DarkHorse Podcast with Greg Ellis and Bret Weinstein
Greg Ellis is an actor, director, author, and host of podcast The Respondent. He discusses with Bret what makes the current political situation in the US so frightening, having himself grown up in the UK and moved to the US.TIMESTAMPS: 01:00 Greg's background 02:12 Trump and TDS 04:58 What do Americans not realize about the US? 06:48 America versus China for human rights 10:56 Biological reasons for the divide 14:30 "Grave Matters" poem 17:04 Why Greg and Bret are fri...
I have the distinct honor of sitting remotely with Greg Ellis, who is an actor, director, author.
He is also, I believe, newly a video podcaster, has a new series coming out called The Respondent, and he has another podcast called...
What is it, Greg?
The Voices in My Head.
The Voices in My Head.
I like that title quite a bit, actually.
It's a good one.
Why, thank you.
So welcome, Greg.
Thank you.
It's lovely to be here.
So, I'm not sure exactly where to start.
You and I, I think, are newly acquainted with each other, at least in personal contact.
We've not met in person, but we have now had discussions.
And I find you fascinating and a very pleasant surprise that such a person exists.
So, you obviously are not from around these parts.
No, originally I'm from northwest England, a little village called Ainsdale, by the sea, close to a town called Southport, about 30 minutes north and 30 minutes west of Manchester, and currently reside in Los Angeles.
You reside in Los Angeles.
And how long have you been in L.A.?
I've been here about 25 years now.
Good grief, that long.
25 years.
And are you a citizen?
I am.
I became an American citizen around the time President Obama was running because I wanted to be able to give back and I remember calling, my first phone call on behalf of his campaign was to some older lady in Wichita and she must have been very surprised when she heard it.
Do excuse me, do you have a few moments of your time?
I'd like to talk to you about Barack Obama.
I always remember that call.
I'm very proud to become a US citizen.
Yes, well, congratulations.
It's good to have you on board.
Just in time for this next round of electoral politics, I guess.
The Trump era is treating you well, I trust?
It's interesting times, isn't it?
I remember looking at the debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016 and I was one of the few who really believed that he was going to win.
I actually turned the sound off for the debate and studied their body language and their facial expressions and Since then I think there's been this... Perhaps many people haven't accepted the fact that he's won.
We don't have to be happy about it.
We can be outraged and disgusted and etc etc but accepting that he's won and how we can focus on the positives on the left to get someone to challenge to take the presidency back I think is more important than orange man bad Trump derangement syndrome.
Yeah, I agree.
Once somebody tells me that they have a clear understanding of what's supposed to happen in this election, I know that it's about to become a very awkward conversation.
I have the sense we have two candidates who both have an ironclad argument for why they must be elected, and each of them is right.
Each of their arguments being that the other person is not fit for the job.
Yes, I agree, and it's what you talk about, the lesser evil or the zero-sum game.
It's like an ideological Cold War, if you will.
I remember during the Cold War, James Baker said it's important that we talk to our enemies and our friends, and these limits of absolutism are morphic and complex.
What we sense, how we feel and experience these limits is the epitome, I think, of learning on the edge of volatile events.
And it does feel like volatile times.
Often the tyranny of the urgent consumes us and we degenerate to somewhat immature behavior and acting out.
And how we approach those limits and meet them is asking newer questions and leaving nuance and doubt firmly in the forefront, I think.
I agree with that.
I am... I'm not sure quite how to ask the question, but I have done a lot of traveling, as I know you have, and that has given me a different perspective on the U.S.
than I would have if I had simply been here and not ventured very far.
I'm certain you have a different perspective, though, having joined and become a citizen of the U.S., having been born abroad.
What do you think Americans miss about the U.S.?
When you say what do they miss about the U.S., do you mean what do they miss because they're Americans?
Yeah, what is in our blind spot, given that we all are shaped by our natal experiences, and not being able to see the U.S.
from the outside, I have a sense, is a distortion.
But it's a little hard for me to say what the distortion is, because of course I have it too.
Yeah, I think I may be, having lived here for 25 years, I might not be the perfect person to ask that question, although I am reminded of being on the tube station platform, the underground, or it's the subway in America, many years ago before I came to America.
And it was packed full of the Brits, the stiff upper lip Brits on their way to work.
And this American fellow, this tourist, entered the platform, walked in and he had very bright shorts and very loud t-shirt and he stood there and after about 10 seconds he said, God damn what's wrong with you Brits?
You're all just so quiet and you're not making any...
And it made me chuckle, and I looked around and I could see these straight-laced Brits, I'm probably one of them too, and you could see they were cracking smiles and they wanted to kind of, you know, let their personality out.
And I think there is a beautiful part of America's, I talk a lot about America's personality and how it's perceived by, perhaps by different nations around the world.
And I think it's in pain right now and it's somewhat disordered in terms of the lens of how we view it.
The one thing I find really perplexing is the notion that we can't celebrate the best aspects of being American.
It seems to be, I was talking with an agent at a big agency the other day, CAA here in Hollywood, And it sounded like he just detested America.
In fact, he said that China was, their human rights in China and North Korea were better than America.
Oh my God.
And to have these extreme conversations and hold space and listen with curiosity and not, like, where does that come from?
Where does this hatred of the place that's given us all, we're all immigrants, has given us an amazing opportunity?
It's a grand experiment, I think.
Yeah, there's something very troubling about that.
I wonder, I would like to think that that particular myopia is born of a positive instinct, that maybe the desire to understand what we are falling short on has caused us to over-focus and to maybe imagine things about the rest of the world that aren't true.
For anyone to say with a straight face that our human rights record is, you know, falls short of China or North Korea is to just evidence a complete failure of awareness of what is taking place elsewhere in the world.
I mean, for all of our faults, we are well ahead of those two.
Oh, very much so.
You know, I'm reminded of Images from decades ago in the Middle East of the burning of the American flag and the outrage in America at how that event was perceived when viewed and recently seeing Americans burning the American flag outside the White House.
And I think there is reason to be upset and angry and to protest and to come together.
At that level, I just can't get my head around that.
No, it's crazy and, you know, unfortunately the sensibilities of the moment actually are placing the American experiment in danger.
So it's possible that these people who have this warped view of the U.S.
are going to get to test their hypothesis and see what life is like without it.
But My fear is that they're not even honest enough with themselves to remember what they thought.
That at the point that it becomes clear what they've lost, they will imagine that they were always on the right side of that, rather than even just honestly tracking their change in viewpoint.
Yeah, I think there comes a point, there does come a point where you have to, given this cancel culture we've talked about, you and I before Brett, you have to kind of plant your flag in the sand firmly and say, you know what, I'm going to go down on record, whether it be this tweet, this moment in time and speak my mind because I think we've reached this brinking point where
There's a segment of the population on both sides, I think, who believe that the other side's political wrong-headedness equates to, essentially, immorality.
And how do we solve society's problems if we don't talk to each other, break virtual bread?
You know, it's like, are you willing to accept that there are people on the other side of the political aisle who disagree with you?
But nonetheless, people of honour.
Or is it your position that anybody who disagrees with your political prescription, ipso facto, is dishonourable?
And what are we afraid of?
What are we afraid of?
Is it courage?
Having the courage to speak up?
Fear of being cancelled?
Losing our livelihood?
You know, it's like we have this circular choir preaching to each other, to a degree.
Well, I think, actually, you ask what is it that we're afraid of, and I'm concerned that it's actually a different process that causes people to have that caricature view.
That this is actually something human beings are wired to do, and they do so in advance of war or genocide.
They portray that which they are about to attack as less than human, as diseased or as vermin or something like this.
