The Sevan Podcast - #581 - Jesse Crosson

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

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bam we're live that was quick just like that jesse crossing how are you sir good seven did i say your name right you did i love your format on youtube really yeah i got to uh i got to get on the uh do you know what the assault bike is? Yeah. Oh, shit. I think we have an echo. Do you maybe have a YouTube channel open? A YouTube channel open? Yeah. Like the actual YouTube channel that we're streaming live to?

No. Hi, Caleb. Caleb, you can't see Caleb. He's on the back end. I just saw him pop up. Gotcha. So the videos are – they seem like they were all roughly a minute. And I could get on the assault bike, put on the headphones, and hit play.

And then it would just play them chronologically, and I would get snippets of your thoughts, your life, what you're doing today, just in one minute snippets. And I would go back and there'd be anywhere from, I don't know, what's the most you ever make in a day? Five. More than that. Probably seven or eight. Okay. I don't try to do that generally, but on a bad day when I'm coping, you know? Oh, that's fucking awesome to hear that. I didn't even think about that. So that is a coping mechanism to making the videos. Right. I mean, it depends on the day. Sometimes it can be stressful and it can feel like work, but yeah, when I'm dealing with, you know, unprocessed trauma, I'm struggling with something, being able to talk about it and feel like I have an audience that will receive me and

accept that and hopefully relate to it or, you know, get some benefit from it is it's a way to work through things. Yeah. It's interesting. You, uh, you do such a good job. It doesn't come off like that at all, but I used to make a lot of content around my kids, little Instagram stories. And it was to deal with, like, if they knocked over, let's say, I just put flowers in a vase and I fill it to the top with water and they knocked it over. And I thought like, Oh shit, someone's going to die. I just turn on Instagram. Oh, look, a pot of water and show like how calm and cool i am a pot of water got knocked out it's fine you know like come on boys let's clean it up and but really it was me coping like it was great it's like almost like you turn god on to watch you oh shit god's watching

i guess that's a good kids i hadn't thought about it that way. Yeah. It's a, it's a brilliant format and it made me, it inspired me to want to start making more kids content again. Like, Hey, this is what do you go when you do that? Do you stream straight to YouTube one take live? No, I usually, I usually just record a video. And depending on how like centered I'm feeling sometimes it's one take sometimes it's 100 because I'm stuttering and my brain isn't working but then yeah just load it and sometimes I'll do like long form content like this weekend we got

together there were a bunch of us uh I think seven uh social media people who had been in prison who are now trying to like kind of highlight what we're doing with our lives or do something different and it was you know we made a lot of long form content we make some short. We just did some things to kind of decompress. But we also had some time that was just us. Like Vice News came out to film us and they said, oh, you know, it seems like some of this stuff is for, you know, the Internet and some of it's for you because, I mean, we need that. The Venn diagram or the overlap of people who've like been to prison, had these traumatic experiences, but then also gotten out and talk and talk so openly about it or kind of like based a large portion of their life around it. It's very small. So it's been hard to find people

to relate to, to be able to do that both for content, but also just for, you know, kind of like healing or processing is really helpful. What do you think about, do you consume any advice's content? I, so I haven't watched TV since I got out of prison and I have a hard time. Like I'll watch, I'll watch basically the same thing you're talking about. Like I watch Tik TOK if I'm in the middle of something or if I, we've got like a treadmill in the garage, if I'm on the treadmill, I'll turn that on. But otherwise I just, there's something about like receiving content. It's hard.

It's hard for me to sit in one place for very long. I loathe them. Do you really? Yeah. I love them. So I don't know enough about them. The only thing I ever saw was there was a preview when I was in prison. We never get to see the actual show about one of the prison systems in Thailand where they allow their prisoners to train Muay Thai and fight. And if they win enough fights, they win honor for their prison and they win freedom.

I remember thinking like that sounds barbaric, but it also sounds a whole lot better than sitting in here for the rest of my life. That was my one exposure. They used to be crazy cutting edge jesse they were so awesome they did all the crazy shit right and then i don't know what happened to them but they went straight victim mentality they went they went just just and i don't mean this to be offensive they just went crazy woke just like holy like demand they're basically an outlet out of canada now canada now that basically demands that people be offended and follow followed sure they almost seem anti-freedom

and not almost that it's um and i was born i'm born and raised in in berkeley california too you know um i was born in the hive so you got a taste of it growing up huh yeah i was born in the hive. So you had a taste of it growing up, huh? Yeah, I was born in the hive. In my heart, I'm a tree-hugging hippie. Set them free. Let them go brawless. Have the babies at home. That's the interesting cross-section.

Because I grew up when America was like, at least supposedly more like cleanly divided. You had like liberals and conservatives and you had some moderates. But you didn't have this intersection of all these different ideas and all these cross sections from the left and the right and people who basically don't describe any kind of labels. And it's been interesting to see. And I think like COVID and different different situations we've gone through have really highlighted that we're much more fractured as a nation. There aren't cohesive groups. You have kind of like sub circles that are everywhere. And like I said, with the Venn diagram example, like we have more in common than we think with people we may not expect. And in a weird way, I think that should be like empowering or hopeful. But I think it's been the opposite. I think people have been felt more fractured or more betrayed.

And I think that's unfortunate as the nation becomes more extreme and some of the stuff that we're seeing. As the nation becomes more extreme and some of the stuff that we're seeing and you can't even tell like how much of it's I've started to realize you can't even tell how much of it's not that it's not real, but that it's there's not a lot of it that you remember. You might remember this before you went away. There was stuff like Jerry Springer. Yeah. So like it would be like white supremacist family marries into black family. You know what I mean? And it'd be like these two families on stage. And, and like, if you're watching from California, you're like, fuck, this is like crazy. This is like some weird one-off shit. And now you can turn on Instagram and there's people talking to you about how pedophilia is a

bad word and you should just call it adults being attracted to children and you should accept it. And you're like, what the fuck? You know what I know what i mean and it's this uh but what's interesting is as things get more extreme like that i i like i think you were starting to put a positive spin on it it's letting us realize that hey i might be a hardcore democrat i might be a hardcore uh conservative but like head i'm not down with the fucking pedophilia shit sure we we bond kumbaya let's hold hands august 16 2021 that was the most uh exciting day of my life an hour and a half's notice you know i woke up just went about my day and at two o'clock in the afternoon they called me to the office and at that point i had 10 years left on my sentence. And the counselor, you know, said, there's somebody on the phone for you. And there was a speaker phone and they said,

