One American - Chase Geiser - NXIVM, Keith Raniere, Battlestar Galactica, & Justice | Nicki Clyne

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Sept. 29, 2021 - One American - Chase Geiser

02:02:13

NXIVM, Keith Raniere, Battlestar Galactica, & Justice | Nicki Clyne | One American Podcast #9

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	My own experience taught me that we don't have a justice system, at least not in the way that the constitution dictates, or the way that I think most people perceive based on shows like Law and Order or you know uh pop culture where we believe people are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, that if they are innocent, they will be proven as such.
	But as we've seen with multiple documentaries made 20 years, 30 years after the fact of someone being wrongfully uh convicted and then having to fight.
	We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
	Mr. Gorbachev teared down this wall, a date which will live in infamy.
	I still have a green.
	Good night and good luck.
	Good night and good luck.
	You were saying that people in an attempt to cure Tourette's would do like invasive neurological surgeries, they take all sorts of pharmaceuticals.
	Yes, yes, but the the hypothesis that um you know, Nancy and and Keith have have come up with is that Tourette's is actually an impulse disorder.
	So it's like anything where you have this urge that you need to do something to alleviate that urge or that itch, you know, and and so with Tourette's that's in the form of a tick.
	I see that could be a vocal tick, a physical thing, uh whatever that is, but don't we all have those urges?
	You know, like don't we all have impulses?
	Some that are healthy, like some people have urges to go to the gym every day, you know, like they need to exercise.
	So that's that's a socially acceptable, you know, positive itch.
	Um, but you know, then there's there's addictions, and and some of them are are more socially acceptable than others, but it it all comes down to this like our wiring and what we think will alleviate the pain or the pressure of basically being human, and and the Tourette's is so visible.
	So when people went through the process of kind of um working with with Nancy and using the tools to explore like the root of the the ticks that they have, when it started, and there's a documentary about it that I hope will be public one day.
	It's not yet, but it toured film festivals for a while, won a bunch of awards, but this is specifically about ESPs.
	About about, yeah, and about the the people who overcame their Tourette's.
	So it wasn't just one.
	No, it was so after Mark did it, Mark Elliott, who is uh a dear friend of mine, and he joined ESP, not even to address his Tourette's.
	He was a motivational speaker.
	He'd kind of just come to terms with the fact that that was him.
	So he was he was doing motivational speeches with Tourette's, and it was like and and here's here's like the beauty of it is that he he spoke on tolerance because he'd grown up with uh such an experience of prejudice and rejection due to his Tourette's.
	He he barked like a dog, he bit the air, he would yell the worst thing that you could say in any moment.
	So, you know, depending on who's in front of him, he would say the most offensive egregious thing.
	I'm sure it has to do with Oh, I didn't realize that it was like a profanity form of Tourette's because I've known people with Tourette's that just kind of like flinch every you know every once in a while, but he had the he had sort of the verbal spine.
	The most I've known a few people with Tourette's.
	He had the most severe case of it I've ever encountered.
	Um so he came because he wanted to be more successful in his career.
	And I was involved in I think one of his first trainings, and it was challenging.
	Like it was challenging to I was a coach and I was leading leading a group and trying to kind of keep everyone together.
	And he was like, he would look at me and be like, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, you know, like luckily I didn't take it personally, you know.
	Uh so but it was distracting and it's funny.
	Like it's hilarious.
	And would you say sorry or would he just let it roll?
	No, he just let it roll.
	I mean, at this point, this was his life, and it yeah, if you acknowledged it every time, that's all you would spend your time doing.
	So, what happens when the guy like that gets pulled over?
	I think so he got kicked off a bus once in St. Louis because uh in St. Louis, and uh he had I think a card that explained he has this medical disorder and he can't help it.
	Like he like the joke, kind of like the Joker when Walking Phoenix is like, I can't stop laughing.
	Yes, yes, exactly like that.
	And uh, but in this case, it didn't, it didn't let him off the hook.
	People were deeply offended.
	Um, he was saying, you know, the N-word, and uh he got kicked off the bus.
	I think the police came.
	It was it made the news.
	You know what?
	It's not a bad idea to make that card just so you can tell people how you really feel.
	I know.
	I would say I was uh talking to someone and and I made the joke, like, don't we all have a little Tourette?
	Meaning it more as a metaphor, right?
	Right and the person is like, you know, like we should pretend like we all have to meant because yeah, it kind of flies in the face of the political correct police against someone who has a disorder, you know, and is is saying these things because they liter literally can't help it.
	Um so that's there was actually he the same person I was speaking to sent me a link of a woman who's a YouTuber who has Tourette's uh who I forget what she said on one of her videos, but she got in a lot of trouble,
	and it's sad because I think part of her message is to educate people about the existence of Tourette's and and what it's like, and um, but she said something that was really inappropriate and got a bat a lot of backlash.
	Well, I think the most famous Tourette's YouTube is the Bob Sagitt guy, right?
	He's mowing his lawn and he just yells Bob Saggott.
	Oh, really?
	It's an old it's like one of the early viral YouTube videos from years ago.
	It's pretty funny.
	So how um how like what was the process to help um I'm sorry, what was the the name of the the man?
	Uh Mark Mark, yeah, thank you, Mark Elliott.
	What was the process to help Mark with his condition?
	So that's one of the things that frustrates me about the whole Nexium conversation, and just generally, it's like when that whenever there's anything potentially controversial, all the good is just ignored, right?
	Right.
	So it's like, hey, Picasso beat his wife, so you can never appreciate any of his paintings.
	It's like that doesn't really make sense.
	So yeah, so with Mark, I mean, obviously, he really had Tourette's.
	Obviously, it really went away.
	So obviously, whatever was done and uh um uh was was effective.
	So what you mentioned that it was about getting down to impulses and and what caused the the um uh the Tourette's in the first place, or when it started.
	What do you remember what the exact process was for how that was rectified?
	Was it one session?
	Was it weeks?
	How did how did that work?
	Yeah, well, for him, for him, it was a little different, like I said, because he didn't come to the program to specifically address it, and I think it might have been even an additional challenge for him because his whole career identity and livelihood in many ways depended on him having Tourette's right.
	So, in a way, he didn't necessarily want to fix it.
	You you could argue, and and I don't want to speak for him, you know, he's he's a great speaker, and um, I think he will probably do that again again soon and uh and be speaking about his story more.
	But the most like the simplest way to put it is that it's a type of talk therapy, so it's conversational.
	Now it's obviously more effective than what most people think of as talk therapy, and um what he did was he was just taking the the normal curriculum and and applying the tools.
	And what ESP taught really had a lot to do with personal responsibility, uh emotional awareness, goal setting, um building transition states so that you're not a victim to how you feel in your body, but you can actually kind of move through different states or even dictate what state you want to feel.
	Let's say you have uh, I don't know, have to go to a birthday party and you're just like not in the mood, but you want to show up for your yeah, like you want to be fun, even if you don't feel fun.
	So uh so it's kind of like Victor Frankel, like man's search for meaning, that book about um how you can't change what happens to you, but you can totally control how you respond.
	I love that you that you brought him up because I read that book when I was 15 years old and it changed my life.
	Like that I think is really what shifted my perception of how much we can control.
	And at the time though, I didn't have any tools to be able to do that.
	I knew it made sense to me because if you look at, you know, many people can go through a similar experience and experience it very differently.
	Or we go see a movie and we have completely different perceptions of it.
	So that just goes to show that there's no objective way to experience something.
	So if it's true that we can choose the nature and the quality of that experience, why wouldn't we want to have the richest, most positive, most fulfilling experience of every moment?
	Now we don't have any structures that I'm aware of in our educational model or in society right now to really learn that and build that.
	Like we are uh traditional education is very deductive.
	It's just like teaching kids, you know, what to think, basically.
	Right.
	And what ESP offered was an inductive process of questioning, you know, using Socratic questioning of examining your beliefs and never telling you what to believe, but understanding why you think what you think, because a lot of our beliefs come from conditioning from way before we had logic or cognitive abilities.
	And unless we have some like major crash with reality, we usually hold on to those beliefs.
	You know, we we like go around the world thinking something we were taught when we were little consciously or not, and we don't necessarily challenge or change them or adapt them to being a grown-up or you know, just to to the kind of life we want to live.
	That's really fascinating to me.
	One of the this just occurred to me hearing your response.
	One of the more fascinating to things to me about Keith and ESP and Nexium based on what you just said is that traditionally when you have we uh in our culture, we're we rely so much on experts, right?
	Experts say you see that in headlines all the time.
	People go to their therapist, they believe everything the therapist says to them, they go to their professor, they believe everything the professor professor says to them.
	And by using the Socratic method, you really eliminate the need for anybody to be an expert in order to care because all you do is ask questions and you cause you cause the recipient or the subject to kind of go through the process on their own.
	There's you're not providing answers, you're not an expert.
	So it kind of gets rid of that like ability for a charlatan to come in and just like make shit up because all of this is a question and response sort of sort of method.
	That's very interesting.
	Yeah, people like that who were really attached to their knowledge or or their expert authority and and image as such, um, often I think felt threatened by the curriculum because it was very accessible to anyone and um well, and you can duplicate it.
	So, like you can have somebody come in and very quickly they can become an instructor or a leader of a session, right?
	Yes, that's that's not very common.
	I mean, even in like Scientology, there's extensive training that goes on in order to do dynetics and all that stuff.
	And yeah, but that's fascinating that that it was sort of basically very reproducible.
	And that and that was key in making it.
	I mean, in order for something to be scientific, it needs to be verifiable, measurable, reduce uh reproducible.
	And so that that really was the trick.
	Like you're not getting results unless you can measure them and reproduce them.
	And so that's why it was important that you could do this process with someone and get a certain result and do the same thing with someone else and get the a different result.
	And obviously, it very like there's human experience, and it's a very human-centric thing.
	It's not something that you can just read in a book and uh integrate the same way, but uh it was all about like consistency and reproducibility.
	That's interesting.
	So how the hell did you come across man search for meaning when you were 15?
	You know what?
	It was on my uh English classes book list.
	No kidding.
	I was in like a little bit of an advanced program, but I was more of a fan of of nonfiction, and I looked at the list and it it probably looked like the shortest, guessing.
	Yeah, it's a quick read.
	Yeah, exactly.
	And uh, and I loved it.
	I I just I I was kind of obsessed with it.
	And because of that, I wish I could find I might have like my book reports because I know I had to like write about it.
	I'd love to go back and find out like what the hell I thought as a 15-year-old.
