Justin Wren, a former MMA fighter turned activist, joins Joe Rogan to expose Congo’s Pygmy enslavement by Bantu tribes, where 120 were freed and given land/wells. He links deforestation—losing Texas-sized forests—to rebel mining of coltan, forcing Pygmies into bondage. Wren’s sobriety and Christian-inspired purpose shift led him to combat the "African Holocaust," with 5-7M deaths and 400K+ rapes in 2012, funding liberation via Indiegogo ($200K–$250K goal) while preserving rainforests and wildlife without imposing faith. [Automatically generated summary]
And for folks who haven't seen it, there's a video that Justin did that's gone viral, and this has really brought a lot of attention to your cause and what you're doing.
There's a video of you with these young pygmy children.
Is this the first time they're seeing a white man?
To preface the video, this is actually not the pygmies, the video.
It's actually the bantu.
And the Bantu are the tribe that's actually enslaving the pygmies.
And so it was, yeah, it was around some of the pygmies, but this was the least remote location.
Like you'll see that there wasn't many trees.
Where I went was 85 kilometers deep in the jungle where you couldn't even see the sky because the canopy of the rainforest is so tall.
And so this was the Bantu people.
And the Bantu people are the ones that enslaved them.
It was actually a gift because that video to me is a real gift.
It shows me, even though I hated their parents, you can't even see that in the video, that I actually just had a hatred in my heart towards the parents of these kids.
But yeah, so that was brutal because on the UG also I posted a video or actually a thread about how I buried a one-and-a-half-year-old in the Congo.
And his name was Andybo.
And so this video that's playing right now, you can't even tell that their parents are responsible for the Grave that I dug, I think, two days before that video.
And forcing people, what's really crazy is forcing people to work in the mines to create the very things that we need to power our most technologically advanced pieces of electronics, like these laptops.
The warlords and the whole system that they've got going on down there.
It's so bizarre to look at, you know, United States of America here in 2013, how everything is, and then realize there's another part of the world that exists in the same time that is essentially living the way people lived thousands of years ago.
It's pretty tiny, but in it, it has all these things that are almost like a pygmy tally mark.
And it's all up and down the top of the bow and the bottom of the bow on the inside.
And it's all the kills that he has of certain types of antelope.
And he gave me the, I think I have like 10 arrows, 5 with like the metal on it, and then 4 that are just straight wood that are sharpened and they have this like circular thing around the tip of it.
And I thought the ones that are metal would be the ones for the antelope because they look like they do more damage.
But it's actually the ones that don't have the metal on it.
That are just carved out of the wood that are the ones that go after the antelope because they dip the tips of them in poison.
And so it's poison dipped arrows and those are the ones that go after the biggest ones.
And the metal ones are more for like monkeys and small little pigs and things like that.
Well, it depends on if it was raining, the rainforest, and then if the wind is blowing.
I actually have pictures of, I think, like the widows and orphans that lived in one hut together where just in the middle of the night, it didn't even rain that night, but the wind blew and their whole roof came off.
And so they have to go get the leaves again and place them over, banana leaves and different, like those big elephant-looking ear leaves.
No, they're actually basically, if they come to a city at all, yeah, there we go.
That would be home sweet home for a full year.
That's the kind of villages that I'm staying in.
And if you look in there, I think on top of one of those huts, there's like a few clothes.
And if a pygmy's had clothes, they've been a slave.
So there's basically the only pygmy's that are there.
Yeah, so there's some of the clothes.
So obviously these ones have been slaves.
And most of the ones I've ever been to have been slaves.
There's only been like one village I've been to where they were so remote that they still...
Weren't enslaved and they could be hunters and gatherers.
But the deforestation with the trees falling that you could drive two Mack trucks through, those are scaring all the animals away to where they basically can no longer live like hunters and gatherers because the animals just flee from all the trees falling.
It's loggers, but it's also the guys that are like the Bantu, the slave masters.
They can get the pygmies, their slaves, to go cut these trees down.
And to pygmies, trees are holy.
They believe that the ancestors of their, yeah, their ancestors live inside the trees, become trees, and they bury their dead inside, holes inside of trees.
They find an opening in it, they'll put their dead there.
And so they're having to cut down what they've lived in for thousands of years.
And then the rainforest preservationists and wildlife conservationists, they push them out.
They'll buy up the land, and they'll say pygmies aren't good for this, and they'll kick them off the land.