Mr. Crossman, are you sitting down? And I said, no, why? And the fear in that moment was, this is basically how you find out that your family has died. Like I found out that my dad had died because they called me up to, and they let me see my mom. But generally it's, they call you in the office and they tell you, and they said, no, well, because you've been granted a pardon, you're going home today. So it went from this like ultimate fear of like, oh no, I lost somebody else. I lost like one more thing to, oh no, I'm going home. And yeah, I can't really describe the shock or the kind of like joy or the same time, like fear and anxiety, because I thought they would take it back. I thought it was a mistake. I thought if I didn't get out soon enough,

and they actually told me that when I got in front, they said, we got to hurry you through this or we're going to have to keep you. And I was like, fuck, like, what can I do to hurry through it? Um, yeah, that was the day that, that the pardon that I had put in in 2019 actually came through and it was just insane. A window opens that you, that they can let you out. And if that window of time closes, you stay. Well, they, what they said was that, so the, the pardon had been signed on a Friday. I was released on a Monday, but for some reason they didn't get it until late that Monday. And so they said, well, if we don't do it today, we'll have to let you out maybe tomorrow, or maybe like once we get all

this paperwork process. Like there was another guy that I know, he received a pardon in 2020 in like February. And I don't remember exactly what the month was. And they said, okay, we're going to let you out. And then something happened with his home plan. So that put it off two months. And then there was a covid outbreak. So that put it off too. So he just ended up staying in prison six months after they said you're going home tomorrow. And that was my fear is like I've heard horror stories like that. So I was like, well, let me let me do everything I can. And it just worked out. I managed to walk up front. You you put in a I guess the word I heard you use clemency.

I mean, I know the word, but I don't know the word. Basically, you applied for clemency. Can you explain that and how much prior to you getting released you applied for that? So in the state of Virginia, because there is no parole, the only release – Which is crazy. Let's circle back on that too. That's fucking weird. Unfortunately, it's a lot more common than people think. You know, in 1994, 1995, the Crime Act took a huge basically took a huge portion of the nation and made federal funds dependent upon the willingness to abolish parole and what they call truth in sentencing.

And a lot of states have gone back since then. But Virginia isn't one of them. So there's no way to have oversight. So in my situation, my guidelines today, I was sentenced for eight to 13 years, and then they were modified to 10 to 16 years. And the judge sentenced me to 32 to the basis of my clemency in 2019. And this is back when it was a long shot, like this under previous governors, they would release maybe five or six people at the end of their term for political reasons, or because, you know, kind of cronyism, it was such a rare thing that it didn't seem a possibility. So for me, it was more of like doing everything I can and then accepting the result. Like if I didn't try and I had to spend the rest of that time in prison, I would have felt like a failure. I would have felt like a certain sense of like inadequacy or would have added something to it. So for me, it was really about just like

doing everything that I could. But yeah, it was based on the fact that I'd been sentenced to twice the high point of my guidelines, that I'd been sentenced just after my 18th birthday and the work that I'd done, you know, getting a college degree, teaching classes, starting programs, like working as well as the future plans that I had, which didn't include, you know, YouTube. But so the governor in this kind of amazing sweep granted more petitions or for clemency or more pardons than all the previous governors combined. So it was this huge, in the history of the state,

in the history of the state of Virginia, in the history of the state of Virginia, it was about 1200 people. Um, it was pretty amazing. What was the profile of those 1200 people? Was there one, like,

was it like, you know, like, um, was the vast majority of them, uh, marijuana, uh, sales, or was the vast majority of people who've been over 15 years?

Was there any like categories you could kind of stick them in? I don't know the demographics, but what there was this intensive process through. So because there was parole before 1995, there is still a parole board that investigates those people's sentence from before 95. And part of the arm of that is the clemency or the pardon wing. And they worked overtime. They hired extra people like they did these kind of exhaustive uh looks and everybody did applied for for clemency and it was pretty broad it was across i had a friend who had a felony murder charge basically he showed up to a drug deal went to go get the drugs the guy that he was with killed somebody and while he wasn't even there he was like a mile away he spent 23 years in prison for that oh shit you know there was another guy with robbery there were a couple guys with white

collar crimes so it was it was kind of broad across the spectrum and your shit was fucked up because you had accidental home invasion well it was not accident well we didn't we didn't know anyone was there but we broke it like we intentionally that's like really bad you rob a house it's cool you rob a house and someone's in it and it's like oh shit it's a totally different thing okay and that's where your shit kind of went sideways right like uh yeah 50 of it well yeah 50 of it yeah i mean like you said if we'd broken into a home i think that's a violation of someone's privacy in their space and it's it's under no you know terms acceptable or okay it is not to the level of yeah of traumatizing someone by them being there and being afraid

for their life and experiencing what they did um and, and that, that was a shift. And then, and then the other thing was, uh, drug deal gone bad, um, gunfight ensued. So basically someone was chasing you. Basically. I mean, it was more complicated than that. Like these two guys that had stolen a pistol and sold it to somebody who sold it to me. And then they started threatening him because I don't know if they got caught. I don't know what happened with their situation, but they wanted the gun back and he wouldn't give it back to him and he wouldn't give him my name, but then they found out my name. So then they were over at his house and threatening his girlfriend who was pregnant at the time. It was just this horrible kind of shit show of like drug fueled insanity. Like none of it was rational

or reasonable. It was just, it was emotion and drugs kind of combined into a really unhealthy place that then, yeah, I agreed to go meet them. And like, that was the culpability. I agreed to meet them and just have this flash of sanity that like, this is a really bad idea. Like somebody is going to get seriously hurt. So I left and they chased me. And I remember being so frustrated and angry, like, dude, I'm trying to go away. Like, I'm trying to not like have this go bad. Like we all just leave me alone. And then when the passenger reached over across in my mind, he was getting a gun. So I just pulled mine out and shot him. He was in the car. We were in cars.

Like I said, they were chasing me down the road. I was driving the right lane. They were in the passing lane, like trying to swerve into me. So when you say passenger, you don't mean passenger in your car. You mean? The passenger in the other car. So because I was in the right lane, he was right next to me in the left lane. He didn't die.

No, nobody died. But you got both both of them i did hit both of them unfortunately with one shot no with i emptied the clip there was there was no like that's people have that whole idea of like a die hard and like this witty line as you like you know take sight and fire i've talked to police officers i've talked to people in combat the mechanics of it maybe for people who are well trained or there. But for me, I was like screaming and streaming tears and just like going deaf and nothing about it was Hollywood. It was more of just like kind of a breakdown in the moment. So you're driving your passenger side windows down. You shoot through the window and get both guys. Other way driver's side. Cause I was in the right lane. They were in the left. So

sorry. Shooting across and shooting a gun in my own face i mean it was not a smart or reasonable again it was just it was a reaction what kind of gun it was a colt 1911 a 45 wow wow had you ever shot it before i'd shot it at bottles i'd never shot it at anybody or shot it under stress. I couldn't even hit any of the bottles. I remember we did that. We unloaded like three clips and I was like, oh, I guess it's not for me. Did they stop chasing you? They did.

And Caleb, how many prisoners are there in Virginia in the prison system that they let 1,200 go? I wonder if that's like, I wonder what the percentage is of that. I wonder, are there 100,000 people and that's 1% of them? It's usually 28 to 30,000. The other thing is they didn't necessarily let that many go

because some of the pardons were to expunge records from the past. Some were to kind of clear the name or clear the culpability. They weren't necessarily all to genuinely release people. Okay. Oh, we're down to 23,000. That's huge.