	I just I just remember being deeply impacted and thinking it made sense to me, and that I also wanted to go into psychology um because of that, and I or maybe it was my interest in psychology that really uh made me interested in it.
	The only other book that I'd say uh well, there's two other books.
	Um, one that I read when I was 12, which again, I don't my mom isn't uh she's a retired now English teacher, but so she had a very uh diverse bookshelf.
	But when I was 12, I read uh Carlos Casaneda's uh Yaki Don Juan's Yaki Way of Knowledge, I think it's called.
	And it's about this uh it's written by this doctor in hindsight.
	I don't even remember, I don't even know if it's true or not, but I read it as if it was true that this American doctor goes uh into the the desert, I think in central America and and goes on this peyote trip and he like find it becomes enlightened, like finds himself, goes on this psychedelic journey, and uh I was reading it on a boat trip with with my dad.
	I got in a fight with him, locked myself like in this room that like didn't even have a ceiling this high, and just spent the whole day reading it, have very vivid memory.
	But I loved it, like it I think it helped me in the moment escape the circumstance I was in, and it again it clued me into this perception that there's just so much more to life to this human experience than we can explain, or or that is dictated to us through kind of the the typical societal progression.
	So for whatever reason, whether it was books or maybe I was just drawn to those books because I was just born this way, I don't know, but I've always been curious about all the different ways we can be human and and why it is we choose one way or why we say one way is the right way, or it's normal.
	And I don't I don't really believe in that.
	I believe that it's it's unique for everybody and it's a it's a journey and it's a constant evolution, or it should be and uh yeah, and then the other book was um The Fountainhead when I was 17.
	I was 17 when I read it.
	I finished it, I finished it on the school bus on the way back from a field trip to a frankly right house.
	Oh wow, so it was like super fitting.
	Like, oh yeah, like my life made sense, yeah.
	Oh, that's so cool.
	That's yeah, I remember exactly who I sit next to on the bus when I finished that book.
	That book changed my life because that book flipped a switch In my head, literally, where I went from having self-esteem that was dependent on how I was perceived by others to the exact opposite where I just don't give a shit at all.
	How how did the book teach you that?
	Or I mean you've got Howard Rourke, right?
	And he is Ayn Rand's ideal individual.
	Yeah.
	And he refuses to do anything except what he wants.
	And that sounds selfish in the negative connotation of the term.
	And I think Ayn Rand used the term selfish to be intentionally provocative, like she wrote the virtue of selfishness and and some other essays on that.
	But what she really means is self-esteem, in my opinion.
	And seeing him as this sort of godlike figure, obviously he's not he's not a realistic depiction of a human being because nobody's that perfect.
	Nobody nobody has that much integrity in that they live so perfectly in alignment with their ideals, like he did.
	But she laid it out so perfectly and she made a moral argument for why you're a better person if you focus on your own happiness than if you focus on others, right?
	So we were brought up in this sort of Judeo-Christian environment to always consider how we make other people feel, always consider how other people make us feel, and always consider what we can do for others.
	But really the moral thing to do is consider what you can do for yourself, because if you live based on what you owe others or what others owe you, then you'll only ever think of yourself as a sacrificial animal and human beings are not to be sacrificed.
	So that I read that book, and I mean it's 800 pages of 17, and I think I I read it because I was reading a Neil Strauss book.
	I was reading the game by Neil Strauss about how to pick up women, and he's like combo.
	He just he just mentioned, oh, and I picked up the fountain head before I fell asleep.
	And I was like, What's the fountain head?
	I went and bought it.
	And I was like, holy shit, like that book to this day, it like still gives me goosebumps.
	And if people don't want to read the 800 pages of the fountain head, I don't know if you've ever done this, Nikki, but in 1949, Gary Cooper starred in the Fountainhead, the movie, and the screenplay was written by Ayn Rand.
	So it's not like a Hollywood literally.
	Yeah, the the Atlas Shrugged mini-series.
	Oh, I I'm convinced the CCP made that they made that to make it all look bad.
	Right.
	Yeah, definitely, definitely.
	So and I didn't, I don't want to I want to hear what your thoughts were on the fountain head too, but I just I I couldn't help but interrupt because I'm so passionate about that book.
	Absolutely.
	Well, and I think this idea of selflessness is a lie.
	And and to think that you are sacrificing yourself for others or being some type of martyr and that that's good, it it's a lie because we're always doing it for a feeling we get, even if that's if I help other people, I feel good about myself.
	You know what I mean?
	And to defer, like let's say I consider my values ideal.
	Like I think hopefully most people consider their values, even if they don't always uphold them, but they're like intellectual I you know, higher everybody thinks they're right, yeah.
	Right.
	But it's like if I believe that those are virtuous, then why wouldn't I want to use my life to honor those?
	Why would I honor someone else's?
	And so that's what I think the beauty in what she writes about is is it's not it's not selfishness in like an indulgence in feeling good.
	It's uh it actually is in some ways a sacrifice for a virtue, you know, like for a principle, like that's how I understand Howard Rourke Rourke's character is like he's he goes through hell in order to have integrity, exactly.
	And that like fuck, you know, that that means we're not animals.
	That means that we can honor something even if it is inconvenient or painful or causes great loss just for the principle to exist in the world, even if no one knows it.
	Like to me, that's that's inspiring.
	Did you um did you go on to read Atlas Shrugged?
	Yes, yes, what'd you think?
	Did you like Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged?
	Uh well, I read them at very different times.
	I don't even I wouldn't be able to tell you what I understood about the fountain head when I read it at 17.
	I just felt something.
	It made sense to me.
	I grew up in Canada.
	So there's a very um much kind of like socialist indoctrination that I that didn't sit well with me.
	And so what the fountainhead was about, like and this kind of you know, like owning of your values and what you've earned, like that was compelling to me and knew.
	Atlas Shrugged, I was um 23, I think.
	I just I I think at a different maturity level.
	So I the short answer is I liked Atlas Shrugged better, but I also if I read The Fountain Head again, I might who knows.
	It's just like when I read it and I understood it better when I was reading it.
	So when we spoke on the phone, did I tell you about my experience in Canada playing Risk?
	No.
	So I want to hear it.
	So unlike you, I was actually the member of a cult when I was in high school.
	So tell me more, what's that like?
	When I was yeah, uh well, when I was in high school, I um decided I was gonna read the Bible.
	I was like, Holy shit, if this is like if God wrote a book, like why wouldn't you read it?
	That's one of the like things that just blows my mind about the vast majority of people who believe that it's the word of God, but like never get around to reading it.
	It's like God sent you an email, yo.
	It's like it's not in spam.
	Unread, yeah.
	And so at the time I believed that it was literally the divine word of God.
	So I read it, and when I read the Bible, I was like, holy shit, I don't I don't think that the Lutheran church, which I grew up in, I was like, there they got it all wrong, you know.
	And I was like, I need to go get baptized because there is not a single instance of infant baptism in the Bible.
	Like I would in the word literally means like dipping or dunking and like the whole sprinkle shit doesn't even make sense.
	And how can you repent if you're an infant?
	I was like, this is all fucked up.
	Like I've never really been baptized, you know.
	So I so I um I had an anguish teacher in high school who was and is, though we've had a falling out, um incredibly brilliant.
	Um very argumentative, very self-righteous, clinically narcissistic.
	I think genuinely a good person, just so self-righteous to the point of um being kind of harmful.
	Anyway, I would stay after class um and argue with them about the interpretation of the Bible.
	And day after day, day after day.
	I mean, he basically just convinced me that I he convinced me of his interpretation.
	And he was part of a religion called Christadelphian, which means brothers in Christ.
	I think there's like 60,000 of them in the world.
	We started in the UK in the 19th century, I think.
	And I got baptized by my English teacher in a cow trough in Bloomington, Illinois.
	In a what?
	A cow trough, like a big bat, you know, like a cow trough that was what they filled up with water and that they dunked me, right?
	Wow.
	Sorry to dig up some photos, I could send them to you.
	But um did you feel different?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, I literally felt like now I am a citizen of the kingdom of God.
	It was I felt that like finally, I felt I imagine exactly the same as anybody who John the Baptist baptized felt like that day, you know.
	And it was an incredible experience.
	They have still to this day, I believe they have the most rigorous interpretation of the Bible uh and argument um for their interpretation of the Bible.
	I just have kind of shy, I'm more of a Jordan Peterson Christian now than a Christadelphian Christian.
	And then I think that the um metaphors are more important than the the actual facts of whether or not it happened, right?
	Totally.
	And so um as part of that religion, I traveled a lot.
	I'm I mean, I'm in high school and baptizing people in the United States, like throughout the United States, we're going to like you like so right away.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Cause it because you're evangelized.
	Do you go and baptize nations in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit?
	And so yeah, I mean, I'm like hanging out with high school friends and dunking them and like doing the whole thing.
	I giving sermons.
	And so I went up to Canada, I went to Guelph, Ontario, and I did a two-week um uh like camp there, and I was staying with some Christadelphians, very nice family.
	And We decided to play risk.
	And I don't know, it was maybe like three or four turns into the game.
	I just wiped out the girl next to me.
	It was like the younger sister in the family.
	Because if you wipe somebody out in risk, you get all their cards, and the more cards you have, the more armies you get.
	It's like you have to wipe people out.
	Yeah.
	And all of a sudden her family starts acting really weird.
	And like 30 minutes go by, we're playing this game.
	People are quiet, like treating me differently.
	I'm like, guys, what's going on?
	Like what I do.
	And they're like, you wipe Becca out too early in the game.
	Oh.
	And I'm like, that's the difference between Canada and America.
	Sure.
	It's sad, but true.
	It's true.
	I had why are we playing though?
	Like, why are we playing if I'm just supposed to like screw around?
	Participation trophies and all that.
	Yeah.
	So I don't know.
	But um that's interesting.
	It but it was a it was an interesting experience going through that.
	And it wasn't like a cult in the traditional sense of a cult where there's like, you know, a dominant leader who takes advantage of everybody that people want to hear the word cult.
	There wasn't, it was it was much more decentralized than that because it's a lay ministry, so there's no like pastor of the church, like everybody took turns doing sermons.
	All the men did, right?
	And it was just you must have built some really good skills doing that though, right?
	Like speaking, or yeah, there was that skills or yeah, we would do they would like send us to um like a camp.
	There'd be all these kids, most of them are from Canada, actually, Canada and a lot of people in the UK and Australia, and it'd be like, All right, you are on the pro-Trinitarian team and you are on the anti-Trinitarian team, and you guys are gonna do a debate in an hour.
	Yeah, so we're sitting there and we're making a case and we're citing Bible verses.