And they'll buy up thousands and thousands of acres.
Yeah, I've heard from my family members in the pygmy tribe.
And when I say this, like, literally, I have pygmy family that are more family to me than some of my family here in the U.S. Like that one crazy cousin who gets drunk and grabs your dick?
Yeah.
For sure, yeah.
There's some pygmies I just love, man, that I love.
Do you speak their language?
I don't speak the language yet.
I speak some of it, man, but not a lot.
And during that year there, for my birthday coming up, I'm going to get Rosetta Stone, I think.
I've actually seen the mane of the lion that it killed.
The head warrior, you know, gave me my name, which is Mzungu Simba Masai Maran, and that means the white lion, Masai warrior.
So I'm a part of the warrior class of the Masai, and whenever the wind blows with them in those big gauges, they'll just twist their earlobes and then wrap them around the top of their ear.
So it looks really funny, but that's just on a windy day.
We took some balloons over there to see if the kids would like it.
And to be honest, the Warriors liked the balloons better than anything because we'd blow up those balloons and just tie them, throw them on the ground.
And then the different Warriors would stock the balloons almost on every time, almost the first throw every single time they nailed it.
And so they do that and they just kind of like circle each other and they just do that amongst the warrior class, just almost like a ranking system of sorts.
I saw the one and because I'm trying to learn from those guys some survival stuff, which the Pygmies know more than anybody, but...
While I'm here, you know, learning from that show, and they did like the swamps of like Louisiana or something, and there's all these water moccasins and all this stuff, and he's barefoot in there.
See, I thought about it and they believe trees and snakes are their ancestors.
And so even though they killed the snake, if it's a python, they won't kill it.
They won't kill a python.
They'll drag it to where it's safe.
The only python I've heard of them killing was whenever they Had gone fishing and then they had it almost on like a stringer of sorts and then a big python came by and took their fish and then the guy was so mad he killed that python.
But the pygmies were mad at him for killing a python.
Because they aren't poisonous, but the black mambas, they know how dangerous they are.
I think it's like 20-30 minutes and you're gone and those things can get up to like 8 or 10 feet long and they're the fastest snake in the world and they're one of the most venomous.
So the fastest, most aggressive, one of the longest and so it just seems like Congo, man, like everything, there's some of the most beautiful places in the world.
I mean the mountains covered...
On the equator, covered with, I mean, the most gorgeous trees, silverback gorillas.
I mean, just some beautiful stuff there, but there's some dangerous stuff.
I got a video of hippos and crocodiles all in the same waterhole, and the hippos are like swimming right next to the crocodiles, and they don't give a fuck about the crocodiles.
I heard lots of different stuff, and normally they open up around the campfire at night.
I would have to pretend sometimes to go to sleep for the Bantu slave masters or the kids to leave.
And so Shalom University calls it Campfire University for the Pygmies because they'll open up and they'll be real around the campfire.
And they'll actually, because if I ask them in front of I had a chief of the Bantu come to me and welcome me.
Well, first he was like, what do you want with my people?
What do you want with my property?
And then I told him I was just there to learn.
I was with the university.
We're there learning, doing research, and just here to help and benefit.
And then he gave me an egg and told me he had a gift for me.
And so he gave me just one single egg.
It wasn't until, and I was so grateful and thankful because, you know, he gave me a gift and I was going to be able to eat it and everything else.
And as I'm cooking it and the pygmies are helping me cook it, and after I eat it, they finally tell me around the campfire, after I had pretended to go to sleep and then got up to come back around the campfire to talk for hours until we fall asleep around the campfire.
They finally told me that the egg they gave me wasn't the Bantu chiefs.
It was the pygmy chiefs.
And the pygmy chief had saved that to give to me because he heard that a visitor was coming.
And so the Bantu chief like just, you know, took his gift, completely stole it and acted like it was his.
And really it was the pygmy chief.
And he was giving me everything that he had to give me because that's food for them.
Like food's their livelihood.
And that was a clean source of food.
And so, yeah, it's just it's pretty messed up how they treat them.
Well, the pygmies used to never have to depend on the Bantu.
So this is why, I mean, on the UG, some people have really been...
They're really interested and they've been trying to find out what kind of slavery there is.
And the slaves that we've been able to set free, they weren't in shackles and they weren't held to gunpoint.
Like, I don't know how to do that with the rebels yet.