Yeah, because it was 29. It was about 30,000 a year ago. You know what's interesting, Jesse? jesse and uh there was a like a 10 year um uh seven to ten maybe maybe seven year i don't know but there was a section of my life where i was homeless and and i mean like really homeless i don't mean like like my peer group they call them homeless but they're not homeless they're drug addicts like 99 like so like when the news says we're building homes for homeless people they're not building homes for homeless people they're building homes for drug addicts like 99 like so like when the news says we're building homes for homeless people they're not building homes for homeless people they're building homes for drug addicts but i was like homeless by choice but i was like the only one there was one other guy old

guy i met in all the years who wasn't a drug addict and i was a drug i mean i wasn't a nicotine but i just didn't have a drinking problem or lsd or coke or acid most of the guys were drunks but in pills god so many fucking pills but but when i was homeless i was kind of like excited for like the apocalypse right like if like if it came i was ready for it like this is going to be cool like this would be crazy right like if covid would have happened when i was homeless it would have been fucking rad better prepared than anybody yeah and it was just it would add that everyone would have been just out of my way i could have just sat in the park all day and drew pictures you know i played frisbee um and talked to drunk dudes and it's a guy it's a guy thing too homelessness is

mostly a guy thing it's dudes but you're you're with a bunch of dudes kind of like the prison or or military or or the priesthood. And then the same thing was true with – I had a different perspective on violence. And now I have almost no compassion or leniency for them because what I see is someone grabbing the gun and shooting and getting one of my boys on accident. Do you know what I mean? Like even if you don't have a gun, if you're fighting with someone who does have a gun, my window of acceptance of that is like – like didn't i would have never even thought that i've been like yeah the cop signed up for it and it's his job and blah blah blah and use minimum restraint but now i have kids i'm like shoot them you know i mean because like i

don't want to be like in the 7-eleven getting sunflower seeds and somebody takes a gun from a cop and straight bullet comes in the it's weird how perspective but let me ask you this yeah what if one of your kids grew up and was in that situation and the response was for the cop to shoot him right right yeah that too and and in the same thing what if my son was that cop sure you're right it's a um and and and that could happen my kids could um uh – you and I both have been into drugs. So what's to say I have three boys, odds are pretty good, right? That they do something stupid that puts them in a way that maybe I wouldn't be compassionate for.

I know. It's tricky, right? I used to always drive drunk in high school, and now I have no tolerance for drunk driving. Yeah, like that was – I'd say there was three years in my life where I drove more drunk than sober. Sure. Well, I remember that was the one meaningful program we had in the Department of Corrections, which was just a pilot program, was called a victim impact program. And it was basically going through a list of all the crimes or the classes of crimes, and then either watching video testimony or written testimony of somebody who'd been a victim of that crime and listening to the consequences of their life, their families, what they lost, like how hard it was. And it was designed to like create an empathetic response.

And it was incredibly powerful. And the last section was this woman who came in, who was in a wheelchair and it was her and her parents. And they came in to talk about her experience of being hit by a drunk driver and being in a wheelchair five years later and knowing she's never going to walk again. She's never going to be able to dance. And it was her parents talking about getting that phone call that their daughter had been hit by a drive driver and they didn't know if she was going to live and not being allowed to see her and being held back in the scene. And it was, I cannot imagine anyone ever watching that and being okay with driving drunk or having someone else drive drunk. Yeah, it's so um the george floyd thing is like that some people see the george

floyd incident and they see a white cop holding a black man down i i don't see i don't see that at all i see a guy who was high on fentanyl meth and alcohol being taken off the streets who could have hit my kid on his tricycle. Sure. I mean, I think it goes both ways. Right, right. I think it is both ways, but both ways are totally fair grounded assessments. I think the thing about the cop is looking at Derek Chauvin, looking to kind of like deadness in his eyes in that situation. That's because police officers don't get the trauma informed care they need. They don't get the help they need. They have to show up and watch a child get run over by a car and then respond to some lady who locked her keys out of her car. Like they're not prepared. They're not

supported to do what they do. And I think his behavior was inappropriate. I understand the situation, but I also understand that he was not supported enough to be in that position and that the vast majority of police officers don't. They don't receive the support. And some, I mean, my experience was mostly with correctional officers. We have about 5% are extraordinary, about 90% are just doing their job, and 5% that are basically sadists. And I'm sure that's true across any of those fields. But I don't think, generally speaking, you can say that cops are bad or even someone

that does a bad thing is bad. Like, my whole platform is on second chances. And I mean that for everybody. I don't mean that just for people convicted of a crime. So I think it's just, it's terrible the way we kind of divide and blame rather than saying, Hey, this is a messed up situation and we need to change the way everybody in this situation is acting. Everyone, you know, receives these resources. Is there anything that happened in there in those 19 years that you can't talk about because the implications on you,

like I've heard you say stuff. I'm like, I guess he's not worried about getting in trouble. Like, um, you used to sell, um, apple pies illegally, Jesse illegal apple pies. And there was one other,

and you ran a, a small gambling business. Um, what's it, what was it called? Well, my, my self partner mostly did that.

I took over the gambling business for the UFC tickets. Quarter, quarter boards. You ran quarter. Oh yeah, no, I did do that. I didn't even think about that as a business but yeah i mean those are things that are illegal i kind of doubt they're going to come back and press charges from

an institutional perspective but i hope not uh could they i don't think so i mean because it's not a it's not a street charge it's not something you'd actually charge me with in court and i think it's i don't i don't know how they would press like an institutional charge while i'm out of custody that would be a shame to like do all these things and start a non-profit and go back to prison for selling apple pies oh it'd be fucking nuts but dude there's there's i've seen nutty i feel like every day in the news i see something nutty is there is there anything in there that you just don't talk about um because because you you you don't want the blowback? Not so much because I don't want the blowback as because I don't want to sensationalize things.

Like in the beginning, one of the most common questions I got was like, did you ever see somebody murdered? Or what was the worst thing you saw? Or what was the worst you saw somebody hurt? And that I don't like talking about because it's traumatic. The things that I saw are not pleasant things. only that turning that into like entertainment for people I think

it's just disgusting like I'm all for for you know Korean revenge films I'm all for the UFC I'm all for self-defense I'm all for you know a legitimate depiction of a war movie but to sensationalize those things for the purposes of entertainment is just very against my core values it's um yesterday you told in one of the the videos I saw, you told a story about watching a guy in the yard get fucking stomped by a bunch of dudes for like five minutes. Yeah. And as I was – I actually started – I didn't trip on the guys who were stomping on him. I didn't trip on the guy getting stomped. I started, I felt bad for you because you probably wanted to do something, but you can't do something because the immediate implication is, is your face gets stomped. Right?