	It's like, how do you believe that hell is a separation from God?
	When in Psalm 139 it says, even in the depths of Shul, uh, you are there, like you know, it's like and they're reading like uh um uh bilinear Bibles.
	So they will read in English, and then right below the English would be the Greek, and then the definition of the Greek word.
	So if you had like a question about like a weird verse that didn't line up, you'd like look at the original Greek word.
	So it was awesome.
	It was rigorous, you know.
	I it um I'm I'm glad that I went through it.
	Um there's some problems with it, but it definitely it definitely reinforced the importance of actually thinking through the shit that you believe.
	Yes, and I think everybody should know not just what they believe, but why they believe it, and they should have a couple iterations of defense for that belief.
	You can't just you can't just have a belief, right?
	Like whether you're pro-abortion or pro-choice, like fine, but have like be able to go four or five back and forth in that argument, you know, don't just stop at what you think intuitively, you know.
	Yeah, and be willing to argue the other side, right?
	I think that's you know, in our in our culture right now, we're almost like we treat we treat other perspectives as if they are like contagious, you know.
	Like, I don't even want to go near someone who thinks this way, it might like rub off on me, or I can't being being close to it, I might be perceived as condoning it, or or even speaking it, I might be perceived.
	But I think that's an essential part of deepening our understanding is being able to understand the other side, you know, to really if you disagree with it, know why, not just ew.
	Like that's yeah, not helpful.
	Yeah, so maybe someday we'll get to the point where everybody is as smart as we are, or we'll just move to an island.
	Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
	That sounds like a great sculpt, yeah.
	That's it.
	You know, fly your plane right through the magnetic field.
	So yeah, speaking of um sort of uh fictional civilizations.
	Tell me about Battle Star Galactica.
	Yeah, I want to know like how you got involved in the beginning.
	Like I said, I'm only on episode 10 ever, but I want to know how you got involved, what your audition was like, favorite moments, that whole experience.
	Sure.
	So I was very fortunate to grow up in Vancouver besides the socialism, and I'm I'm teasing about that.
	Like it's um it Canada's a great place.
	It has its issues right now, as we're seeing kind of with the the lockdowns and things like that.
	But uh Vancouver is beautiful, uh lots of opportunity, very multicultural, and um it at the time was people would refer to it as Hollywood North.
	There were so many the X-Files was one of the earlier, or like MacGyver, I think, uh film there.
	I didn't realize where the earlier, I think so.
	I hope I hope I'm saying that right.
	Definitely the X-Files was one of the uh early ones and 21 Gums Tree, that's way before your time.
	But then more and more shows, especially sci-fi shows, uh filmed in Vancouver, and I wasn't a child actor.
	I did take acting classes, but I also played every single sport, including boys' ice hockey, like a good Canadian.
	And I just have to identify as a boy in order to do that.
	Oh my god, you know what?
	It's that's a whole other podcast, let me tell you.
	Uh it's like that Disney movie Motocross where the girl pretends to be a boy so she can.
	Right, all right.
	No, I had a ponytail at the back, and I probably didn't get my ass kicked because of that.
	You know, I uh my coach, so I joined a girls' team, but there weren't enough um girls my age.
	They were like large um women on the opposing teams, and I yeah, and so it was actually he invited me to so I could like actually play uh with with the boys, but I was like 11 or 12, so um so I did a lot of things.
	I played in the band, I loved school, but like drama was something that I that I loved.
	I did the school plays, and uh after high school, actually right before I graduated, I chopped off all my hair really short and dyed it dark.
	Um, I don't know if you've seen the movie Hackers, one of my favorites.
	Were you inspired by Angelina Jolie?
	Yeah, 100%.
	One of my favorites of all time, all time.
	Okay, good.
	Um zero cool crash override.
	Yes, the plague.
	That was the villain was the plague.
	I love I love it.
	You know, we can um come from different generations and still share pop.
	We're not that different.
	I was born in 90.
	Were you why were you born?
	82.
	Oh 83.
	83, somewhat, yeah.
	You're you're younger than my older brother.
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	So anyway, I I had that haircut.
	And so it funny enough, like that I think that gave me an edge.
	Like I was, you know, I wasn't like blonde girl next door.
	I was like the edgy chick.
	So like any I I yeah, exactly.
	So I I started getting some roles in uh like high school TV shows, kind of movie, movie of the week type.
	So you just like look in the paper and see an audition call.
	No, I got an agent.
	I got an agent after um I graduated, and I started doing some extra work.
	Like I was just happy to be on set.
	I also was um, you know, I applied and got into film school, but after the summer, I was also throwing raves.
	I have a lot, I've done a lot of things in my life.
	I've had like real raves with ecstasy and everything.
	Everything.
	Yeah.
	Was it awesome?
	So yeah, it was awesome.
	But I I kind of retired from that by the time I was 17.
	Uh I I was like, okay, I'm gonna do other things.
	I graduated.
	You're like, were you cranking Moby?
	I just have to know.
	I need to know more details.
	Oh, I don't remember the DJs names.
	It wasn't Moby was too mainstream.
	Yeah, it was all like underground drum and you know, I went through the different phases.
	All I can say is I'm glad there wasn't Facebook.
	Like I'm glad there was no social media.
	I have a photo album somewhere that uh will never see the light of day.
	And we'll just leave it there.
	I'm so glad to know that about you.
	I had a lot of fun.
	I mean, I always, as you can imagine from my reading choices, like I didn't necessarily fit in with everyone in my high school.
	And so going to Raves gave me this uh introduction into like a lot of different subcultures and older people and people who are doing different things, and that was like the 90s Karawak.
	Pretty much, yeah.
	And it like got me through high school because otherwise I think I would have just been like bored to death.
	So I graduated early, and uh I was planning to go to film school in the fall, but I landed a couple roles.
	My first one, which is so funny.
	Have you seen um what's that Aziz and Zari show Master of Nuns?
	Master of Nuns and Nun.
	He makes a joke about how his first role was a Gogurt commercial.
	Oh my god, my first role was a Gogurt commercial.
	Like, do you still eat yogurt?
	Still my life.
	I've never eaten Gogurt.
	Um are you kidding?
	But I didn't know.
	Yeah, freeze it.
	You gotta freeze it.
	That's a ticket.
	I think uh so I did a coger commercial and I did a like a day on a show.
	And it was so funny because I was also that summer.
	Um I was working, trying to remember the timeline, but I was working full time.
	No, no, no, I know.
	I decided not to go to school because I the acting thing was kind of, I was like, Oh, I wanna I want to see if this works out.
	And so I got a full-time job that allowed me to go to auditions.
	Um, so I would like take the bus on my lunch break whenever my audition happened to be.
	And when I got the paycheck for this like one day role, I thought they made a mistake.
	I called my agent, I'm like, they overpaid me.
	Like, I don't I don't know what to do.
	Like, but she's like, No, no, no, that's how much you get paid.
	And I was like, excuse me, okay, maybe maybe I want to like put a little more, you know, commit to this.
	This is pretty great.
	And and of course I loved it, and so I pursued it, but then I and then I got bored because like sitting around waiting for auditions and stuff is uh, you know, I I got restless, so then I went back to university at night and was doing classes and uh and working as an actor as well.
	Battlestar was just another audition.
	I'm not old enough to have watched or grown up with the original battle star, so I wasn't familiar with like I didn't realize there was iconic oh, oh my god, this this is controversial.
	I mean, a lot of people didn't want there to be a new battle star because the original reboot right now there have been talks for ages.
	So I every once in a while on Twitter, I I've recently I've been seeing people pissed at the notion that there could possibly ever be another one, be another one, yeah.
	Who knows?
	Okay.
	Um so it was controversial that they were doing it in 2008.
	So they were doing it.
	I wasn't really aware of this because I didn't know the the history.
	I just auditioned uh it was an audition that was with the director for the first um for the first time going.
	They were taking forever to get through the auditions, and uh what it's like going to an audition, at least for me, is like I would come prepared, you know.
	I do my makeup in the car, I do like breathing, have all my lines worked out, go so that I can just sit and do the audition and and go.
	But they took hours, like I don't know if they were behind or they were just taking longer or what happened, but I kind of went through these different phases of like getting ready and then having to wait again to the point where I was like, I just don't even care anymore, which is a great place to be because you're just you're more present.
	You're like you've you've let go of this attachment to being perfect and being on, and I was just like, okay, I'm exhausted, I'm just gonna go in there and and do my best.
	So did you audition for the role of Callie, or did you audition for okay?
	I see.
	I auditioned for the role of Cali.
	I uh, as you've seen from the show, I had bangs.
	Uh-huh.
	I went in, I did the scenes.
	And there wasn't a whole lot.
	I don't mean keep interrupting.
	I just don't ask these questions, I'll forget them.
	So no worries.
	I noticed that in the first season that I mean, you're in some scenes, but there's not a whole lot of content with your character as far as up to the first 10 episodes.
	So, like, what is an audition look like for a character with kind of a small role?
	Yeah, yeah, it was two different scenes.
	Um, one that I think got cut from the miniseries, it's on the like DVD extras where I confront Tyrell about his relationship with uh um Boomer and there are two words in in that scene.
	So frack, yeah, which I thought was a typo.
	Right.
	So you say fuck.
	Yes.
	I didn't know.
	And they're like, yeah, that's frack.
	And there's the word sorry, which as a Canadian, I said sorry.
	So they're like, um, you know, fix the Canadian accent and like get the hair out of your eyes, because like my bangs were also like covering my eyes, and then but the first thing I said when I went in for the audition, and I was like, Are you guys just filming the show in here or what?
	Like you scared right off the bat.
	Yeah, but they love it.
	Like, What's going on?
	And I always look like if I had the opportunity to kind of like break the ice or just kind of like you know, settle into the fact that we're all just human.
	And they laughed.
	And so after I did the first take, the director said, Well, if everyone did it perfect like you, we wouldn't have to take so long.
	And I was like, Boom.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So uh, and then they asked me to just do it one more time with the with the changes I mentioned.
	I did it, I left, and I felt good about it.
	You never know.
	Like I trained myself to leave it all at the audition.
	Never try to never think about it again.
	Because if you do, you'll go crazy and feel bad about yourself because it there's so much rejection, and and you just never know like what it's based on, how they decide who gets the part.
	But then a few days later, my agent called and and said, I'd just gone to a movie, and they're like, Well, do you like do you like sci-fi movies?
	And I was like, and they're like, because you're gonna be in one.
	And and uh I was pretty excited, and it was it was so much greater than I ever could have imagined.
