so because I knew how to read, I was able to really structure my days like I was at a school.

You know, I would study philosophy in the morning.

I would study world history.

I would study African history.

And then I would just like read for pleasure.

But I was always like, you know, every day I'm figuring out, okay, how do I keep my mind moving forward?

And if you keep your mind moving forward, you can actually survive.

And it's, you know, it's no different than any other hard shit you got to go through.

But it's really like, can you keep your mind taking one more step?

And then there were some days where I was like, I don't, I don't like, yo, this shit is too much.

Like I'm fill myself like physically, like I can't take one more day.

And in those days, I would just grab a book, man, of somebody who inspired me.

You know, sometime it would be Nelson Mandela he had been through like 27 years

and I would just like open it up and like let me just start reading something I would read the poem Invictus like that poem always just kind of brought me back like you're the master your own fate you know I'm saying you're the you're the captain of your soul so I would go back and read that there's a book called as a man thinketh by James Allen it's about 60 something pages I would literally, my version of that was so dog-heared, but I would like literally just open it up.

And any page was about, if you master your thinking, you can master your environment.

And so it was like things like that would keep my brain just going forward.

Um, you know, obviously, I would work out, you know, do push-ups and calisthenics and roll-up.

Um, I used to roll my mattress up, and then you tie a sheet, one sheet around it, and you put the other sheet through it, and you make your handle, and now you can do your curls.

You know, so I would do that, take that mattress, put on my back, I would do squats.

So, I would run my routine in there, and just running that routine is really what kept me like,

you know, put one positive thought in front of the next, you know.

And I mean, at that time, I still was like,

you know,

I wasn't like a model prisoner.

You know, I don't want the listeners to be confused by that because it's a little different, right?

It's somebody who follows the rules and just stays out of the way and get out of trouble.

Like, I was, I was, I was, I was into bad shit in there.

You know, I was not,

I didn't ever think I was getting out.

So I was like, I just got to run an environment.

You know, I got to be in control in this environment.

I got to, you know, make all the moves

to have agency over my life in that environment.

And so initially, while I was in there, I was just, I was only focused on getting out so I can finish getting into shit.

So when, so, what initially sent you to solitary?

So the first time I went to solitary was for an assault on

a guy who was my neighbor.

And basically, I didn't have any money on my books at the time.

And,

you know, story day came around and I was like, I'm going to go take his shit.

And so I literally went to rob this guy.

And he happened to be coming in the cell at the time.

We got into like a fisticuffs.

And

so they took me to Solitary for that.

And I did about a year for that.

A year.

Yeah.

And then because what happened was an officer got assaulted in the process.

He jumped on my back, and I thought it was like his cellmate coming to help him, and I kind of threw him off me.

And so that was, cost me about a year.

And then the second time,

this was some crazy shit.

So I was at the Michigan Reformatory, and at the time, I'm the lion foreman, so I'm like, I make sure as we're serving child that, you know, if this thing is running out of like cutlets, I put the cutlets in the thing for them to continue serving.

And we were all about efficiency.

Like, we want to move these guys through as fast as possible because the the the the child hall is where all the shit goes down the stabbings go down it's crazy so we're trying to move guys out and this guy man he's he's just holding up the line and so

what happened is that sometime they would send these guys over to the reformatory was like a higher security level it's the old you know it's the oldest prison in Michigan at the time it's called the gladiator school and sometimes they would send these guys from like the lower levels who you know they're getting in trouble at the lower levels and they would send them over there as punishment you know and usually when they come over there they don't realize that that this is a different this is a different game you know i mean like the reformatory is real prison those lower levels it's like a fucking camp you're not dealing with you know you're dealing with real prison and so this guy comes over he's holding up the line and we're like yo like what's what's the hold up and and so he starts to cuss our crew out you know he's like Basically, y'all bitches acting like this.

Y'all fool.

Give me more potatoes.

So it's like he's upset.

He don't feel like he's getting enough and so i'm just i'm talking to the guy and i'm like yo i'm like i'm like chill out like what what what's what's the situation here you know and he like they acting like this they're fool blah blah and i'm like what you want he like you know y'all give me some more so now he's being disrespectful so i was like all right i got it so i load him up on mashed potatoes gravy call him to the window and i slap him with it and i was like yo don't come to the window disrespectful and so i then slapped him with this whole tray of potatoes and gravy and uh and he takes off running.

And he runs it to the officers, you know.

And so my supervisor, who was cool, and he was like, go to the back and like hide.

So he's trying to hide me out.

I don't want his better workers.

He don't want to lose me to this.

And so that led to me being in solitary for a year.

A year.

Another year.

For hitting the guy.

For slapping the guy with mass potatoes.

Yeah.

And so now I'm there for another year.

But

the last incident,

which was happening in 1999, me and this officer, we got into a conflict.

And the conflict escalated when he pushed me, like literally, he wouldn't let me go to the bathroom.

He pushed me and then I beat him up.

And

this was another one of those moments of like,

you know,

I think in life, man, that

sometimes we don't talk enough about how lucky we are.

Me and this guy,

we get into a conversation.

It escalates.

At this time, like, i'm 27

um all i do is lift weights workout whatever

and i don't even realize the difference between like a 27 year old grown man strength and the boy that walked into prison um and so when i punch this guy i don't in my mind i'm not even thinking about

Like how destructive it is for a grown man to punch another person another human being I'm just like we get into the thing it escalates So I punch him and I as soon as I punch him, I like, go for the scoop, pick him up, and his leg gets caught under my arm.

So I slam him down, his radio flies over the

railing, lands on the floor.

Now, when this conflict happened, they're doing what's called emergency count.

So every month in prisons all across the country, emergency count, they blow us a siren.

And everybody, it doesn't matter what you're doing, if you're working to kids, you got to drop what you're doing.

Everybody has to go back to the the cell block.

And so what happens is, you know, they'll let people use the restroom, et cetera.

But that siren is gone.

And so when me and him are up there fighting, the siren is gone.

So the officer downstairs doesn't even know that this is happening upstairs.

The thing that saved his life and saved me from a life sentence was his radio flew over the gallery and landed.

And so a counselor coming in looks and sees the radio and is like, why is it the radio here?

Looks up and sees the confrontation happening.

And so he hits his button.

All the officers come over.

They dive on my back, separate us, take me to solitary.

So when they take me to solitary, I'm in here.

I'm raging.

I'm still in that energy.

And the guy next to me, he's banging on the wall.

He's like, yo, look down because I can see down to the cell block.

Now, there's an ambulance out there.

And basically what happened is when I punched him, I broke his trachea.

And so they had to perform emergency surgery on him and literally in front of the cell block.

And so I was sentenced to an additional two years and then what ended up being four and a half years in solitary confinement.

And the only reason that man did not die that day is because his radio flew over.

And,

you know,

it's one of those things where when I began to

recalibrate my life and began to really transform my life and think about my life differently.

It was another one of those things where I realized in that moment, I just let my anger dictate my actions.

And no matter whether I thought he was right or wrong,

I was so angry and so enraged that I just punched this guy indiscriminately and I literally could have killed this man.

And I would have literally been serving the rest of my life in prison.

And so when that happened,

You know,

I remember they transferred me that same day they transferred me.

So I I was at, that happened at a prison called Muskegon Correctional Facility.

They transferred me to Oaks Correctional Facility.

And the first month, man, I was there, the officers would just come and they would like talk so much shit, you know, like we're going to fuck you up.

And, you know, we're going to, you know, you're going to get yours.

And,

you know,

it was the most vulnerable.

you know, I felt because I knew that it happened in there.

You know, I know that they can come in, they can just say, oh, he did this, and they can come in with the goon squad and pepper spray you and beat the shit out of you, and you're cuffed up, and there's nothing you can really do.

You know, so it was very, it was very tense for about a month or so, you know.

And then there were officers who was at the facility where it actually happened at, that transferred over.

And they kind of knew me and they kind of knew that, you know, the

experience with the officer wasn't just like I woke up and had a bad day you know they knew it was an escalation and even though I you know when I look at it like I'm all about personal responsibility and accountability and like I had to eat that you know that I was I was wrong in in terms of my reaction to the anger there were things I probably could have did differently

but what they told me at that point was like you're never gonna get out of here

you know you're never gonna get out of here and

I remember the first time time one of them said that to me, I was like,

I was too naive to really, you know, believe it.

You know, I was like,

whatever.

You know, I'll do a year or two without here, and they all let me go.

And then

I started seeing guys around me who had been in solitary for 10 years.

A friend of mine, he's actually out now.

His name is Peter.

He works, I think he's like a clerk back in Michigan.

But he was my neighbor.

He was in solitary for 10 years.

There was a guy across from me that was like, this guy was one of the most fascinating people I've ever met.

He was a con man.

He was masterful at manipulating the officers, but he was in for 20 years.

In

solitary for 20 years.

And so when I started seeing that, I was like, man,

I might never get out of here.

And

the first two years,

I was like kind of resigning myself.

I remember writing my dad this letter.

I wrote my dad this letter

and I just said,

you should just go on with your life

because they're never going to let me out of here.

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

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

And so

that's how resigned I was to

the idea that I was going to die in there.

And

it wasn't until

I was in about two years or so,

maybe about a little over a year.

Basically,

I started journaling.

And it was inspired by a letter I got from my son.

And my son told me that his mother had told him why I was in prison.

And he wrote this letter, and he's like, my mother told me that you're in prison for murder.

And he said, Dad, don't kill.

Jesus watches what you do.

When I got that letter,

like, you know, I wasn't religious, you know, I'm not religious, not spiritual.

But there was something about that that just like struck me like in the most heartbreaking ways.

It's like, I have a kid out here who I have let down

and whose mother is telling him stories about me without context.

And I don't have a way to reach out to him and say, hey, son, here's all the shit that happened.

And so I was like, you know, I got to turn my life around.

And I can tell you, like, over the years,

every time I got into some shit, I would just be like, all right, this is it.

You know, this is the last time.

It was always these moments of, like, I'm going to do right this time.

But it was never about me.

It was always like, I'm going to do right so my dad doesn't have to come see me in jail or come bail me out or my friends don't have to come, you know, try to get me out of trouble.

It was never a real thing.

And so when I started journaling, I started with this essential essential question of like man how did I end up here because up to that point I didn't I didn't think of myself as a bad person like I didn't think of myself as like angry I didn't think of myself as like

I didn't even think of myself as violent

I thought that

I had just got into some situations that people provoked me in

And so I asked this question of like, man,

how did you get here?

Like, you're the smart kid.

You know, you're the kid that wants to be a doctor and an artist.

And

how the hell did you get here?

And so I started going back and I started asking myself questions based on when was the first time you got arrested

and what led to that?

You know, and then what happened the second time?

And when was the first time this thing happened and that thing happened and who was responsible?

And what I was able to do was debate, I was able to go back and realize that I had all this trauma.

I had all these traumatic things that happened to me as a kid, but I also had caused a lot of hurt.

And I had did a lot of things that really was like, no, actually, you probably are a bad person.

And so as I began to write and sort those things out, I realized I had never accomplished.

I never finished anything.

I started a bunch of things.

You know, I never finished high school.

I was like probably one of the smartest kids in the class.

Went to job corps, got kicked out before I finished that.

Was going to go to the military, never followed up to take the test.

So I was a consummate quitter.

You know, I started some stuff and would never finish.

And so I said, in my journal, I said, listen,

if you're going to turn your life around, you have to finish one thing.

You have to challenge yourself to finish one thing.

And so I'm looking around this cell and I'm like, okay, what can I do?

I've done all the push-up challenges.

You know, you could do in solitary.

And I was like, you should write a book.

But you got to write the book in 30 days.

If you write this book in 30 days, you can change your life.

If you don't, you're going to die in prison.

And that was my...

That was my charge to myself.

And

I'll tell you, like, in solitary, there's no like you don't have a word processor typewriter you can't even have like a regular ink pen because you know they're scared you're gonna like sink somebody or stick somebody

they give you this little flimsy plastic pen

and so I remember getting a pen I got like a little pad of paper

I said to myself

like it's no way possible You're going to write a book in 30 days with that pen.

This is not possible.

And I remember saying to myself,

this is what you always do.

You always make an excuse.

You always make a way to get out of being accountable.

What are you going to do?

Are you going to turn your life around or are you going to bullshit the rest of your life away?

And so I sat there for a while and I was like,

What if I roll this pen up in some paper?

And I literally took some paper and I started to roll the pen up so it was firm enough And it was like the size of a regular pen.

And I wrote that first book in 30 days.

And I knew I would never go back to prison if I ever got out.

But at that point, I still didn't know if I was getting out.

So what did you write?

So the first book I wrote was a novel.

It was a fiction novel.

I love reading.

You know, I was really fortunate to really be able to

escape through books.