Maybe in the year I'm there, I can befriend them.
Like, I had to befriend the slave masters so they would want to learn and stuff.
And so with the Bantu people, we just had to sit there and say like, hey, you know, these are people.
Like, I'm an educated guy from the United States.
I'm not really that educated, but the Shalom University guys, those four guys I'm with, two have master's degrees and two have doctorates.
So they're really educated and they're the ones leading the university.
So I'm like, these guys are knowledgeable and And I came from the US. These are actually people, like fully human beings.
And the Bantu eyes will get big, like, what?
And then they'll see us treating them like humans, treating them like they have value, treating them like they should be treated.
And so it starts to change some of the things.
And the pygmies are more slave to the Bantu through circumstance.
They used to not depend on them.
They used to be hunters and gatherers and not have to worry about it.
But whenever I can see the sun at times, And it sounds like this earth quaking thunder going on all throughout the day, thunder going on, but I see the sun.
It's not raining on me.
I'm like, why is there thunder?
And then we finally get close enough to where we see some of the deforestation going on.
And these are trees that you could drive two Mack trucks through, you know, and they're cutting these trees down.
And whenever those things fall, it sounds like thunder.
And so the animals just flee.
I mean, and I think last I heard, and I don't know that it's scientific, maybe someone can find it.
But I think they said that the deforestation in the Congo, the second largest rainforest in the world, is up to the size of Texas or over Texas in the last like 15, 20 years.
And see, that is why the rainforest conservationists, the wildlife preservationists are getting involved in ways that they're trying to buy up that land and protect it.
And I agree with that.
That's why I feel like what Shalom's wanting to do and what I'm wanting to partner with him, it's an all-encompassing thing where it's like human slave liberation and It's rainforest preservation and wildlife conservation.
Other things that they're using it for is charcoal.
See, in the Congo, since they don't have electric plants and things like that, they have to cook.
For them to cook, if they burn up wood, it's not as long-lasting or as hot as charcoal.
So I have a picture of a woman that was a slave for charcoal and her slave master put this bag of maybe 120 pounds minimum.
I mean the bag of charcoal was taller than she was.
I mean a pygmy woman is small.
I don't know if you can pull up the one Chaibu Siku, the picture that says Chaibu Siku.
But I mean these are small people and they're carrying bags of charcoal where two slave masters put it on their back.
Tie a rope around their head and this woman having to walk four or five kilometers On these little paths carrying this charcoal, and they'll cut down the trees to make charcoal.
They'll cut them down, and they'll start a fire, but they'll put dirt over the fire, and it smolders.
I don't know if it's a week-long process or a few-day-long process, but it makes it just long-burning.
And so that's how most people cook in the Congo and in Rwanda and in Uganda and in Burundi.
And those places will get charcoal from the Congo jungle because there's so much wood, they don't even think about it.
So these poor people that are just recently slaved, these poor people, these poor pygmies, before that, they were able to hunt and gather, they were able to do everything.
I mean, there was times that I've gotten sick to my stomach hearing the stories that have happened to them.
And that's what I was saying.
They would go hunt and then they would come to the edge of the forest where the Bantu are.
And the Bantu grow corn, grow beans, and they would basically want some side dishes to go with their meat.
And so they would trade sometimes like the wild plants that they would gather and they would come and trade their either bushmeat or their hunted animals and their different kinds like mushrooms and stuff.
And they'd trade it with the Bantu people for some corn or beans or rice or cassava leaves, which they can make ugali out of.
It's a kind of paste-like thing that takes on the flavor of the meat.
And they had a trading relationship.
Sometimes Bantu would go find the pygmies because they wanted some meat.
And they weren't the best shepherds.
And so they could grow the corn and beans, but they wanted some meat.
And so that's how the relationship started.
And then they started to get exploited.
Whenever they could no longer hunt like they really can, the animals started fleeing.
And the wildlife conservationists and rainforest preservationists are trying to push them towards the road.
They made a bunch of promises.
I mean, a lot of these NGOs...
That had their special interest would promise the pygmies, if you go off this deep forest, if you let us have this, we'll take care of you whenever you're closer to the road.
We'll make sure you're taken care of.
And then they just never took care of them.
And then the Bantu buy up the land from underneath them and then enslave them and say, you're on our land, you work it.
Well, I've been to more than nine, but the last time I went, I went to nine different tribes of pygmies, nine villages.