And so I just have the sense that it is an unfortunate but natural human tendency that has been dragged into exactly the wrong realm.
And that we are missing the obvious question, which is, are we closer to a decent answer by completing the American experiment, by fixing what isn't right and making – continuing in the same direction, or uninventing it and trying over? by fixing what isn't right and making – continuing in And I think if you compare those two things, an honest analysis would tell you there is no comparison.
Yes, there are serious flaws and there is serious unfairness, but we, you know, are far closer to having gotten it right than having gotten it so wrong there's no hope for repair.
So, I just can't believe we're about to reverse course rather than, you know, to redouble our efforts in making this the fair and wonderful place that it has always aspired to be.
Well, maybe we're in that deep valley that you and I talked about with regards to the adaptive landscape model and we're jumping the discourse gap and we're finding ways to... I mean, look, the problem I have Being a classical liberal is that I think liberalism at its core is the willingness to hear other voices.
I may not agree with them, but a true liberal welcomes the provocation and does not retreat from it.
We want to come together and have critical, be more critical thinking people.
You know, how can we How can we find solutions rather than focus on the problems and attend to the problems and find better solutions and get to the peaks?
How do we get to that peak, whatever that peak is?
Well, I also think something is missing because even as you describe it there, I mean, I know you and I are of like mind about this and that we have a parallel experience, but I think people have the sense that talking To people who have a very different perspective is like taking your medicine.
And the experience of actually doing it is totally the opposite.
Right?
I actually quite enjoy the conversations that I have with people who can explain to me how the political landscape looks very different to them, or how the scientific landscape looks different.
Those conversations are Very rewarding.
And a conversation with somebody who shares your viewpoint can be reassuring, but it doesn't broaden your understanding nearly so much.
And so I really wish I could just let people in on not only the The analytical experience, but the feeling that accompanies being able to cross some big gap that is famously supposed to be unbridgeable and discovering a human being that you actually like on the other side.
Yeah, and learning something and taking something away from the conversation and growing and modifying your belief system.
It reminds me of a poem I wrote called Grave Matters.
All judgments passed on others belong in the court of self-opinion.
Take not a part of the blame.
Accept not projections of shame.
Blame passed to others is judgment passed on self.
To begin a sentence of revenge, dig two graves.
Eventually we all end up in the happy ever afterwards of our emotional hospitals.
So, you know, how can we look to self and, you know, the involution of self and to evolve that better sense of I don't know it all.
I've said this to you before.
The more I learn, the more I realise I don't know.
And that's stupefying.
It's like going into the... finding the clearing in the lungs of the forest.
And then realising that there's this massive expanse of new forests ahead.
And new journeys and trails to go on.
That's opening up to possibilities.
And what an adventure!
I mean, just glorious.
I totally agree with this.
People, in general, they just seem to have at least what I feel is the inverse reaction.
The discovery that there is a great deal you do not know is an invitation.
It means that there is profit to be made that you were unaware of.
And so you should be happy at this discovery because who knows what you'll find out rather than just constantly reassuring yourself that you've got it nailed and it's all very simple and the trick is just to force other people to see it.
That can't be very fun.
No, we have to have a bit of serious play.
I mean, it can be serious, but we have to have a bit of play.
I mean, a lot of my work in my career has been improvised and in the moment and off the cuff and living on that phenomenological edge, the razor's edge, not just the bleeding edge or there's too many edges in there.
But how we can add a little artistry and flavor and fun and maybe take a bit of Dr. Carl Jung and mix it up with Dr. Seuss.
and present it in a way that isn't too serious and studious.
We do need the serious and studious and the legislative, you know, legalese, et cetera, et cetera.
But I think you and I have talked about how we came together and how much respect I have for you and the work you do and the podcast that you did with your brother being one of the best podcast episodes I've ever heard on the portal.
It was just so genuinely real and authentic and, you know, the brotherhood of Weinstein was on auditory display.
Yeah, it's funny.
I don't know when we first became aware of each other.
I guess it's been a year, maybe two?
But in any case, yes, there's an awful lot of parallelism, I think, in our perspectives.
But because of that, I want to unpack a little bit here.
I have the sense that in describing who you are and what you do that the real category that would be most descriptive just is not one it's a category that doesn't exist or at least if it does exist we don't name it because it would be uncomfortable but I have the sense that you you are Yeah, you're in the ballpark.
You are of a certain age, you've accomplished many of the things that you set out to accomplish, and you're now eager to fix the world or something like that.
Am I anywhere in the ballpark?
Yeah, you're in the ballpark.
I think eager to help the people who truly can fix, I believe truly can fix the world.
And, you know, people that have the courage and fortitude and the decency to To go out there and try and to galvanize support.
Decency finds no refuge in a juror's prudence of fear.
We need courageous people from all different walks of life to help tend to the fabric of the American personality.
And the Constitution and that beautiful document I remember when I first read it, I was just stupefied that these human beings came up with that document at that time, and how astonishing it still is to this day.
It lives on.
Yeah, it's a living testament to their ideals, even where they didn't meet them.
It's evidence of their blind spots.
I mean, it's really a marvelous lesson in what the finest minds of a particular era Could see and couldn't see, and I hear it described in such bleak terms, especially on the left.
I mean, it's maybe spoken about overly reverently on the right, where it's treated as almost a religious document without flaw because it's divinely inspired, and on the left it's treated like just a, you know, a series of Errors and the fact is it's a prototype.
It's a prototype of something absolutely marvelous and you know what I was thinking about when I asked you about what it's like to have joined the U.S.
is I'm Just recognizing how many people saw brilliance in our model and adopted it.
Sometimes formally and sometimes less so.
But, you know, the UK among the places that took up the mantle of American democracy and have done it differently.
How marvelous is it that the colonists spelled out a vision so beautiful that it was contagious and that it actually spread freedom in its wake?
Yeah, and I actually think right now in England, Britain, we could do with some of the tenets of the Constitution and the amendments because hearing that there are now hate crimes and thought crimes are now part of the law in England.
And the fundamental understanding of what free speech is and how we must protect and fight to protect our freedom to speak our mind.
However challenging it is with certain people to hear them.
you know, Where is the line?
It's always a difficult conversation to have about abortion and the line of freedom of speech, incitement to violence.
Well, what is violence?
Are words violence?
I'm reminded of Ricky Gervais who said, offense isn't given, it's only taken.
If you choose to take offense, then take it.
I don't give an A. Right, and it's not tragic if you're offended.
The idea that we're supposed to remake civilization to avoid you being offended, that's a dire prescription right there.
Yeah, and I think what I've been doing with The Respondent and why I started The Respondent is to try and just begin a conversation, a multimedia conversation.
And part of it came about through this, you know, we talk about the founding fathers, the Constitution and America and where we are today.
Part of it came out of this toxic masculinity, Smash the patriarchy.
All men bad.
And there were so many men being cancelled.
Some of them were, you know, justifiably tried in the court of public opinion and then tried in the legal system.
But some I think were caught up, particularly in my business in the entertainment industry, without due process.
And, you know, trying to return a place where chivalry, I feel like chivalry is dead or it's been lost.
I'm reminded of I forget who wrote the quote, but it goes, But the mind of man is not, like Fourier's heated body, continually settling down into an ultimate quiet, uniformity, the character of which we can already predict
It is rather like a tree shooting out branches which adapt themselves to the new aspects of the sky towards which they climb, and roots which contort themselves among the strange strata of the earth into which they delve.
And when I think of that and I think of congeniality and how to be a more gentle man and the origins of chivalry, which I think they go back to, it was a code of conduct, I think, developed in the 13th century.
