The Adam and Dr. Drew Show - #1758 This is not “One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest”
Episode Date: August 23, 2023Dr. Drew and Mark Geragos are back for some more nuanced discussions, especially concerning how we deal with mental health in this country and drug addiction. Dr. Drew explains how trauma is rocket fu...el for addiction, and there’s so much more we can do for psychiatric patients that would benefit not just the individual, but all of humanity. They also contemplate paths young men can take to support healthy masculinity and their future livelihoods. Please Support Our Sponsor: Angi.com
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That's what I'm talking about i'm gonna i'm gonna have to uh send that over to gary no choice mandate get it on how is gary smith well gary
is killing it gary's working on he's got the brian and gina show um and he's working on another one
with this guy sexton who's a lawyer divorce lawyer which
is fascinating listening idea yeah very interesting yeah and I think there may be a third or fourth
Emmy may try to claim the IP on one of those so you better get in there quick I mean he's not
listening so you ended with I animated a challenge about black history and about slavery and this controversy about what the vice president said about the Florida Board of Education or Florida textbooks.
OK.
So the consternation is are you implying that slavery was good because people could learn a skill?
And it's like, no.
No one on earth.
No one.
This is the part about our current discourse that needs to stop.
Somebody misspeaks or something, go, you.
You know, this is why I love talking to you about it, because both of us are dinosaurs when it comes to the liberal arts education.
Yes.
And so.
Or what it used to be anyway.
Exactly.
What it used to be.
It's certainly not like this anymore. But when we left to go to our privileged, white privileged, small university colleges
and take liberal arts education, one of the things that I thought was a virtue that I
think you would agree was a virtue is you would study a wide variety of thought.
And whether it was philosophy or art history, sociology.
No matter how provocative, no matter how egregious.
And you would, people would have disparate opinions.
Oh, yeah.
But it wasn't, you wouldn't be able to get away with just hijacking the thought and making
it into something that it was not.
Or using, I'm so confused by the present moment.
I started reading a biography on
Lenin. And he used the strategy, he developed and advocated for the strategy of ad hominem
and just yelling people down. That was his main skill. Right. So here we are. Fight against it,
everybody. It's not okay. No, I think what this guy was trying to articulate is interesting because –
We're talking about now the black history thing.
Yeah, because what he was trying to articulate inartfully maybe and it's been completely kind of transmogrified is that there is a place for skill sets and for learning skill sets, whether it's college or a vocation or
something else. I mean, one of the arguments that, speaking of sociology, that we used to make
40 years ago is that the worst thing that happened to the U.S. in a lot of ways was not mandating,
like Israel, mandatory either military or community service for young males.
Because young males then would, at their height of when they are susceptible to kind of transgression
and their brains are still forming, you get kind of a rigorous, disciplined environment.
And—
Trevor Burrus I've been talking to people about that again,
for addicts and for alternative sentencing. I don't know how you feel
about that. I couldn't agree more
for alternative sentencing. Why
in the world, if you're just
a taxpayer,
there's whole certain classes
of crimes. And for people
who are addicts,
you've made this argument for the longest
time, and some people are coming around to its. What is, you've made this argument for the longest time,
and some people are coming around to it now.
This idea, remember when it was so popular
to have what I used to call, and you used to call,
I think I got the term from you,
30-day drive-through rehab.
Yeah, and you used to explain to me
in painstaking detail,
you've got to basically break them down,
put them back together, and it requires rigor, and it requires a long period of time. And it's a step-down approach. Much like if you were
on an IV antibiotic and a surgery, you start in the acute care, you take the IV antibiotics,
then we switch you to oral antibiotics, and then the nursing is doing the wound care. You know,
just there's a step down to everything in medicine. Same as an addiction. It takes a while,
though. It takes a while. Yeah. And so, interestingly, we don't apply that.