	The writing, the actors, the just the whole experience, the the history of it, the the fandom, it's I've noticed that like the vast majority of YouTube videos uh of you are at different like conferences and conventions, yeah.
	So much fun, so much fun.
	So I couldn't have chosen, even though I didn't really choose it, but I I couldn't have chosen a better show, in my opinion, to be part of, and also not just because of the experience, but because of the issues and the ideas and the philosophical concepts that are explored in the show,
	I think are so relevant and so important, and it challenged like for its time, and that's why I was curious to know whether it holds up, but it does, and I and I don't know what how this is gonna play out, but the most fascinating part to me thus far is how there's a religious zeal among the AI,
	because for some reason all of the AI sci-fi stuff that exists, it's all very like hey, the AI is not going to be religious, like they're practical, they're you know, real, there's no superstition in AI, right?
	Right.
	They're gonna be scientific materialists, these artificial intelligent beings, right?
	And and that's something that's super cool.
	And I I obviously I'm so early in the show that I don't know how that manifests and plays out, what's really going on with the like religion thing, but the fact that there's like this religious zeal among the AI is super intriguing to consider because if you think about it, the manifestation of artificial intelligence, if it follows how intelligence manifested evolutionarily, it it makes sense that there's gonna be a religious component or a spiritual component because that is part of intel, that is part of our intelligence, right?
	Well, and and I think that's the crux of what Battlestar really proposes is what does it mean to be human?
	And if AI has all the qualities, it has consciousness, it has emotions, has the biology, then what are they if not human, right?
	And um, I think what the writing, what the writers did remarkably well, besides building these like complex characters and story arcs and and you know, uh graphic scenes, because of course it's still sci-fi is really get audiences to question these really basic understandings of morality that we judge people by.
	So as you get into the series, what I think you'll find is that you know, there's not just the good guys and the bad guys, like right, it seems like it now because there's a humans versus the the Cylons, and obviously we identify with the humans, but there comes a point when you start questioning, like, I don't know, like they're doing some pretty messed up shit, like the humans are not all good, right?
	And I don't know if I agree, and and certainly the religion plays into that, uh, but even just from a moral standpoint, it it brings complexity to those questions, and and that's what I love about it.
	Well, the interesting thing to me that the it makes me think of i'm a big fan of westworld too is if you get to the point where artificial intelligence is very much indistinguishable from human beings especially with the biological component where look they're they feel the flesh and blood um then like why don't we just skip all the bullshit and just start cloning people and call on artificial intelligence because what's really the difference at that point right whether it's manufacturing or live where you're cloning someone it's still artificial right so
	that's just uh I and I can't and what is artificial like then you just go back right if you make artificial so real that it is real then you might as well just be duplicating the real thing no it's I love that stuff like that and that these are the types of questions that in in some of the trainings in ESP like we would get into all this stuff and that's that's what I loved about it.
	So like, you know, my, my track, I think checks out.
	I know to some people I might seem like an enigma because it's like, wait, am I Hollywood?
	Am I a cult member?
	Am I a conservative, which is like a new, new label.
	But, you know, really I'm, I'm a curious person who wants to understand why we're here and how to make the most of it and, and why, why we can't seem to overcome these societal patterns of kind
	of, of events or themes that are very destructive and anti-humanitarian, you know, like there's cycles within history that keep repeating themselves and like, what's it going to take?
	And I think asking these questions before we reach the point where we can literally just like destroy the planet, you know, because someone leans on a button or, or Cylons take over or who knows, like we need to ask these questions before we have the technology in our hands.
	And, and I mean, arguably we already do.
	And I don't think we're at the ethical understanding to be able to handle our technology morally, but I, I think we should try to catch up.
	So why'd you decide to leave the show?
	didn't decide to leave the show I that's a that's a misconception that's a lie I think that's what that's called I'm sorry I didn't realize that I should I shouldn't have been presumptuous.
	No, no, it's okay.
	I'm glad you asked because, no, I loved being on the show.
	I would never have chosen to leave.
	We were in the final season and I got a call from the producers, David Icke and Ron Moore.
	They called me personally, which I think is really, you know, speaks to their character and what they felt of my participation on the show.
	Like we were like family.
	So killing someone, spoiler alert, killing their character.
	So they call you and me.
	Like they're just shocking like, was it we're little, a going went I I to kill it.
	you.
	wasn't, phrased they They said, they remember don't said, I go.
	to look, going is like Callie know, it's you I the have, we final really, that that, season.
	arc story the with Characters know, you have Callie, to you, die.
	their, With like I said, I didn't, exactly how for I didn't want to leave.
	leave but uh they really impressed upon me that it wasn't personal you weren't being fired I did story it was exactly exactly and the one did you hang out on set after after that for the rest of the season yeah well I'll just say first like the one consolation I had in them telling me that is I knew that if I was gonna go it was going to be epic.
	So I was also excited about like even though my my role grew throughout the series I still didn't have like the juiciest of of scenes like I I was kind of you know I was always around there was fixing stuff and Obviously,
	like and I don't want to give away too much, but you know, my character goes through some dark things and and there's a lot of action, but I didn't I didn't have like a whole episode that focused on that that largely focused on my character.
	So I trusted the writers to make it an epic ending, and I think they succeeded.
	Um spoiler alert, what happened?
	Did you just go down saving everybody?
	Not quite.
	I don't know.
	I don't want to, I don't want to ruin it, but I I my character finds out some disturbing information and doesn't know how to process it.
	And uh be even before, well, yeah, and starts to kind of like lose her mind a little bit.
	So which is a I don't want to speak for all actors, but I think a lot of act for a lot of actors, like that's like their dream, you know, to play like emotionally mentally complex characters that are really struggling and like going crazy in a sense, like that's super fun.
	So I got to go through that, and then uh and then yeah, some something kind of unexpected happens at the end.
	I I meet uh let's just say uh uh airlocks are not my friend.
	Always the airlock.
	Um, but that's how one of the main Cylons dies in the very first season.
	Yes, yeah, there's there's a lot of airlock action overall.
	Um, but I did um some scenes at the end of the show.
	So I actually got to be on set for the last day of filming because there were some flashback scenes to film.
	So I was really um I love flashbacks.
	It's the it's the redeeming factor of Handmaid's Tale.
	Right.
	The flashbacks are the best part of the show.
	Right.
	Yes, yes.
	Okay, so when you um were finished with Battlestar Galactica, is that when you just sort of amped up your involvement with um taking ESP classes and and and Nexium and Yeah, so I had taken a training with ESP.
	Um now was Keith given the trainings, or was it okay?
	I see.
	No, there were and you know, back to the reproducibility of the model.
	Like I think it started with Keith, and then he um Keith and Nancy, and then they taught other people and and how a training would work is there was like a head trainer and then there were breakout groups and coaches who would who would lead those.
	And so I um took a five-day intensive in Albany.
	I think it like I was still doing Battlestar, I just was on a break and kind of was at a point where it's like, okay, I have I have the show, I have the apartment, I have like I have all the things, but I don't I don't know what I'm doing.
	Like I I you know, I would get really nervous doing interviews because I was so um, you know, like what you were saying you realized about re reading the fountain head, I didn't have quite that shift yet.
	I was still very much um basing my sense of worth and value on what other people thought.
	So it felt really good to be on a show, but then it almost almost increased the standard that I held myself to where it's like okay, now I'm successful, so I need to be seen a certain way, and I you know, I've I've always loved learning, but I think also part of going to school was also making sure I was smart and educated and that I wasn't just an actor, like I kind of had a prejudice against just being an actor too.
	I needed to like have degrees and all this stuff.
	So what I loved about ESP when I when I took the training, and honestly, I was skeptical, very skeptical.
	I um was invited by someone who is now very negative about it, but at the time she was like, you know, pom poms cheerly, like you know, just and kind of like high pressure sales, you know, in in it getting me to go.
	But I was like, you know what?
	If it is what she says it is, and I noticed a change in her after she she took a training, then awesome, it's worth it.
	And if it's not, then that's and was there like now I know.
	Was there a multi-level marketing component to it?
	Like was a kickback for people who recruited new people to take classes.
	So I don't know the if you call it like legal or exact definition of multi-level marketing.
	There were incentives for people if they wanted to invite other people.
	And like could could you make a living just recruiting people to take classes?
	If you became a salesperson, you could okay, absolutely.
	But the what I think is different than what is called like a pyramid scheme or or the kind of the negative multi-level marketing.
	I again there's a difference though around multi-level marketing is different than pyramid scheme.
	So totally, but a lot of people don't make the distinction.
	The pyramid scheme is when you make the you make most of the money off of the recruiting and not off of the product or the service.
	A multi-level marketing company is legal as long as you make 51% or more of your revenue off of the actual product or service, not just recruiting new people to join.
	So, like cut co, for example's multi-level marketing, because even though you make a lot of money off of recruiting other people to sell cut coat knives, you you still the company still makes most of its money more than half off of actually selling the knives, not the recruiting part of the business.
	So that's how that's that's what the difference between a pyramid scheme and multi-level marketing is multi-level marketing has a bad rap, but it's not unethical.
	Yeah, I mean, so basically how it would work is if you're a salesperson and you uh invited someone and they took uh a training.
	Um, then you would get a percentage of the the product sales.
	So and everything was completely transparent, you know.
	If that was a career path that you wanted to do, you knew ahead of time, like what your cut was, what other people's cut was, and um, you know, a percentage would go to them, a percentage might go to their what was called a field trainer.
	So it kind of like sales manager.
	Um, someone go to the trainer of the training, some would go to the rent of the building, the food, you know, like all the things that it takes to put on a training like that, and some percentage would go to the company.
	So that's basically I don't I don't know what you call that.
	It was very lucrative for the people who pursued it um full time and and as a career, right?
	So yeah.
	Um so you went the first time and you were like this is kind of weird.
	I was like this.
	I was like, what about what do you guys got to teach me?
	And I the first day I remember being like, I don't know, like I already kind of know this stuff.
	It was about communication and uh it was cool, it was interesting to me, but I I was waiting for like what Sarah had told me, the the woman who enrolled me was like she had these like big breakdowns and emotional shifts and and you know, like aha moments, and I and I hadn't had that yet.
	So I also thought like I was just checking out all the people, I was pretty judgmental to be honest.
	Like I was I was uh I was into being cool, and I wouldn't say that the people taking or or teaching the course would all of them would like classify as there's dork, whatever that is.
	I I don't know what that even is anymore.
	And I'm and I'm so thankful for that because I missed out, or I could have missed out.
	You're on Battlestar Galactica, you're the biggest dork of all they didn't know that for a long time since the raves.
	Yeah, I know, I know it's true, it's true.