So I was like, well, I want to try to write a book, you know, and

I love these stories I was reading.

I was reading like Westerns, Louis Lemour,

my favorite, one of my favorite authors, Donald Goren.

So he had all these street books like Dope Fiend and

Black Gangster.

And it was like all this kind of underbelly, Iceberg, Slim, Pimp.

All these stories were stories I had read early on, and these guys, they were like me.

Like Donald Goren served time in prison.

And so I'm like, well, if these guys can write a book, then what if I give it a try?

And so my first novel

was literally about this girl who played street basketball.

Her dad was like a street basketball legend.

And so I wrote that book.

And I remember just like,

I had never felt

a greater sense of pride in myself.

Than the writing that book on a notepad.

And I still I still have the original Books that I wrote in solitary confinement on notepads and on a back of paper.

I'll send you some pictures of it.

It'll blow your mind.

And I remember writing that book and I got out.

So I write the book.

This is some wild shit.

So after I write it, I'm like, well, a book really isn't a book until somebody reads it.

And so I clammed on my floor.

And I'm like, yo, like somebody want to read this book I just wrote?

And I remember this guy at the the other end of the tier was like don't nobody want to read that bullshit this ain't Oprah

so so Joe here it is I'm like I'm trying to like I'm trying to turn my life around I'm like now I got to shank this cat for disrespecting me you know what I'm saying so

but it was like it ended up it ended up when he said it you know my ego you know it's like I'm you know I am on the yard like I'm a shot card if I can have you done right

and then I stepped back and I was like

no he actually just gave me a go.

Like,

if I'm going to take writing serious, I need to set a goal for what do I want to happen with my work?

You know?

And then another guy, he agreed to read it.

And now, so I'm in solitary, so it's not like I can just walk out the cell and get a guy to book, right?

So we would make these fish lines out of our underwear.

So we take all the string out of your underwear.

You attach that to a toothpaste tube that you scrolls in all the toothpaste out of and stuff with paper.

So you stuff it with toilet paper, wet toilet paper.

Then once that dries, it has enough weight that you can slide it up and down the tear.

And so then sometimes we would use our socks.

Most of the time I use socks,

but you just unravel that string and then you can slide it up under the door and then you can attach whatever to it.

And so I attached the book to it, man, slid it under the door.

And I don't hear for this guy like all day.

So now I'm like nervous as shit cuz I'm like, it's my only copy.

You know what I'm saying I was like I didn't get a guy my only copy and he ain't responding but then he came back to the door man and he was like

you know that's one of the best books I've ever read and I was like wow it like it blew my mind for like literally about five minutes and then I thought about I was like man he in solitary confinement he over there bored as shit it could have

I could have sent him anything I could have sent him a recipe and it'd be like it's the best chicken soup recipe ever right so but I was like okay maybe if I send it out, you know, send it out to people.

And so I started sending my writing out.

So like, I have a brother.

He's my stepbrother.

And like out of all my siblings, he's the one of us that's like always played better books.

You know, he went to school.

He went to college.

He was an engineer at like one of the big three.

And he just always done it better books.

And I remember sending it to him.

And he had never wrote me in prison.

Like never wrote me in prison.

I sent him the book, and I remember I still have his letter to this day.

And he wrote back and he said to me, this writing is better than most of the people I went to school with.

And I'm going to help you figure out, you know, a path forward.

And so just getting that affirmation for somebody who he wasn't in the streets, he wasn't in a prison cell block, though, he had did it the right way.

Like, just that little boost, man, was like, okay, maybe I'm on to something, you know?

And so

I wrote my second book

right after that, and I gave myself the same thing.

You got to finish it 30 to 60 days.

And then I started a third book, man.

And

I went into the deepest bot of depression that I had experienced in prison.

And it was because by the time I got to writing book three,

I realized I had this incredible talent and that it had always been there.

And that I had let all the trauma, all the violence, all the street life overtake my life.

And I'm like, I'm in this environment.

I can't give birth to this dream.

Like, I'm, so it was, it was the most, like, getting sentenced was like,

my life is over.

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

that was devastating.

You know, and so I was going through this depression.

And I did what I always always would do, which was go back to those books.

And,

you know, I was getting heavy into philosophy, which was like the wildest thing.

It's like, you know, growing up, you know, you hear philosophy, like, oh, that's super boring, you know.

But I was getting into all this philosophy, man.

And I remember going back to James Allen book, and it was really talking about this idea

that you think into existence the life that you want.

And if you focus your life on negative thoughts, you're going to only produce negative outcomes.

And when I went back and I read my journals, I saw the pattern.

The pattern was super clear of like,

I bought into this negative narrative, so me being in prison was not a shocker to me when I went back and read through my journal.

And so I said to myself, if this is true, and if this is absolutely true in the negative, then it has to be true in the positive.

And I began to just refocus my energy on getting out of solitary.

And I remember saying,

if I'm going to get out of here,

I need help.

Like, they're not like the way it looks on paper, they're not just going to let me out, you know?

And so

I wrote this letter to the warden, and it was a super philosophical letter about the truth.

And what I said to the warden was like, when I walked into prison,

My statement was that I was not going to follow the rules and that I was hell-bent on destroying my life.

And I'm like, if you look at my record,

you would know that I've honored my word.

Like at that point, I had probably

maybe, I think about 34 misconducts.

And they range from everything, a dangerous contraband to assault on staff, assault on inmate, you name it.

And

I was like, so the thing you know more than anything else is I'm a man of my word.

And what I'm telling you is that

if you believe that to be true in the negative, I just need you to believe it to be true in the positive.

And if you give me this opportunity to get out of solitary,

I'm going to focus on two things.

I'm going to mentor these other young guys, and I'm going to focus on becoming a writer.

And I sent that letter to the warden, and the warden literally wrote me back.

And he said, you know,

Despite my hesitation here,

I believe you, and I'm going to advocate for you to get out and so he began to advocate for me to get out but he had to go through multiple series of like his supervisors because the assault was on the inmate and so it took about another two years before I got out of solitary the assault was on an officer yeah on the officer yeah yeah yeah on the officer and so it took literally two years um before I finally got out but once I got out I took those handwritten books and I typed them all up, you know, and I mentored those guys and I began to tutor the guys who they said couldn't read or wouldn't read.

And I found that if I gave them books that was similar to their life, they would put in more effort.

And so that's what I focused on, you know.

And then I typed those books up and I was like, I started to send them.

I was sending stuff out.

I still got like copies of my query letters, man.

I was just sending stuff out in the dark.

Like I sent like Jay-Z was like the president of like Def Jam at one point.

I was like, oh, you should publish this book because you rap about this shit.

I already live it.

I sent it to him, and I was just like, did he respond?

No, he never did.

I never got a response.

But I did get a couple of responses from like some like independent publishers.

And they was like, no, we're not interested right now, but thank you.

And I just kept going at it.

And then I was like, you know what?

I'm responsible for my own dream, you know?

And so I took the money that my parents sent me and money I hustled on the yard.

I still had hustles.

They just weren't like illegal hustles.

So I wasn't doing like drug smuggling, but I would sell, you know, the merchandise on the yard for twice what it's worth.

And I just took that money, man.

I saved it up.

And

I published my first book from prison in 2008.

How did you do that?

So I bought this book.

I ordered this book called The Self-Help Guide to Self-Publishing.

And I taught myself everything I needed to learn about publishing.

Like I knew how to get a copyright, an ISBN number.

I had a partner outside who believed in what I was doing.

And I basically would just be like, here's the steps I need you to take to, you know, execute this.

And found a graphic artist and a printer.

And yeah, and published the first book.

And then the prison sued me for the cost of my incarceration.

Wow.

Yeah.

And they tallied it up to like a million dollars.

Yeah.

Because basically what they did is is they literally went and said this is how much it costs for you to be in prison at every prison you've been in per day and so higher security level it was about 150 something a day lower security levels like 70 something a day and it was like by the time you get out of prison it'll be about a million dollars and so we want 90

of anything you earn off this book they thought i had got a book deal they didn't realize i had like self-published

and i was like

you know the thing that that struck me about that when I went through the through the

through the actual hearing with the judge was I was like man you know I wrote this powerful letter to her and I was just like look

I'm coming home with a conviction I got three felonies right I got I'm convicted of second-degree murder felony firearm and it's assault on an officer and I'm like if I put that on a resume

nobody's gonna hire me when I get out

and I'm like, fair, I get it.

Like,

if I'm in a hiring position, I saw, if that only saw that, probably not hiring that person either.

So I'm giving myself a chance.

You know, I'm trying to give myself a chance.

Like, I don't want to go back to the streets.

I want to be able to contribute to society, but I know society is not going to give me an opportunity.

So I'm creating an opportunity for myself, you know?

And so I went through the court case and they,

this is how, this is how they ended up not getting any money, right?

So I backdated a contract to myself saying that I would only accept 15%

of the proceeds, I mean 10% of the proceeds once the company recouped its production costs.

So they went from suing me for 90% of $15 per book to only being able to sue me for 90% of $1.50 per book because I backdated this contract.

I used to work in a law library, so I was like, you know, I know contractual law is binding, and the lawsuit was only binding as long as I was incarcerated.

And so I just made sure that I didn't make any money, you know, until I got out.

But the letter that I wrote to the judge, like, it was important to say that, is that, listen,

at that time, you know, it's 15 years ago.

I've been out 15 years now.

At that time,

nobody was like,

really talking about second chances if you have a violent crime.

Right.

You know, if you had a non-violent crime, just a chance you can get a job and you get out.

And so I was realistic.

I'm like, yo, nobody's going to hire me.

So I got to figure out how to make it happen myself.

And so I went through that lawsuit and it was, it was tough.

You know, it was tough because I'm like, this is the first time I'm trying to do something legit.

Like, I'm, I'm, you know, I've sold drugs.

I've hustled on the yard.

I'm trying to move into like.

doing something with my life.

You know, I don't want to be, I don't want to be thugging it out forever.

I don't want to be, I don't want to be one of those people that go in and out of a prison system.

You know, I don't want to die die here.

Like I want to, and I want to actually add value.

Like I know some things that I think is helpful in the community.

But if you take this away from me, then what do you, what do you expect me to do?

Right.

You know?

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So they were under the impression that you had got some crazy big book deal.

Yeah.

And so they were just trying to stop it and try to fuck up your dream.

Yeah.

Yeah.

God.

I mean, I kind of almost can see it from their side if they hate you.

You know, like, fuck this dude.

Let's, what can we do to derail this?

Or, you know, if you're a corrections officer, you're not making a lot of money.

At all.

No.

And

you're in there and then you think, is this motherfucker getting rich?

Right.

And then there's also jealousy of talent.

That's a real thing.

Absolutely.

When you find out a person has talent,

and especially if you don't have any talent, talent is like, talent is a gift from God.

It's like you either have it or you don't.

You can develop some talent, but some people have talent.

There's something that some people, like there was a video we played the other day of...

Biggie rapping on the street when he was 17.

Yeah.

You ever seen that video?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you can't teach that.

Yeah.

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

at all.

At 17, that's a gift.

Yeah.

That's a gift.

You know, some people just have a gift.

And sometimes that gift comes from pain.

Yeah.

You know, sometimes that gift comes from a life of struggle and hardship.

And it just, the emotional turmoil builds something inside of you that comes out in your art.

And people hate people with gifts.

Yeah.

They really do.

They really do.

Especially if they hate you already.

Yeah,

I wasn't their favorite, you know?

But the crazy thing is, like,

that's how I originally took it.

And I think that was some of the impetus to them, like, filing a lawsuit.

But the policy itself is wild.

Because, like,

if your parent dies and you inherit their insurance money, that same law applies where they can take 90% of that to cover the cost of your incarceration.

That's fucked up.

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

And that's where the the the the hate came in because

how it got initiated was the person in the mailroom was like oh how dare this guy write a book yeah and then i'm gonna send this to the attorney general and they're gonna like sue you so it was crazy man yeah

what is it like the day you get out of solitary

wait so you did it three times yeah

two one year stretches and then one more

yeah yeah

um

so on that last one man

i one, I just, I didn't, I didn't believe I was getting out.

You know, after a while, you started to kind of,

you know, it starts to play with your mind.

You know, you see these guys that got, you know, they've been in for 20 years, you know.

But I remember like going, because you go up to these hearings, you get, and it feels like you're about to go, and then they come back in 30 days, and they're like, oh, they won't let you out, right?

Because you got to go.

So it goes like this.

When you had an assault on the officer, you got to go to the warden.

And then the warden goes to like a regional director.

And the regional director goes to like the main director.

And so each time I would make it like, oh, I got it to the warden, then the regional sets it down.

I got it to the regional, then the head shuts it down.