Yeah. I mean, and that, the reason I told that story wasn't just for the sensation of seeing it was for that was like the breaking point for me to realize that I could not allow this place to define me because the, the ethic in that place was, you know, that's none of your business. Let it happen. And I'm watching someone get their face dumped in and like, I'm not OK with that. I'm not at the same time either. It's it's a horrible kind of bind to be in because, yeah, it's you know, this past weekend, all of us got together for, you know, this kind of convention. And we talked about that. We talked about the ways we adapted to be in prison and the ways we adapted to survive in a place that we had to and how we had to work to kind of get rid of those habits or change who we are or get back to who we want to be because if you see if you see that in the real world you can step up like i i can remember two boys fighting and a boy was

collecting shopping carts one time and another boy like some kid obviously from his high school started picking a fight with them and i was with my mom i was a kid my mom ran over and broke the fight up started yelling at them and there were witnesses and shit loads of people but you do that in prison they stopped they would stomp my mom out it would be bad does everyone how long how long after 19 years um have you get to see it all? What's the time before – how long do you have to be in prison to have seen it all? By all, I mean the selling of illegal pies, a stomping of the face, whatever. You have a whole litany of stories of things you've seen. How long the his service, his legal services to the other guys, how long before you've seen

it all? Is it quick or do you not even after 19 years? Yeah. Okay. And then you figure it out. You see the whole machine. And you see every now and then you'll find those, those people who's really stand out. Like I've had people in my life with inside and out that are just extraordinary. Like those people will always stand out to me, but the kind of class of people you do, you're, you get that guy, like his, his identity as being a drug addict, that guy's identity as being a gambler, that guy's a gangster, that guy's a Christian, that guy's a, and you meet that. And very few people go very far, deviate very far from that.

And I'm not saying they're not individuals, but unless you develop a close relationship with them, that's all you see because that's all they kind of put out into the world. Like everybody plays a role and you get to know those roles and you see the guys who hustle and have creative hustles and have really bad hustles. And yeah, it just, it becomes another place where you kind of know all the characters. Oh shit. So there there's, there, there are archetypes. Oh, very much so. The, um, the martial arts club you had is, was fascinating to me. Yeah. I love that. That's, and that's, that's one of the things that I'm most proud of being a part of, and it was completely illegal.

And that's what I think is the problem when we have a divide between what's moral or what's good and what's legal or what's allowed. And I understand their concern, like the idea of saying, OK, we're going to let these prisoners, especially guys with like stabbings and gang histories and whatever, train martial arts seems really unappealing and definitely wouldn't be a good thing to the public, but being there and having seen the transformation in people and having seen the bond across people who never would have sat at the same table or never would have had the same conversation. It was powerful. Like it was one of the most powerful things I was a part of. And that was important enough to me to risk getting in trouble because like, I didn't do anything else wrong. Like I stayed out of the way, but it was worth it to me to do that because I saw the change that it was making. I saw you do another interview, and the people were surprised. The gentleman who was interviewing you was surprised that that would be a good idea, that lifting weights or training martial arts for prisoners would be a good idea. And it's amazing. It's amazing to me. I mean, I get it.

And it's amazing to me. I mean, I get it. I see the flawed logic that the way that they think, because I have friends who won't put their kids in martial arts because they think it'll make their kids violent. And it's such bad thinking to not give. It's such a bad thing because the kids in my kids martial arts class are the least violent most self-confident assured uh and obviously we know training um training is uh physical training is one of the best things you can do for a human's mind yeah when somebody said something the other day that i had never heard it put this well before he says acute stress washes away general stress so if we're under this general stress of being incarcerated being away from our families being being in fear, being discomfort, you know, uncomfortable, having that acute stress of lifting weights or running as hard as we can or training as hard as we can, or doing something intense washes that away and allows us to then be more peaceful and

not be agitated, not be responsive. It's, it's a good experience. I mean, and you talked about the assault bike and watching my videos. And I'm amazed because the two experiences I've had in an assault bike when I went to a CrossFit gym in town where that, that was the worst experience of my life. There was like one minute sprints. Yeah. Yeah. It's horrible. I'm chill. I'm chill on it. I'm chill. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, sometimes I get aggro on it, but I do, I do probably like a hundred calories in 10 minutes and I am covered in sweat and then I get off and then like i stretch or i

do some like sit-ups right you know i do mellow stuff while i'm um okay that makes sense yeah and then i maybe go back and forth on it i don't do that yeah that thing will make you vomit right if you try to if you try to fight with it that's horrible um courtney's your your fiancee's a crossfitter she is yeah that was a trip when i heard that i didn't know that at the time when Um, Courtney's your, your fiance's a CrossFitter. She is. Yeah. That was a trip when I heard that. I didn't know that at the time when I invited you onto the show, but a lot of my, a lot of the shows I do are around, uh, CrossFit related subjects. Well, it was cool because it's, we never had like official, you know,

we never had the literature. What I got was the, uh, the, um, uh, what is it called? The supple leopard, you know, the book that they call the got was the uh the um uh what is it called the supple leopard you know the book that they call the crossfit bible that informed so much of how i worked out and what i did and then we would get like they had like box magazines we would like steal wads from that that's what i did in prison like we did the training but that was my aside and when i went to coffee with during the pandemic when i was in this you know dormitory they didn't like it was not okay to do any training like we tried to hit the pads and they sent all the cops out in the yard and we're going to lock us up. And it was like, all right, cool. We can't get away with this here. So we just did these incredibly intense workouts. And I came

out of prison in the best shape of my life. Like I came out of prison. We, there was a video, uh, I don't know if we did a video or just pictures. I was out like a week and we were running steps with a 60 pound vest and just like killing it. And now I'm not anywhere near there, but that's one of the things that Courtney and I have bonded over because, you know, I knew her as a reporter. We interviewed me back in 2019. I didn't know anything about her personal life. So over the next couple of years we started talking and she was telling me about needing to get kettlebells. I was like, what do you need kettlebells for?

And then we started talking about our workouts and what we did. And one of the first things we did was the weekend I got out, I helped her, she went to Richmond. I helped her move back to Charlottesville and we went to her CrossFit gym and just got demolished by all these like, you know, ex Navy SEALs and professional athletes and like but was like okay well i thought i was in good shape in there but i still got a long way to go and that was definitely a good bonding experience we did a we did a wad this morning it was pretty and horrible so um you knew

you were you knew her the courtship process was 10 years no it was like two years two years we we had crossed paths it It's one of those bizarre things where the place I used to hang out downtown, she had an apartment over around the same time I was down there, uh, where she had lived. Like it just, it's, we crossed paths a million times without realizing it. And then in 2019, we had ended up being Facebook friends because I had somebody managed my Facebook page and basically just friend everybody possible to try to get my essays or things I was working on out there in the world. So she was doing a story on the abolition of parole in Virginia and what that effect was 20 years later, you know, 24 years later.