	I know, but but being a nerd is cool these days, yeah.
	That's right.
	Ever since Bill Gates did everything's changed, everything ever since what Bill Gates did it.
	Well, but I think ever since superhero and sci-fi movies have become mainstream and like comics and comic con like I feel like that's the one.
	All the nerds, all the nerds were the ones that ended up making money, and when that happened, it was like okay, like now it's cool to be a dork because yeah, you got high income potential, you know, like oh, you're a computer science major.
	That totally shifted.
	Okay.
	Uh yeah.
	So anyway, I was skeptical, but I really just tried to focus on the education, which is why I was there.
	And on the third day, I did, I really did have a like a huge realization.
	And it it centered around funny enough, self-esteem.
	And and how I had been limiting myself by uh what I what I realized, which probably seems basic to anyone who does, you know, introspection or or self-awareness, but I hadn't come to this understanding yet, which was I was kind of cursed with like talent when I was young and things were easy for me.
	So I and I don't mean to sound uh I don't know, like self-aggrandizing or anything, but like I was able to do well in school and sports and different things without trying very hard.
	And so that meant that I didn't build the ability to like push through failure and and discomfort.
	And so when I did come to a point of failure or discomfort, I would have an emotional meltdown.
	Like when yourself in a room, yeah.
	I yeah, or I would like cry or or you know, you know, just try to get out of out of having to go to like you know, soccer tryouts or or having you just like stopped at that stage of development that most people go through and like growing up.
	I think so.
	And I but I was smart enough that I could get away with it and just keep switching to different things.
	Like I went to four different colleges because I was like, oh, actually, I want to study photography, and I actually I want journalism, religion, film like I just jumped around to all these things and I was good at them, and I wasn't willing to feel bad, like feel like I sucked at anything.
	So whenever it get to the point where I'd have to feel like I sucked, I'd be like, I'm bored, I don't want to do this anymore.
	And so do you have any siblings?
	Did you grow up with brothers and sisters?
	Are you the youngest?
	I have a younger brother.
	Oh, you're the oldest, okay.
	Okay, yeah.
	Yeah.
	I was just curious because I I was interested to see how that might have played out because I grew up with three older brothers, and oh okay.
	Um, so I'm I'm the youngest, so typically attention seeking, but I like I'm accustomed to getting a rash of shit all the time.
	Right.
	No, I didn't, I didn't get enough shit.
	If if I could maybe sum up my issue better, is I didn't get enough shit uh when I was a kid, yeah, yeah.
	And um so we should basically you're making a case for bullying and why that's important.
	Um just point out what's wrong with it.
	Encouraging kids to push through adversity and not indulging in tantrums, you know, like letting kids have their feelings, have you know, negative emotions, feel sadness.
	I think I I think I repressed a lot of, I mean as much as I might say I didn't um you know go through enough.
	I like I did my dad was an addict, my mom started a single mom, raised us, like I did have a a certain level of adversity, which gave me insight into a whole different way to experience the world that anyway was different than kind of like my classmates and things like that.
	So I did have a certain amount of struggle, but when it came to achievements, uh I didn't I didn't have um the strategies to really like push through them, right?
	And coming to that awareness in the ESP training was revelatory to me and so helpful because I felt like there was something wrong with me, like I just couldn't, I thought it was like I couldn't find the right thing, you know, like people make it, oh, you have to find your passion.
	I'm like, I don't, but I don't really believe that.
	I believe you create your passion, you know.
	Like, of course, there's things that we prefer and that we're drawn to, but I think it's more that the commitment is something that fuels uh a passion towards it but i i never was able to kind of break through that and and so what that realization gave me was so many more options like oh okay i just need to be willing to fail like i just need to be willing to be a beginner at something or not be the best which is dumb anyway because obviously
	I was never the best, but I might've been the best in my class, or I might've been like the best in my recreational dance group, but like, or, or, or better at what you were doing than any of your peers.
	Right.
	And, and at that age, like when you're young, but then I like held onto that way too long.
	And then other people who knew how to work hard way past me, you know, and I was like, what's wrong with me?
	Why can't I get it together?
	And emotionally, I didn't know how to deal with it.
	And I also, I think had other, you know, emotional struggles that I didn't really understand that had to do with my relationship with my dad, that I was able to identify and work through.
	And that is probably the thing that I'm most grateful for that ESB helped me with is having a relationship with my dad, learning to forgive him, to accept him, to love him.
	I mean, he's my dad where he passed away in 2016.
	I'm so sorry to hear that, but he, we became best friends and we're so much alike.
	As I said, he struggled with addiction, but he was the most brilliant, sensitive soul.
	Sorry.
	I don't mean to say we're so much alike and that he's brilliant.
	I'm not trying to say, but, um, but you know, I think that a lot of people who struggle with addiction are sensitive, have been through a lot when they're children and don't know how to process their sensitivity to the world.
	And so they, they turn to drugs.
	And so I was able to connect with him on a level.
	I never, ever could have, if I had held on to my expectations of him, of if I'd held onto my anger and if I'd continued to believe that somehow his failings were about me, you know, cause as a kid, like you make everything about you and
	through the awarenesses and the maturity I was able to develop through ESP and, and a really supportive community, I was able to see my dad as a human being with a struggle.
	And I, yeah, I mean, that means the world to me.
	I was able to be with him in his last days and it was just the greatest gift.
	Well, I'm really, really glad that you were able to, um, reconnect.
	And I'm really sorry that your dad passed.
	It's been a hell of the last five years for you.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I'll say, yeah, it's the twenties are going to be great.
	Don't worry about it.
	I'm like, when does it level out?
	I don't, I don't know.
	I mean, there's, I think there's a quote about like not wishing for calmer waters, but wishing for the strength to endure them.
	Or I might be mixing quotes, but I feel that way.
	Like I, I don't, as I've mentioned, I don't think I ever wanted just a normal, comfortable life, careful what you wish for.
	Cause I don't think I ever expected that I would be dealing with the type of adversity that I'm dealing with now, but it's taught me a lot.
	I've grown a lot.
	Um, ironically, the tools that I, that I learned and the, I think, uh, awareness is and kind of the self-reliance both like in the physical world, but also emotionally that I developed by being part of ESP has been the thing that's allowed me to kind of weather this controversy and,
	in this crazy few years now of course I wouldn't be dealing with it if I hadn't been a part of it, but I'm also grateful because I feel like adversity is how we like by how we deal with adversity is how we define ourselves.
	It's how we build character.
	It's it's not by making ourselves the most comfortable we can be.
	It's you know, what do we do in the hard moments, not when it's easy?
	What do we do when you know we the things that we are attached to are on the line?
	Do we do the right thing?
	You know, do we do we maintain our integrity or do we throw our friends under the bus or do we blame, you know?
	And that I didn't know what I would do in extreme circumstances because I did still live a very comfortable life, and I feel you know, I guess I have more confidence in myself and more trust in myself now.
	So I want to ramp up to the struggle and what you're doing now, um, as a result of what's all that's happened.
	Uh, but I want to bridge the gap, and um, I just kind of want to hear from you a little bit about how what happened between your first five-day intensive and today, okay, which is a big story, but like when 15 years, yeah.
	Yeah, when did you first meet Keith and what was that like?
	I imagine it was after you'd done several ESP courses, right?
	Yeah, he sometimes would come and do what we call the forum after certain trainings, and earlier on he did it more.
	So I think in either my first or second training, he came and did a forum, which was basically he would show up and people could ask him anything they wanted.
	And like were you like prepped on who he was?
	Like did he have a rep before he showed up?
	Pardon?
	Did he have a reputation before he showed up?
	Yeah, well, in the training, and I think it's in one of the first what we called modules, like the the classes were broken up into two-hour modules, and I think the introduction gives people a background into how ESP developed and the kind of history of Keith meeting Nancy and them developing,
	you know, having the idea for a school and how they worked together to develop the first five-day curriculum, or I it actually wasn't meant to be taught in like a condensed format like that.
	It was meant to be taught taking like one class a week or two classes a week, but then they ended up developing or basically just putting them all together for people who didn't live in an area where classes were taught.
	So you could kind of like the Tony Robbins model model.
	Yeah, you can just like squish it all together.
	It's called an intensive, and so yeah, so students would learn who Keith was, a bit about his background.
	I honestly don't remember exactly what was said about him.
	It was not the narrative that is being has been portrayed in the media.
	I'm not assuming that it was.
	I just want to.
	No, I'm just sort of saying it for general reference for whoever's watching, like so.
	Vanguard is the smartest man who was ever alive.
	Exactly, exactly.
	He has the highest score in Pac-Man in the 1980s, he could do a Ruby scuba in 970.
	Probably did, but you should see that.
	Did you never see the YouTube video of him playing Pac-Man in the 80s?
	There's a YouTube video that I'll send you a link.
	I've been doing research, Nikki, and I have some fun shit too.
	I'm gonna need to interview you about Oh, I can tell you all about Keith.
	It's not really a game, it's more of a puzzle.
	And he's like kicking ass.
	That's so cute.
	It sounds like uh yeah, yeah.
	Um so um so obviously he wasn't like portrayed as a some fucking messiah.
	Like, I think that's not obvious, and that's obvious for anybody who could think.
	Was he a fan of Battlestar Galactica?
	Was he like holy shit, Callie?
	I no, he he wasn't, he isn't.
	Uh he isn't I don't, he's never seen it.
	What the fuck?
	He's never seen it.
	I don't think I mean he doesn't really well, especially now, obviously.
	Uh, but I he wasn't a big TV watcher.
	Um he had more important shit to do.
	I think so.
	He he walked a lot.
	I think he still walks a lot, but he would he walk a lot on his alone, or did he like to be with people?
	Both.
	Yeah.
	Both.
	He would walk on his own and and and think and he would meet with people going on walks a lot.
	And just to clarify for the audience who uh who hates him or doesn't know who he is.
	Right.
	Yes.
	You think he's like a genuine great human being and that he's innocent of this bullshit.
	I do.
	I do I also want to say that that especially right now, that is not my fight.
	Right.
	I everyone is entitled to their opinion.
	I think the narrative that is out there is false, completely false, if anything, antithetical to who he is, what he stands for, how he lives his life.
	And I believe there's enough evidence that if people could just see it and um approach it with a critical lens and not get caught up in emotions or or feelings of you know,
	like he he had some lifestyle choices that were different than the norm, but nothing nothing that crazy compared to stuff that's on TV or or what other people do, like it's been totally blown out of proportion.
	And really, it all comes down to intent.
	And the people who've developed and crafted this narrative have planted the seed, and it has like completely like a weed, just overtaken everything that he has this sinister bad intent.