So it's like you're getting your hopes up and you don't know when it's going to end.

You know, it's kind of like,

you know, I remember when the pandemic hit,

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

A lot of my friends reached out to me and was like, you know, how do we help people navigate these tough times, right?

The isolating feeling of being in the pandemic.

And what I told them, I was like, the hardest thing that we're all going to grapple with is uncertainty of not knowing when it's going to end.

And that's exactly what happened, right?

It's like, all right, everybody's going to go into lockdown.

And then on April 30th, we're all free and clear.

It's like, nope, we're going to stay until March.

Nope, I think we should stay until June.

Nope.

So we just, you started to lose that orientation because you can't put your feet on solid ground.

That's what it's like in solitary.

You just don't know.

But way worse.

Yeah.

The extreme of that, right?

Yeah.

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

And so the wild thing was like that last year in solitary.

So they have these guys come over to the cell block.

They're like clean up, they pass out the food trays.

So they usually come from the protection unit.

The last year, they stopped letting them guys come in because it was just creating too much conflict because they was like, they got beef.

Now you over here and guys are trying to get to them.

So it's crazy.

So the guys who was coming over was from general population, and these was like guys I knew, you know.

So like the last year I was there, you know, they would come through, man, they would smuggle me candy bars.

I hadn't had a candy bar in like three years, you know.

And I remember, you know, one of my guys come over he smuggles he i hear the broom hitting the door and i look up and it's like two flattened down like snickers that he's like probably put in his shoes i don't know where he put them i didn't i didn't even ask questions i didn't want to ask questions um and i remember like running them over cold water so they can solidify

So when I tell you, it was like

the Snickers was like the best like ever.

I mean, the details of how I can taste that, given I had been gone from it.

So I told him guys, I was like, man, they let me out.

it's going to be like George Jefferson strolling out of here, you know?

And so that's literally how it was, man.

They popped that door.

I mean, I took my little bag of shit and my books and threw that thing.

And I'm George Jefferson strolling.

I'm like, I'm out.

I'm like, y'all have never seen me because I had really,

you know,

I looked at it like this.

I was like, you know, up to that point in my life,

I had let myself down so many times.

You know, I had been beat down by life, the traumas, the fucking, all the things.

And it was the first time I felt like I was fighting for myself.

Like I felt like I was fighting for myself.

Like I'm going to get out of here.

All the things I said I'm going to do, I'm going to get out and I'm going to do them.

And it's going to be the first time that I'm going to stand on something that really aligns with that little boy.

that I always knew was there.

And I'm going to fight for this kid.

And so I was so, I was like,

I'm moving on up, but I'm moving on up into like a higher purpose in my life.

And that's what I got out, man, and I went to work.

I'm like literally went to work.

I took those books, you know, I typed them up.

You know, I figured out, you know, how to publish the book.

You know, I started preparing for parole.

The year that I published the book, I went up for parole that same year, 2008.

And I was at a prison.

At this time, they had transferred me to lower security levels.

So you started to work work your way down, which is its own craziness, you know, because

I did, at that point, I'd only did a hard time.

And going down to security level is like crazy, you know, because now you're dealing with these guys that's coming straight off the streets.

They're like,

you know, you're dealing with,

there's kind of a hierarchy in the streets.

You know, there's a hierarchy of mindset in the streets.

Guys who are usually good at selling drugs,

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

And so now

you're in lower levels, you're dealing with a lot of guys who really should probably be in an addiction environment versus actually prison.

You're dealing with your

failure to pay child support,

DUIs.

low-level drug offenses, you know, petty theft.

So you're dealing with a different mindset of guys who are really still, they're trying to heal, you know, they're just coming fresh off the streets.

And it's an open setting.

So I'm going from like being in a cell by myself to like now I'm in this like cubicle with, you know, these random, you know, guys.

But I was just preparing myself, man.

I was like, you know, I want to get out and I want to add value to society.

And so, you know, they had transferred me.

So now at this point, I'm way up.

I'm in northern Michigan over the upper peninsula so I'm about 12 hours from from you know my hometown my dad comes up my dad my stepmom my oldest son and um

man we go into this parole hearing it probably lasted you know maybe a minute you know this lady she was just like

why did you do what you do it was like a very hard line just the facts you know

And I was just like, I'm not getting out.

Like I knew it.

Like that hearing was so fast.

She didn't even, you know, listen to my dad.

It was just very curt.

And I was like, man,

no, I'm not going home yet.

You know?

And so, how many years in was this?

So, at that point, I had 17 years in.

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

So, technically, it can be anywhere from 12 months to 24 months.

They give what's called a flop or a passover.

So they gave me a 12-monther,

and usually you go back within about 10 months of that to go back to the same process again and sometime less when they're trying to like deal with budget issues and kind of get guys out.

So I went back probably about eight, ten months later.

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

She didn't say, she didn't tell me she was denying me like in the in the hearing.

It was just the way that the hearing was handled where it was like, she didn't ask, you know, what are your plans when you get out?

Who were you before that incident?

What led up to that incident?

Like, it was just very, you know,

basically you killed someone

and that's it.

And I think when I was even trying to explain to her,

I think she just kind of like shut it down.

She put you in a category.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She shut it down.

Like, it was almost like me explaining to her was making an excuse.

You know, that was the way that she responded.

And I was like, man, it was, it probably didn't even take a full 60 days before I I had a decision back, you know, that I was being denied.

That's got to be a horrible feeling to just be in a category where

they don't take into account any of the circumstances, don't take into account any potential growth or this direction that you're trying to move your life into.

You're just in a category.

You're a murderer.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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

There's no rehabilitation.

Right.

You have to do it.

Your story is so similar to many stories that I've heard.

Yeah.

You know, I've done a lot of podcasts with my friend Josh Dubin.

Yeah.

You know, Josh?

That's the lawyer guy, right?

Yeah.

He's the guy who used to work for the Innocence Project.

Now he works for the Ike Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice.

And it's mostly dealing with wrongfully incarcerated people.

And some of them,

the stories,

you hear it and

it just kills you.

It breaks your heart.

And just try to imagine what it's like to be that person.

Dealing with corrupt DAs, corrupt prosecutors, corrupt everything, corrupt cops.

And people just get railroaded because they need to hang a conviction on somebody.

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The scariest parts of the system, so like one of my best friends' name is Calvin.

Calvin did 24 years for a crime he didn't commit.

And he's out now.

And he has one of the

man, he has one of the most incredibly positive spirits of anybody I've met, given what he's been through.

And

the hardest part about any of this, you know, is exactly what you say.

It's like when you're labeled for the rest of your life,

it hits you, you know, because it impacts your ability to contribute.

And what people don't know is like 90% of people incarcerated will get out at some point.

And we have to decide who we want to be as a society.

Like, do we want to give people a second chance to prove themselves?

And like,

I'm not, I'm not a

I'm not not a person who

has a mindset of like you just throw the doors open and let everybody out.

I know, again, that I was fortunate and I was lucky to be literate.

And I was lucky to have read books that led to me really putting in the hard, arduous work of reimagining a life for myself.

That's tough work.

That none of us gets out of there without our scars.

You know, there's things about me right now that I can directly pinpoint, oh, this is because of what I went through in solitary.

There are some things that I was able to take out of that environment and turn into a positive.

Like, you know, sometimes people will hear my story and they'd be like, oh, well, solitary actually worked out for you.

And I'm like,

I'm like, no, I'm like, there's a difference between solitary and solitude.

And like, solitude is something that I think that all of us should explore more broadly in our lives.

We all just need time to get away from even the most positive aspects of our life.

Sometimes you need to step back because it allows you to have even deeper gratitude.

But I really was just lucky, man.

I was lucky to be willing to go on a journey, but also to have the skill set to read and, you know, to read books of like, hey, it doesn't have to end like this.

You know,

you don't have to be pinpointed to one horrible moment in your life, you know, and

there's the cumulative nature of the things that led up to that moment.

It doesn't excuse you.

Like, I don't make excuses for the decision I made that night.

I just want to be clear about that.

There's like

all these causal factors that lead to us becoming who we are in whatever capacity.

But that's the tough stuff we don't like to grapple with because it's not efficient.

You know, it's not easy

to figure out.

I mean, the facts of it is like, it's not easy, right?

It's not easy to be like, okay, this person killed somebody, so we should give him a second chance.

Like, but there are tons of us who have gotten out and who have done the work before we got out and that we're contributing in a way that most people who've never went in probably contribute.

And like, those stories should be lifted up.

We should be tripping.

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

Oh, absolutely.

Like, I think there's the appreciation, for me it's the appreciation of freedom

but it was also falling in love with the beauty of my mind

like you can't you can't

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

and that

you can live your life in such a way that it honors what it really means to be human, to be complex, to be able to discover something new about yourself every day.

Like that's what, that's what, like for me, freedom is that.

You know what I'm saying?

Freedom is like, you know,

the book that I've recently written is called How to Be Free.

And you know what really inspired me to write that book is I've met so many people out here in society who's never been in a prison cell who are psychologically, emotionally, and mentally incarcerated.

And they're incarcerated by heartbreak.

They're incarcerated by shame, grief, anger.

I mean, I've met people who have it all.

They have the best job in the world.

They have more money than they will ever be able to spend.

And there's a thing from their life.

that does not allow them to be fulfilled.

You know what I mean?

And so

there is that appreciation post-incarceration that, you know, you just, I mean, 15 years later, I still revel in moments like a kid.

You know, like I'm like, I'm like a kid, man.

That's beautiful.

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

We should all keep that kid.

Man, protect it, too.

Yeah.

You know, and protected.

But don't get hard.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean.

Life forces you to get hard in a certain way, and I'm sure your life forced you to get hard in a way that most people can't comprehend.

But the fact that you can hang on to that

childlike joy of things.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's the curiosity.

You know, I'm like the biggest nerd.

I love it, man.

It's like, I already said my son, I'm like, I'm the coolest nerds you'll ever meet.

Because

there's a thing, like, you know, I got out like two years after I out, I was a fellow at MIT Media Lab.

And you got to imagine like how wild that was, Joe.

Like, I'm going from like

the barbarity of prison.

24 months.

Yeah.

And now I'm at like the most technologically advanced school in the world.

And I always say it was like Fred Flintstone going into an episode of the Jetsons.

When I got there, it was like robots were like, I mean, it was crazy.

Like, I mean, they had these cars that parked themselves.

And I was just, my mind was blown, you know?

And I remember one time being there,

and the director was like, he can tell I felt like out of place

and he was like

don't worry about it you can contribute like you can contribute it doesn't matter where you come from you can contribute and I remember how that stuck with me of like

man I can contribute you know what were you doing there so I was working on a project called the Atonement Project where we were using technology and art to facilitate restorative justice conversations

It's super hard to talk about hard things, you know, when it comes to violence and it comes to people who have been victims of violence.

And I felt like art and technology provided a vehicle to kind of bridge that gap, you know.

And I remember this one story.

This was like super funny.

So I'm there.

And one time I'm in one of the labs.

So they would do these demo days.

You can go around to all the labs and like watch all this crazy technology.

And there was this one kid, man, he was working on something in the auto industry.

And he was trying to get this,

it was like one of those screens to kind of perform in a very particular way.

And I was just watching him.

I was like, man, he just keep bumping up against it.

It was so obvious to me like what the problem was.

Like, if you just move this over, like, a quarter of an inch, it's probably going to work the way that you envision it, you know?

And I remember saying that to him and just seeing him, like.

It was almost like a light bulb just fired off in his head.

And I was just like, man, that was wild because this is a smart kid.

You know, this kid is brilliant, right?

And so I said,

I want to do a prison hack here.

And I want to challenge these students and faculty to solve some problems based on the problems we had to solve in prison.

And so they said, yeah, you should do it.

And so I literally told them all the things that I wanted.

And I came up with five design challenges.

And one of them was you got to design a tattoo gun out of a tape layer motor, a good tire string, and an ink pen.

You have to make what we call a stinger, which is like kind of like, so you have a hot pot, right?

so in prison in order to like heat up our noodles we had to you know especially if you're in the old prisons excuse me if you're in the old prisons there's no

there's no microwaves so you have to figure out how to heat them up and so we would make what's called a stinger which we would take an extension cord cut that up and then you attach like nail clippers to it and you got to splice them and then you put it in the water and plug it up and then it heats your water up and so now you can make your noodles your coffee you're just putting the cord right into the water yeah but if you do it you got to put it in first before you plug it up because if you if you like plug it up first

yeah if you plug it up first then it blows the power out in the cell block now you got a whole nother problem um

and so we would that's how we would heat up our noodles our coffee oatmeal whatever and then i had them um if back back in the day we used to get these little radios they're not boom boxes but they're like little g radios or something and

they they disable you know you from playing you know your tape player to them because there's no tape player attached.