So I was talking to a Navy SEAL, a guy named Rami Adelike. I've had him on my podcast before. And
he was a drug addict. Well, he wasn't a drug addict. He was a drug dealer. And really going
down a bad path, he was born in Nigeria. He was born into wealth. His father got assassinated,
and he came here. And then- Is this the guy who did your show?
He did my – the Special Forces thing.
Right.
Yeah.
That's what I remember.
He's an impressive –
Oh, he's a great guy.
And I found out when I interviewed him again yesterday, he was – when he was kicking our ass, he was playing – he plays characters because he was an intelligence guy.
And he was playing a specific character and I could see it when he was talking about it.
I'm like, oh, man.
And it's funny because I could see it through it a little bit.
He impressed the hell out of me when he stepped up and started talking and I thought, that guy's got a sense of humor.
I know it.
Somewhere in there.
And I could see it.
But in any event, he got his shit together and became a Navy SEAL and it was the most important thing in his life.
And he has been advocating for that for other people.
He had two warrants. You know what the story is?
He had two warrants out for his arrest for, I mean, really crazy stuff.
He had cell phone schemes and stealing sneakers, all kinds of stuff,
and selling drugs and caught in New Jersey and New York.
And he went to this Navy SEAL office and the recruiting officer runs his stuff.
And she's like, you got two warrants out.
He gets up to run out.
And she goes, no, no, no.
Hang on a second.
Come back tomorrow.
You got a suit or a nice shirt?
Come back tomorrow.
She put on her full gear, walked him into the courtrooms in New Jersey and New York.
And it was just like six months after 9-11.
Wow.
And got dispensation, got him completely expunged to go become a Navy SEAL.
To go out.
Life-changing.
And he just said, we need to do that.
That can really help a lot of people.
It's just an interesting subject because I look at how they do it in Israel, and they do it in several other countries.
And I was more in the weeds on it 30, 40 years ago.
But whether it's military or community, you know, Peace Corps style or something like
that, or, you know, the Mormons with their mission.
You know, you can say what you want, but growing up in La Cunada when I did, where it was heavily Mormon, many of the kids who I grew up with who went on the missions, it was also life-altering for them.
I mean a second language was just something that's virtually unheard of in America, this idea of doing something outside of yourself, going someplace, going away, not having the parents hover over you.
I mean, there's just a – there's a lot of, I think, attractiveness to that.
We got to do something because we are down and out.
Well, it's – we got – there's also, going back to COVID, there is something that happened during the pandemic and the shutdown.
What do you think?
I think that there has been – I know that I'll be tarred with the Elon Musk brush.
But as he was saying, he was asking, is there an epidemic of mental health illness? I think that there was something about the pandemics and the shutdowns and the failure to learn, shutting the schools, that has caused real damage.
Oh, my God.
It's published.
Yeah, except no peer-reviewed studies in the U.S.?
No, no, multiple.
JAMA is on the record saying that we have destroyed adolescent females.
They have this one study that shows essentially a doubling in suicide. And we
already were in trouble. And then this just put it over time. And they overtly speculated that the
female needs that social peer exchange in order to develop and feel okay about themselves and to
regulate their emotions. They're explicit about that in the article. I threw that up to the board
of supervisors. You also told them.
If you didn't listen to last week's episode,
Drew just got back from Austin a week ago.
Sunday.
And speaking to 2,500
board of supes
members from across the country.
And they were quite receptive.
I ran out of time. I was having to blow
through my presentation. And I just threw the slide up from of time. I was having to blow through my presentation.
And I just threw the slide up from that article.
I pulled it right out of that article, which had been published probably three months ago.
And it was right when they asked me to speak.
I said, you know, funny thing because they wanted more on mental health because they were aware they had problems. Well, it's finally – I mean we figured out, at least some people have, this is not a housing first issue.
But then they go right to, so we're going to get counselors and social workers.
It's like, no, these are medical problems.
Why can't you use the word psychiatry?
I was yelling at them.
I go, these are psychiatric problems.