	So anything he does, people see through that, and it looks or they make it look abusive or manipulative or deceptive in some way.
	I've known him for 15 years.
	I've never seen him be deceptive, I've never seen him be mean, I've never even seen him raise his voice at someone.
	I've seen some videos of him where I could tell that he was feeling frustrated, and he intentionally lowered the volume of his voice.
	He's very mindful.
	Like when he was sitting in front of a group, he was like, may I be candid?
	And then he would say like ass or something.
	Like he he and he has said like some of the higher level trainings that people have taken video clips from and taken them completely out of context.
	Like first they have to understand it's taken out of context, so there's a whole kind of progression that has gone on to to get to a certain point.
	But he's he's provocative in ideas, he presents ideas that are sometimes um like distasteful.
	Tony Robbins is the same way so that we can think about it, and that goes back to what I was saying at the beginning, and that's you know, that's what I love about sci-fi.
	It's like it takes us out of everything that we think we know so that we can question things from a more objective, pure place, and Keith really created a space, or so I thought, where we could all question everything, nothing was out of bounds, and I love that.
	And I you know, I might have beliefs that I've had since I was little and I still believe him.
	Like I became vegetarian when I was 11 and I've been vegan for 14 years, like for moral reasons or health reasons for moral reasons, you love animals.
	I once I learned what meat was made of, I was like, that's not right.
	What if there's like a what if there's like an evil animal?
	Would you eat that?
	Like an evil, like it was like the worst animal animal.
	I don't know, just like a just an inherently violent evil animal.
	I so that's it.
	So we should put a pin in that because I think it relates to my views on prison.
	Uh but I even evil animals, I don't think deserve to be eaten.
	Um, and I think it's it's also for me, it's the principle.
	Actually, I the the morality of it isn't so much that I believe animals suffer, It's the fact that we as humans can empathize with animals, and what does it do to our own humanity that we can eat, consume and objectify and be violent towards a being that we can empathize with.
	I totally respect your position, but I just disagree.
	Great.
	Yeah.
	And I've never been, yeah, I've never been a person who I don't even often talk about it because people there's such a stigma around being vegan.
	I'm like, for me, like kind of vegan, I promise.
	One of my favorite passages is the fountainhead.
	I think she's describing Howard Rook smoking a cigarette.
	And she describes it as man's dominance over the elements.
	And she's like, it's like his dominance over fat ass.
	He's wielding fire.
	And she like goes back to the caveman who discovered fire, and she's like, This is fucking Howard Rook.
	And like when I make an a steak on the grill, I'm like that fucking cow, like dominated.
	You know what though?
	So here's the thing.
	Um, I know this is a little tangential, but it's fine.
	This is fun.
	I'm having a reasonable.
	Uh there was a show that the guy from Super Size Me did called 30 Days.
	Okay, where he brought together, I think it's a brilliant concept.
	Um, brought together two people from extreme ends of some ideological spectrum.
	And the only one I saw was uh a hunter from like the Midwest, excuse me, um, went to live with a vegan family who supported PETA, like they were like hardcore.
	So he walks in and he's wearing like a camo car heart.
	Pretty much, yeah.
	And all I remember is thinking I respected him so much more because not only was like for so many reasons, but the vegan family, they were super intolerant of his views.
	They like did some demonstrations that were like rude and violent, which to me goes against the whole reason for it in the first place.
	For me, like it's it's a human-based value, it's not making animals more important than humans.
	If I'm deserted on an island, like you better know I'm gonna like learn to spear fish or catch animals or whatever.
	Like, if it's if my survival depends on it, I don't believe my survival does.
	So I can I have the luxury to make that choice.
	But the hunter, you know, he was first of all open.
	Um he also when he hunted, he like he took on the responsibility of taking the animal's life, you know, he killed it, he skinned it, he did whatever you do with it, use the parts, ate it, and I respect that.
	Like if you are willing to take responsibility for that and you understand what it where that comes from, I I support that much more than being an arrogant asshole about you know your and I'm I'm a big meat eater.
	Um, but I will say that it does bother me when I have chicken wings and one of the bones is broken because I know that it grew too fast because of the hormones and it's like the factory farming situation, yeah.
	So I I'm not a fan of that.
	I don't think it's necessary, yeah, to to do all the do the terrible shit that we do, but at the same time, I reserve the right to you know the free range approach.
	And I think I think if you're willing to really acknowledge like what you're eating, um, then you have every right to do so.
	I think what I more so have a problem with is the disconnect, like people who won't kill an animal or support it, but they will eat a burger, you know, it's like asking someone else to do something and take that on that you're not willing to do, and I think that creates fragments in us, so I think that's just not good.
	Again, everyone has the right to do whatever they want.
	Um, so within reason, obviously.
	So I wanted to ask you if you're comfortable talking about it, and we can just totally bypass this if you want, but I wanted to ask you.
	Um, I've read, and obviously it it seems to me, having talked spoken with you and just used a little bit of critical thinking that the vast majority of any sort of media coverage on the any of these issues like Nexium or Keith has been exaggerated or just blatantly false.
	Yeah.
	Um is it true that you were in a like involved romantically with Keith for a number of years?
	Yeah.
	So how did how did that start?
	It was just he would come to forums and then you'd go to volleyball or what's the deal?
	I was like, hey.
	And I want and I mean specifically the reason I ask is because like I wanna see, I want to see from you if there's like a distinguishing between ESP and Keith, or if you sort of perceive them as like this this unit of like, was he was he to you the embodiment of this the systems that he taught uh or that he set up, or what what did you did you have a relationship with them such that he was Keith and it was different than his business, you know what I mean?
	So I'm an advertising business, but my wife doesn't see me as cube advertising LLC, you know what I mean?
	Did you see Keith as Nexium?
	No.
	Interesting.
	No, no, I saw Keith as Keith.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And so how how did how did that like transition happen from just knowing him as the leader of this like this system that you were participating in uh or taking classes from?
	How did that transition happen to where it was like, wow, I know who this person is as a human being rather than the role that they play in in the system of participating in?
	It's so it's tempting.
	I really want like there's a part of me that that because there is so much um misinformation and scary music around all of this, it makes it seem yeah, just very different than it was.
	At the same time, I don't want kind of like things that were personal and private to distract from kind of this phase of the story.
	Okay, there are people wrongfully in prison.
	Um, you know, Keith being obviously one of them, and I think I'd prefer, although I think there is like there's a humanizing aspect to talking about my relationship, because of the amount of prejudice and hate that's out there, I fear that whatever I say can be misconstrued or or you know, taken out of context.
	So I think I'd I'd rather kind of bookmark that, you know, maybe maybe at a later date, maybe when we're like in a different phase of this story where it's people are more open, I can you know talk about like it, yeah, that it was an unconventional relationship and it was a beautiful relationship.
	Uh I'm sorry that I'm sorry that um that was taken from you.
	Thank you.
	That must have been really hard.
	Yeah, must still be hard.
	It's really hard.
	And I there's a lot to process.
	There's been a lot of loss.
	I mean, just even the fact that I lost my dad, you know, and then yeah, just it was just one thing uh after the other, uh community, my career, my reputation, the people closest to me in my life, um everything.
	And then having to go through a phase of of really great uncertainty, like what people probably don't know, is it like after Keith got arrested,
	and then um Alison and then Lauren Claire, Nancy, Kathy, because the government used Rico it and and called Nexium, which wasn't even really its own thing, it was like an umbrella company for all these different companies that did different things and offered different services.
	Anyone who was who had ever taken a course, who was friends with us, who was affiliated um or involved, could have been indicted.
	Like what I didn't know about the government and about the justice system is that they can do whatever they want.
	If they if if they have their eye on a target, they will make a crime.
	Like I really naively when this first happened, I remember I I spoke to the FBI agent, which I knew I wasn't supposed to do.
	I'd seen billions, and I knew I was supposed to go lawyer, lawyer, lawyer.
	But I I couldn't help it.
	Like he was a young guy, and he kind of like intercepted me outside as I was going to like park the car.
	And we were waiting for his buddy to show up.
	And I was like, So, how long have you been in the FBI?
	Like, I was just making conversation.
	And I and I said to him, I'm like, look, I know you're just doing your job, but there is a lot you don't know.
	And all I care about is that do processes served that you that you undertake a an honest investigation and search for the truth.
	Because so far at that point there'd been a bunch of stuff in the media.
	Obviously, Keith had been kidnapped in Mexico and then brought to the US.
	And I knew that they had a very limited amount of information, and it was coming from not credible sources.
	So at that point, I naively thought, like, oh my God, like once they learn the truth, they're gonna see that this is not what they think it is.
	Like this is right, but it wasn't about that, but it wasn't about that, and I didn't know.
	Um that's the disadvantage of having having so many high profile clients and Scientology faces this too.
	I'm I'm no fan of Scientology, but I'm certain that a lot of the criticism of Scientology is unwarranted just from the fact that Tom Cruise is a Scientologist and it's great headlines, right?
	Right.
	Great for lawyers and it's great for law enforcement to just pin.
	They love to they love to have a big story like that about a celebrity conspiracy.
	And I think that yeah, I think this was at the height of the Me Too movement.
	So imagine, you know, like they I think they imagined it was gonna be like a Harvey Weinstein situation where once the story broke, an avalanche of victims were gonna come forward, right?
	That's not what happened.
	Like no one did.
	They they were like not even.
	There were the people that like went to them, um, which there's a lot of a background there, which obviously I won't be able to cover today, but um there's a lot of questionable motives about those who have um claimed to be victims,
	whether it was at trial or in so-called documentaries and and things like that, but you know, there's money involved, there's uh absolving themselves of certain responsibilities involved.
	There's a whole and then there were a lot of family members that were worried about their kids, right?
	I mean, like everything allegedly that's like but I mean it makes sense.
	I know that like I told you earlier in this conversation, my parents were really weirded out that I joined this religion and I was going to Canada for two weeks at time and baptizing kids, and you know, so they were my parents were very cool because they believe that I was at the age and I was 17, 18, where you have to start figuring shit out for yourself.
	You figured out totally and I did figure it out, and they were right.
	I'm so glad that they let me do that.
	Um it was it was harmless, like it wasn't like there was any sexual assault going on in this cult, or I wasn't being like beaten or threatened, or you know, there was nothing weird like that going on.
	It was it wasn't a cult in that sense, it was just it was just a very uh uh zealous misguided.
	Yeah, sure.
	So um, my point is I could I can understand why people who were formerly close to people who got involved in this new system or these classes that changed them for the better.