So you have to figure out how to connect that to the big radio.

And then it plays from your tape player through the big speaker.

And then I had them make a lighter out of batteries and wire and then to make a fish line out of the same material I told you about earlier, the string out of their socks.

And so I gave them like three hours to complete these challenges.

And we're going for three hours.

They blew the power out of MIT Media Lab.

It's like the best.

It felt like an intellectual victory.

I was like, yeah, it's like these super smart kids, they like blew the power.

And so we get to the three hours.

I mean, one of the kids burnt themselves.

I got videos like he burnt himself like trying to get the lighter.

And they almost got the tape player.

I think if they had had probably about three more hours, they'd have figured all this stuff out.

But I had two goals with that.

One, the nerd in me wanted to really understand the science.

of like, okay, why does this scientifically work?

And then the second part was that if they would have accomplished this with these meager little tool set

they would have been applauded and people would have said you know that was brilliant and that you're a genius and that you're incredibly intelligent because you were able to take these little scrappy things and make something out of them and the reason i wanted them to validate that is because i believe inherently that there are people in prison who possess ingenuity innovative you know abilities intelligence, all these things, and we throw people away.

You know, we literally throw people away.

And I would have been one of those people that have been thrown away had I not had the ability to write.

And so,

you know, it's those type of things where you think about these other prison systems.

Like, I've visited prisons in, I've been to Germany's prisons, London.

I've been

to Ghana.

And

you see,

like, how different it could be.

You know, what we're capable of when you give people an opportunity.

I can tell you in my time, you know, of almost 20 years in prison,

I've met

I've met some bad people.

I met some people who

are scary people.

You know, I was in prison with a couple of different serial killers, serial rapists.

But they are the extreme minority.

The extreme minority.

Most of the guys that I met that I served time with

were trying to hustle their way to a life.

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

I met a lot of people that had real psychological issues.

I don't know what the politically correct term is nowadays.

I feel like we got to always have a correct term.

But people who were really like screwed up.

It wasn't, I didn't meet a lot of

inherently evil people, but I have met some evil people.

And you know it.

Like there's not even a doubt in your mind of what you're dealing with when you meet these people.

But we're lazy, man.

You know, we're lazy because if we can just slap a title on you,

and just categorically say like everybody's, you know, you convicted of a murder, you're a murderer, and that's everybody.

It's not everybody's story.

All of us don't arrive there, you know, and it's, and it's, you know, I,

the time that I did was the consequence of the choice I made.

And I accept that.

You know, I accept that.

I accept that that came with.

I even accept now,

you know, we're talking 34 years later.

There's penalties and consequences for.

that one moment in my life that I live that I'll live with forever.

There's the personal

reality right like like that doesn't that never goes away you know like that that

understanding of what damage I've caused to this family is something that never goes away

and then there's the societal consequences that

you know at this stage in my life they're not the same as they was the first day I walked out

But they remind me of exactly what society thinks of me when I deal deal with them.

And I think that we should be able to earn the trust of society back.

I think you got to put the work in.

I don't think that anybody should just be handed a free card.

But I think you should be given an opportunity to prove yourself.

That you can contribute and that you want to contribute.

And I can tell you, like, the guys that I deal with, man, there's so many of these guys that can contribute if we just stop throwing people away

yeah the system is just set up to punish they're set up to just lock people up so they're off the streets and so that other people don't have to deal with them but they are like you said they are going to get out most of them

and they're not going to be rehabilitated and oftentimes they're hardened and it's oftentimes even worse absolutely and there's so little effort put into how to f fix things,

how do you make it better,

what do you do that you can help these people contribute and you can have them come out of jail actually a better person?

Yeah.

Which is possible.

Absolutely.

Yeah, and I think you have to look at the system holistically, right?

Because it's not even just the men and women serving time that suffer.

Like the officers who work there,

it's a brutal job, man.

Yeah.

They suffer.

Like, they're not happy people.

Oh, no.

You know,

and

they're not happy because their job forces them to have to have a persona of toughness.

You know, you have to, the way that it was originally designed is you have to have a wall up between your humanity and the people that you're tasked with policing.

And that makes it tough because you have to come into this world

for most of the time, 60 hours a week, because most of those people have to make overtime in order to, you know, provide for their families.

You got to wear a mask for 60 days out of the week.

And then you got to come in and you got to see people

at their worst

more than just the moment to arrest them, right?

Like a police officer on the street, they're arresting a lot of times people at their worst moment, then they pass them off.

Correctional officer, you walk into this environment every day.

You have to deal with somebody who is in a cycle of their worst moment.

And the violence, the chaos, the smell,

the lack of tools and resources where you have to untangle the chaos.

You have to untangle the violence.

You have to jump into the fray when a guy is butchering another guy.

And then you have to go home with that.

You know, you have to carry that home.

And it's the higher security levels.

That's happening all the time.

Somebody's getting stabbed on the yard all the time.

You know, somebody's getting maimed and getting

blungeon, you know, on a regular basis.

And then you have to deal with that.

You know,

it's the interesting thing about how, you know, at one point I didn't have empathy for correctional officers.

You know, they were the enemy.

Like you're holding me in prison, not realizing I'm really the one that's responsible for me being there.

But over time, man, I remember I started to get empathy in the craziest of ways, man.

You know, this officer came to do a strip search.

And I refused the strip search.

I was, you know, I was in that rebellious state.

And I just remember like

thinking to myself after that, like, man, this is his job.

You got to come and look at somebody's ass.

You know, it's fat asses, skinny asses, hairy asses.

This is your job.

How can you be a happy person?

Right.

You can't be happy.

Like you, the guy go in the visiting room and you see this guy out here with his kid and his family.

And when he leaves there, you have to strip search this person.

So you have to put this armor up between

your own humanity.

and that show you for 40 hours a week, you're looking at asses.

That got to suck.

You know what I'm saying?

I'm like, dude, like, of course you become an asshole.

Like, how could you not, right?

Yeah.

But, you know, I think that's where we got it wrong.

We've kind of created this kind of idea that it's us against them.

And in reality, it's not, because they're spending a lot of time in that environment.

Yeah, they're in prison too.

They just can leave at night.

All day.

Yeah.

It's a different kind of prison because they're in control and they can quit.

But a lot of them, they're probably imprisoned by their bills too.

So they can't quit.

Absolutely.

And in a lot of the environments where these prisons are are

located, there's no other jobs.

No, that's the only industry.

Yeah.

That's the only industry.

The fact that prison is an industry is also insane.

The fact that privatized prisons are an industry, when I found out that prison guard unions lobby to keep drug laws on the books,

I remember that moment.

The moment that I found that out, I was like, that is evil.

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

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Private prisons are,

they want more people in there because that's how they make money.

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

Chickens are right.

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

Absolutely.

And you think about like the cost of phone calls.

Like before I got out of prison, we had finally fought to get the phone calls down.

I mean, they were charging $15.

And how much do you make in prison?

Like,

the best paying job I had in prison was

I think when I worked in the law library, I made about $54 a month.

Every phone call is $15.

$15.

Holy shit.

And so most people in there make, you know, I worked in a kitchen.

I started off at $17 an hour.

You got to work a week to make a phone call.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's insane.

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

But the average job, you're making 17 cents an hour in a kitchen.

Oh,

and the phone calls $15.

$15, right?

So you make, you know,

so you can't talk to your family, family, you know, and then we finally got it down to like about $3

15 minutes.

Still, if you're making 17 cents an hour.

Yeah.

Take you forever to make a phone call.

That's insane.

And like even now, like I keep money on my phone for my friends who are incarcerated to call me, you know, and I just like, I'll put, you know, a few hundred on there.

And then it's like, you know, every time you call, you can tell how much money is gone because they're like, yo, you got $150 left.

And it's just like, geez, like, man, you know, and I'm a lot of instances, I'm their only connection to their family and their kids.

Do you, do you know the Freeway Ricky Ross story?

Yeah, absolutely.

Do you know Ricky?

Yeah, so we've met.

I wouldn't say that we were like good friends, but we're cordial anytime we've seen each other.

But we've met, I want to say at least four or five times.

But yeah, wild story, man.

I love that, dude.

I've had him on a few times.

Yeah.

But he learned how to read in prison and then became a lawyer and realized that they wrongfully convicted him under the three strikes rule.

Yeah.

And that's how he got out.

No, that happens so much to people, though.

Yeah.

Like, they all

overcharge you.

That's one of the things that I would love to see change is like.

There is no accountability for prosecutors when they overcharge people or wrongfully charge.

It's up to you who's being charged to figure it out into, which is crazy, right?

Like the onus shouldn't be on a person.

Well, it's a crime.

Yeah.

It should be a crime.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

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

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

Yeah.

Once you're a convict, you're not a person anymore.

And they can do things to you that should be illegal.

It should be a crime, but they could get away with doing it.

And it impacts like

everybody.

Like right now in this country, there's probably about 150 million people who have someone incarcerated or who have had someone incarcerated.

Like, it's no longer, you know, when I was coming up, you know, I came up during the height of the war on crime or the war on drugs, right?

So I come up through that era.

I came up selling drugs when crack first exploded in our communities.

And, you know, the prison population went from, I think, you know, a couple of hundred thousand to two million.

Which is insane.

Which is wild, right?

Wild.

In a short amount of time.

In a tiny amount of time.

How old are you?

I am 50.

I'm 53.

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

Yeah.

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

Yeah.

How did this happen?

How did this happen?

Literally overnight.

And we find out through Freeway Ricky how it happened.

Yeah.

It was our own government.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Which is fucking insane.

Crazy.

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

who realize they can get away with this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And in Ricky's case, they were using it to fund a war.

Yeah.

The contract was

crazy, right?

Crazy.

I remember hearing about that shit in the news.

Yeah.

When I was a kid, going, what?

Yeah.

What happened?

But I didn't, at the time, I didn't know that it was being funded.

by selling drugs in Los Angeles.

I had no idea that was.

But I remember that it was in the news, and Oliver North was in the news.

And

this was when Reagan was old.

So he's like, I can't recall.

He just said he didn't remember.

Right, right, right.

Yeah.

Convenient.

Yeah.

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It was wild.

Yeah.

It's it's horrible to think'cause you

you know, as a boy, I remember thinking, Well, the government's good and they're looking out for you and they're the good people and the cops are the good people and all the prisoners are there it's'cause they're bad.

They're bad.

Yeah.

And so that's the that's the narrative, right?

And like, I grew up the same way.

You know, my dad was in the Air Force.

You know, I used to go to the Air Force base and, you know, all of his friends were in the Air Force.

And, you know, you grow up.

And on my neighborhood block, there was, you know, this woman used to be a police officer and the firefighters and the doctors.

And so you grow up seeing this ideal.

of what you think is good and bad.

And then you see this explosion of this drugs.

Like that same neighborhood, you know, I wrote this story a while ago called The Trees No Longer Give Fruit.

And it was about my neighborhood.

And what I was writing about is that I grew up on a block where every backyard there was some type of fruit tree, pear tree, peach tree, apple tree.

And then crack came and it killed my neighborhood.

And these manicured lawns and these houses where there were two families, I mean two parent families and, you know, professionals and, you know, and you felt like a community, this drug came in and and it was literally like a bomb had been detonated and so that early narrative of like inner city kids as the the what did they call them super predators um that was the narrative back then now that was biden yeah biden said that on tv yeah yeah clinton hillary clinton she was like super predators right and i was in prison when they when they when that crime bill took college out, I was averaging 4.0.

And they said that it took rehabilitation out of prison.

You know, that night, I think it was 94 crime bill like Biden and Clinton passed.

And like, I remember like we went to school and the professor came in.

It was like, this is the last semester.

They were taking it out because of this crime bill.

And so when you look at who was villainized back then,

who filled prison back then, The face of that was black males.

Like that was the dominant face of, you know, who you would think is in prison.

Now, 30 years later, that's changed.

It's changed with opioids.

It's changed with fentanyl.

It's changed with like poverty in these rural areas.

And now the prison population looks vastly different.

Like there's more.

I was just in the juvenile lockup last week.

I was in Rhode Island.

And like this room of these kids, it's like 10 kids in two different rooms.

And I mean, it looked like the United Nations of Diversity.

Like it was like

literally like three white kids over here, a couple of Latin over here, black over here.

And I was like, shit, you know, and these are babies, right?

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

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's also corporations.

Yeah.

See, the thing about Detroit, most people don't know that Detroit,

up until they started moving jobs overseas, Detroit was the third wealthiest city in the world.

Absolutely.

In the world.

Absolutely.

In the world.

In the world.

Yeah.

Which is crazy.

Yeah.

To think that inside of a lifetime, Detroit goes from being one of the wealthiest cities in the world to one of the poorest cities in America.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

And just because they wanted to make some more money.