And she was looking for someone to say why abolishing parole was a good idea. And she was looking for a case to say why it wasn't a good idea, like why we couldn't review this case. So she came across some of my writing was like, hey, this guy's perfect. So she reached out and did a couple of phone interviews. And it just it it was it was an interview it was great you know okay these people are interesting um and then we stayed in touch because one of the hardest parts about being in prison is feeling like you don't have a voice like nobody cares like something absolutely horrible i remember when i first got to buckingham this kid that i knew he was like five minutes late to chow and the sergeant was like yeah you can't go in he was like dude i gotta go eat like i'm

hungry and he tried to walk by him the sergeant grabbed him by the neck and like slammed him into the fence remember being like this is what i'm dealing with like nobody gives a shit that he just slammed this kid in the fence um so having somebody who would like tell our stories so when we had like a scabies outbreak when they were strip searching kids coming in the visitation room when they were doing all these things she was willing to report on it she was like yeah this is fucked up like let's let's do something about this and so i had this like deep appreciation for just by the fact that she cared enough to give us a voice and then after she left tv i was like hey look i've been calling you like once a month like can i just keep calling you because i like you she said yeah sure and we were friends and

you know we kind of continued to grow and in the beginning of 2021 she had just like a challenging kind of like personal situation that related to you you know, some of my past experience with drugs and, and, you know, dealing with potential incarceration. And we just bonded over that. We just, we started talking and we realized like we had so much more in common that,

yeah, we had the exercise thing. We had similar interest in reading. We were both kind of like interested in the idea of investigative journalism. You were a writer. Yeah. And she's a writer too.

She does a Seville cover story for the local paper, you know, maybe once a month or something. And I got to do one this week. So it was like we both got to do a cover story for the local paper this year. It was just like some of the cool shared experiences. What was your subject of your of your article? So I went back to pick up my friend from prison. So I went back. It was right right before my year. I was going back to the place and I was talking about the earned sentence credit. So in 2020, a law was passed that would give nonviolent offenders or people with nonviolent charges access to more good time. Basically, if you like stayed out of trouble, you went to class and you worked the job, you get access to more good time. And then this past year, the governor used a budget amendment,

like he didn't pass an open session. He sent in a budget amendment that for the period of this budget, those people that had a violent charge in there before or after as a part of their non-violent charge aren't eligible for that uh good time so it was 8 000 people that were just suddenly disqualified that literally had been told like all right you're going home this month like tell your family to get ready like you know this is what's going to happen we're then told like a few days later oh yeah sorry we're just kidding like you're not going home now because they also had a violent charge with their non-violent charge.

Yeah. So it was highlighting that and then highlighting the experience of going back to the prison. I'd actually gone back to a prison to speak before, but this was the first time I'd gone back to this prison where I spent 13 of those 19 years. It was going into the front door and seeing one of the sergeants that I'd known for all those years. Going around the back

and having the investigator be like, what the f are you doing here crossing just just like it was a flashback it was it was intense and but but you're not allowed to go back and visit people until 2029 but you were allowed to go back there to pick someone up yeah so once they're outside the gate I'm okay and they even approved me that one time to go in and speak but like now I've been trying to get back in. I want to do some speaking for a reentry. I want to do some speaking about the nonprofit. I want to like, and I'm just getting kind of a stonewall response.

Like I can't even get some staff members to respond to me. And what I'm hearing is I have staff that talk to me like off the record or, you know, and they basically say, we don't know what's going on, but they're acting crazy. Like they don't want us talking to anybody. They don't want us interacting with anybody. Like we have to run any interaction through our like chain of hierarchy. So I don't know what that going on but they're acting crazy like they don't want us talking to anybody they don't want us interacting with anybody like we have to run any interaction through our like chain of hierarchy so i don't know what that's about but it's like rather than allowing people to come back that are doing good things for their life and speak and hopefully have

an impact they're just putting a wall up when you went back there and spoke did you cry did you break down uh i thought i was gonna be nervous going in when i walked in and i looked through the they had us in the visiting room i looked through the window and i saw the guys in the scrubs and the like that hit me but i was like you know i'm okay like this isn't so bad as i got in my car and left i made it maybe like two miles down the road and just has to pull over because i just collapsed i just started fucking crying and shaking and it was like it took that long but when it hit it hit pretty hard when you left yeah there's a um i read this book by patrick bet david uh he's an entrepreneur like a entrepreneur guy cool dude um and he said that a lot of times the um people confuse the symptom and the issue and so the example would be the issue is drugs and

the symptom is homelessness. And since society doesn't realize that they try to address homelessness and what they do is they exacerbate the symptoms. And I would argue all day until I'm blue in the face that the same thing happened with COVID. The symptom was COVID, but it wasn't the issue at all that COVID didn't kill anyone. It was 30 years of bad lifestyle choices that killed people. The CDC was reporting 94% had four or more comorbidities and 6% there was no stats on. I feel like you see that coming out of prison, that you're seeing that there's a big picture issue. Is it hard to stay big picture and not fall into the minutia? It can be, especially with a nonprofit. I came out with a really clear mission, and what it is is you said the symptom. I don't even think drugs are even the cause of homelessness. I think it's trauma and untreated trauma is the cause of drugs. It's a trauma of abuse. Even deeper than what I was

saying, even taking it even deeper, even getting more down to the, you want to pull it out by the root. Yeah. Because everything that I've struggled with, everything that I've seen other people struggle with, it comes down to that core of trauma or if we just call it pain, like hurt people, hurt people. Like people don't get up in the morning and decide to go beat somebody up or beat their wife or do something else. There's some amount of pain that causes them to be that way. There's something that needs to be addressed. And that the more we kind of like push people into the corner or tell them they're bad people or kind of like beat them up, well, that's not getting to that core. And that's what I want to provide because so many

people coming out of prison are dealing with that trauma or dealing with that untreated issue. That's going to then lead them to go back in or commit suicide or turn back to drugs or turn back to unhealthy lifestyle or hurt somebody else. My goal is not only to save the people coming out, but make sure they do more or do no more harm. It's like the, you know, the medical code that until we start treating that we can't. So that was my goal. And all of a sudden now we've got other programming and we've got somebody talking about a halfway house. We're starting to talk about a vocational program and it's hard to get back to that because it's such a big issue. And it's so like, like I'm currently now like trying to get into therapy and I'm having trouble finding somebody to work with in the area because,

you know, everybody's booked and nobody takes insurance. And it's just like, we have a limited resource. And I think that should be the focus. I spoke to somebody this weekend who I'm so impressed with because her goal is to build an empire and then basically make everyone have access to the skills and trauma care that they need. Like, that's it. That's what she wants to do with her life. And I think that's beautiful because I think that we need that kind of support wherever we get from,

because I love going to the gym and I love hanging out with my bros and I love, you know, my fiance, I love these connections, but at the core, it's about healing and being able to be the best person we can be. When you first applied for your clemency, you said you applied in 2019. Yes, sir. How does that happen? You're just hanging out and someone's like,

hey, who was the governor at that time? Governor Northam. Northam. And so someone does, can you tell me that story? Is someone like, someone says to you, or you read somewhere, hey, Governor Northam's considering doing a mass clemency. Well, he wasn't. That's what's interesting.