Each one of them had never seen a white dude before, so that scares them.
I mean, there would be times that it would take an hour, maybe even sometimes a little over an hour, before someone in that tribe, most of the time it was always women or children, that would finally come up to me and touch me to make sure they don't go through me like I was a spirit or a ghost of some sort.
And then once one person felt me and I'd play a game with them or something like that, then more would I mean, literally come out from hiding behind trees, come out from the forest.
Whenever I come in, sometimes they would flee, run, cry.
Kids like flailing on the ground, like just freaked out by me.
But whenever I'd make friends with them, then they would ask me one thing.
Every place that I went in all nine tribes, they asked me, will I help them have a voice?
That was the thing.
They're like, we have no voice here.
They're the only tribe not allowed to have their citizenship.
You've gone from being on the house in The Ultimate Fighter, competing in the heavyweight version of the show, to now living in a grass hut in the Congo.
I mean, especially with this video going viral and with yesterday, us talking about a book deal.
And today I went out to lunch with a publicist that really worked on the blind side.
The movie Invincible, and I forget some other big-time blockbusters that he worked on, but I mean, people are saying that this is a kind of crazy story, and the whole thing is that- It's a Sandra Bullock movie, man!
The last year and a half, man, I've honestly felt like I was just a nut.
Well, not a nut.
I knew it was right, but I felt like a lone nut.
Like everybody, people would be like, oh, that's really good, but why don't you go back to fighting?
I mean, I've won my last three fights, and then I took some time off to go see the world and see what people I could fight for.
And I couldn't find anyone better to fight for than the Pygmies, because they're the worst off-people group on the planet.
Yeah.
But yeah, man, it's been a crazy journey, you know, from people, family, from close friends, all saying I'm an idiot for giving up fighting and I could actually do it well.
And at Grudge Training Center, going from being invited there after the Ultimate Fighter to then being kicked off of it when I was a drug addict to then being invited back onto it.
Uh, and then, um, me saying, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna leave and go, go here.
And then them being like, what are you doing?
You know, uh, my coach Trevor Whitman, he's awesome.
I love that dude.
It's very, very good coach.
Bro, he's one of the best guys I know as a person too.
He's just incredible.
Him and his wife, a big giving hearts.
And we, uh, we set up three different hospital visits for the, for grudge fight team.
I was an official volunteer at the, uh, Denver Children's Hospital.
So we went there three different times as an official, like whole team, uh, And so that was great.
That was how I started showing them, hey, I've really made a life change here.
I'm no longer the drug addict that was coming in here.
And, I mean, actually a depressed drunk drug addict.
I tried to take my own life, all this different stuff.
I had three different doctors that would give me scripts, and I had one doctor that would give me a hundred at a time, and I could go to all three of them.
I don't remember two to two and a half months of my life.
There's no memories, except for there's one hazy memory.
It was from my best friend at the time, and we're building that relationship back.
My best friend at the time, the guy that got me into fighting, my first fight was because he was in the hospital, and he couldn't make it to the fight.
He had a staph infection where they almost thought he was going to lose his leg.
They literally thought, we might have to take his leg.
It was deep into his leg.
They thought it might have been in his femur bone.
Oh, my God.
So he was laid up, man.
And then I went to the promoter, told him he's out.
Then the guy started talking trash.
He just ended up in the hospital one day early.
And the promoter had watched me wrestle.
It was in Oklahoma.
And so he knew my high school wrestling coaches, who were both two Olympic gold medalists, both wrestled at Oklahoma State, were national champions there, Kenny Monday and Kendall Cross.
And then I just remember hanging up and going straight back to the drugs.
And so I had my medical marijuana license for three years, which I'm cool with people having that, but I went with...
I would always piggyback everything.
The reason Grudge voted me off the team was I started waking up and fixing my steel-cut oats, fixing my egg whites, getting my berries, putting in the steel-cut oats, fixing all that, but then starting on my vaporizer before practice and then hitting...
The pain pills and then starting with washing it down with hard liquor, man.
And so then I'd go train and they knew it.
They knew I was sweated out, out of my pore was coming liquor.
They knew that, I mean...
How would you train like that?
Bro, I don't know.
I mean, I was going through a literal, when I say depression, I mean like the darkest, deepest, most desperate time of my life.
A lot of different things that didn't make sense to me.
I grew up at 13 years old.