Yeah.

They didn't want to pay the union wages.

They didn't want these factory workers making a great living.

They wanted all the money.

Yeah.

They completely

almost destroyed that cereal.

Just like a bomb, just like crack.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Fortunately, it's a resilient city.

It's bouncing back.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's bouncing back.

Yeah.

It's nice to know.

Yeah.

But fuck, the fact that that can happen.

Yeah.

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

You know, I remember when I came home, I was so optimistic coming out of prison.

I mean, you got to imagine, like,

you know, walking out everything.

It's just like, oh, it's going to be exciting.

You think that life really has advanced and people have moved on.

And I remember just going through some of the neighborhoods and I was like, you know, these were beautiful blocks and these beautiful homes.

And I would go through some of the neighborhoods and there's one house left on the block.

And it's like the other house that are still in different, you know, states of disrepair were falling apart.

And it was like the most heartbreaking thing to think about

there's kids that this is the block that they go down to go to school.

And then this was the other thing that was mind-blowing because I went into the schools and I'm like, it's in worse condition than the prison I just left.

And like that talks about where people are investing to your point of like we start investing into like keeping people in prison or putting people in prison versus like education facilities to keep people out of prison.

Yeah.

So

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

Yeah.

And no, no,

no course correction, nothing being done on a on a federal level to try to correct that.

It's It's just

and I think there's a problem in this country.

I mean,

it's a good problem in some ways that you have to get re-elected if you want to be president.

You have four years, you have four-year terms.

But because of that,

they just think about getting elected.

And then once they're in, then they think about getting re-elected.

And the last thing you want to do is do anything controversial that might take 15, 20 years in order to reap the rewards of it, generational.

You know, like if you're trying to say, like, hey, we've got to do something.

I know we're investing so much money overseas.

We invest so much money into these nonprofits overseas and all these different things we're doing, regime change and untold billions of dollars.

We've got to invest in these cities and try to make less prisoners, less people incarcerated, less people that start off in a terrible position.

But that's like an unpopular thing to try to run on, man.

Because

the people that are just trying to protect their money,

you know, there's so many people in this country that think about people in prison, they don't even think of them as prisoners.

They want them in prison because then they're not out in the street inconveniencing their life.

They don't want to deal with, like, why?

Why does someone, you think you're different?

You're not different.

If you lived in that environment, you would be in there, man.

We're all the same exact fucking thing.

Absolutely.

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

Not that much.

Not that much.

If you lived in a terrible environment and grew up in a terrible household and dealt with terrible pressures, you would be in there too, man.

We would all be in there too.

And the callousness of people to look the other way is, you know.

It's a blight on our society, that callousness.

We're supposed to be the most advanced society that's ever existed.

But yet we still,

which is crazy, right?

The United States of America is supposed to be the most prosperous, advanced society on earth, and we have the highest level of prisoners.

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

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

It's really interesting because, like, you know,

I don't do a lot in the world of politics outside of criminal justice.

And what I've learned about

this particular space with politics, it is the one space where in the last, I would say the last 15, 20 years, where there has been some common ground and there's been a little bit more courage than I've ever seen in my lifetime.

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

It took the work of a lot of incredible people, a lot of storytelling

to start to shift it to where it's the one issue where you can get some type of bipartisan buy-in.

And I think that the facts of it is this, to your point, where there are certain segments of society that

we have not dealt with.

Like the gun violence, where I come from,

is something that most people can't even begin to imagine.

Like in my family, in my family, like I mean, I mean like my, not my family of friends, but in my family, at a minimum, there's been eight or nine of us who have been shot.

We don't talk about gun violence in an inner city and the cycle of it because the lack of treatment for gun-related trauma.

I didn't know what PTSD was until I was already in prison.

I didn't realize that the things that I felt at 17 years old when I got shot were actually real things and I wasn't making an excuse for being paranoid and that I wasn't being irrational for thinking that I had to carry a gun to protect myself when both my brothers had already been shot and many of my friends had been murdered

through gun violence.

So those choices as a kid, why they were illegal, they weren't necessarily irrational.

And so we haven't done a good job at like being just honest, right?

When I started to see the shift with criminal justice was when opioids began to penetrate the suburbs.

When you you started to see kids who normally can come into a neighborhood, buy some cocaine, go and party, and they're fine

to go back to the suburbs, it was easy to just be like, oh, well, those black kids over there are selling cocaine and, you know, they should be arrested.

When you started dealing with this higher level of opioid addiction that doesn't just stay in the hood, that it really carries over to the suburbs, then people started to be able to see their own kids and their grandkids.

And now that you're seeing that it's over 30% of the prison population are white, you're starting to see people say, well, wait a minute, this isn't just a criminal orientation.

There's a deeper problem in society, which is one, is drug addiction that we don't really deal with because there's so much shame attached to it.

So I can tell you, like, sometimes I do these talks all over, when I'm speaking at corporations,

like you name it, I've been at these spaces.

I cannot tell you how many parents parents

that work incredible jobs in government, in state,

in corporate come up to me and pull me to the side and say, thank you for speaking your truth.

I wish I can tell people what I'm going through in my family right now.

I wish I can talk about why my husband has not been in the household because of his addiction.

The shame attached to it.

You know, the shame, if it doesn't fit the narrative that you've been handed, the shame attached to it.

You know, and even,

you know,

being a black male in America who comes from the hood,

there's value to that narrative, right?

So leaning into that.

Like if I'm, you know, you think about the black comedians, right?

We always talk about our trauma and our pain because that narrative has cultural value.

You know, if we lean into, as much as we can lean into like

the elements of us that's from the hood in a smart way, in a funny way, et cetera, we'll always get that laugh.

We'll always get that, you know, that sense of like, oh yeah, y'all do have a different reality, right?

Because that's the narrative and that narrative has endured from generation to generation.

And I think now we're just getting to a space where, and I mean, and there's tons of work to do.

Like to undo all the damage that's happened in the system is going to take us another 50 years.

You know,

we'll be lucky if we catch up to Germany or Norway or one of these more forward-thinking countries like in the next four or five decades.

How do they handle things over there?

I'll tell you, it's two things that I was struck by when I was there.

At one point,

I was with this guy named Scott Budnick.

I think you may know Scott.

He produced a hangover.

So Scott does incredible work in criminal justice.

He's one of,

always telling me he should get a Nobel Peace Prize.

But Scott and I, we were over there with another group of people and they were doing like a bunch of panels and both of us basically got bored.

We was like, we should like go see if we can run around the prison, right?

So we just kind of peeled off and, you know, we're, we're talking to the guys who are serving time.

They're showing us their cells.

They don't even know I had been in prison, but they're, you know, they're excited to have visitors.

So they're like, you know.

And I went into this one cell and I remember just standing there and I was by myself and the warden came, this woman, and she was like, are you okay?

And I was like, yeah, I was just like caught in the thought.

Like, I spent a lot of time in prison back in the States, and I spent four and a half years in a cell that's probably about half this size.

And I was like, you know, I'm in solitary confinement.

I was locked down for all this time.

And this woman visibly started to weep.

And she said to me, we would never do that to one of our citizens.

And that struck me.

When she said we would never do that to one of our citizens, it made me realize that in America, when you are convicted, your identity as a citizen is taken away.

If you even had it.

You can't vote.

You can't vote.

You know, you can't travel freely to other places.

You know, there's still restrictions that I have, you know, and this is 15 years later.

And like, I can't, I can't, you know, and this is where it'll hit you, right?

So my wife and I and my son, we'll travel.

And my wife, she's incredible.

She's a great leader in the world.

She's doing like, I I mean, some of the most amazing work in the world.

And we'll be traveling, and she has TSA.

And there's always this moment when we're traveling together, when we get there, and the TSA agent will be like, oh, ma'am, you can go on that line.

You got TSA pre-check.

And it's always like we always instantly look at each other.

She's like, no,

I'm going to go with my husband.

Is it the biggest problem in the world for us to have?

Absolutely not.

You know, but is there a dig at my dignity, you know, as a husband, as a father, every time we have to have that look and that exchange?

Right.

And I have to think about as a taxpaying citizen that I pretty much pay more taxes than probably 99% of the country and that I don't have access to all the things that comes with being a taxpayer citizen and that I can actually use clear and move through.

Effortlessly, but my use clear?

I can use clear.

But you can't use DSA free.

What the fuck is that?

It's crazy, right?

Things like insurance, like home insurance.

I bought a house in LA in 2019,

and

I didn't realize that a felony can impede you from paying house insurance.

And it was after I already bought, which we know that's usually people's biggest investment, is their home.

Right.

What does me having a felony from 30 years ago have to do with my ability to pay insurance on a house I already bought?

you know and so it's like these insurance is such an evil scam yeah you know especially in California it's brutal oh it's so evil it's so crazy they mean California there's a new fire I don't know if they put it out yet Laguna Beach did they put that fire out Jim

was raging yesterday oh geez I didn't even do that yeah yeah I mean

you can't get fire insurance yeah you know I have friends who have houses now that they can't get insured for fire and they're like what the fuck do I do yeah what do I do yeah and they can't get out.

They don't have enough money to get out.

And then it's hard to sell your house now if you're in an area.

Like, I have a friend who's trying to sell her house, but it's in an area that's too close to Laurel Canyon.

And Laurel Canyon burns.

And nobody wants to buy a house there.

Yeah.

It's like, what the fuck?

Yeah.

Here it is.

Brutal.

13-year-old boy arrested for brush fire that led to evacuations.

Fireworks.

Did they put it out?

I don't think so.

So, what are they going to do to him, though?

Oh, he's a kid.

That's what I'm saying.

Like,

he's a fucking kid.

I started a fire when I was a kid.

Yeah, I'm sorry.

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

Oh, fireworks?

Yeah, I think I was.

So I was living in Jamaica Plain,

which is

at the time it was a bad neighborhood outside of Boston.

I think it's supposed to be gentrified now.

Oh, wow.

So now that was...

I was

13, right?

Yeah, I was 13.

So that was his age.

Yeah, and

we were lighting firecrackers in this field.

And it started off just like this little fire.

And we're stepping on the fire.

And then the wind blew.

And we're like, oh, shit.

And then it just raged.

It raged through this field.

And we ran out into the street and just by fucking sheer luck found a cop.

And then we told the cop, the cop's like, get the fuck out of here.

Like, we told them what we did.

We were like, firefighters, we're sorry.

Right.

And

they wound up putting it out.

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

Okay.

He's a kid.

They just said, you're a kid.

You fucked up.

Yeah.

Well, that's good.

Yeah.

I mean,

but.

We got out of there and then we came back like the next day and we saw all the shit we burnt.

It was like, oh my God.

It was like this huge area that was burnt.

Luckily, no one lost their life, but it was just sheer luck.

Yeah.

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

Totally.

Yeah.

Propane tank, anything.

Anything blew up.

Yeah, anything.

You never know.

Or y'all could have actually got like seriously.

Yeah, we could have crazy.

Yeah.

I mean, it was just luck.

Yeah.

Dumb young kids.

You leave them alone.

The fact that any kid could go buy a lighter.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Some matches or whatever.

You buy a lighter.

Yeah.

And you can just light things on fire.

When you're a kid, that's what you want to do.

Yeah, you want to light things on fire.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a million times in my life I could have done something stupid and gone the wrong way, and just by sheer luck I didn't.

And, you know, when I talk to people like yourself, who obviously are very intelligent and have a lot to contribute, and you just imagine like, that could have been me, man.

It could have been any of us.

That's the thing that

people need to really get in their head.

It could be any of us.

Absolutely.

Any of us.

And

leaving these communities the way they are and not doing anything to try to fix them is, to me,

it's

the biggest

failure of our government.

Other than, you know, interventional war, you know,

interventional foreign, interventionist foreign policy and starting wars that are unnecessary and costing lives, which is the worst thing we've ever done.

And

that's the next worst is that we don't do anything about it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think, you know, I think it goes back to what you was talking about earlier with talent.

Like, how much talent are we leaving on the table?

You know, like when I was just there in Role Light, and so I went to this juvenile program over there.

And, you know, the reason I went is these kids, they're working in a music program.

And they've...

like gone from like getting into all types of trouble to like now they're using art to like you know really shift how they think about life and so i was like well i'm gonna come over there and spend time with them because i've i've dabbled in in working with

I ended up doing this this spoken word piece with Nas on on one of his albums and the kids they were just fired up about how you can use writing in these other mediums you know and so they wanted to work with me on it but the talent that is wasted in prison you know the the the ingenuity um just think about the thing about being able to make a tattoo gun out of a piano wire or a guitar string and

an engine from something else some sort of a motor Take player.

Yeah, yeah.

When you see some of the tattoos these guys make in jail, you're like, Jesus Christ, these are incredible tattoos.