He the paperwork is always available in the law library. Like I worked in the law library. It's a form that you have to submit and you have to write essentially like an essay. You have to talk about what you did. You talk about your history. You talk about what you want to do. Like it was just something that I wrote out. So I just wrote it all out by hand. I got it typed up. I got it sent out and put it into printed form. How long is that? How long would it take someone to read that? The petition itself was maybe five pages, but I ended up getting so many. I put in all my documentation, my college degree, my journeyman's license, my everything. And I'm getting so many letters of support because having done that writing, having had a couple articles published and just put things out on Facebook.

And it's like massive community support. So like hundreds and hundreds of letters that then made my position, you know, this stack, this huge stack rather than just a few pages. But, yeah, what I wrote was probably five pages. So it would take someone some time and care to read it. Oh, yeah. I mean, to really like look at it. And then, I mean, they do, they did an intensive investigation. Like they checked everything that I had said. They went and they checked the history. They interviewed people. Like they went out of their way to make sure, because basically the thing was like, look, just make sure everything you're saying is true. And then we can judge it on the merits. And one of the things that so many guys screw up on is like, they're actually have merit, but they're so worried about it not being good enough that the lie or make something up or try to say it sound better. And I just don't do that. Just pitch your basically pitch your reason.

Like, why do you believe you deserve a second chance or why do you believe you deserve clemency? Like, what have you done to deserve this? How was your initial sentence wrong? What is the issue? And so many people don't do that, unfortunately. But and then so I think what happened or at least part of what happened is there was this big scandal involving Northam and there was this big criticism. Then there was this heavy involvement in like, how can you make amends or like, how can you make a difference? And one of the things that's constantly talked about is like the racial inequity in our prison system, especially in the South where you have just the numbers are pretty disturbing. And so he looked at it and I'm thankful because obviously as a white guy, I wasn't with the people

who was like subject to the racial inequity. His response was, all right, I want to go across the board and I'm going to look at every case and I want to give everybody a fair shot. That was his response. It wasn't like, okay, what previous governors have done, like, hey, I'm going to free a couple of black or Hispanic people and therefore that'll make me look good. No, he said, I'm going to go across all these cases. I'm going to invest the resources in the parole board pardon unit to say I want to make sure that the people who don't need to be there, who are no longer a threat and who can do good, get a chance. And that had a significant impact. And who can do good, get a chance. And that had a significant impact. And so you turn that in and do you get any feedback?

Like what's the feedback loop like? So you submit that. Do you submit it about a year before you're released? It was two years. Two years. So a little over two years. So then the beginning of 2021, my mom got an email or a phone call or something saying, hey, like we're finally going to start investigating this.

Because they had 10,000 physicians sitting on the desk somewhere. They just didn't have the time or the resources. Beginning of 2021, they basically said, hey, you know, we're going to start looking at this. Like, we're going to try to figure out what we can do. And then I was interviewed by a former state police captain. I got called over and I had this phone call with him. He said, hey, you know, I do interviews for the probation or for the parole board, the pardon board. Like, just answer my questions. That's the same thing he told me. He said, look, just tell me the truth about anything, about everything. And I did. And I didn't hear anything. That was maybe February or March. And so I just kind of kept waiting and waiting. And then, you know, it's like, OK, maybe by the end of the year or, you know, maybe before the governor leaves office or I just didn't know what it would be.

And actually, this is the crazy story. So we started a mental health program while I was in prison. And there were, I think, six or seven of us to start the program. And four of us have either been paroled or pardoned, like that sweeping. And one of them was done within literally 12 hours of the governor leaving office. Like it was the last thing that he signed before he left office was letting this guy out of prison. Just blew my mind because, you know, I ran into these guys, like I've seen him, I've hung out with him. It's been like, man, the work we did actually made a difference and it was recognized. And I think a lot of times we don't feel like that happens.

And for that to happen and for people to be validated, it felt amazing. And for that guy's life, dude, he was 12 hours away from being forgotten. Yeah. So in that, in that two years that led up to August 16th, 2021, basically you're at your one-year anniversary. Yeah. Just celebrating. Is there hope?

Or does the – from the second you – I know I've heard you say that you did all this work to turn it in, not necessarily to get out, but to at least exhaust all the possibilities so that you could have like some psychological relief. Like, Hey, I am not here. I'm being held here against my own will. Like I've done everything I can do. Yeah. So after you turn in that paperwork and then you do the interview with their guy, do you have some glimmer of hope that you hold onto or no? Well, so I had the relief initially when I put it in, I was relieved. I felt like I'd done everything. And then what actually happened when all these people started writing letters and people started supporting and people started saying, hey, this might really

happen, that hope or that relief turned to anxiety, like, oh, like, maybe this is and then another buddy, actually, one of the other guys from the mental health program, he went home, they just called him to the office at 12 o'clock, and he was gone that day. And I was like, man, like, maybe that could happen for me. Like, maybe this is a thing. And all of a sudden every day, rather than just being another day, it was a day that I was in prison. It was a day that I could be out or maybe this would happen, but I had to spend one more day there. And that was by far the hardest time. That last 10 months when they shipped us in the middle of COVID to the dormitory and we're just stuck in a big room and open showers and open toilets. And that was just, it was

horrible. It was the worst, worst time I had. What was the previous comms? I guess this is where I'm getting to. What was the prior to August 16th when they called you in and you thought maybe a family member had died? What was the previous comms that you got that your letter of clemency, your application for clemency was still breathing, still alive? So just the fact that I hadn't gotten a turndown, because normally they'll send you a turndown. If not, it's still under review.

So yeah, there was no like update. There was no regular mention. There was just, hey, you haven't gotten a turndown. So you're still alive. And I've had guys that I talked to wish for just a turndown so they don't have to keep like feeling that anxiety of like maybe or maybe not. They get to the point where like, man,

I just wish they'd turn my appeal down or they just wish they'd turn my parole down or turn my pardon down. Like, I just don't want to have to deal with this shit anymore. I wonder what the fastest anyone's ever gotten their clemency from when they turn in their paperwork because two years is, it is, that is quite a way.

I mean, it's still amazing. Say that again. That's way faster than normal. People wait three, four or five years on a regular basis because again, they just didn't have the resources. You had 10,000 petitions and you've got like five people in the office yeah i was doing the quick math on it would take one person 30 years if they spent a day on each one or something right and they'd lose their mind yeah pretty much i i heard you say um

did what and when they give you that notification um have they told anyone else yet like do your mom and dad know or does anyone else know are you the first one and you're like oh shit i can't wait to share this they had told my mom so they the reason that that they had to clear up is they couldn't get a hold of my mom because to actually release somebody on a clemency they have to have an approved home plan and so they had to like the probation office for lynchburg had to call my mom and say like do you actually live here is this actually a thing and we had submitted like because I put in the in-state and out-of-state home plan to give us many options like they wanted me to get out and never come back I was cool I was going to South Carolina they wanted me to be in-state I was going to stay so uh they had to get a hold of her they

had to verify that I had a home plan and then um yeah that was it they she had about an hour and a half or maybe she had maybe two hours notice I about an hour and a half or maybe two hours notice. I had an hour and a half notice. Oh, but they appreciate your note, your patience during this time. Yeah. Good old Virginia. Well, the thing is for Courtney. So, you know, Courtney talked to my mom and Courtney talked to me and we had this relationship and she was actually in she was in the news office.