	I could understand how their prior relationships would feel alienated by that because this person has grown out of the shit that they were in before, right?
	Yeah, so and and in many cases had gained uh a certain level of independence that the parents didn't want, I think.
	And um, yeah, there again, there's a there's a lot, there's a lot there.
	Um were you there when Keith was kidnapped?
	I was so you saw the whole thing, you're in the house or the room or whatever it was.
	It was just a villa or something.
	I don't know the deal.
	My instinctual response that uh terrifies my mother is that I started filming it on my phone.
	She's like, Nikki, stop.
	Like there's uh there's one piece of footage that somehow HBO ended up with not from your phone, not with my permission.
	Holy shit.
	So they they they bribed somebody in law enforcement to just give it.
	I'm not sure.
	I'm not sure exactly how it is.
	That is fucked up.
	Don't you have the IP?
	Uh uh, so it actually got leaked to Mexican media before that.
	Um there's one shot, yeah, where I'm like running to the door, and you can see them walking Keith to one of the cars, and then there's this guy with a big machine gun, and he sees me and he starts walking towards me and like this, and I'm just standing there still filming, and that like looking at it now, I'm like, what was I thinking?
	But it's this, I had no reference for this.
	I didn't even know how scared to be.
	Like I feel safe, I felt safe living in the United States, yeah.
	And Mexico's a whole different story.
	Mexico's a whole different story.
	So that I should have known.
	I mean, I'd heard stories from friends who'd either been kidnapped or known people or had family members killed, so I knew that was a reality, but I still like viscerally, it was so surreal.
	I was like, these men can't be here to hurt me.
	Like that I or they would never hurt me, you know, one day when we're off air, I will tell you the story about how I accidentally partied with the cartel on Tijuana.
	You know what?
	I mean, it's a wild, wild place.
	Well, I I mean, I went backpacking through Central America when I was 19.
	And looking back, like I just I've had a lot of these experiences, I guess, where I'm like, what?
	How did I survive?
	Like, how did I not get assaulted or attacked or whatever?
	But anyway, what if it's angels or just somehow I have enough common sense to to navigate, I've no idea.
	So I watched it happen.
	So the rumor is that there was about ready to be some massive awesome orgy, and then the cops knocked on the doors that just total horse shit.
	Oh shit, total horse shit.
	Um I've said that to friends, and like um, they've all been very disappointed.
	No, I mean, we were all doing different things.
	I just woken up from a nap.
	Um and then just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom on the door.
	No, well, it was wide open.
	They just like walked right in because it was like an open air kind of space.
	Um they just walked in and it was confused.
	Like, I didn't know if they were like workers, but then I saw a guy with a bulletproof vest and a balaclava, and I was like, oh, that's not right.
	And so I started slowly in my brain.
	It's almost like when someone pulls a prank on you and it like takes a moment for you to adjust to what's happening.
	And uh I still didn't really know until the one of the guys showed me a picture, or he had this like crumpled uh few papers, and he showed me one with allegedly, I don't think it was, it looked very unofficial.
	Uh and there's a whole story on how what they did was illegal, and I have theories about how they were able to do it, but he they showed me a picture and I just like acted like dumb, you know.
	I didn't I didn't I didn't want to help them, but I didn't want to not help them, like I just kind of acted like I was didn't know what was going on, and I I didn't um but Keith was in a room, but anyway, that that whole story, by the way, of like there being some uh leading up to some recommitment ceremony.
	I mean, look, if even if that were true, so I believe people are entitled to do whatever they want in their private lives, consenting adults.
	Uh one of the ways I think a lot of Um, this type of information has been propagated, especially attributed to to Keith, uh, is sometimes the way Keith would work with people is he would say provocative things to and if they had a problem with it, like why would like bring it to the surface, like why do you care?
	Right.
	And the person who has so he provoke and this and then use Socratic method and then provoke and the Socratic methods that's how you're also had had the understanding and the tools ourselves to be like, oh god, like I'm super pissed about that, or like I feel like that's the worst thing ever, or I like I need to work on it.
	And that's I guess at the end of the day, even when some situations were like hard or maybe not ideal, I always took it upon myself to think, okay, but why do I have a problem with it?
	Because whatever this issue is that I have is a limitation to my ability to experience the fullness and the richness of life, regardless of my circumstances, because if I need reality to be a certain way for me to feel okay, that's a limitation.
	So I never took not I never took, I really tried not to ever take things personally and to see anything where I was like, I don't like that, or that's not okay as an entry point to evolving my I don't know, my like flexibility, my emotional flexibility.
	It doesn't mean I'm okay with something like morally, or I might I might still not want something, but at least it's not from a place of fear, it's a place of understanding why I don't want it or why I don't agree.
	There's um eight of us who were who um you know are addressing some of the topics and trying not to get into too much of like a defensive position because at the end of the day, we're all adults,
	like we if anyone goes to the website, it's the dossier project.com, and we are all successful in our own right, you know, doctors, entrepreneurs, lawyers, artists, like it this isn't a group of like vulnerable, impressionable young women, whatever that even means.
	But I think that yeah, the whole narrative has been very misconstrued, and it's it's very unfortunate because I think what we were doing was incredibly powerful in in helping women build self-liance and inner honesty and integrity and push through fears or or social conditioning that may be limiting, and um it it at the time, you know.
	I think we were doing a lot of really great stuff.
	I get that now have changed their perception of what it was, and understandably, if they believe, like I said before, if they believe now that there was bad intent,
	then they filter everything through that, and it's easy to like make things fit because some of the things we are doing were uncomfortable, you know, like growth is uncomfortable, like even physical growth and working out, but um,
	it's been yeah, vastly misunderstood, misconstrued, and it's it's unfortunate because people because the other narrative was out there first, because it takes this more of like women are victims position, just our mere existence, people feel is like victim shaming, like just the fact that we're saying our experience was this, it's different.
	We own it, we believe in taking personal responsibility, we believe in pushing, you know, against adversity to overcome things.
	We don't believe in blaming other people, etc.
	etc.
	People have made that into some sort of threat against those who believe they're victims and it and it and it shouldn't be.
	These conversations should all coexist, and we should be able to examine if someone feels victimized what the cause of that is.
	So what you experienced with This whole backlash was essentially Keith being arrested either legally or totally illegally and kidnapped as you as you would say in Mexico and extradited to the United States and charged with racketeering.
	There was a hard drive that allegedly had um uh illegal content on it, and um uh basically there's this this the whole like sex trafficking collateral bullshit, right?
	And you as someone who knows them better than anybody, um uh seem to me to be more in a position to say what this guy's really fucking like, right?
	And so um what you sort of have garnered from this so far, and uh this is where I want to segue is that the due process system in the United States is totally fucked up, and the prison system is just as, if not more fucked up because you you have friends that have been incarcerated.
	I mean Keith is was sentenced to 120 years, which is um no violence, no weapons, no drugs, right?
	Right unheard of.
	So you've kind of come out and become this advocate for free speech, do process, prison reform.
	What is what does that look like?
	Like, what if you what have you learned about what it's like to um for a prisoner?
	So my brother, my brother was actually incarcerated for a number of years, three years.
	Oh wow, and um he never fucking talks about it.
	So I had no idea what that was like, but it was like a maximum security situation.
	Um, I think it was a burglary charge.
	I don't even know the charges because I was so little when it happened, he's 13 years older than I and uh uh I just know that it was a really fucked up experience for him.
	He was like 18, 19, he was married, he had a got a divorce from his wife later later on remarried her and then divorced her again.
	So that's an old other story.
	But um, he's like when you were describing your dad to me, it sounded just like my brother Clayton.
	Um brilliant, sensitive, read every fucking book you can imagine.
	And um, having had this experience, are the people that you're in touch with in prison just related to next team, or are you sort of branching out and just speaking with people who are incarcerated that you're sort of sympathetic to, and and what have you learned about what these people go through that has really changed your perspective?
	So my own experience taught me that we don't have a justice system, at least not in the way that the constitution dictates, or the way that I think most people perceive based on shows like Law and Order or you know uh pop culture where we believe people are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty, that if they are innocent, they will be proven as such.
	But as we've seen with multiple documentaries made 20 years, 30 years after the fact of someone being wrongfully uh convicted and then having to fight, really literally fight for their life and only plea deals, fucking plea deals for travesty.
	They are a scam, they are a scam so that the government can convict more people, and they have all the resources and the capacity to do things in a way that strip people of their right to a fair trial and a proper defense, and obviously a lot of these people are um people who can't necessarily afford the best lawyers.
	I don't even necessarily agree that the best lawyers are the highest paid one ones, but often public defenders are overworked.
	Um, some of them, you know, their area of expertise is may not be the case that they get, so they may not be as informed, and and they just I mean, with their caseloads, they just can't give the attention to to everyone that they if they care, and then some of them I think don't don't care as much as others.
	So there's those issues.
	There's how people are even uh kind of ensnared into the system in the first place, which there's a lot of sneaky stuff that goes on there, you know, jail house informants.
	Um there's something called ghost dope, which I I've you know, this is all I've just learned in the past few years because I've been become obsessed with understanding like how is this possible?
	How is it possible that our case is not an anomaly?
	Like I thought our situation was just some like outlier.
	What I've learned is that it's the norm that almost everyone in prison, guilty or not of a crime, was wrongfully convicted.
	And what I mean by that is they had some there was some type of overstepping prosecutorial misconduct, some type of deceitful, what you know, like the the whole plea deal process.
	I know people who were who pled to 10 years.
	I know a guy who sold drugs, okay.
	He admits to selling drugs, he was a low-level drug dealer and user, which is often the case, and he was willing to take 10 to 15 years for being a low-level dealer.
	He's like, I I want it, he wanted to take responsibility.
	He's like, I did this, I put myself in this situation.
	I'll do 10 to 15 years, made the agreement, got to court, and the judge gave him 20.
	And like, I'm just like, why?
	Why?
	If someone is willing to give up 10 to 15 years of their life to uh and what do you what do they learn in the last five years that you don't learn in the first 15?
	It it makes no sense, it's just cruel.
	And apparently the judge said, like you should you shouldn't have taken a deal.
	I don't know what he should have done, because like you go to trial, and then there's an even greater penalty for like, oh, you shouldn't have gone to trial.
	So it's it's a losing game.
	I think people who take deals wish they'd gone to trial.
	People who went to trial wish they'd taken deals.
	It's do you think that there should be a constitutional amendment um making plea deals illegal?
	I think there's a case for for plea deals, you know, like I mean, I I think people should obviously be able to plead guilty if they're guilty, but right why should they get a it does no, you know, it's true, it's true, and there's maybe like there there might be circumstances.