I'm inked up.

All these,

I got like, I actually got in trouble for getting tattooed one time.

I got caught like getting, getting, getting tattooed.

The tattoo artist wasn't good enough for getting rid of the gun.

So

I think it was the last thing I got in trouble for in prison was getting a tattoo, which was crazy.

I was trying to get a cover-up right here.

Was that when you were already out of solitary?

Yeah, so I was out of solitary.

I was actually working my way down to like going home, and I was just like, we're in lower level.

Let me have this guy slam this ink in, cover this up real quick.

And we literally got busted because he couldn't get rid of the gun fast enough.

And they actually took 90 days from me for that, though.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So when you get a misconduct, they take days from you, you know?

And, you know, you think about some of this stuff, like

you're taking 90 days from a person

for a fucking tattoo.

Their own body.

Yeah.

For what?

Like, why are you,

why is the excess of punishment?

But it goes on.

Yeah, like, how many of those guys could get out of jail and be excellent tattooists?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah, and

that was the other part of the idea with MIT is like,

how do we take

people who

don't have traditional kind of educational backgrounds?

and utilize their talent so that they can add value to society.

You know, it's one of the things that I appreciate about

Silicon Valley is that talent is really more important than your educational pedigree.

Right.

And like, if you if you're talented, they're trying to figure out how you can contribute in a way that is meaningful.

And it's the same thing with like art.

You know, well, it's because it's so competitive.

They just want to get ahead.

And oftentimes, people that aren't educated are some of the most incredibly talented people.

They just have some weird thing about them that allows them to think differently.

They don't care you didn't get a degree.

Like, hire them quick.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, Yeah, I worked in Silicon for three years and I invested there, so I'm super happy about that.

But yeah,

I worked in tech and

when I was there,

it was so fascinating to like, you know, being, especially like a startup, you know, just that startup energy of like, let's just break a bunch of things, let's fail, and let's fix it and let's figure it out and win.

And I'm like, that's the streets, right?

Like I tell people this, like,

I learned, like, my business acumen comes from two worlds from the streets and prison and what I learned from the streets is marketing and promotion I was one of the best at like figuring out how to get our product into other areas

there were a lot of skill sets that I I didn't I didn't even recognize them until I was far removed from that world that oh this is just like entrepreneurial talent you know the ability to to problem solve like I remember one one one of the houses we sold at a they call them trap houses not back then we called them crack houses we get this house it's in the middle of a nice neighborhood

and this house is it's it's cranking it's making a lot of money because people over here still have money that's buying the drugs but we pull up one time and i'm like it is a line down the street i'm like we're definitely going to jail like this like

so

we clear we're on a clear path we're going to jail like very soon right and so i was like i was sitting there looking at it and i was like the reason it's a line because we got this armor raw gate like as soon as you walk up, so you can't go past this gate.

And I was like, well, what if we move the gate to between the kitchen and the basement and allow the traffic to snake down into the basement?

Then we kind of keep our, you know, we can seal.

More low-key.

Yeah, keep more low-key.

So it would be stuff like that that I was figuring out at like 13.

Then it's like smuggling drugs.

Like I would, I would hop on a Greyhound with like a family-sized bag of chips that I've ripped open, put drugs in, super glue back up.

I put like a

Slurpee in one hand, and I just walk on like a little kid.

Meanwhile, I got like, you know, the half a brick of cocaine

bag going down Ohio, like I'm hustling, right?

So I say to people, like, I learned like the marketing and promotion distribution part there.

And then

in

prison, I learned operations.

Like, how does cash flow work?

So I loan shark.

That was part of my livelihood.

And prison was loan sharking and then running these underground stores and basically i worked in the recreation center which was like the hub so i had access to both sale blocks which means that i can circulate cash on the off days when this sale block gets money this week this one doesn't so i can loan money here pick up the next week and i would just circulate this cash so i was starting to generate this cash flow and then i began to really understand interest rates and like the interest rates in prison are ridiculous like a hundred percent markup on everything um but but I also was able to convert that cash, right?

So like, say you were on a gambling table, Joe, and you're like, you're down a hundred dollars and you don't got it right now.

And then I got it.

And then I can come to you and say, okay, I'll give you a hundred, but then I need your girlfriend or your mother to send me 75 to my account because that's more valuable is the money I have in my account.

And so that was called a money transfer.

We would just transfer cash.

And so I learned these things.

And then when I got out, you know, I started off hustling books out of the trunk.

Like a lot of people, they talk about the out-the-trunk experience as kind of like fashionable and cool.

I seriously was like, literally, I had a little hollow civic and I would go all over Detroit.

Parks, strip clubs, you name it, bars.

I would literally set up, sometimes I would set up a little booth inside the clubs.

A couple of my friends, they manage the strip clubs.

They'd be like, yo, come up to the club.

I'd be like, I'll come up there with books and I'm talking to the girls and they doing lap dance.

I'm selling books.

Wow.

Yeah.

And I'm like, so that's how I really started the journey.

And I mean, my first, first day out of prison, I sold my first book in the parole office parking lot.

And so I took these skill sets from those two worlds and I just applied them to legitimate enterprise.

And then as I began to kind of pick up, you know, notoriety through that and the storytelling, you know, I started speaking at companies.

And then I actually ended up joining a company that I used to speak at and who became a client of mine.

They was trying to figure out their company culture.

How did that work out?

What was that about?

Yeah, so a really good friend of mine, Ben Horos, you've had his partner, Mark Andreessen on.

Yeah, so Mark's partner, Ben, is a really good friend of mine.

He's one of my,

he's one of my best friends, but he's also like a great mentor and somebody who really, you know, we're always having these idea exchanges.

But one time he invited me to his home for dinner with one of the founders of one of their portfolio companies.

And the founder and I, we hit it off.

He's this tough, tough Israeli guy who's been through some stuff.

So we would have these conversations about like grit and determination.

And he had this company called Trip Actions at the time.

And they were going through, they were like a skyrocket.

This was hot.

It was going through a lot of things.

And then when the pandemic hit, the thing, the first thing that suffered was travel, you know?

And so I was, I had already been helping the company like figure out like some like kind of more their cultural values and and the culture and he asked me to join the company you know and i originally joined as the head of dei because he really wanted to figure out what was happening in the company how to set people up for success and

one day i spoke at an event and the the the chief revenue officer was like I need everybody on the sales team to be able to communicate like that effectively, you know?

And so I took on my second role, which was head of sales and success culture.

I got a chance to train one of the best sales teams in the world.

This company went from like zero revenue to like, you know, it's $9 billion valuation.

How do you crush that?

So how do you sort out a program like this?

Like,

you had never done this before?

No.

But I did it in prison with figuring out how to like run and operationalize the things I was doing in prison, right?

So like...

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

I think just conversations, like conversations, things I was was doing.

I was doing some of this stuff in nonprofit world too.

So I led an organization in LA around nonprofits, raised a ton of money, was able to really kind of build out that culture.

And then Ben actually wrote this book called What You Do is Who You Are.

And in a book, he talked about some of our conversations around culture.

And it kind of gave them a framework to really understand how these lessons I learned in prison could really be applied in corporate.

And, you know, we hear it all the time.

If you can run a drug operation, you can run a corporate.

And I don't think it's that simple.

I think it sounds great when people say it.

Like Freeway Ricky Ross probably can run a corporation.

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

There is some skill sets to run an actual startup that

you need to have a lot more experience, peep-to-people part of it.

Like, how do you really build relationships?

That's one of the things I was really good with in prison is like really knowing how to be diplomatic, knowing how to resolve conflict.

You know, a lot of times in prison, when violence escalates, it's because people are fighting for respect.

And if you can make sure that both parties walk away with their respect in place, you can become a real problem solver.

And that's like an inherent value in that environment.

Now, the caveat is that you also have to have a propensity for violence.

Like people have to respect, like, you're not just telling them something because you don't want people getting into dust-ups on the yard, but you're telling them because you've actually lived that life.

And

all of that psychology from that world applies in any corporate setting.

Any company you can imagine, all the things that people are going through, it's the same thing that's happening in prison.

The only difference is, you know,

your colleague might shank you with an email versus,

you know what I'm saying?

He might slide that email

to, you know, that's the only difference.

But the mindset of like what people are really after,

you know, that is the same thing that you're dealing with in prison when you're talking about like the economy, right?

And how do you, how do you build.

So,

you know, in there, I would find guys to invest in, you know, so if it's like you, you ride in, you from the neighborhood, your family's not taking care of you, I would say, okay, well, this little homie, he's on his sale block.

I'm going to give you, you know, $30, $40, and then you got to flip that.

But you also got to be able to defend it.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, I can't come and fight your battle for you.

It's the same thing that happens in corporate, right?

You are assigned a responsibility.

The CEO can't bail you out of that.

He can give you the opportunity.

And he can ensure that you have all the things you need to succeed if he's a good CEO or she's a good CEO.

But then you got to do the work, you know.

And so, all those lessons I learned from in there, how to build community.

One of the things that I would do because I was hustling on the sale block is I made sure that me and my crew that we broke bread every day.

Like we always would take our little ramen noodle cookups together and we would make sure that everybody that we said was like part of our family and crew.

It didn't matter if they didn't have money.

It didn't matter if they couldn't put a 10 cent noodle in.

Just that ability for them to know that when we come to break bread, we're all on the same playing field, like that was a game changer.

You know, we trained together every day.

You know, and when we would train, there was an accountability that we just commanded of each other.

It's like, if you say you're going to be on the yard, yard, be on the yard.

You know, you're going to go for 10 laps today.

We're going to push you and drag you and help you get around.

And it built this closeness.

And, you know, and

there was some little chaotic nature to it all, right?

Because like our friendships didn't come easy in there.

You know, the price of entry was probably like the craziest shit ever.

Like my thing was like,

when I welcome you into my world, it's based on these two things.

Are you willing to do life or are are you willing to give or lose your life?

And if you're not willing to do life or take a life,

then

we can't be hanging out on the yard because the stakes are that high, right?

It's the same thing in corporate where you're like, listen, we're fighting for something.

In the startup, we're fighting for this outcome, you know, an acquisition, a merger, an IPO, whatever that thing is to change the world.

Like, we got to be in the trenches together, you know, and if we break bread together, if we spend this time together, we realize we're fighting for that one thing, it's a game changer, you know, and so when I go into these companies, you know, I come in with that mindset of just like the honesty, the vulnerability.

You know, it's the things that I'm even in the book that I'm talking about now is like

vulnerability, when you hear that, a lot of people don't think that applies to being a CEO.

But it's one of the greatest unlocks in your company culture is when you can get super transparent.

And like I learned that from being around great, you know, Ariel, he was a great CEO, and he always got super real with us.

And when he got super real, it didn't always feel good.

But what it did is it allowed you to look at, okay, this is what we're really dealing with, you know,

and you got to face that thing head on, and that's what applies in your real life, you know.

That's the only thing that applies.

Yeah.

Being super real is, it's everything.

Oh my God, it's the game changer.

As soon as you're bullshitting.

Yeah.

Like now, what is truth?

What's reality?

How do you succeed if you're not dealing in reality?

Yeah.

And that's where real grit comes from is the truth.

You know, like you can't, you can't have grit without having honesty.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Like it's, you know, we hear it in sport.

I'm a crazy sports fan.

I think the best stories about how you conquer life come from sports.

I agree.

And, you know, grit and resilience,

the fundamental parts of that comes down to the truth.

Like, you have to be, you have to, you know what's in you, right?

You know if you got that thing to push forward or if you don't.

And when guys quit, like it's because their truth is that they're not strong enough to keep going.

Right.

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

And when I was writing about it, obviously I'm writing about it from a different perspective of like, you know.

I had an experience, man, that was like

what even sparked me to write the recent book was I dealt with something that was so high level complex that it landed me on the deepest level of gratitude.

And it was my brother was murdered in July of 2021.

And I was sitting in our family's living room

and I'm watching my family mourn.

And I was struck by

this

profound sense of guilt.

Because I know I made somebody else's family feel like that.

And so while I should have been grieving my brother and trying to unpack that, it was navigating this complex world.

And what it led to was the toughest year of my life, emotionally, of trying to reconcile my brother's murder with who I had become as a kid.

And what I landed on was that gratitude is one of the greatest keys to freedom.

And is that if we can lean into being thankful for all of it, right?

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

that

you can live a life that is so rich and abundant in fulfillment

because you're always in that spirit of gratitude.

And you're thankful for the moments you're in.

And that, to me,

when you're in a company setting and everything feels chaotic and you're like, you know, damn, I don't want to get up and go to work.

If you can just pause for a minute and be like, man, I'm thankful that I get a chance to get up and go to work.

Yeah.

And I'm thankful for these challenges.