She had left TV, but she goes back to do freelance stories sometime. So she was in the TV station looking or talking about a trial that she was going to cover. And so my mom had texted her that morning asking her something probably about like sending more letters for the clemency thing. And then she said her phone just kept buzzing, but she was in the middle of, you know, talking about this plan. She was not thinking about it. And then when she finally got out, she picked the phone up and it was like four missed calls from me and like 27 missed calls from my mom and this message like i'm going to pick jesse up like you know in an hour and it was half an hour old and she was an hour from the prison so she gets in her car she cancels all her other meetings

like driving at top speed to meet me at the prison and so my mom and i went out to the front and we like pulled to the next driveway next to the prison which is just this farmer's driveway next to a cornfield and i'm in shock and my mom's in shock and courtney's driving in shock which is probably not safe and then so i got to meet her in person because all our previous interactions have been by phone or by letter like we'd never been in the same room and all of a sudden you had never held her you had never like not touched her hand or anything nothing because there were no visits during covet like she wanted to come visit and nobody could visit there weren't even non-contact visits so there i hadn't even seen

her in person once in my life the four people that died from covet at your prison um what so so when covet started happening uh i started i started for a year every day, I would search for one healthy person who died from COVID. And I would put it out on Instagram, please send me any picture, and I couldn't find anyone. Eventually, there were two people who popped up on the scene. There was a 15-year-old boy out of New York. I couldn't get a lot of information on him. And there was another guy who is an elite biker, but pretty common for people who are addicted to refined carbohydrates to have horrible immune systems like ultra marathon athletes. But everyone else that died was fucking obese that I found. Or they smoked like three Juul cartridges a day.

Like they had to be doing – working hard to die. Did those dudes in prison, those four dudes – like I can't – are there obese people in prison? Yeah. You could be unhealthy but is it because they feed you shit yeah i mean they feed you potatoes and bread every day yeah it's fucked up why would they do that they should be experimenting on these dudes with like pure diets sounds good i you know i'm sure a lot of guys inside would actually really appreciate that because food is one of the number one gripes. Yeah. I mean, if you look at it,

the number of guys that are diet become diabetic while they're in prison, as a result of the, the food is incredible. Fuck. That doesn't have to happen. And the other thing, so I worked, I worked in medical my last 10 months at the,

at the dormitory. And one of the things that they talked about, I appreciated this one nurse who was just really open about it. She was like, look in the beginning, like we were killing people. We didn't know better. We thought it was a matter of oxygen

not being able to enter the lungs. So we were putting them on ventilators. We were pressurizing their lungs. We were blowing their lungs out. We didn't realize it was actually the transfer into the oxygen, into the blood system. What we really needed was blood thinners. And she was like, and she basically said,

when we talked about the people that we lost at the first prison, she was like, look, if they had any kind of respiratory ailment, that's probably what happened. It's like they had respiratory distress and then that led to them being put on a ventilator and yeah you you know it the crazy thing is too is like you can go to the cdc website and you can see there there are there there was a plan in

place for a pandemic and like one of the things is never quarantine the healthy they have to be let they have to be only quarantine the sick and for some reason there was a panic and that that advice was was um was reversed that policy and as i'm sure you know tons of fucking old people were killed by being pushed by being kept inside in nursing homes it was fucking crazy dude yeah i mean i think it's one of those issues where generally i'm on the side of kind of like science and medical discipline but i don't think the whole picture was looked at, and especially the kind of mental health crisis and the lack of connection because it's, you know, I watched my dad basically die because he moved to Costa Rica and thought he was going to be in

paradise, but he lost his structure. He lost his support and it just basically gave out, had a blood clot and then had surgery and just died. Didn't wake up. And it was, it was, I, maybe there's some medical explanation, but what I saw is he went from an incredibly structured, supportive community to being in a place where he was just always an outsider. He was always a gringo instead of like, you know, Philip. And I think that killed him. Where was his blood clot? Uh, I don't remember where the blood clot was. I know they removed that. They managed to get him through that and they did the surgery to replace a heart valve. And they said that he was so healthy. They didn't want

to do a mechanical one. They want to do a big one because he was definitely gonna live more than you know 10 or 15 years and he went to bed that night and woke up or didn't wake up fuck what year was that 2006 shit so and you went in in 2002 i heard this stat the i heard this thing the other day that LeBron's been playing basketball so long that when he started, there was no Facebook. And every time I hear your story, I just think about the monumental leaps in technology that happened when you were in jail, in prison. I remember when LeBron started. He started in 2004. He started right when I got to the first prison. That was like his first season guys were talking about that. Or maybe it started the year before, but I remember that was the thing. Like y'all hear about this kid coming out of man. He's amazing. And like,

yeah, he's been playing a long time, but yeah, no Facebook. Like the cell phones we had the high tech before I went to prison with an Nokia block phones with the snake game. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'm going to make a presupposition here. I'm totally open to you and fucking me. How many how many years did you need to do before you were reformed?

Lots of presuppositions. I'm making a presupposition that you that you needed to go and that you are reformed yeah um it's hard to say because like immediately went in and i was on the straight and narrow i was on the right path and then when i got sentenced i was hopeless i was like man i gotta spend 32 years in here like i'm i give up i don't care and then i started kind of like feeling hope because i put an appeal in because i was look the judge sentenced me and literally couldn't even tell the court how much time he had sentenced me to like, there's no way that's going to stand. Right. And then when my appeal got denied, I was once again, I was hopeless and I was angry. So I had this kind of like curve of

like up and down. And I think if I had a shorter period of time, I think within five years, I had made all the significant kind of changes and directions in my life. But at the same time, some of those people that changed my life, some of the people that introduced me to meditation or introduced me to CrossFit or martial arts again, or didn't come until later. So it's really hard for me to say that, but I'll say that in a situation where I'd been provided all the resources that I needed, if I'd actually been given access to quality mental health care, if I'd been introduced to like kind of meditation or mindfulness or something along those lines, I think five years would have been more than sufficient.