I go, do you know who gets wraparound services?
Not surgical patients, not pneumonia patients.
That term was developed for psychiatric hospitals.
Psychiatric patients need wraparound services, vocational rehab, psychological services,
social services, but the doctor must do the care first.
So it's so interesting.
I've had – in fact, I've still got one current client who fits into this.
I've had this experience where they will commit heinous acts.
But it's clear they were –
Altered state.
Altered state.
Then you come in and legally what do you do?
There's a code section, penal code section 1368.
You declare a doubt as to them.
And you can – many times they get sent to usually a Tascadero or Patton.
State what is left of the state system.
What's left of the state system.
For whatever you say about the state system, somebody who I'm ducking and is throwing bags of urine at me back in the lockup, the next time I see them, they're coherent.
Modern psychiatric care is lovely.
It's lovely.
It's like the difference.
They don't even remember.
People think that it's one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
They also think when they saw that movie, they were watching a documentary.
Right. Even then, they weren't like that.
They are supportive.
They are lovely oftentimes.
And they often have step downs that include community centers and vocational rehab and
independent living.
And this is what we do.
Well, the current system does this.
We ship them there.
And many times it's charged with murder.
And then break them out?
No.
Then the doctors say, okay, they've regained competency at the facility.
They go to trial.
They send them back to the county jail where they disintegrate in a matter of weeks.
And I'm ducking bags of urine and feces again.
And they get drugs again, too.
Yeah.
And then you declare a doubt again.
This goes on for years, for years.
And you can't get anybody to kind of get their arms around it.
Well, in the infinite wisdom of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors,
Katherine Barger had an entire plan to develop a psychiatric wing of the –
The hospital. Exactly. Not the hospital, the jail.
Right, right.
Well, she was going to take, you know what's so funny?
They've almost done it de facto, Twin Towers.
Yes, it was going to be Twin Towers.
Yeah, that's the newest facility.
If you ever drive by the county jail, there's Old County, and then the two towers are the
Twin Towers.
The sheriff, and the last four sheriffs have all said this, they've all said they run the
largest mental health institutions in the world.
And they're right.
And as I told you last time, because of the total dissolution of the healthcare system,
and lift them, go to the prisons, the jails, and the streets.
And so what does the sheriff do?
The sheriff houses the most mentally impaired people in Twin Towers.
And give them no treatment.
And give them no treatment and let deputies who have been, you know, in some cases six weeks out of the academy.
Right.
That's who you're going to give to these guys and to these women.
I mean, it's almost as if the institution has the definition of insanity itself.
We keep doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.
And in all their do-gooding at dismantling the state health care system, they have replaced
it with something worse.
Exactly.
Far worse.
And then what do we do?
We release them because in off times, the offenses for which they're picked up are very minor offenses.
They're screaming.
They're yelling.
And you may get a cop who will arrest them.
They'll go to the county.
They'll go through three days of the IRC, which is a hellhole inmate receiving center.
And then they get placed there.
And then they're bonded out or they plead to something and then they're released.
They're released right there.
Yeah.
So where do they go?
What do they do?
Exactly.
Oh, I wonder why this isn't something that's going to work.
Yeah, it's just ridiculous.
But again, they won't do it.
There was a plan to do something.
They refused.
Why do they listen to advocates?
Who are these people?
They shouldn't even have an opinion.
I know, but they've been given so much credence.
They've been given – we've invested so much into adopting that ideology that we can't
see that we're just –
They're killing.
It's murder.
It really is an institutional
murder absolutely there's seven dying a day in the streets of la county we just had another um
last week right in fentanyl alley yeah that's how could it be otherwise well and they it's a
hospital without doctors and nurses what do you expect and they come and they set up the little
tents yeah because they have so many of them a day.
It's like a quick response team.
But instead of doing the actual quick response with medical professionals, we just come –
And the medical professional is the coroner.
Come with the coroner.