I'm thankful for the abundance that this brings into my life.

And that, you know, it's hard sometimes for people to see it because they haven't lost anything.

But when you've lost everything, you know, you're thankful for like, you know, my gratitude practices are,

I wake up in the morning.

and I try to identify three things that I'm thankful for.

And they can't be the super obvious things.

They can't be like, you know, my wife and my kid and the house and the things.

It's these small things.

You know, things that

I get excited about.

Like, I got cold orange juice today.

Like, how amazing is that?

You know what I mean?

Like,

that matters to me.

You know,

you know, I have a device that I can actually communicate with the world an idea, you know, that I have like in the moment that I have it.

Like, that's that's gratitude.

You know, it's like, I got toothpaste today, you know, soap.

Soap is a big thing in my life.

Like,

you know, there was a time when I was in prison when,

and I don't know what was happening in my family's life, you know,

but I didn't have any money

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

And all I had was this state issue soap.

And it's a little small bar, about this big.

It's probably about a quarter of an inch thick.

And it smells like pine saw.

And I just remember like

this moment of like,

man,

I can't afford a bar of soap right now, you know?

And in that same stretch, I was in solitary and I didn't have these shower shoes.

So in prison, you get these little, you know, shower shoes that you buy for like $2.

Because you're going to take a shower in this, you know, this cesspool of all these random body fluids or whatever.

And I tried to wear my regular shoes to the shower.

And the officer was like, you can't wear those to the shower.

I'm like, what do you want me to stand barefoot in that shower?

And she was like, I don't care what you do, but you can't wear those.

And like that feeling of like

shame,

you know, that like I was a drug dealer.

You know, I hustled.

I took care of people.

I stood up for people.

And I don't have $2 shower shoes.

Like that is what allows me to appreciate all the things.

You know, and so what I say to people is like, find

the things in your life to be thankful for.

You know, find them.

Like, be intentional about it, though.

You know, because that's,

to me, that's the ultimate freedom, man, is gratitude and to be thankful about, you know, even our complex country.

Like, we got it.

We live in a very complex country.

It's actually kind of dope, though, you know, and I don't think we spend enough time, you know, talking about the things that we should be grateful for, just being here, you know.

I think all kids should be like part of education, they should have to travel,

especially if you're in this country.

I think you should have to travel to places that don't have all the trappings of possibilities.

You know, and

I just think that gratitude is a game changer.

I think so, too, because I think it's too easy easy to focus on negative, and negative begets more negative.

If you just find the things in your life that suck and dwell on those, your life's going to suck more.

It's just simple mathematics.

It's real.

I know people that are very successful that don't have gratitude.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

That's who I wrote the book for those people.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

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

I remember one time

a story when I was on television.

I was on this TV show called News Radio, and

we would get the ratings in.

And when we would get the ratings, you know, we weren't doing that well.

It wasn't a very successful show.

It was only successful once it got off the air, ironically, in syndication.

It became, because it was a good show.

But

they were all sitting around, and they were reading variety, and variety magazine, and the Hollywood Report.

I would call them the devil's rag.

Because like, you guys are like concentrating on all this shit that is making you compare yourself to other people.

And you're all getting upset that we're not after friends, that we're not after Seinfeld.

I go, last time I checked, I'm on television.

We're on television.

You know, few people get to be on a fucking sitcom and

we're here pissing and moaning because we're not on the biggest sitcom.

That is so crazy.

Do you know how many people would trade lives with you?

I mean,

I had a ton of terrible jobs doing construction, delivered newspapers.

I did everything.

drove limos, I did everything.

I'm on TV.

I'm happy as fuck.

But for these people, like, there was never, you know, it's just, it's just a symptom of Hollywood itself because Hollywood is all about who's number one.

It's not just about like you're making a great living doing something that's really fun.

It's like, no, no, no.

Someone is out there being Tom Cruise.

Right.

How come I'm not Tom Cruise?

You know, this is bullshit.

Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise.

I'm not Tom Cruise.

Right.

You know, and that's literally, and then they live miserable.

They're multi-millionaire, miserable people, which is

the craziest thing.

A kid like me who grew up on food stamps was like, what is fucking wrong with you people?

This is crazy.

Like, you're living the dream.

You're in,

maybe you don't have the number one dream, but guess what?

No one's paying attention to you.

So you don't get scrutinized.

You can go to a restaurant.

You don't have fucking cameras in your face.

You're actually living a better dream.

Yeah.

My friend Brian said this to me once.

My friend Brian Callan, he said, all you want is to be able to go to a restaurant and order anything you want and not worry about what the bill costs.

Everything after that is bullshit.

I was like, that is like some of the best wisdom ever because

it doesn't matter how big your house is.

It's just your fucking house, man.

You get used to all that shit.

Absolutely.

There's some nice things that come with money.

They're nice.

But freedom is nicer than all those things.

and everybody has that no it's the ultimate wealth yeah and ultimate wealth and just not worrying about your bills is though i remember i got a development deal which uh for comedians is this is back in the day when everybody they were trying to turn everybody into jerry seinfeld they try to turn everybody into a sitcom roseanne right you know so everybody they they would come to comedians and they give you a development deal and they would give you like a hundred thousand dollars or something like that and then um they would try to write a sitcom around you and develop a pilot this was like the game that was the hustle and the first time i got a development deal i think i was

26

i guess i was 26 something like that and you know my whole life i'd been paycheck to paycheck always broke you know and for the last five years just hustling as a comedian trying to get by i was just happy that i didn't have to have a regular job right i was just a comedian but i was always broke and then all of a sudden I got, I think I got $150,000.

And it was like this enormous weight was lifted off my shoulders.

It was the craziest weight.

It was like physical weight.

I was like, now I don't have to worry about my bills.

Like I was, every month, it was like, can I pay rent?

Can I keep the lights on?

You know, can I afford gas to get to my gigs?

It was just like that.

I was like, barely getting, no health insurance, no nothing, nothing.

Just barely getting by.

But that physical weight,

I'll never forget that.

I was like, that's the most important thing is to not worry about your bills.

Absolutely.

But then everybody's worried about what Bob's got a 22-foot boat.

I've got an 18-foot boat.

Like, Jesus.

All things don't really matter when it comes down to that.

Yeah, it's like that, that there's an, I forget who said it.

Comparison is a thief of joy.

Is that Thoreau?

No.

Thoreau is most men live lives of quiet desperation.

That's my other favorite one.

Yeah, it's a great.

I think it might have been

Jefferson who said comparison is thief of joy.

But it is.

It's like you can miss out on gratitude when it's right in front of your face.

You have so many things to be happy for.

Absolutely.

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

You'll have you depressed for sure.

Oh, it's compared.

This is Jonathan Haight wrote a book about what it's doing to young girls.

It's like they're comparing themselves constantly to everybody else.

And these girls are using filters and everybody's like,

and then they're getting plastic surgery and changing this and changing that.

And look at all my shit.

Look at my bag.

Look at my jewelry.

Look at my car.

Look at my this.

Look at my that.

And it's just, everyone's constantly in this state of comparison.

And no one is happy just to be alive and healthy in America in a wild time of change.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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

And like,

it's that saying of like, you know, you can have a million problems until you get sick and then you only have one.

Yes.

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

And

what I've been struck by is, you know, you talk about the people who looks like they have it all and they're not happy and they're not fulfilled.

That's like being struck with that illness, where it's like you got all the trappings of life right here at your disposal, but you're trapped into this idea that, you know, and sometimes it's not that it's not real stuff, right?

Like trauma is real.

Sure.

You know, shame is real.

You know, grief is something.

None of us are getting through this life without grief.

Like that's just factual.

Like if you live, you know, any considerable amount of time to where you're conscious, you're going to grieve at some point.

You know, somebody's gonna die you're gonna lose a job you're gonna lose an opportunity you'll love all highs yeah nobody gets all highs exactly yeah and i think what what happens is that

one we just haven't created space to like talk about what that really is for us you know we just kind of deal with it on our own and then it trips people up because it can get heavy at times you know and if you get hit with a few things back to back it can actually be overwhelming um

but if you lean into some of these things that really centers you, you know, being present, like I'm super present in a moment to sometime.

It can be annoying to the people in my life because I'm just like, no, I actually changed my mind like literally this moment.

And they're like, what are you talking about?

We planned this whole thing for like, yeah, but I changed my mind because in this moment, this is where I really want to be.

But it's a beautiful space to be, you know, like that.

Yeah, that's what I learned in prison.

So I tell people, like, I was incarcerated before I ever stepped foot in a prison cell.

I was free before I ever got out of solitary.

And that freedom of mindfulness, that freedom of really understanding that the rest of my life is on me, you know, I didn't know if I was getting out of prison.

Here's what I knew.

Whatever happens, my son is going to be able to look at me and say, you know what?

My dad went through all of these things, but here's who he became as a person.

That you can't, it's not a box that can contain that, you know, and it's not a it's not a gate that can keep you back from that like that's all the inside work that's the inside job and like that's how i just try to live my life is like you know it's it's you know i see it and it's sad because it's to all the things you say it's like the the competition with with people highlight reel right like you can't compete with somebody's highlight reel exactly it'll drive you crazy it's not even real highlights a lot of lease cars out there come on the lease cars is this i saw a car out here that i took a i mean i've had people be like yo can i take a picture in front of your car yeah i do have a lot you know what i'm saying so you know when you get behind it you realize like man what what do people really care about where's the most joy is like the friendships you develop

the people you spend time with yeah like

Those things are invaluable, you know, and that's not to say that people shouldn't aspire towards success.

Like, I'm like, listen, leave it all on the floor.

Whatever you're, whatever, whatever tasks you've been given in life, like, go out and execute it to the fullest capabilities possible.

Like don't, don't undersell yourself.

Don't have do it.

Don't quit on yourself.

Go for it.

Push yourself to the limits.

But understand, you got to be present in the moments that you're living.

Otherwise, it's going to be squandered time.

And so that's how I just try to live my life, man.

I'm like, I'm enjoying it.

You know, I want to enjoy it.

I work hard.

You know, sometimes it's probably annoying to people around me that how hard I work, but I find joy in that.

You know, there's joy in the actual work, you know, otherwise I wouldn't do it.

So there's joy in

most aspects of life that people miss out on because they just can't appreciate it because they haven't been in prison.

That's the thing about that.

We should send everybody to the bing, at least for me.

Now, you know, I don't advocate for that, but I think in your mind, I think when you were saying that you were in prison before you were ever in prison, there's a lot of people that just don't understand how to think, and that's something we don't teach people at a young age

how to think.

Absolutely.

And I think

it's a gigantic factor in where you find yourself in life and whether you find yourself living a happy, fulfilled life or whether you find yourself

one of those people that lives in quiet desperation, which is most people out there.

Yeah.

I mean, they've been talking about this epidemic recently

with males in general and just like how men are not satisfied with like life, you know?

And I'm like, part of it is like, I think, one, we have to be better.

I think this is something women build community way better than men do because we're so competitive.

And like you, you, and we're not always willing to be vulnerable.

But I can, I can say, like, well, my, my friendships that I have with men, it starts at vulnerability.

You know, it starts with like the depth of like, what does it mean to be vulnerable?

What are we struggling with today?

Right.

You know, how are you really, like, how are you really feeling today?

You know, how did that, how did you feel when that deal didn't go through or when you lost that money?

And like, you don't have to put the cape on and try to figure it all out in one day.

But my responsibility to you as your friend is to ensure that you have a space that we can come and get brutally honest.

You know, how are you navigating parenting?

Like, it's tough, right?

Relationships are tough.

You know, marriage, all these things that require, you know, a different muscle.

And like,

it's almost like we talk about them in these very kind of

extreme ways right either either it's like extreme toxic masculinity or it's the feminization of males right and the truth is like it's neither of those things you know those are narratives but they're not the narratives doesn't necessarily mean that they're true you know what is true is that we have not created space for honesty and transparency and vulnerability and we haven't identified that as actually a strength.

And so

what I've found that's that's been amazing, man, is the men that I'm in relationships with as my brothers and my friends, that vulnerability piece is like, has been a super unlock for us actually having enjoyable friendships, you know?

And I think,

you know, it's all the things that,

you know, these things translate into your work experience.

They translate into your relationship with your children.

Like, I get so inspired by like my friends, which I also think is important.

It's like you should be inspired by the people you spend time with.

Like that, that's invaluable, you know?

And it doesn't mean that you don't deal with their hard, you know, the hard parts of their life.

But if you're inspired by them and you're vulnerable with them, the hard parts of their life become beautiful.

You know what I mean?

And those are easier things to navigate because it becomes what the real meaning of honor is.

Yeah.

You know?

The thing about men being competitive with each other, that's a huge problem.

It's a huge problem.