I was heavily bullied.
That's when I found the UFC. 13, I sat at the lunch table by myself, had people throw stuff at me.
I was invited to my middle school crush's birthday party, and it was a costume party.
I got the invitation.
I'm like, no way.
Costume party wins a prize.
And I remember her dad worked for Dr. Pepper, and she loved Transformers, so I came to the party as a Dr. Pepper Transformer, like with the Dr. Pepper cardboard and made out of duct tape and Dr. Pepper boxes.
I got there, and I was 30 minutes late.
Everyone was pointing, laughing, calling me an idiot.
That was whenever I was probably, I guess, maybe in the first fight of my life, was suicidal thoughts because they were like, you're so worthless.
Oh, there's no cell phones, so I walked and I got to Dairy Queen.
I lived in the country, so they call that the Texas stop sign, Dairy Queen.
And so I went to Dairy Queen, and I think I remember one of the employees Coming out to throw away trash and I'm like sitting there behind the Dairy Queen right in between kind of the dumpster And then they're like, what's going on?
And I was just sobbing.
And then I went inside and called my mom.
She wasn't there for a little bit.
I had to sit in there.
They asked what was going on.
Anyways, that was a big left turn.
But that's when I found the UFC. And I thought, maybe a few weeks after that.
And I thought, these guys don't get bullied.
These guys are like modern day gladiators.
And I was mesmerized by the sport of it.
Because I love sports.
And I always played sports growing up.
But this was multiple sports put in one.
And I'm like, man, if I could just become one of those guys, I'll have all the passion, the purpose, the significance, the...
I'll never be this dude that I am right now.
And I'll be the exact opposite.
And so I set out for that and started at 15, started wrestling under two Olympic gold medalists, 17, won my first national championship.
18, was living back and forth with the Olympic Training Center.
19, started fighting professionally.
21, I was on the Ultimate Fighter.
22, fighting.
23, it was main event at the Hard Rock in another promotion.
And I think every time I got my hand raised, and it got worse as this drug problem got on, but...
I stopped looking forward to even the victories of fighting and started looking forward to the parties after the fight.
And then I started thinking like, I don't know, every time I get my hand raised, if you can find a picture of me or a video of me smiling after a fight, that would be the first for me because I don't think I smiled after any of them.
I was always looking towards the next one.
You know, most guys jumping up, smiling, screaming.
I already felt empty enough, I guess, with some of the victories.
And I think whenever it got real bad was after that Roy Nelson fight on The Ultimate Fighter...
And Dana and Rampage and Rashad and Coach T and basically everybody except Roy was telling me that I won or that it should have gone to a third round at least.
Because I think one judge thought I won, two thought he won, and it was a split.
And we only went two rounds.
And for me, this was my dream.
And so whenever that was taken from me, I felt like it was taken in a wrong way.
Then what really got bad was after the Madsen fight, I lost a split decision again.
I remember, I bet my mom would confirm it, but whenever this happened, I was 18, and I was living at the Olympic Training Center, and I wrestled against a world champion.
I didn't give up a point.
It was kind of like I could have given up a point.
It would have been similar to, I could have tapped or let it snap, but I just didn't want to give up a point, so I let my arm snap.
Anyways, I probably took at least a month worth of the oxycodones in a week.
A guy maybe took me down, and once he's on your back, he goes to...
Do a gut wrench.
He wraps around your ribs and he starts to crank down with his shoulder on the back of your shoulder blades.
You're trying to fight it so your back doesn't break 90. If it breaks 90 degrees and your back angles towards the mat, the guy gets two points or maybe one point sometimes.
But I didn't want to have my back break 90 to where he get any points.
So I just let it keep fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting.
And I tried to do this hop thing.
And whenever I went to do the hop, that's whenever all his weight came down on it.
Super experienced guy.
He was like 33, 34. And I was 18 at the Olympic Training Center.
He was a world champion, Olympic bronze or silver medalist.
And it just snapped.
And whenever it snapped, it went completely behind my back.
One of my buddies at the Olympic Training Center puked because of it.
So I was laying on it completely behind my back.
Like if I was on the mat right now, it was completely behind my back.
Except it was this way.
Oh my god.
This whole part of my arm, it was wicked, this whole part of my arm was under my back.
So it broke it, it dislocated it, and it tore the ulnar collateral ligament.
So they did a nerve transposition, so I have no more funny bone.