And the ideas of chivalry and how to be more chivalric.
How can we even begin to have that conversation if we are cancelling the very idea of man is extinct.
Smash the patriarchy as I understand it.
The matriarch and the patriarch is the mother figure and the father figure.
What are we going to do?
Are we going to suggest smashing the matriarch and toxic feminism?
No!
That's just the shame rage and the point counterpoint.
And, you know, most of us, I think, most of us men, I would like to think, are not looking to smash ourselves and tell ourselves that we are all toxic.
Yeah, well, first of all, I very much liked that recitation.
I've never heard it before, but it's brilliant.
The issue of what is happening to masculinity is so dire.
And, you know, you say that Some people were tried in the court of public opinion and then tried in an actual court, and others were just tried in the court of public opinion.
But even more distressing than that is the fact that some people were tried in the court of public opinion for things that aren't even wrong.
Yeah.
And it's guilty till proven more guilty.
Not even guilty till proven innocent, or innocent till proven guilty.
And that is what really concerns me, particularly in the area of family law is one place.
You know, the respondent deals with the familial bond, the familial tapestry of how we Collectively as a community and interpersonally within our marriages, relationships, father-son, mother-daughter, etc.
etc.
How do we tend to that intercommunication skill, interpersonal communication?
I think most of us are vaguely familiar with stories of family breakdown or familial breakdown.
We have a friend or a Or a family member who endured a bad breakup.
It's a common trope in our dramatic and comedic entertainment.
And obviously reliable fodder for media outlets like TMZ and supermarket tabloids.
When it comes to celebrity relationship implosions in particular, I think that there's this notion, this thought that men, and particularly celebrity men, and I don't classify myself in that bucket,
are superhuman and they're not we're not we're just human beings and every individual is struggling with something and as we are trying to remain physically um physically uh Healthy within the organism.
We have to remind ourselves to exercise from the neck up.
I think mental health is a huge, huge issue right now.
It was particularly with men, because we don't talk about it.
You know, particularly with COVID and this messaging of Social distancing, which I've mentioned to you before, is so inherently flawed.
It should be physical distancing and social connectedness.
We are human beings.
We're sentient creatures.
We should be encouraged to come together as small groups and larger groups.
And be communal and there's a lot of currently I've seen a lot of commentary on this topic of men being bad and we're bombarded by messages about the deeply corrosive effects of toxic masculinity and confronted with institutions
Psychologically conditioned now to think masculinity is toxic that men are bad man's kindness is extinct chivalry is a bygone notion and Particularly in the family law system.
It's rife with outdated gender ideas every bit as sexist as those faced by women in Other arenas past and present and we need to spirit level the sexes somewhat So, I very much like this topic.
I have a lot of thoughts on it myself, and I believe that the sexes are up for a renegotiation, but that that renegotiation would be insane to implement some kind of sameness to enforce it in any way.
In other words, I believe strongly that there are features of masculinity that are honorable and that we must preserve.
There are parallel features in the feminine world that we need to honor and preserve.
We should leave people the freedom to avail themselves of these things irrespective of what sex they are born in.
But we should not expect men to be like women or vice versa.
We should find out what people want when they're truly liberated.
You know, in my case, my wife is lovely, but she does have a kind of male bent.
She plays like a boy.
The animus has risen within Heather.
Yes.
And, you know, it's a great thing.
I'm very pleased to have a partner to go adventuring with, and somebody who doesn't shy away from danger or pain or all of these things.
So it's, you know, it's not like, it's not like I want to go back to the 50s, right?
And sometimes that's how it's portrayed.
At the same time, I think we are doing a tragic disservice, especially to our boys, in telling them That masculinity is a hazard or is inherently bad or something like this, because among other things, I may have said this to you already, I can't remember, but the fact is straight women do not like weak men.
And so if you induce your boys to become weak, you're setting them up for a tragic romantic failure.
Yeah, and I agree with you and you have said that to me before and I couldn't agree more that how the the mother and father if we're talking in in simple terms or the matriarch and the patriarch negotiate these differences of opinion of parenting I think is is So that the child gets the most opportunities to take risks, but not risks that will kill or severely injure him.
In the case of boys, because I'm a man and I have boys, it's not sexist.
I'm not, you know, not talking about girls and women for that reason.
I think that's vital.
I remember the first time my son squared off to fight physically, and I reassured my wife at the time that it was a necessary rite of passage.
And as our youngest, I think he was six maybe, At the time, and my eldest was eight, there's a two-year age gap, they needed that experience, that prideful moment.
He needed the younger brother, because I've been the younger brother, of taking his elder brother on and maybe even teaching him a lesson in the process, which he did a couple of times.
She was still somewhat distressed as I led the boys into the back garden or backyard and created this imaginary boxing ring.
Although she did, she trusted, well trust is important, it's vital, she trusted me enough to to calm her understandable
Mother bear concerns to believe that I might know maybe better how to handle this rush of testosterone situation and this sort of balanced parenting cannot take place if men and fathers aren't present there must be a balanced or renegotiation as I say the spirit level of the sexes in order for boys to become more fully formed self-actualized young men take those rites of passage with a deeper more imagined sense of healthy boundaries
So that they can eventually, alone, take those steps to start to think like men.
Responsibility equals reward.
And feel like boys.
Risk-taking equals ambition.
And I think more we can advocate fatherhood.
You know, advocating fatherhood is not about admonishing or diminishing motherhood.
I believe a the primary role of a father or one of the primary roles is to maintain an aura a Presence if you will which says look and listen son life has problems We're gonna solve that problem together one day You'll have you'll have your own you'll leave home and and be playing more seriously on your own with your own little
Children, boys of your own maybe, or friends, sons and daughters to play with, tend to be responsible for.
Let's prepare for that day to learn how to confidently and sensibly risk take together and I think it's vital for boys to learn Through the eyes and the experience and the behavior reflected from a father and to learn boundary setting self-discipline And how to instill a sense of empathy for themselves their partners peers and friends and
And eventually, you know, their ultimate partner, hopefully.
And when the testosterone in boys is not channelled well, boys become destructive.
And when fathers are not present in the family home to instruct, boys destruct.
And when testosterone is channelled well, boys become constructive.
So why aren't we advocating, why aren't we talking about positive Masculinity and positive father figures, fathers role models more so that we can leave a legacy for the younger generations that we leave behind.
So I want to connect a couple threads if I can manage to do it.
Your theme about the constructive aspect of masculinity is very important and near and dear to my heart.
And I have the sense that we are very complex creatures.
I mean, that's a fact.
And that what that means is that the way things are hooked together is often not obvious.
And so there's this tendency, this Chesterton's fence problem, where something, the purpose of which is not totally obvious, gets removed because a strong argument can be made that it's somehow antiquated.
And that very frequently we are living the harm that arises from having eliminated something vital without realizing we were doing it.
And what I see on this topic is that we have renegotiated the rules of sex.
And that those rules of sex, basically we are told that any resistance to just getting laid and not thinking about the consequences is somehow oppressive.
And that the discovery that sex is just a biological drive and that you should follow it where it leads you and there's no reason to make it more than it is and all of that.
There's no reason even really to give a damn about the person that you're having sex with.
That the consequences of this are many, and one of them is that it puts males in one of two modes, and it's not the one that we should want to flourish, right?
Men have always had the opportunity to spread their seed without taking responsibility for the consequences, and that is not men at their best, that's men at their worst.
And The problem, the reason that we are now hearing about toxic masculinity is that in a world where men have been told that that part of them is just fine and they should, you know, activate it, is a world that is dangerous to women because the men are viewing them as targets rather than as partners and
In that world, there's this temptation to then write the rules that make women safe to be around men rather than writing rules in which men are prone to behave more honorably because, frankly, it's the only path to a life worth living.