	I don't I don't like to kind of make absolutes.
	I think that plea deals are weaponized in a way that's grossly unconstitutional and very damaging to our country, to the justice system.
	And my experience, so so to answer your your question, I speak to dozens of people in prison, um, mostly federal prison across the US.
	I started by um I know we don't have time to go into this whole story, but as much time as you need.
	I you know, I started a movement with with friends uh dancing outside the Brooklyn prison when it was they were on lockdown for COVID.
	I know the media represented we were dancing for Keith, not true.
	They actually moved him to a different cell the second day, and we still showed up every day, brought more people, brought music, brought lights.
	And I still will get messages like through Instagram like, hey, I just got out of MDC, I just want to say thank you.
	Like I look forward to you you guys coming every Friday.
	It's the only thing that got me through.
	We were so we were going crazy and just thank you, because like when you go to prison, it's hard for people who care about you.
	If you have people, if you're lucky enough to have people who care about you, it's hard, you know, and and I think everyone wants to think that their friends are gonna stand by them and be there for them, or that they would be that friend if it happened to someone, but it's painful,
	you know, like as committed as I am, and I and I do believe that I've proven to myself that I am a loyal friend, but it is hard, you know, to really just walk around knowing that someone you care about is in a prison cell.
	So I think there's you know, there's very human reasons why people don't answer the phone every time, whether it's because they're doing a podcast or it's just they're just like it it's painful to to talk to people in prison.
	But I I've for you know a long period of time, and I think still I I found it to be the opposite.
	I found it to be healing to be able to be there for people.
	So it started with the dancing, and then we wanted them to be able to invite friends and family.
	So I created a phone number and held up a sign with the phone number, and of course, they all started calling me.
	And so I just started making friends, and I just started um, you know, meeting all these different people, and there's such a wide range and and MDC in particular, because it's a pre-trial facility, has everything from like murders to you know, some white collar crime to someone who's just there on a parole violation or like any number of things.
	So you know, have they shared with you what it's like, um, actually, like in terms of prison conditions, yes, yes.
	That was one of the first things that I focused on because I wanted to educate the public about what was going on inside the prison and and the dancing was two things.
	One, it was giving entertainment to the guys inside, just like for no reason, because that's the thing they would call, be like, What what do you want?
	Like, why are you doing this?
	And we would say, like, for you, and they couldn't like you know, for them to think that people would just take time out of their day to show up for them to entertain them to connect with them was a foreign concept, which is why it's so needed.
	Like the fact that them just feeling like other people see them as human is confusing, like that should tell you something about the conditions and how they're treated.
	And so they were locked in their cells at this point, uh, 23 hours a day, two men per cell.
	You're basically locked in a bathroom because there's a toilet right there, toilet, bunk beds, uh hot and bad food, dangerous, and being treated not like an not like a human.
	Um, there's one person who actually uh I'm I'm still in touch with, and it's coming up on a year now.
	He reminded me because uh the first time I saw him through the window, and then he called me and he told me it was his birthday.
	So I made a sign for him that night, and it it was uh July.
	But he said after he'd been calling me for a few months, he said, you know why I like calling you, and I was, you know, I I thought maybe because like I'm smart, I'm nice to talk to, or whatever, right?
	Like he was an educated, and he's like, because you call me by my name.
	Like no one's called me by my name.
	They should call by the number for years, number or a nickname.
	Most people don't go by what they call their government names.
	Uh, they have nicknames which are usually uh if they come from a different state, then they might be called like the city or the state that they're from, right?
	Or it might be a nickname that they have from like being in a gang and things like that, but but rarely are they called their actual name.
	So I always made it a point when I was speaking on the phone to to say their names and address them, you know, that way.
	But it's I feel very strongly about everyone being treated like a human being, no matter what they've done.
	And that doesn't mean I think we should let criminals free, like it's it's crazy to me.
	Um like when I post things on Twitter about conditions in prisons, and and you know, people are like, Well, you think we should release them all?
	And and no, that that's not it.
	Uh but what would maybe just don't sentence them to 25 years if they've only sold if they sold cocaine one time.
	It's it's horrific.
	Oh, what I wanted to say about ghost dope, because this is something people don't even realize.
	So ghost dope is like if they catch you with a certain amount of drugs, and then if they they Make they can make up some arbitrary amount and say, well, you must have sold.
	Like if you were selling for two years, and based on this much, and you probably only had like a quarter of your stash, then you probably sold this many a day.
	And that means you sold X exorbitant amount of drugs in the world.
	So they sentence you based on an astronomical amount of drugs, even though you like a made-up number of a made-up number, and they're allowed to do that.
	So and you have no recourse.
	What you can just say, like, no, but it's not based in anything.
	So what's the solution?
	Just electing better judges because the judges are responsible for sentencing.
	The judges are responsible for sentencing, and they're responsible for making sure that the law is upheld in court.
	I think the biggest problem is yes, the judges, but more so the culture of winning amongst prosecutors.
	I think prosecutors should care about the truth.
	They should care about prosecuting the right people for the right crimes, and they shouldn't be rewarded for convictions because that if you think about it, like prosecutors are usually very smart, very, you know, probably like come from Ivy League schools, best in their classes, they're competitive.
	Yeah, and they're rewarded for getting the bad guy.
	I think there are a lot, there's a lot we could do.
	I think that I mean, I don't know if all of them have the capacity for empathy or how that factors in.
	I'm not, I don't, I just don't know.
	And I also think there's a probably a lot of great prosecutors, but I don't hear about a lot of them.
	Let's just say that.
	And a lot of the issues that I learn about from people who are in prison, it's because a prosecutor withheld evidence, uh told them something that ended up not being true, or you know, badgered some other drug user to give testimony that wasn't true, things like that.
	How do you distinguish between people that are just bullshitting you that you talk to?
	You know, have you encountered that?
	I have encountered people that I'd say are like hustlers, yeah.
	But I've never encountered someone be that way about their crime.
	Every single person I've spoken to has said, look, I'm not completely innocent.
	I did this, but that's not what they convicted me for.
	That's not like, but they gave me a deal.
	Like, I was willing to cop to this, or or it's their their defense attorney totally like misinformed them about something, or like there's always something that's believable.
	And the other the other thing I think probably that's that factors into this.
	So the people who've called me and reached out, that's a certain type of person too.
	Some people are doing their time, and they are not thinking about other people, they're not thinking about the outside world, they're in a very like kind of well-sistic mindset, you know.
	And I told you on the people I'm connecting with.
	I told you on the phone that I was um in college, I was falsely accused of sexual assault.
	And I remember the most important thing to me, more important than whether or not I got in trouble, anything else that happened.
	The most important thing to me was that my friends or someone would believe me.
	Yeah, and I could see how someone who's been wrongly convicted would be more likely to call, yeah, because not because not for any hope of getting out or any sort of appeal, but just because they want a normal good person to believe them.
	And it's it's it's fucking scary.
	But I remember I would I would go to like my closest friends, I'd say, Listen, this is what happened.
	Did I do something wrong?
	Like, did I fuck up?
	And it was like I was second guessing myself.
	And they're like, no, man, you need to do anything wrong.
	And I talked to I had lawyer friends.
	And I talked to them like, listen, this is what happened.
	I I even wrote down everything that happened right after the accusation so that I wouldn't forget.
	Like I need to write this down now.
	So 10 five years from now, I'm not like what the fuck happened.
	You know, like, oh, maybe, yeah.
	Like, does this the memory?
	Yeah, I'm just documented.
	I was like, and and um one of my lawyer friends told me he's like, listen, he's like, I've represented a lot of guys that have gone through this.
	And he's like the innocent ones are always worried that they crossed the line.
	It's like he's like, he's like, you did nothing wrong.
	You're fine.
	And um that's something that was really interesting to me.
	But that that's the the major shakeup of going through something like this isn't the prison.
	I mean, it is that sucks, but it's it's the psychological just yeah, you know, like it's the shame and and and the second guessing of self that is the most um biting of uh yeah of the process for my experience.
	I mean, obviously, I didn't have any process, I didn't like have to go to court or anything like that.
	I didn't have any legal recourse, but um, so I can't speak to that, but I can say that it is um it is a psychologically devastating experience to face that, as you know.
	I mean, you were in the position where you didn't know if you were gonna be indicted.
	I just wanted to relate to what you experienced, and so no, that feeling of being misunderstood and really like, and that's something I've I've thought about and dealt with a lot in my choices, because a lot of people don't understand my choices.
	You know, why would you stand by someone accused of such horrific things?
	Why would you put yourself out there?
	You know, you're you're clearly uh, you know, smart, like you can move on with your life, and so I've really had to think about what what is the right thing, and is it worth it even if only I know?
	Like, is it worth it?
	If the rest of the world thinks I'm crazy or brainwashed, or you know, whatever they want to make of my choices, is that okay with me?
	Is it is it worth it?
	And so far, yes.
	And the thing is, I haven't fully had to face that because there are a lot of people who support me who believe me, who you know what I mean?
	Like, even though kind of the general population believes this crazy stuff, there are a lot of people who see through it and friends that I've had forever, and and my family and things like that who know me and don't doubt that.
	So what have we left unsaid that we should say?
	Well, I just want to thank you.
	I want to thank you for um reaching out to me.
	I haven't done other interviews besides the faded, ill-fated dateline episode, and um my first one that I did with Scott Adams last October, but obviously a lot a lot has happened, and and you know, that was my first interview.
	It's a little nerve-wracking, but it was helpful, and and Scott's been great and supportive.
	And I do get a number of requests, and I trust my instincts and I trust my evaluation of people.
	I really got the feeling like you wanted to understand and get to know me as a whole person, and that you know, you you mentioned some of the things of what you were interested in, and after seeing some of the things that you talk about, it's we have a lot of crossover and and similar interests and things like that, and I was not wrong about you.
	Thank you.
	Um, yeah, I just wanted you to know that and anyone watching to know that.
	And I think you're you're gonna do really well with with this podcast and whatever you want to do.
	And um, yeah, I just wish you all the best.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	Um, thank you so much for having the courage to come on and giving me a shot with this brand new thing that I'm doing.
	Uh it's um been really a pleasure to get to know you past couple of weeks and uh and talk to you today.
	Um I'll chop this thing up and send you a link later.
	Okay, all right.
	Sounds good.
	Thank you so much.
	Of course, I'll talk to you later.
	Okay, bye-bye.
	We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other thing.
	Not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
	Mr. Gorbachev tears down this wall.
	A date which will live in infamy.
	I still have a dream.

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