They moved it to where it's right here.
So if I talk on the phone too long, these three fingers go numb.
I had some family friends and a guy that was like a second dad to me and his kids are some of my best friends.
And Jeff was kind of in that core group.
But he had heard through the grapevine that my mom had come and checked on me during that two and a half period period.
And I think my dad might have came, but she had broken into my house that was in Colorado.
Not broken in, but she just was able to get through the back door, saw the drugs, saw the pills, saw how I was living, and it looked like hoarders or just filthy.
And so she knew that he might be the one guy that could get to me and get through to me.
And so he called me every single day for two months.
I mean, called me, left me a voicemail, text me, and emailed me.
And was pissing me off, man.
I was getting livid with him.
Wow.
And then whenever I got kicked off a grudge, I got out to my phone and got out to my car.
I was like in angry tears.
I didn't know what to do.
Because I was living my dream, but it was a nightmare.
And my dream was reality, but it was literally a nightmare.
And whenever I got to my car, I had a text message, voicemail, all this sort of stuff.
Didn't want to hear from them.
But the text message said, this was when your iPhone, it didn't just say text message on it.
It would say like the actual message.
And on the actual message on the screen, it said, check your email.
Checked my email.
The very first thing said, game plan for victory.
And then whenever I opened it up, it said, the best thing you'll ever do in your life.
And it was a trip that was paid for.
And I thought it was maybe like a detox kind of thing or a rehab or something like that.
So I was interested and I just got kicked off a grudge.
I think Trevor was the only guy, maybe Brendan, No, I think there was like 30 guys or something.
They got there early to vote on the day of sparring to vote if I stay a part of the team because some of the guys had had it with me.
And Coach T brought me into his office and he said, bro, we can't have our name attached to you anymore.
I'm the only guy that wants you still a part.
I could veto it maybe.
I'm the head coach.
I'm not going to go against the guys.
And grudge is unique, man, because grudge is a family.
I think for Elliot Marshall, we threw a surprise baby shower for him.
I mean, in fighters, throwing a baby shower for a fighter, that's just not normal.
And a lot of...
Fight gyms or they're a bunch of gym hoppers and a bunch of selfish dudes and they're never going to give the coach the money or they're never going to they're gonna try and knock out their training partners like we we just worked like a had cookouts together all this different stuff but I was the one guy that was the that was the problem and they voted me off and so man I was just I was empty I felt like man now my dream is Or my nightmare, but my dream.
You know, I know that you've gone through some growth as a human, as a man, some spiritual development and character building and all that, but I can't help but be terrified at how smart you are and how together and passionate you are, but yet you still got hooked by these fucking pills.
Those goddamn things scare the shit out of me.
And I know you were a younger man at the time, and you didn't have the life experiences you have now, but you're not a loser.
So the fact that you got just sucked up into it like that, it's so terrifying to me.
Because Florida had these things called pain management centers where you would go to a doctor and the doctor would say, what's wrong?
I hurt my back.
Well, you need a prescription for pain pills.
So the doctor writes it.
In the same facility, right next to the doctor's door, the next door is the pharmacy that only sells OxyContin.
You go in there and you buy pain pills.
And they have these fucking...
Pain management centers, and they're all over the place.
So you essentially have these OxyContin addicts waiting in line at all these parking lots to get into these places, and the places were filled with poor people that were just hooked on these goddamn pills.
It's so amazing how many guys, I have a bulging disc now in my neck, and it's amazing talking to how many guys, talking to people, asking, How many guys also have the same injury or similar injuries or in their lower back or in their middle back?
Man, that's terrifying shit, but for a lot of people out there that might be struggling with that very problem right now listening to this, hearing you, that you were able to pull yourself out of it, I guarantee you, you can inspire people to do the same.
And they can realize, they can listen to you and go, I want to be that guy.
I don't want to be this guy that I'm now, a slave to this bottle of pills that I have to figure out how to get every week.
And it was, they kind of donated this ranch to be for all walks of life, kind of all beliefs and for people to come there.
And, uh, it was a vision of this one guy that, that wants to just, uh, have a place where people's lives can be changed and stuff.
And man, there's these, there's like 20, 30 guys that said that they are not that said, but they, they literally went to war for me and my, and my life and told me how to life worth living.
And it was, it was awkward, kind of not awkward, but just right at first, I was like, what's up here?
This is crazy.