And I guess the final thing I would say on this is that in a world where sex had not been demystified, And where it was therefore difficult to come by and required real investment by men in order to persuade women to go to bed with them, men moved mountains in order to impress the women that they were most interested in.
And that was a process that was tremendously powerful.
And the fact that these things are now frequently satisfiable with a kind of junk level of sex is resulting, I think, in a great deal of potential just being absolutely squandered because there's no motivation to follow it.
Well put.
Very well put.
Better well put than I could have talked about.
I interviewed for the Respondent later in the season.
It reminds me of when I interview a family law attorney.
And she has an all-female practice and only represents men and she'd been practicing law for many years in family law and saw the bias within family law courts and decided that she would try harder to help men.
And when I found out that it's a felony for a father to kidnap his child, And it's not a felony for a mother to kidnap the child.
And by felony I mean the birth certificate.
A mother can place on a birth certificate any name she wants.
Not tell the biological father.
And the biological father, who may not have any idea that he is a father at all, then has 30 days to appeal.
And if the father doesn't appeal, then that father will never know his son or daughter.
And more importantly, or just as importantly, that son or daughter will never know, or grow up as a child through, you know, to maturation, through childhood, not knowing their biological father or mother.
Now of course there are cases where There are men who we can say don't deserve that and probably women who don't deserve that and you know I've talked in length about Nikki Crick's study on the differences between character traits and between women and men and the female and the male whereas men move faster to a physical violence women
they get past it, men get past it quicker and move on.
Women move to what she called reputation savaging.
And how we can find a place where, where more fathers and sons are connected, Less families are erased.
Less children are growing up in single parent families.
And we can understand that not all dads are dead broke dads.
Many of them are dead beat dads.
Many of them are dead broke dads because of the system.
And I think this is a major, for me, it's a huge, huge area in our legal system that needs reformation.
I'm talking later today with Molly Olson, who was, she led the drive for equal shared parenting or default shared parenting in Minnesota, I believe.
There's three states that have that.
And that has fundamentally changed not only the face of family law, it reduces obviously the attorney's money, there's less incentive for them to be able to churn, but it also brings half of that family, when a child is erased or a father or a mother is erased, half of their extended family is gone and erased too.
This can't be good for our communal collective.
It cannot be good and Understandably we focus on you know the immigration issues at the border and the separation of families I wonder why we don't place more focus or as much focus.
I should say on our legal system and our families Who are being torn apart because of that and our children?
particularly our boys you and I have talked about education and and Yes, we have lost sight of the essential features of a functional society, and we now treat them as aesthetic, which is most unfortunate.
So, you know, I think one has to look at all of the tropes, the narrative tropes, surrounding Children out of wedlock, right?
So there's something very antiquated about the idea that children should only occur within a marriage and, you know, I think that we think this is antiquated because the notion was prior to the invention of reliable birth control and so, of course,
Reliable birth control made it possible to have sex and not produce children and therefore it meant sex could precede marriage more frequently than it would have in the past because women of course are wired to fear producing children without a partner because of course children are so expensive, I don't mean expensive financially, but so intensive to raise that a partner is a necessary feature, right?
It is a much harder job to raise a child alone.
But at some level, in the renegotiation that occurred, we lost sight of the fact that actually society has an overriding interest in making sure that children are well-raised, and that well-raised children are much more likely in a household that has two parents.
And part of the reason for that is because that household has more than two parents, it has two extended families.
And we don't frankly even know the extent to which having two parents is a necessary way to learn how the navigation of being human even occurs, right?
To have two parents is to guarantee that there will be two people in your lives who have distinct opinions on things.
And then you as a child growing up in that environment will learn of the two perspectives and you will have to figure out how to weigh them.
In a single-parent household that is much less likely and so I'm not telling you I know the answer to this at all but I am telling you that at least we ought to be able to identify the value and say two-parent household is Not really an optional thing.
It's not aesthetic.
It's functional.
And just in the same way the state sees it as within its interest to make sure that a child is well nourished, is mentally well nourished less important?
Yeah, no, and I'm dismayed at the tenor of much of the discussion that's taking place about the nuclear family.
Marriage appears to my eyes to be on life support, and I see and read many people who appear to be happy about that, even while a backbone narrative of this pandemic
Or panacdemic as I call it we're living through involves families hunkered down in quarantine The statistics reveal a decay of marriage as a foundational institution as I write this the Wall Street The Wall Street Journal I think had reported that US marriage The US marriage rate had plunged.
I think it was six point Six point five new unions per 1,000 people according to the National Center for Health Statistics the lowest level since the government started keeping scores since 1867 now, of course You know, a plunging quantity of marriages says nothing of quality.
Quality is important.
You and I have talked about, you know, equity and equity of outcome and equity of opportunity.
And one might argue that fewer good marriages is better than a greater number of bad ones.
But the trend speaks to, I believe, The belief that we as a collective think that marriage is a social institution that leads to a better outcome for children is not the case.
When I read, I think it was David Brooks, celebrated New York Times writer, Who recently wrote an article or an essay in the Atlantic theorizing the nuclear family is obsolete.
In fact, it should it was a bad idea and a mistake.
I think is what he called it to begin with.
Really?
I mean and you mentioned the 1950s, you know, the he I think he pointed to the image of the 1950s the halcyon days of the dinner table families and we mythologize, you know, it's actually A fantasy that in reality was nothing more than an anomalous blip.
I'm sure the fifties were wonderful and I'm not taking anything away from the fifties, but our reimaginings of the stories from the fifties, there were some hard times.
It was a hard grind in the fifties.
How can we better tend to our younger generations?
I mean I've talked about the Gen Z's and Millennials before and you know I hear people that sound like my grandparents, oh you know I remember I was a kid I wouldn't have done that and you don't want to do this and We as the older generation have to accept responsibility that it's on us.
It's not fully on them.
They weren't around when we were their age, so we are responsible for what they're coping with today.
Oh, absolutely.
The dysfunction just propagates through the ages.
And, you know, this question about the nuclear family and is it an invention and all of these things, I find the conversation just shockingly confused.
I mean, there is a way in which the nuclear family is a recent invention, but it's not by virtue of it having come about from whole cloth.
It's a matter of the economic realities having caused people to move away from their natal homes, and therefore families being reduced to nuclear from a larger
Phenomenon it's not that they were established from a lesser phenomenon and that this you know Requirement that you bond with somebody was imposed from above Now there are cultures where it doesn't exist But in general it doesn't exist by virtue of a failure of certainty of paternity so in places where a man is Unlikely to be certain that the offspring produced by a woman are actually his
There's a phenomenon called the mother's brother phenomenon where men are better off investing in their sister's children, who they know are related to them, than they are investing in the children that are attributed to them, who may or may not be related to them.
But that's actually, we know just evolutionarily, the result of a failure of information, a lack of certainty, rather than it being some kind of enlightened state.
And so to the extent That the rules, informal or formal, can result in males being certain of who their offspring are.
When males are certain of who their offspring are, they invest, because it's the right thing to do.
Males have an interest in producing offspring that are viable and well-adjusted, and a two-parent household is the easiest way to get there.
Yeah, very much so.
All of the statistics show that a child, a boy raised in a two-parent family household is going to have a far greater chance of success in life and be able to see
Further into the future and the possibilities and the probabilities in every metric less likely to end up in in prison less likely to end up on drugs less likely to take their own life and all of these things I think Where did we get to a place Brett?
Where did we get to a place in our society that the value of life has become so Extinct.
People just, so many people just don't care.