Not enjoying your friend's success, not wanting them to succeed, secretly wanting them to fail.

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

You will never live a happy life if you want to seek, if you seek joy in other people's failure.

You will never, you will never live a happy life.

That is not the way.

The way is if someone is doing really well and you feel jealousy, what is that?

What is that feeling?

That you're comparing yourself to them.

Well, you have two choices.

You can either be bitter and upset and negative, which does you no good, or you can be inspired.

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

Absolutely.

And actually, you should thank them for that.

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

Like, oh, what fuck that dude?

No, no, no, no, no, no.

That's not the way.

The way is, what is he doing?

Oh, he's working harder.

He's doing this.

He's figured out this.

He's more objective.

He's more analytical.

He's figured out a way to work harder.

Absolutely.

He's figured out a way to work smarter.

He's more honest with himself about stuff.

He writes things down.

He's got a chart on his wall where he figures out what he's doing wrong and how to correct it.

And he's doing that work and he's correcting it.

I'm not doing that.

That's why he's getting ahead and I'm not.

Okay.

Okay.

But you got to be vulnerable even with yourself.

Absolutely.

And that's the super unlock, right?

That's what I got out of journaling.

Like that journaling was like, you know,

when I sat down and first started journaling,

my

one task to myself was, you have to be brutally honest.

And you have to be, and it's not going to be pretty, but you got to be brutally honest.

Only sit down and journal when you're ready to be brutally honest.

And that was a game changer for me.

Like, I remember there was a guy, he was in a cell next to me,

and we got into this minor conflicts.

he owed me for some cigarettes that you know he got on credit he didn't pay it and when i wouldn't give him more on credit he blew the power out in my cell so he stuck some in the fucking light socket right and i'm over here i'm like i'm already because i i had went to the yard that day to the uh to the uh the the cages right so we go out um and normally i don't really go out in the in the winter time you know this is solitary so i might go like a month like during february it's brutally cold in michigan but i get up and i go out i hadn't been out you know i think most of January, I probably hadn't been out.

And so I go out to the cages and this one guy, he gets into it with the officers.

You know, they're having a little verbal, you know, altercation.

And the officers take it out on all of us.

So we're only supposed to be out for an hour.

So that hour, in my mind, already programmed for, I'm going to go out, I'm going to walk, I'm going to do my walking for about 15, and I'm going to push up, you know, whatever, keep myself warm, et cetera.

They left us out there.

It had to be for an hour, 45, way beyond what we were supposed to be, right?

Just to keep you cold.

Yeah, just to keep us cold.

I mean, like, we're, and it's like, I mean, by the time I come in, I'm so cold, I'm past the shivering point.

And so I'm, I'm pissed.

I'm, you know, I'm pissed.

And then the neighbor's like, yo, can I borrow some more cigarettes?

He ain't paid me back.

And I'm like, I cuss him out, man.

No, I ain't getting no more cigarettes.

Joe, I'm over here steaming, bro.

I'm so, I'm like, literally, I'm like, I'm enraged, but I'm like, I'm super cold and like the power is out.

So, because the power is, I had like a little radio.

I can like block out some of the noise so I can read and write, you know?

And sometime they'll come fix it in a couple hours, but sometime it can be days, you know?

And so by the time I thought out, I'm like, I had just started this journaling journey, you know?

And I just started writing down.

I catch this motherfucker.

I'm going to shake him.

And, you know, I'm going.

I'm furious, you know.

And I come back a couple of days later, because that's what I would do.

I would write, and then I would come back and read what I had written.

And I was like, this is the mind of a madman.

Like, this person, like, I would not want this to be a person that I live next door to.

So you got to get your shit together, you know?

And so I wrote through this process.

And, you know, even now, you know, I still have all my journals.

They're actually on a pad similar to that, like that notepad.

I still have all my journals from prison.

And i can go and flip through the pages and it's like you know um one thing i didn't do enough of i wish and i would encourage people who journal is write the dates on everything because i didn't write all the time i didn't write the dates but i can go back man and i flip through and sometimes it's beautiful you know sometimes it's these moments where i can see myself awakening you know and i see this desire to be a different person

and i see just the the honesty there you know of like listen i'm not i'm not there yet.

You know, I feel it, you know, I'm afraid that, you know,

what if I become nice?

Can I survive the yard now?

What does that mean, you know, to like

not be angry?

Anger is a power in prison.

You know, it's a, it's a, nobody wants to mess with an angry person in prison or a crazy person.

So these things are, they have value, you know.

Who am I without?

my anger, you know?

And so I can see this enlightenment in real time.

And I'm just like, man,

you were really a kid.

It's like you're trying to figure this stuff out with no,

there's no therapist.

There's no, you know,

you don't have anybody to interpret.

You don't even have language for this.

You just know you're hurting.

And you know that that's the anger is really hurt.

You know, it's really disappointment.

It's all these things.

And that, that writing it down, like I highly encourage people to like really,

it's one of the things that I attribute to my success today

all the things that I want to manifest in my life I have written down I've literally written them down I mean now we got technology I'm constantly writing things down

with on my phone when I don't have access to pen and pad but there's something powerful about like handwriting like just the the meditative process of seeing one word after another um

but it starts with that you got to get real with yourself you know and it's

you know, for me, it was

so hard because early on,

I blamed everybody.

You know, I blame my dad, you know, I blame my mom.

Like, why would you hit me out of anger?

You know, blame my dad.

Why would you let her do that?

You know,

what has led to that journaling led to me having

powerful relationships with my parents because it taught me how to be vulnerable and it taught me how to talk to them without judging them, you know, and to really spend time with them and say, you know, you know, I remember my mother, we had this, we had this, we had a dust-up, you know,

because she was upset by something I had written.

And she said to me, you know,

you don't know what my life was like back then.

And she said it multiple times.

And I just listened to her.

And I said to her, I was like, Ma, how would I have understood your life when I was nine years old?

And it just stopped her, you know?

And it allowed us to actually talk about who she was and what she had went through.

And it allowed me to forgive her, you know, because that was a tough thing that I had to navigate was forgiveness.

And that's another thing that I found in life, man, is that people hang on to stuff.

You know, they let it torture them.

You know, meanwhile, the other person is off living their life and they're not even thinking about that thing that you're harping over, you know.

But I wouldn't have been been able to get there without journaling.

You know, I wouldn't have been able to get there without saying,

I'm actually not angry today.

I'm hurt.

You know, I used to like have these moments where

this is a, this is an extremely vulnerable thing to say, but it's important.

Mail call in prison.

is one of the most emotionally charged times that you will ever serve.

Because it's that moment of a day where everything gets quiet and everybody who's in the cell block is waiting to either get excited or get disappointed.

And if you're lucky that someone thought about you and they've sent you a letter or they've sent you $20,

you know, $30 or whatever.

And it is, it induces so much anxiety.

when you're waiting and you're waiting and you're waiting to hear from someone.

And I just remember like writing in my journal, you know, I would go to these stretches, man, and I wouldn't hear from my family.

You know,

I would write these long letters and I wouldn't get a letter back.

I was going through, you know, a time where I felt extremely vulnerable because of the assault on the officer and was worried about like my actual well-being, you know, to the point where I started fasting like three days a month, I would like not eat anything.

I would just drink water and I would just like eat cough drops that I could buy out of the the commissary that was the only thing that you can buy that was like digestible other than medicine when you're solitary so you can't you can't get noodles and all the things and so we would buy cough drops and eat those like jolly ranchers you know that was like our little thing and and

I just would like

I just remember like writing and just being like, man, I just want to hear from somebody, you know, because these people,

like, they can do anything to me like I've hurt one of their colleagues you know and they were telling me they would you know tell me yo we're gonna come in and fuck you up or we're gonna you know

and

when you're going through that you know that there's things that they can do like they can deprive you of food

they have this concoction in there I don't know if you've ever heard of this but it's called food loaf and basically what happens is say say they pass out the meal and you decide I'm not going to give the milk carton back then they can put you on food loaf restriction.

And so instead of getting a regular tray, they give you this loaf of everything that you would have had that day that's packed into this brick that they bake.

And so just imagine them just grinding all your food up, you know, your mashed potatoes and chicken patty and stringed things and then baking it into a little brick.

And then being like, okay, that's your meal for the day.

Now that's what the meal is supposed to be, but what actually happens is they take all the leftover food from that week.

we cook that with oatmeal and jell-o so it actually stays together and they bake it into these bricks and they put it into the freezer and then when somebody's on food loaf they'll send over to the child hall we got one on food loaf and they'll they'll take that brick out warm it up in the in the in the oven and then send it over to the cell block And you can't eat it.

It smells so atrocious.

It is the most gross thing, but it meets their minimum requirement of what they have to do in terms of nurturing so in terms of nourishment so what i would do is like three days i would just fast and i would just drink water and i would you know use my cough drops and i was doing that because i was preparing myself for if they just decided to make up a lie and be like oh he didn't give us back the card or he threw some food on us and then i'm like i'm physically conditioned to go without food um and not suffer right and then i realized that

when I started to do it, that it actually had these spiritual and these psychological effects that were like benefits I didn't know I needed or was looking for.

But one,

it really was the roots of helping me understand what it means to be resilient and what it means to be capable of overcoming a thing.

And then it also just helped me self-regulate and know that I can be in control of how I feel about anything.

And so the first time I did it, it felt, I felt like I was suffering.

You know, I was like, oh, this is hard.

This is, you know, this system is forcing me to have to, you know, figure out how to be tough and all the things.

But by the time I started to do it, I started to feel like, you know, gratitude.

And I started to feel like dishonoring of myself, you know, that I'm willing to fight for myself, you know.

But all of that came out of being, you know, raw in those journals and just being like, man, I didn't get any mail today.

That hurts.

You know what I mean?

It's sad.

I don't feel thought about.

I went 17 years without my mother coming to visit me.

And that, that psychologically had so much impact on how I saw myself of like your own mother won't come see you.

Like you're that bad of a person, you know.

And so that journaling really helped me.

undo a lot of that damage.

You know, it helped me to start to see myself as like, no, you actually are lovable.

Like you are, you are worthy of good things happening to you.

You know, there's a lot of bad things that happen to you, but those all weren't a reflection of your self-worth.

And so when I got out, you know, it helped me have these deeper conversations with my parents.

And it really helped me understand like what true forgiveness is.

You know, there was a time where I had forgave my mother, but it came with attachments.

You know, I forgive you, but you got to be this now.

You You know, you got to be, you got to nurture me, and you got to, you know, take me and,

you know, hug me in your bosom like any other parent would do their child.

And it was all contrived in my head.

You know, that wasn't forgiveness.

That was like this condition.

Right.

You know, and I see that in, I see that in work.

I see it in life.

I see it in relationships and parenting.

Is that we're always attaching a thing to the outcome as opposed to saying.

That's transactional.

Yeah.

You know, as opposed to just saying, you know what?

I forgive you.

and

that's it.

It has to be nothing else.

Like, you don't have to change.

We don't even have to like each other, but I'm not going to hold myself hostage to the pain of the past.

Like, you know, that's when I think about, you know, grit and I think about sports.

And, you know, I watch these athletes who compete.

You know, they're putting their bodies on the line.

And, you know, sometimes you can see a person have an injury and you're like, that person's career over because, you know, they don't have the mental toughness to like overcome that adversity you know and you you see them quitting in a moment and then you'll see the other ones that they'll have that injury and you know the moment they get out of hospital they're like they're working you know they're working they're willing to work them themselves back to you know to whatever they need to do to to compete again you know and like that that's All of that is that vulnerability and ability to like accept a thing and then decide what you want to do with it.

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

Absolutely.

So we see ourselves in these athletes and see their struggles and their triumphs.

And we say, oh, I think if I work hard, I can do that too.

Or I could do something similar in my own life.

Absolutely.

I think a lot of people are going to get that out of this conversation too, from you.

You know, what you've gone through and who you are now is very admirable.

You know, it really, the way you express yourself, the way you can talk about these ideas and the way you're so vulnerable to just talk about what you went through.

It's an insane journey.

And I really appreciate you coming on here, man.

I appreciate you having me, man.

I'm such a big fan and just so much respect for

the way that you, you know what I really respect out of you more than anything else?

It's your curiosity.

You know, I find that super fascinating that you can be doing anything you want to do in the world, but you remain like super curious about life.

And that's like such an admirable trait and one that I truly appreciate.

But I think we all have that.

I think it's just not nourished.

You know, I think everyone's curious.

And I'm very curious about people.

Very curious about what makes a person who they are.

What did you go through?

How do you think?

How do you go through your day?

Like,

what is your thought process?

You can learn a lot from people, man.

And I learned a lot from you.

Thank you very much, my brother.

Thanks so much for having me there.

My pleasure.

My pleasure.

All right.

Bye, everybody.