Yeah.
What do they call them?
The county – what do they call them?
The medical examiner.
Yes, the medical examiner. But it's so mind-boggling to me that that is the solution.
And there's another problem here.
Maybe we should talk after this, which is how death certificates are filled out in this country, in this state.
Yeah, tell me about this because I want to get into something related to this.
And I promise I will give my little piece about black history, which I haven't finished yet.
But that will go down as natural causes.
The fentanyl death behind your office.
That will just be –
Natural causes.
Natural causes.
I don't get it.
I really don't.
I don't get it.
I mean I just – it seems to me –
You don't get it.
Well, it seems to me – I have said I was born in downtown LA.
I went to law school in downtown LA. I have practiced I was born in downtown L.A. I went to law school in downtown L.A.
I have practiced for 40 years in downtown L.A.
And I've watched this cycle that we've gone through.
And five to ten years ago, I couldn't have been more –
It was thriving.
Yeah.
I couldn't have been more excited, I guess, about an area.
It was just – things were wonderful.
And then COVID and then the zombie apocalypse and now this death march because there's no other way to describe it.
I was talking to Adam this morning and I think people are in like a – not the people on the street but the people that are making decisions and the people that are in the press and the people that are driving you and me crazy.
I think they're delusional.
I think Trump like broke their brain and they became so just beside themselves about him.
And that became – had a delusional hysteria with it.
And then COVID just anchored it.
It just cemented this delusional thinking.
it and then COVID just anchored it. It just cemented this delusional thinking. So a giant part of our peers and population can't look at the mistakes they've made because of this delusional
sort of preoccupations or this hysteria they were in. They just can't see it.
And they can't change their mind.
Right. Because if they look at it, they're going to go, oh my, what have I been thinking?
You did that with me on some of these things over the years because I
thought, I had very strong opinions about, I'll give you an example. Before you tell me,
I got to stop. I mean, I got to stop. We'll take a break. Be right back.
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All right, tell me about your strong opinions.
Okay. One of the strong opinions
I had was Prop
47, as you'll remember, which
was the one that kind of... Let's you do
drugs? Yeah, basically.
I understand that one, by the
way. Yeah. Explain
how you understood. Well, essentially
you're allowed to do drugs.
Essentially it's a misdemeanor.
You get a ticket.
And my patients, of course, tear that up. I grew up listening to my father, who was a DA, complaining bitterly about the war on drugs because he was a DA in the 60s.
I agree with him, by the way, right?
Right.
We should be encouraging, mandating, sentencing people to help.
Well, he used to give the example of the UK.
And he used to say, you know, they have a lot of functioning heroin addicts there or addicts.
That's already wrong.
Yeah, exactly.
There is no such thing as that.
And I – Because here's what they all leave out.
And this is the part you may even be leaving out.
Opiate addiction in particular
and all of these disorders are
progressive and they
end in death in all
cases essentially.
They're progressive.
Even if I'm administering
the heroin, let's say, I know
me and the nurses are going to give the heroin.
It still progresses.
This is what they all leave out.
That was the other thing I was yelling them about over the weekend.
So here was my point.
He would always hold up as an example a former client of his who had been a heroin addict.
And he would also talk – I forget the book,
but there was a book that we read during the 70s before I was a lawyer
and made the argument that the UK system worked.
Oh, okay.
What ended up happening?
The guy that he held up for 18 years who became a professor at UCLA died.
Died of an overdose.
Yeah.
And it's amazing to me almost inevitably – I used to tell this to the kids.
I have never known a heroin addict who didn't die.
Or get better.
Yeah, or get better.
That's it.
That's what happens.
It was very binary.
Now, there are intermediate steps we can do now.
We have replacement therapy.
We have medically assisted therapy.
We have buprenorphine.
Some do it with weed.
It's like I'd rather see them do that.