You hear about someone taking their life and, well, he deserved it, she deserved it, well, good riddance.
Really?
And, you know, going back to men and fathers, those, those men and fathers have and had mothers and sisters and daughters.
We are all in this together.
It just, I've read the notes, I've read the suicide notes from the fathers.
The good men, not the bad men.
The ones who just wanted to run along and be the Casanova and procreate and then move along.
And they're heartbreaking, you know?
I've talked to the men who have been at the edge of life, living on the edge of existential terror and angst.
You know, trauma resides in the body, and the body keeps the score, to quote Bessel van der Kolk's beautiful book, and how that inescapability Not just not just of a father removed from his children or son or a son from father but for a veteran who returns from war and has PTSD and how we can
Start to extend our presence further.
I think that's really what one of my goals is.
To meet and innovate through these limits and find a way to learn and lean into learning and the portal of learning, to quote your brother's podcast, The Portal, and find ways to say, how can I give not what can I get from this?
Yeah.
You know, I was... Heather and I were watching with our older son the big short last night, and there's a very eloquent speech in the end of it where the main character, the Michael Baum character, is describing the effect he saw of Wall Street on the people who inhabit it.
And that basically it turned them inhuman by virtue of putting them so closely in contact with the functioning of markets that it became all of the stuff that's harder to defend and harder to describe falls away because the stuff, you know, the balance sheet is so clear.
And I think that there is something to the idea that what has happened is that markets which initially facilitated the production of value
Became subtly empowered to commodify everything even the things that should never have been allowed to have been commodified and that this Expendability that you describe is really the consequence of that that we View everything, you know the fact that somebody in order to figure out what to charge you for insurance or what to pay your relatives if you're killed and You know, assesses your value.
On the one hand, there's nothing wrong with that calculation.
On the other hand, there's everything wrong with that calculation.
Right?
I agree.
Yeah.
I remember reading Joseph Campbell's book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
And soon after I read that book, I wrote a poem.
And the poem was a very short poem.
It was about the year that we're born.
I thought about gravestones and that year that we're born and the year that we die.
I think perhaps it's in the Mexican culture.
It's said that we have three deaths.
And the one, the first death is the moment that we realize that we are mortal.
We fully face our mortality.
And that second death is the last breath we exhale if and when we realize we're on our way out.
And the third death is the last time our name is mentioned on Earth.
And I heard that and I thought about the gravestone and that dash in between and how we dash sometimes through life and how we are so focused on the next moment, the next week, the next year that we
forget to remind ourselves that the now moment is all we have.
And that dash of our life, the poem was called "A Prince's Prayer" and it went, it goes, "A Prince's Prayer," so I'm going to read it through my eyes, "A Prince's Prayer, 1968 Dash?" "A Prince's Prayer, 1968 Dash?" A Prince's Prayer.
A thousand faces worn.
The dash between the dead and born.
I forget her to remember myself forever and ever.
Amen.
And how We can remember that life is lived forwards and remembered backwards.
When I first started looking at emotions and feelings and emotional intelligence and behavioral science and all of that which I came to in my 40s and then started reading books at 45 when all I'd read was scripts and wasn't encouraged to read when I was a kid.
My wonderlust for literature and how I say to anyone who listens, surround yourself with books even if you do not read them and ever pick them up.
It's so important that we honour and remember the great corpus of literary works, many of which I'll never have the time to read, unfortunately.
And how... How we can better tend to self, capital S. Because the better...
I asked myself a question once.
I think I mentioned it to you the other day.
I didn't know anything about philosophy and I sat down and I wrote, who am I in my iPhone?
And I ended up with 1164 notes a few hours later.
It was astonishing.
Just kept going deeper into the dialectical dive.
And then I started asking the meaningful answer, the meaningful question.
So the first one I went to with that was, if love is the answer, What is the question?
And my simple first place that I arrived at, the answer that I found to the meaningful question asked of the meaningful answer, was back to Socrates, know thyself, first aid thyself, for if thy knows thyself better, Then one can love oneself more deeply in becoming more known.
And then love another more deeply, capital O. And I think that space is where I like to Live, reside, remind myself to be in the now moments.
Now and Zen, I remind myself, but then I'm back again in the now moment.
And feelings and emotions, when I started exploring that, you know, what's the simple way of explaining what an emotion and a feeling is?
Well for me, an emotion is a feeling with a memory attached.
And how, say we go to work and our boss comes over and is, what are you doing?
You're late on that report.
And we might get, you know, to use one of the woke current phrases, triggered.
And it's not that in that moment an emotion's coming up, but based on the feeling with the memory attached that maybe when we were six or seven years old.
And we were yelled at or admonished by a parent for not tying our shoelaces quickly or we were going to be late to get on the bus to go to school or to an outing or whatever.
And just understanding how the organism, that's where I love to dive into.
I've been studying a little affect theory and what the organism, what the body is trying to tell me and I pay attention to that.
And that allows me to be less reactive and more responsible which is one of the things that the respondent is all about.
Well, that's fascinating.
I should say I have long had this little puzzle in my mind.
I'm often more comfortable with people who are unflinching in their willingness to engage the question of their own death.
That somehow, I feel like we are moving in the wrong direction on this and we treat death as a failure, you know?
It is an inevitability, it is not a failure.
Now it can be a failure if it happens too soon, but there's something, you know, in fact I was thinking about this as I was biking through a cemetery the other day.
And I encountered one of these situations where there was a husband and wife's grave and one of the partners was gone and the other was not yet gone.
But that means that the partner who isn't gone knows exactly where they're headed, right?
They have a relationship with their own grave that most don't.
And, you know, it's not that I think there's such marvelous value in pondering death itself because there's nothing to it, but there is something to recognizing the implications of the finiteness of life.
And, in some ways, the arbitrariness of death.
You know, just the fact that, I don't know, I must say, of all the philosophical puzzles, I'm most troubled by the fact that, in many cases, you don't get to know the end of your own story.
You know, John F. Kennedy does not know the end of his story.
We all synonymize him with the end of his story, but presumably he knew nothing about it.
And there's something about that that is a little hard for me to accept.
I don't know.
It makes me think of, you know, sometimes I get into wordplay, so I'll take words like depressed, and that's deep rest.
Sometimes the psychological needs a deep rest.
I think about together, to get her.
What other words do I have?
I'm reminded of a Camus quote.
I think it was Camus, the philosopher, who said, we value our own lives in spite of our mortality, and in spite of the universe's silence.
While we can live with a dualism, I can accept periods of unhappiness, because I know I'll also experience happiness to come, we cannot live with the paradox, which is, I think my life is of great importance, but I also think it's meaningless.
And I think that crisis, you and I have talked before about sense-making and meaning-making and meaning-seeking, And I think, I do think we have a crisis of, perhaps a crisis of meaning, but a crisis of faith.
One of the, I mentioned to you the other day, my definition of meaning is everything happens for a reason.
We make up afterwards.
I love this because I use everything happens for a reason as an example of a literally false, metaphorically true statement, because of course it's nonsense that everything happens for a reason, but a person who is convinced that everything happens for a reason will very frequently find opportunity in tragedy, for example, that somebody who wasn't convinced of this would miss.
So by adding that last piece that we make up the reason afterward, you complete the circle perfectly.
You imply the same thing much more poetically.
It's like that karmic menu.
Karma has no menu.
You get to serve what you deserve.
I've never heard that.
But I also am intrigued by your obvious relationship with poetry, which I must say I have a relationship with poetry.
I rarely meet anyone else who does.
My PhD advisor did.
And we always got along quite well in part because I think we had the same appreciation for it as a tool.