Um, but for me, I had a, I had a radical change, man.
It wasn't a, it wasn't a, It wasn't a slow process.
It was like I finally realized I have a life worth living.
And my life can be for a bigger purpose than myself, than getting what I want when I want it.
I can make a contribution to this planet, to this world, to people.
I cannot just fight against people.
I can fight for people.
And that's what it was demonstrated in front of me at this retreat.
And I'm not, man, I have my own personal beliefs.
Everyone does, man.
But this was a Christian retreat.
And for me, it changed my life, man.
Because these men weren't like, because bro, if you want to go into some jacked up religious background, I got it.
I've got a jacked up religious background.
I have family that says, I mean, just crazy stuff.
Like you have instruments in your music, you go to hell.
If you have tattoos, you go to hell.
I'm the only tattooed guy in my family.
And I have a whole back piece and all this stuff.
And I had another one where...
So they're super legalistic and rules.
And this other one, when I'm 13 years old, I left a church camp, the only church camp I ever went to.
I left a church camp with bruises on my neck because they tried to cast demons out of me.
And then I went to Catholic school and had a background where the parents were throwing keg parties for us.
And then I went there in this place, in this retreat, and I told the guy, bro, I don't need...
Anything Christian.
Bro, I don't need it.
I don't want it.
I know your type.
If I sit around a campfire and I hold hands with a bunch of sissies, punks and sissies, and sing Kumbaya, what is that going to do for me?
I need a real answer.
I need some real hope.
And man, the guy gave me an answer where it was like, you know, real people with real problems could really use a real God.
And for me, that just kind of struck a chord.
He told me that if you...
And again, this is my beliefs and stuff, so I'm not throwing anything out there on anybody.
But he told me, and it made sense to me, you've experienced the counterfeit.
And for counterfeit to mean anything, there's got to be an authentic...
And he told me if there's going to be a Folex watch made, a fake Rolex, there's got to be a Rolex.
And you've been around the fake stuff.
You've been around the Folexes.
You felt the weight of them and they broke on you.
You've seen it and you sometimes got to get close enough to where it ticks or it has a smooth transition.
Other times, you've got to actually hold it because there's that smooth transition on the Rolex instead of ticking.
Other ones are so tricky, you've actually got to feel the weight of it.
I think for a lot of people who are atheists, they hear this kind of talk, one of the things that comes to mind is they're going, like, where is this God you're talking about?
Where is this evidence?
To put it into the way I kind of look at it, like, a lot of people have thought, for whatever reason, that I don't believe in God or that I'm anti-God or that I'm an atheist.
I would not classify myself in any way, shape, or form.
I definitely don't think that I'm an atheist, because I don't not believe in God.
But what I think is that when someone can tune into the genuine intentions of the best aspects of any religion, whether it's Christianity, whether it's Hinduism, whether it's...
And generosity and fellowship and moving towards good and bringing people together with happiness rather than moving towards bad.
And what you've done in your life, you can call it God, you can call it anything, but what you've done in your life is recognize the worst possible aspects, the chemical addiction, the depression, the sadness, the failure, all the self-sabotage, And then realize, there's another way to do this.
I've hit the worst possible frequency, and I've also kind of barely been able to tune into this great frequency.
Well, what is this?
Well, knowing the lows and the lowest lows, sometimes you can really sort of We extrapolate that.
There's a counter to that.
There's 180 degrees to that, just like your friend was talking about, the Folex and the Rolex.
For a lot of people that have a problem with the word God, I had this guy Alex Gray on, who's this visionary artist.
Really fascinating, fascinating guy, and he's also this psychedelic adventurer.
And he throws around the word God all the time, and he's like, you know, we kind of have to take that word back because the word God sort of has this bad...
And that's what this vision is for me with the pygmies in the Congo.
Like, a lot of people have misinterpreted it to where they've thought, oh, you're just going there to make a bunch of converts.
You should take them a sandwich instead of a bunch of converts.
If you actually looked at what I'm doing, I'm actually doing slave liberation, rainforest conservation, and wildlife preservation all wrapped into one.
Sustainable ways of life, this and that.
It does not hinge around And it does not hinge around if they become a Christian or not.
If they don't and they don't want to and they want to worship their God, do witchcraft, do all that, fine.
I'm going to love you the same way.
I feel like God has put on my heart a desire to love them.
And to love them well.
And to love them regardless of their choices that they make, just because my choice is to love them.