But you have to be managed. You can't be – and the problem is we really don't know the long-term
horizon on these replacement therapies. You've got to be aiming towards abstinence as much as
possible. Yeah, but the – what is it about the brain?
That causes the progression? Yeah, that causes the progression,
especially with that, with that particular class. It seems like it shouldn't happen, right? Let's say if I administer the opiates, shouldn't things get better?
No.
It has something to do with the disturbances of the frontal lobe that deteriorates further.
So judgment and thinking, all that starts to go out the window.
The singular focus on the pursuit of the drug takes over everything.
To the point where nothing else matters.
Including dying.
Yeah.
And so they take huge risks.
And there is something about the reward system where it kind of needs more over time.
That's the part that I think really –
So I was thinking about that.
And then so many people I know, I don't know about you,
how many people do you know that are on Mount Monjorno or Ozempic?
Oh, it's a lot.
Yeah, I mean it's –
I have prescribed it.
Yeah, it's –
Rarely, but I have.
It's – so far, people that I know, it's worked.
But you know, the interesting thing that they're exploring, people who –
Oh, for drugs.
Yeah. Because it seems to affect – well, not the majority, the other one. I forget the name of it. Yeah, who – Oh, for drugs. Yeah.
Because it seems to affect – well, not the Majora, the other one.
I forget the name of it.
Yeah, Ozempic.
The combo.
Yeah.
No, I'm sorry.
It's Majora.
There's another, the third one.
But Majora, not Ozempic, that hits the brain.
Yeah.
And what is that?
It seems to block the reward system a little bit.
Yeah.
And so they have no – in fact, somebody who will remain nameless who I'm close to
said, you know, the best part about being skinny was I like to go drink.
This is – now I'm skinny and I don't want to drink.
It blocks it, yeah.
And so how much – we had to campersate forever too, which is kind of the same thing but not really in a sustained way.
These things, they tend to work for a while and not long term.
But yes, there's hope there too.
Yeah, and it works on the brain.
That one does.
Majaro does.
The other one works on the stomach.
And they both work on the stomach.
Then Majaro hits the brain's essentially hunger and reward system.
Do you remember the old days when they would sentence people to ant abuse?
Do you remember?
You're old enough to.
Oh, no.
We still.
I don't.
Because guess what happens if somebody wants to drink?
Yeah.
They don't take their fucking antabuse.
Or they drink on it and they die because it's dangerous.
The antabuse principle was to just make your body violently react.
Right.
It was at its core, if you have a sufficient risk, you won't take it.
Because even when they got sick drinking on antabuse, they would do that again.
They would do it again.
So it was kind of a Pavlov's dog.
It was just that you're really not going at the problem.
But these new ones, which also go at the problem, and it also is linked to insulin.
Is it not?
Isn't there an insulin relationship?
Yes.
But you're now getting into very rarefied air in terms of the hunger mechanisms.
Just know that they are activating this.
There's a final common pathway in our brain called the medial forebrain bundle.
It's fundamentally –
What is it?
What's it called?
Medial forebrain bundle.
OK.
Fundamentally, it's the ventral tegmental cells input into something called the nucleus
accumbens.
And the firing rate of those ventral tegmental cells seem to adjust the nucleus accumbens
output.
And it is literally the do it again part of the brain.
And it is literally the survival system.
It's literally the part that says do that again because it's good for survival.
But it gets hijacked by these chemicals just to do that again.
So what is it to create a new pathway?
Well, so in terms of if somebody is in recovery, it settles.
It settles.
And your frontal lobe starts to kick in.
You develop other ways of regulating emotions other than kicking into a drug.
And if you go back, it's right there.
It's waiting for you.
So you can trigger it again.
It's waiting.
It's right.
That's what the people in recovery will tell you.
It's been doing push-ups the whole time.
It's right there for you.
It seems to be some –
Some doing push-ups.
Yeah.
So is that why there seems to be an escalation sometimes when somebody drops off?
Yes and no.