I think to many people, for one thing I would say, I have no patience for free verse.
That it seems to take the value of poetry and to me it just seems to throw it out the window.
Is that right?
I was going to invite you to do an improvised poem with me live on air right now.
Oh, well, I'm going to politely decline.
But my sense is that a proper constraint forces you to explore language in the neighborhood of the concept you're trying to convey.
But in order to get the meter right and to get the rhyme right, you have to search farther afield.
And so you very frequently discover things that are true about some concept that's important to you that you wouldn't have gotten to if you could just use prose.
So to me, free verse has the same kind of Let's put it this way, there is good free verse, but a lot of it isn't good.
It's too much license, and not enough constraint, as far as I'm concerned.
Well, I have, having not been schooled in poetry, and come to poetry, gosh, I think I wrote my first, what I would consider, poem before I published my poetry book, The New Ledge, K-N-E-W-L-E-D-G-E, last year.
I, you know, iambic pentameter I heard about at school, but it was a distant memory to me.
So I guess I break all the rules in terms of poetry.
And we'll, I don't know their poems or quotes.
I wrote one called The Calamity of Conscience, and it goes, the cerebral paradox, the elusive obvious, the letting go of holding on, finding by not looking, Unearthing without disturbing the ground.
Going to pieces without falling apart.
Accepting answers without question.
Unconscious incompetence.
Conscious incompetence.
Conscious competence.
Unconscious competence.
A little bit of Maslow... I think it was Maslow's hierarchy of... Needs?
Yeah, at the end there.
So I'm always, you know, testing the boundaries and... Well, let me be very clear.
First of all, the thing about the rules is knowing how to break them.
I'm all for breaking the rules.
But I'm not for breaking the rules just to break them.
How can you break the rules if you don't know them though?
Well, for one thing, I wouldn't call what you have just recited here free verse.
Now maybe technically it is, but the thing is there's some, and in fact maybe we should get to the code at some point, but You clearly have some kind of a highly regimented linguistic code, and maybe it surrounds more meaning than it does meter and rhyme.
So maybe you're free verse with respect to meter and rhyme.
But what you're saying is it's constructed, in my opinion, to be spoken and to have Meaning and emotion imbued into it the way a pianist can imbue a piece with emotion by the way they play and you actually can see it in sort of the physical interaction with the piano so anyway I
It's possible that my category is too narrow, but my sense is you are engaging a kind of regimented requirement for your poetry, at least according to what you've said here, that is not troubling to me in the slightest.
I quite like it.
Why, thank you.
Yeah.
The expression, I think it's emotional expression and how we can vocalize the poetry and the performance and who is performing it, what's the stage.
Perhaps you, we, I don't know on the Dark Horse podcast if you've talked with Talked about poetry before who knows I don't profess to be an expert and I think that sometimes when you read it on the page You can create and craft meaning making in the moment and the interpretation of what?
It means to you what a quote or what a line?
means to someone sometimes I play with words, you know, I remember doing a whole a Equation set of quotes that were literally Written like mathematical formulas like site secrets plus silence plus judgment equals shame love equals empathy minus shame divided by the group privacy yes versus secrets no and the pain equation and
So I think there is value in both, in being able to speak them aloud, even just to yourself.
I mean, really, it's the inner dialogue, isn't it, at the end of the day, Brett, that we're all in a conversation with.
No one can really know us fully, because that inner critic or that inner champion, that's who we really need to get to know.
And for me, you know, I did it through, well, not I did it, I started to break through beyond my pre-existing belief system that night when I sat down and asked that question, who am I?
And then I think after that I wrote the poem, The Memory Shelf, which if you, will you indulge me for one moment?
Of course.
Okay, so The Memory Shelf goes like this, I have recently become acquainted with myself Placed all my thoughts and memories upon a memory shelf.
Deep sea diving into recesses of reese.
Peace by painful peace.
Seeking peace.
To unpack what's underneath.
To see what's submerged and what comes up to the surface.
Delving deep into the oceans of my mind.
Riding waves of length.
Discovering a mental health.
A treasured wealth.
A salvage mission for myself.
To get connected with my own authentic self.
To tune into the memories upon my memory shelf.
This changeful self-reflection was a choice.
Though painful, it has helped me find my true authentic voice.
I came to realize, through real eyes, the real lies of my past.
And though the sea was vast, I worked them out at longest last.
All my life I presented, and what I re-presented I resented.
Put the kettle on, I'll make a brew of discontented.
Awaken you to stew on how to get through when there's no way around.
You've got to get into it, to get over it, to get through it.
When you can't bear it, share it.
If you can't control it, let it go.
When you can't feel it, have faith it exists.
When you can't hold on, release into the abyss.
And when you find yourself fighting for your life, surrender.
For you have already found yourself inside the thoughts and memories upon your memory shelf.
Wow, that's fantastic.
I love that.
I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Yeah, and there's something, I wonder, it's a little hard to run the experiment now, but I would love to know what it looks like on the page without you delivering it, because there's an awful lot encoded in the cadences in that.
Yeah, I think, well, I'm happy, I will send you a copy of The New Ledge and you can get to know me a little more through the poetry, I think.
The poetry led me to the philosophical and the pocket oracle of kind of self-help philosophical quote book.
That was interesting to write, to come up with simple lines and quotes that had meaning.
To me, at least.
You know, I think the first quote is, everything eventually connects.
I've got the book here.
Ignorance is bliss until your life falls apart.
Faith and belief can be a most dogged pallbearer.
Tomorrow I vow to make better mistakes.
Now and Zen, wish upon and then, realize I'm now longer Zen.
There's a ton in there, but I've just immersed myself in this learning space.
And I think as an artist, I'm constantly trying to find new ways to express emotion.
And that's energy in motion, that's what I think emotion is really.
Yeah, you do this thing, I've now heard you do it several times here, where you find, I assume that these are false etymologies, but they are full of meaning.
Am I right about that?
The false etymology, what do you mean by the false etymology?
I assume that the word together is not born of the concept of to get her.
Right.
And then sometimes I do the counter to that, which is when I started learning about philosophy, Philo-Sophia, and Philo being the devotion and Sophia being wisdom or love.
So it's that devotion to wisdom, devotion to love.
You and I I talked very briefly about Andrew Yang and when he mentioned, he tweeted during his run, that he thought that philosophers should be returned to the White House.
I cheered.
I fell off my chair.
I'm like, we need the great intellectual minds of our time, the heterodox thinkers, the people who will question the commonly held beliefs that used to, back in the day, be in the market square and the elders and the youngsters used to go and seek out and the politicians seek out their wisdom.
And becoming older is inevitable, but becoming an elder is a skill.
Yeah, it is a skill, and in general we are failing to produce adults, that people are trapped in a kind of permanent adolescence, and the only people that we can trust to govern in such complex and perplexing Times are the few who have figured out how to navigate these difficult things.
We need philosophers We don't need exclusively philosophers, but we need at least a commitment to philosophical rigor to be part of that conversation Well how do we, I know there's the Articles of Unity and we can, all of us help move that movement forward.
You and I had talked about Andrew Yang and the potential free Andrew Yang hashtag.
Because I just think he's a tremendous individual with a ton of political potential that's unrealized and I don't think it's going to be realized.
With the current DNC and how it's played out and their choice, which seemed to me to be preordained beforehand.
The VP peg seems to be, at least to my mind, preordained beforehand.
I have a fear.
That eventually at some point during that first term, if indeed that happens to be the case and Joe Biden wins, that he will step down.
And again, these are projections and I have no for a fact.
It's just based on everything that I've seen and witnessed.