And it doesn't hinge around if they do what I want them to do or not.
They're my family, and so I want to see them be self-sustainable and all that other stuff.
So it's not about...
It's not about like, are they going to become converts or anything like that at all?
It's about, I'm going to love you guys and see you guys go from being slaves to being liberated, to being free, to being put on your own land, to being able to farm, to being able to produce your own corn and beans crops, which you're getting ready for their second harvest.
First time in history.
They're going to have their own school.
You're going to be educated.
Once they're educated, they can represent themselves at the Capitol.
Yeah, actually, my buddy that I brought in with me, the filmmaker, he's got a buddy that is developing this military technology that's been picked up by him, but...
And they can fly like drones and stuff like that from a briefcase.
And you take this briefcase and you take it to remote places of the world and you set up these four squares or something like that.
And inside of that, you have perfect Wi-Fi, high speed stuff.
So they're trying to see if they could get that to me because I've had zero contact while I've been there.
So I'd love to be able to Skype with people, talk to people from the jungle of the Congo.
Well, that's actually what I would love to do, is if we could get Shalom University, and it shares it at the Indiegogo page, if we could get them a research center...
On the land, and I'm talking about 1,200 acres of land, if we could get them a research center, then that would mean they have year-round students on the pygmy land, and they'd be able to develop them in different self-sustainable ways of life, crops, water wells, all this stuff.
College students would get credit to develop the pygmies in sustainable ways of life.
And so the big goal would be 200 to 250,000.
I think it's right there, and it says what it does, and it's It's some crazy stuff where, I mean, I'll read it real quick, but it's...
Yeah.
So for $200,000 to $250,000, this is with the university.
This isn't something I made up.
This is what they've been able to say.
It would literally have 3,000 to 5,000 slaves put on five square kilometers of perfect rainforest, five square kilometers of land for the $200,000 price.
But then after that, it would preserve the culture of the pygmies.
It would get water wells.
It would get nutritious crops growing.
So not just...
Not just corn and beans, but good crops.
It would have a tilapia pond that's stocked, so the corn would feed the chickens, it would also feed the tilapia, and it would feed the pygmies.
And it just is a self-sustainable way of life.
It could have earthbag home technology.
Have you ever seen those, the earthbag homes or the eco-domes?
Those things are crazy.
So today one of my buddies was over there having a meeting with him.
And they might want to support this project where if we're in the U.S., three to five men, it would only take them three to five days to build a three to five room home.
And it's under $300 in the U.S. All it is is sandbags.
Sandbags, you fill it with dirt, and you make this like Adobe that you put on the outside of it.
And so we're trying to get that technology over there to them.
Shalom University is like all on board wanting to do that.
And so really, and then they would have that university research center there where they get, and that's the thing.
I don't want this project, I don't want the pygmies to be dependent on me.
Like, if I'm only there a year, and I can only do a year's worth of stuff, I want this thing to be a well-oiled machine that it lasts long after I'm gone.
And so that way, I don't know, I want this thing to outlive me, if that makes sense.
We'll be back most likely tomorrow with Shane Smith.
We've got to work out the dates and time, but tomorrow night we do have a show at the Ice House Comedy Club, and that is at 10 p.m.
with Ian Edwards and Ari Shafir.
Thanks to Hover.com.
Go to Hover.com forward slash Rogan, and you will get 10% off your domain name registrations.
They're a very cool company, and they help support this podcast.
Thanks also to Audible.com.
If you go to Audible.com forward slash Joe, you will get free 30 days service from Audible.com and a free audiobook.
And we would recommend Nocturnal from our buddy Scott Sigler, who's just in here today.
Really cool guy.
So audible.com forward slash Joe.
Thursday night, this Thursday night, at the American Comedy Company in San Diego, California, where they just got their liquor.
So if you want to fuck your life up and go down the hard path that Justin Wren just recovered from, go down to San Diego and take shots of Jack Daniels with Mexican narcotics!
Because they're right across the border in San Diego.
I'm not telling you you should do this, but if you're going to do that, that's the place to be.
San Diego, American Comedy Company, and lots of funny comics, and it's this Thursday night.
Alright, my friends, listen, the message of this podcast could not have been better served by Justin Renn today.
You stand for everything that is good in this world, my friend, and what you're doing, I think, is a beautiful thing, and I'm honored to have you on this podcast.