What you're saying is sometimes when they go back, they go back harder.
Yeah.
And that does happen.
God, I see it.
I see it.
In my line of work, I see it all too often.
I don't know what really to make of that because I can't say the biology necessarily does that yet.
But in the recovering community, they will say that.
They will say that's what's happening, that it's just the disease progresses.
The reason I bring that up, I have a client who unfortunately
passed away just in the last week
and
it's tragic because
I'd gotten him a lot of money
and he'd waited around for years
and then the
deterioration after the money
was... Well, interesting.
There's a case in the public right
now where that is fundamentally what's happening to poor Hunter Biden.
And given the fact that he seems to be free and clear of consequence, my prediction is very high risk for death.
Very high, right?
Yeah, it's awful to hear because he's – people are always kind of ragging on him.
But I was making the argument the other day.
He's sick.
This is somebody who at four or five years old, his earliest memory was losing his mom and his sister in a tragic accident.
I mean you don't have – I mean that's your earliest memory.
Then trauma –
Trauma is one of the underlying rocket fuels for addiction.
Yeah.
And then you've got – he becomes incredibly close to kind of his protector, his brother
Bo.
He dies.
And then he dies.
Yes.
I mean, you know what?
I mean, people can cast stones and anything else and I just think he has overcome so much
that –
He's not.
He's not overcome it.
He's been taken down by it. He's been taken down by it.
He's been taken down by it.
And then if you add the biology of addiction into it, oh, my God.
That's a power – it's unresolved grief.
It's childhood trauma and now it's addiction and sex addiction too.
Throw it all in there.
And it's like, holy shit, if I shut the door and talked to that person,
I would be so sympathetic.
I would be so overcome with it.
But I would not do what Anna Navarro on The View is like,
oh, the father loves him so much.
No, you have to create consequences for that guy
and leverage him into care and abstinence,
and it's going to take a long time.
But letting him run amok and, you know,
his lawyer is smoking weed with him or something I saw.
I hadn't heard that. Yeah, he said, show me the picture of smoking weed with him or something. I saw that.
Yeah.
He said, show me the picture of the lawyer with the bong.
And I mean, it's like, oh, my God, if he's around that, he's going to die.
That's what's going to happen here.
Because this is just horrible.
He's got he's got kids.
And oh, it's just awful.
And there's that.
But this business of, oh, it's all about the love of a father for his son.
Oh, my God.
Oh, this is like, bring it down, Mr. Biden.
Bring the force of God down around.
There's the bong in the right upper corner.
Look, there's the attorney out on the balcony with his bong.
You see that?
It's the second picture from the right.
Yeah.
I still, I, maybe it's my, the prism through which I see this.
I think it's heroic if he can get through this.
I have your fear.
I mean, you know, that's a—
But this is the same case I'm making for the homeless people.
Right.
You must have significant consequence.
You have to break through the addiction to get them into care and motivated.
The force of God has to crush down around them.
Something has grabbed him out of it because he is obviously –
I thought so.
I thought so.
But now I'm beginning to think – because he never talks about recovery.
He's not around recovering people.
He's not had his trauma treated.
I mean it's just inevitable.
As you say, as you know, the push-ups are being – they're doing push-ups.
That's exactly what you were saying.
Exactly.
So now I have fear for that man.
I have fear for him.
I hope not.
Let me do my final bit on the black history that I happened with.
Once again, the fastest 30 minutes.
I know.
We can't get it out of our mouth.
By the way, we did do homework, or you guys did homework, and we have not hit on any of it.
None of it. None of it.
Sorry, gentlemen.
Sorry, the booth.
But maybe we will in this next segment.
I doubt it.
But I don't know the third time's a charm on this.
If the past is any measure of the future, probably not.
But my point on the black history thing was not whether or not slaves picked up skills.
That's just – they did.
Of course, if you owned slaves, you'd have them.