There is a really disturbing dystopia at play where the power mongers at the top Oh, I agree.
oughting to be the ones who are the champions of the people at the bottom.
In fact, they're doing quite the opposite in closed rooms and in private.
Oh, I agree.
And I think there's already an agreement for Biden to step down and that the DNC is hoping we won't notice what they're up to, which, of course, is an absolutely frightening transition in the way governance works, even as dysfunctional as it's been.
This is a new level of dysfunction.
So how is a question and on one level, the answer is so obvious.
And I think those of us, if you see, as I alluded to before, Each candidate has an ironclad argument for their election, and that is the unacceptability of the other, and they are both right.
And for anybody, if you see only one of their arguments and the other one is in your blind spot, then you will say, oh, well, the answer to what we have to do is simply clear, right?
You will say either we can't allow Biden to drag this Woke insanity into the White House because that will destroy America.
And that's true.
On the other hand, we cannot allow Donald Trump to politicize us into oblivion.
Both of these things are un-American and not decent and too dangerous to even contemplate.
So, at the point that you see both sides and not just the one, you understand that each one is unacceptable, then the answer is, well, What would we have to do in order to not elect either of them?
And the answer is all you have to do is believe that it's possible.
And what makes it possible is a lot of people believing that it's possible.
So how about we have that conversation of belief now?
We learn that as we've been taught by 2020 so many times already, and we're only halfway through, the impossible is just around the corner.
So if we can just simply talk ourselves into saying, well, The two major parties forced us into this.
They gave us non-viable options, which requires us to ask, what else can we do?
We have to do something else.
And it is simply, it is ours to take back the White House and from there to restore the Republic to functionality.
We've run off the end of the tape and it is time.
I agree.
And there is an urgency.
I talk about the tyranny of the urgent.
You know, I think about the Articles of Unity.
We currently lack consensus.
Even about matters of basic fact.
Scientific facts.
Scientists are being cancelled and losing their Jobs, livelihoods, I mean I don't need to tell you of all people about that.
And the current tools of our collective sense making are seemingly unable to close this gap.
Yes.
Brink of economic catastrophe that we have seemingly been teetering on for quite some time now You know we did the the How how our manufacturing base and our reliance on We could talk about Even corporate America has gone woke Hollywood's gone woke and it's like a woke or go broke.
What did we get?
What did we get?
Every app, every screen I turn on, it's just everywhere.
How can we galvanize this?
Because the two big voices on either side have control of the mainstream media, the newspapers, the broadcasting media, and it seems to be about the ratings and the money, the commoditization of our values.
Well, I mean, I think you're asking the right question.
And in some sense, I don't believe that corporate America has gone woke.
I believe it is doing what is expedient, which is to say it will broadcast the woke message in order not to be cancelled and to get back to business as quickly as possible.
And so, I think people have not understood what a large fraction of those who claim to believe this stuff is actually accounted for by the same mechanism.
People solving their own personal fears, addressing them by espousing beliefs that they don't hold.
And then they will convince themselves that they do hold them, so they don't have to explain to themselves why they lied.
Once you realize that this is a fringe, and really a very tiny fringe, that's bossing around giant corporations, individuals, that is shaping society according to something that we have no idea how many people actually believe it, then the answer is, well, People are solving their own problems, and that looks like them saying what they don't believe out of cowardice.
What does the opposite look like?
Well, it looks like taking a risk to say what you do believe in spite of the fact that you may come out behind rather than ahead for doing so.
And I think, you know, this is a small example.
But you and I both believe that the two major parties have delivered outcomes that are so unacceptable that we have to consider things like the Unity 2020 proposal.
And we actually take a risk in so saying.
By saying that, we are actually risking looking foolish.
We are risking being blamed for some outcome, either of which will be terrible.
And I think the point is, well, People who have preceded us have given up far more to protect the nation.
This is a small price to pay, and it can be distributed.
If more people join, the clearer it will be that actually we do have an opportunity to do something outside of the script.
And really, at some level, if you get it, you don't have much of a choice.
We have been delivered unacceptable options.
The cost will fall heaviest on the young who have longer to live in its shadow.
It will fall heaviest on those who are oppressed and therefore not in a position to protect themselves financially from what's coming.
So everything that We hold dear.
And just the simple fact of compassion for those who are vulnerable seems to require us to demand something different.
And it's time for people to stand up.
I agree and I hope more and more people find their voice and their clarity and join together and aren't too afraid of being told, well if you go down this path then you're going to elect this person again.
Get behind this person because that's the only, well one of the beautiful things about America is everyone gets, everyone above a certain age and meets the requirements gets to vote.
So vote for whoever you would want to vote for.
And if you silence people, I think this happened in England with Brexit and I think we saw a large portion of that in 2016 with President Trump.
is when you tell half of the population, or nearly half of the population, that they are wrong and their voice doesn't matter, that they are all, to use the terminology recently, which I don't like using, but neo-Nazis or white supremacists, or but neo-Nazis or white supremacists, or they're all bad people, or they're crazy because they believe in God, or their opinion doesn't matter.
They're going to speak their mind in the ballot box when they pull that little curtain, which in England it is usually, when you pull the little curtain, you tick the box.
And so it's no surprise that Jeremy Corbyn lost in England, and Brexit wasn't...
I know there are many more factors to it.
It's obviously not that simple.
But, you know, we're a huge nation of very diverse people and we have great strengths.
I seriously believe that you know someone said to me when I think I retweeted you one day recently about the lesser evil and the animation and someone wrote oh yeah been tried before been tried and I remember one of I remember sitting in school my history teacher telling me about one of the kings in England was about to fight a battle and he saw a spider and the spider kept trying to spin a web and it kept and this king had fought 13 sieges and he or something like that and he couldn't
Find a way to win the battle.
And finally, as he was just mentally exhausted with trying to find a way to rally his troops and strategize how we would win this particular siege and battle, the spider spun the web.
And that's where the phrase, if at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.
And just because it may have, in a different formula, been tried before, that is The reason why we must try again and try in a different way, and like you talk about the ticket rather than the third party, you know, the ticket right now is free.
There is, in fact, the rewards to purchasing or buying a ticket, which you don't have to because it's free, is you get to have a seat at a new table and a new conversation that doesn't exclude either side, that's inclusive and where I'm at, Having just, you know, done a live stream inviting Antifa and the Proud Boys on, is I want those extremes.
I think we should be bringing those extremes of society or the perceived extremes together to have the difficult, challenging conversations.
So hold that space to listen with curiosity.
and mediate through our differences and bring those experts in who who know way better than I on how to moderate and mediate through those conversations and if only if only for the fact of one side feels like they've been heard for a few seconds then that's that behavioral barometer if you will may have been just tended and tempered a little and I think that
It all starts with self and we can keep, you know, the waveform, if you will, the movement, the patterns, the frequency, the harmonious nature of how we can share a little goodness, a little positivity and move from hateful to grateful and from striving to thriving.
No, it makes perfect sense, and the fact is, there's no guarantee, but in a moment where it is obvious, it should be obvious to everyone, that the country is on the verge of tearing itself apart, it seems to me that our patriotic obligation is unity, and that the only position that will feel good in the aftermath, no matter what comes, succeed or fail, is to have tried.
Anybody who didn't try in this moment, who couldn't muster enough imagination to see a different possibility, despite the fact that the major parties announced that they were unwilling to lead.
Anybody who can't figure it out now?
Wow, I mean, I just, I have a hopeless feeling about what that must be like, and I would say everyone else, it's time to wake up and get to work.
Yeah, I agree, and I think that answers the why question.
And he who has a why can bear any how.
So the how gets answered after the why.
I think that was Rumi.
So, you know, answer the why.
Do not question the why.
Just answer the why.
For why is the answer?
And if we can find a way to come together and really galvanize what you're doing, just even the word unity.
I mean, come on.
Don't we all want a little more unity and unification?
It just feels good to even think in that framework at this moment.
It's liberating to do it.
And I must say, I like your formulation about that you should answer the why and the how will follow.
That's really how things work.
The why motivates the how.
If you start with the how, you may well spin your wheels.
Yeah, it reminds me, I think it was Simon Sinek, I think his name is.
He did a great TED presentation on business and how the why needs to be answered, I think it was, before the how and the rest of it.
And many companies start from the out, the concentric circles out to the middle rather than the other way around.
And Apple is a great example of that.
You know, making a difference.
We believe we can make a difference.
We believe we can create products that will change lives.
And I think Unity 2020 has already started to shift perspectives and perceptions in the court and family homes of public opinion.
And as it settles in more and people see more spoken word, written text, animation, the signaling, the virtuous signaling, not the virtue signaling, of what people are really coming together to do because it takes a tremendous amount of people, a tremendous amount of effort.
I don't know how you're doing it.
I don't know...
How many people are involved?
If you need my help in any way, I'm happy to help.
I think more people should come together to help this, to try.
Thank you.
To try to find the how, once we've answered the why.
And your conviction is clear, and we will call on you sooner than you know.
So, before we close this out, is there anything that we should have talked about that we've missed?
I take this to be the first of a number of conversations, but is there anything that belongs here that we haven't gotten to?
I think I should probably mention, it would be remiss of me not to mention my book, The Respondent.
You know, it sounds trite, but because maybe it's time for, rather than Men 2, maybe we need Men 2.0 after all these messages of all men bad, toxic masculinity and smash the patriarchy.
So my book, The Respondent, which is out on Thanksgiving, I chose Thanksgiving.
I launched the Respondent video and podcast series on Father's Day because that day is important to honor.
And my publishers and management company agency said that I was insane to pick Thanksgiving because it wouldn't be done in time.
That day of all days in America is the day where we come together as families and give thanks and gratitude.
So that, the first season of The Respondent, the last episode will air on Sunday 22nd of November and then the book will be out on the 23rd.
And yeah, it's every two weeks at one o'clock, every other Sunday, bi-weekly.
And also the Voices in My Head event, I should mention that, that's coming up on this Saturday, actually.
There are actually two events, one at 12 o'clock, and that is the Gamers Gateway.
Clancy Brown and I will be Clancy Brown, who's done multiple video games and is the voice of Mr. Krabs from SpongeBob SquarePants.
And Hank, I think it's Hank Anderson from this big video game called Detroit Being Human, I think it is.
And I do this character called Colin from Dragon Age.
We got caught up in a little bit of Twitter mobbing because we supported Ayaan Hirsi Ali and JK Rowling because of their views and what they had said.
So the first event is to discuss that.
That's a respondent special event really, a social impact coming together with the fans and fandom.
And then the one o'clock event is the Voices in My Head, which is my other podcast, a long form conversation for voices and character voices and show writers and show owners behind some of your favourite characters on television, cartoons and animation and video games and voiceover.
And that's called the Voices in My Head Jamboree Fundraiser.
I have people like, we have Clancy Brown and I hosting that.
We have Tom Kenny, who's the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants.
Rob Paulson, who's the voice of Pinky from Pinky and the Brain.
We have the voice of Batman, Spider-Man.
So many great, wonderful animation and cartoon character voices coming together.
To have a Jamboree event live simulcast at 1 p.m.
Pacific Time after the Gamers Gateway event at 12 o'clock and Yeah, I think it's it's it's a few dollars and all of the money raised is going to be donated to Ayaan Hirsi Ali's AHA Foundation She's a wonderful woman and her journey and her story is truly inspiring and profound and Yeah, we're going to have some fun.
We're going to have a few special guests.
Vandrea Romano, eight-time award winner and lifetime Annie Award Achievement winner, casting director and voice director.
And it's kind of a big kick-off event to a series of the Voices in My Head events.
Covid and lockdown and having to physically distance Brett has been very challenging for so many people.
And the fans of video games and cartoons would come together once a year for an event called Comic-Con.
So I think what we're going to do with The Voices in My Head is have a regular event where we can focus on a particular area of the entertainment business in cartoons, video games and animation.
and have owners of big video game companies and talk about how to create a video game and how to run a video game company and then have casting directors and voice directors and then maybe branch out from there.
So long-winded answer.
That's the short term on the events for Saturday And the big, big event is the respondent on August 16th, where I speak to and have on as my special guest an evolutionary biologist by the name of Brett Weinstein.
Well, excellent.
I'm certainly looking forward to that.
So, okay, we've got the Respondent.
The book will be out on Thanksgiving.
I have to say, I also hold Thanksgiving in special regard because it's the one holiday that hasn't been successfully commodified yet, so it's a great choice.
I must say I'm a little disturbed.
Buried in what you said is the implication that the character of SpongeBob SquarePants is not voiced by an actual sponge, which I assume is some kind of species appropriation.
I won't let you down.
I remember taking my son, my eldest boy Charlie, to Nickelodeon Studios when they were recording, and he was six at the time, and all of the cast were in the booth.
And he looked up at the video that was playing.
He looked in the studio at Tom Kenny and Clancy Brown and all of the other actors.
And then Tom Kenny came out and did the voice and he couldn't quite make the connection.
But it is one of the joys of being in the entertainment business and the gift of being able to do these cartoons.
I remember going on field trips.
There were some of my greatest moments with both my boys when they were in kindergarten and first, second, third grade, was going on those school field trips, sitting at the back of the bus and then saying, OK, who do you want to speak to today?
And they go, Ben 10 or Spider-Man.
Or then it was SpongeBob and just picking up the phone and passing it around and them having conversation.
So, yes, simple answer, Brett.
SpongeBob is not a sponge.
He's not a sponge.
Mr. Krabs is not an actual crustacean.
Wow!
It's an invitation to cancellation, if anything is.
Well, you're welcome to come and join the event and we'll be doing an improv live flow with bringing all of those characters together in one kind of virtual improvised cartoon performance in place and get to see the people behind, you know, the faces.
And they're truly, I can't tell you, the community of voiceover, cartoon animation voiceover is very special.
There is something very connective about our community and how brilliantly genius these voice actors are.
And we don't know, most people don't know their names.
They know their voices and their cartoon faces or animated faces.
So I'm excited about that event.
Well, that's an undeniably cool setup.
I bet it's great.
And anyway, is it recorded?
I think it's going to be recorded, yeah.
I think it will go out live stream on, it's hosted I think by ThinkSpot.
And Facebook will live stream on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube.
And there's this new platform, I don't really know, I'm a little old, long in the tooth, called Twitch.
Which is a video game platform, so apparently The Voices in My Head being an animated cartoon video game show, and we have 13 episodes.
Actually, 17.
I've done three video episodes.
That's a good platform to have it on there, so it's gonna be on there as well.
Cool.
Available in multiple venues.
Excellent.
All right, well, Greg Ellis, it's been a real pleasure.
So people can find you on The Respondent on YouTube.
They can find you, your real Greg Ellis, on Twitter.
Yeah, they can find me, RealGregEllis, on Twitter.
RealGregEllis.com is my official website where much of my special content lives.
And ThinkSpot.com slash Greg Ellis as well.
And yeah, Instagram, the usual platforms.
Social media, and I'll try and not say anti-social media.
Yeah, that would be appropriate for sure.
All right.
Well, thanks so much.
And for all of you listening at home or in your cars or jogging around, thanks for joining us.