You'd teach – you'd want them doing carpentry and blacksmithing and all that stuff. The actual piece of history is that the southerners convinced the northerners that they were making life better under slavery for black Americans.
They would look at them.
They're thriving.
It's these people.
What do you expect?
We teach so many blacksmiths.
And look how they thrive here under us.
It's like – and the north accepted it.
That's the insanity. That's why abolitionism didn't catch in, catch up. That's why it blacksmiths. And look how they thrive here under us. It's like, and the North accepted it. That's the insanity.
That's why abolitionism didn't catch in, catch up.
That's why it was considered extreme.
Because the Northerners were hoodwinked by that bullshit.
And no one is bringing that out.
Nobody talks about that.
Nobody talks about that.
That's exactly why we had the Civil War.
Well, for a while there, people were saying the Civil War wasn't about slavery.
Well, for a while there, people were saying the Civil War wasn't about slavery.
There's another piece of this that people – you've got to study your damn history, which was I think Reconstruction was – I see the world through Frederick Douglass' eyes.
I love that man.
I worship his language, his speeches. And by the way, he – and once again, the liberal arts education. He was taught 40 years ago, 50 years ago.
He was like required reading.
Right?
Yes.
You'd read his speeches as – not as – it's about slavery but as a great orator.
As one of the greatest orators of –
Great statesman.
In American history.
Yes.
Oh, he is.
He is.
And he – where was I going with this?
Well, you were talking about that you viewed the world through his speeches.
I do see the picture through his eyes.
And the idea of white supremacy, he broke through my understanding with his understanding of that.
And I was like, oh my god, he's so right.
I always thought Lincoln was a racist.
No, he was a racist, but he came around to that.
He was a white supremacist, full on, period, and never dropped that.
And a lot of people who are white supremacists don't realize it.
It's almost like we need a new language for that because people –
Well, yeah, because now you say it and people can't get through it because it's fighting words.
We also think you're saying skinhead and that kind of stuff.
Exactly.
No, you're just saying Eurocentric, Caucasian-specific kind of view of the world.
How could it be otherwise?
That was what we were taught.
Yes.
Judeo-Christian civilization.
Remember that?
I mean, Eurocentric.
Remember that?
There wasn't – people don't understand.
There's the largest continent out there that we ignored as if – when we studied it, it was always in cultural anthropology and looking through that lens, right?
Oh, that's true. Isn't that weird?
Yeah, it was really weird when you think about it in retrospect.
Why am I learning all of this Judeo-Christian civilization as if that was the cradle of civilization?
as if that was the cradle of civilization.
And then I'm studying the largest continent,
and I'm looking at that as kind of this primitive cultural anthropology.
It's so weird.
It was really kind of a weird realization. By the way, for everyone who wants to look back in their history of Africa,
the richest man in the world was from Mali,
and he made a tour of the European nations at the time
and crashed all their economies because he brought so much gold with him and handed it out to everybody.
He crashed the economies.
But all right.
So through Frederick Douglass' eyes, I came to understand more deeply Reconstruction in the South.
And he said repeatedly, we gave up the lash for the shotgun.
Lynching didn't happen before the Reconstruction.
People lynching, lynching, lynching.
Slaves weren't lynched.
If you lynch somebody's slave, you'd get killed by the slave owner.
You just destroy – they would kill you like that.
Lynching happened in Reconstruction all over the place and mass murder during Reconstruction.
Study that period.
That I have a feeling from a standpoint of intergenerational trauma,
I feel like that left more of a mark than anything,
and people were not aware of it as a country,
and the people that were objects of it aren't aware of that history necessarily.
Because it was, when you read about it, it was just, it takes your breath away.
And, you know, so, you know so these are complex human things, right?
These experiences that get –
These experiences are and the morphology of what happens culturally as well.
Right, right.
All right.
So we're going to have to take a break.
We've outdone ourselves yet again.
And we will be back to do more.
Mahalo.
And we will be back to do more.
Mahalo.
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