And, and when I think of that in my head, I't mean it's it's interesting because i don't think of it as five years in prison um you needed five years of like soul searching yeah or or yeah any fucking vipassana camp you needed to be sent to the military you needed to be sent to like you needed five years of like um discipline and unfucking so you go in there and you're like fuck this i'm cleaning my shit up but then i did hear you say that the first time and then you you alluded to this just now you had never shot heroin outside of prison and the first time you ever shot heroin was in prison was that like in your first year no it was that was two years in three years in so still kind of hopeless at that point yeah i mean it was it was like i said it would be that

back and forth it'd be that doing well and then i would just hit a wall and i've always been like a really like kind of mood swing emotional person when i was in one of those big downturns because heroin had always scared me like i had a girlfriend in high school who was like hey let's go get some dope and go you know screw and i was like no, I'm good. See you later. Regardless of all the crazy stuff, it just always terrified me. You couldn't just opt in for the screw part? I was worried she'd trick me into the heroin. But yeah, no, it always terrified me. And then I did. I got to the point where I just didn't care. I wasn't afraid of dying. I wasn't afraid of anything. I was just going to do whatever I could to make it go away. And the blessing I had was

that I didn't like heroin. Heroin just made the pain go away. And so it was only when I was in those like horrible, deep, dark moments that I wanted to do it. And it wasn't like, oh, I want to do it because it feels so good. It was like, I want to do this so I don't kill myself. And so that was it. That was like my medical use of heroin, you know, I don't know, probably five or six times over the next couple of years. Only when I just got to the point that I was completely hopeless. I was, they put me in a cell with this guy who was schizophrenic, who was just completely out of control. It wasn't taking medication with like scream at the wall. Wouldn't take a shower at one point, like just started like cutting himself and

putting his blood everywhere. And that was when they finally got rid of him, thankfully. But like, I'm just stuck in there with him. And I'm like writing mental health. I'm like, yo, I don't feel comfortable in here. Like, what are y'all gonna do and they're like well we can't provide services unless somebody asked for it um and i just i hadn't slept in like three days dude been up acting crazy and doing stuff and my next door neighbor was a dope man so i was like yo give me give me two like what do you got and i did i just remember snorting the dope and getting up and puking in the middle of the night but actually being able to like nod out and not feel that for a day and somehow i needed that as a reset because I didn't have other coping tools. I didn't have

another way to like deal with things or make a change. How long were you in that cell with the wackadoodle? Three months, maybe. Man, I tried everything. I just, the whole thing is you're kind of held hostage in prison, right? Like if you have a good job or if you have a good setup, you have to lose all that. If you want, like if you put in a move and they don't approve it or they say, yeah, we'll get to you whenever. Yeah, I mean, I could get moved. I could go punch somebody in the face and go to the hole, but I'm going to lose my job. I'm going to lose my good time. I'm going to lose my hope of whatever in the future. So you're held hostage by doing the right thing. Whereas in some ways, the freest people in there were the guys who just

didn't give a shit. And it got to the point where they didn't even have to punch somebody in the face anymore. They would just go up to the officer and be like, look, dude, I'm going to fuck him up if you don't move me. And they would move. I'm'm gonna mess him up if you don't give me a new mattress so they'd give him a new mattress so you end up being rewarded for bad behavior rather than like hey i'm staying out of the way i'm doing everything right and they're like yeah we don't have time for you we got to deal with all these guys over here a cop uh a cop pulls me over and i he says um you know you're doing uh 50 and a 30. And I said, OK. And I say, hey, I'm late to picking my daughter up from ballet.

And he says, OK, just slow down. And at that point, I'm like, hey, that's cool. Right. Like the cop let me off. But what I'm also saying at that point is that I'm giving I'm OK with the corruptness of the. Of the system right because not necessarily is that corruption because in my mind that cop's job is to enforce safety right and if he can slow you down and give you a warning and that will cause you to be slower I think it makes like I

ride motorcycles right you're being logical that's you're being logical humanitarian maybe I'm being you're like using common sense and shit i'm like trying to be uh more of a mathematician well let me pose this i i hear you and i agree with you i'm 100 with you but he he um pulls me over and um he says hey you were doing 50 in a, uh, 30. And I said, no, I wasn't.

I was doing 30. A guy blew by me. You radar the wrong car. That wasn't me. Sure. And he gives me the ticket anyway. And now I think he's an asshole. Okay.

I feel like in society, we want to have it, but we, um, I give him, I give him another example. Someone comes up to me and they said, Hey, can I have a cigarette in college? And I'm like, no. And they're like, you asshole. And I'm like, dude, you just asked me a yes or no question. You gave me the power to say yes or no to you. Why didn't you just come up to me and just take it if you weren't open to both answers?

Why did you lie to both of us? Why did you present a false situation? You know what I mean? I'm getting really Taoist here. i'm drilling down to some shit okay there there we have to accept accept the bad we want we want to accept we have to accept the bad with the good if we want to give people wiggle room okay or else it's unjust and i bring this up and i'm not sorry i don't mean i'm not preaching to you i'm working towards this idea um is is prison corrupt yes but okay if it wasn't could it could it not be corrupt or it has to be corrupt? I don't know.

Like, I want cops with wiggle room. I want a cop that makes the judgment call that you don't give the kid a fucking sexual predator ticket for fucking peeing on a fence. You know what I mean? That's just – and he's got to have that now for 10 years on his record because he pulled his dick out and took a pee i want some dignity and humanity i i mean i agree but i think it's a false dichotomy to say that if you want dignity and humanity you have to accept injustice or malice or prejudice or something like that i think if the basis is dignity and humanity that can be applied across the board that the goal is to have as fair and as reasonable and as common sense the system as possible and humanity, that can be a cause of war. The goal is to have as fair and as reasonable and

as common sense a system as possible. And that means that, again, officers and officers of the court and lawyers and judges are given the training to recognize their own biases and basically become the best people they can be and be like, hey, I realize I got a thing. When somebody lies to me, I immediately want to punish them. So this guy lies to me like, yeah, I may give him the ticket, but I'm not going to add on a bunch of extra charges or I'm not going to do what they do all over the country and arrest you for one thing and stack a dozen charges. Your choices are either take a plea for six months or get 20 years in prison. I think that there's a balance, but it's funny you talk about the corruption because in Virginia, you've got like two almost

separate systems. You've got the Western region that is super strict. You're going to get good food and you're going to have to obey every single rule. If you have one extra sock, you're getting charged or you're going to the hole, but you get everything you're supposed to get. Now in the central and the eastern region, and you can pretty much do whatever you want. And there aren't a lot of consequences, but if you want something you're supposed to have, like good luck getting it. So that's really the trade-off. And I had to admit, I preferred being in the central region because I knew as much as I was keeping my nose clean, one day I was going to have an extra pair of socks or I was going to have a, you know, whatever. And I didn't want to have to deal with the consequences of that. And for that reason, I was OK with not accepting those services.

So in that sense, yeah, I agree. There can be this dichotomy of like you get either or. But I think the overarching mission of the police or of the criminal justice system should be to help and heal, to serve and protect rather than to like punish or militarize there every story you have there's wiggle room there's you realize that these prisons are islands and these are social experiments and people are it's it's just so fucking dynamic yeah uh everything from the the hustle to where you would take even the guards saw you take the butter and the extra apples. Right. To make the apple pies. Yeah. And they would crack jokes or everything. Guys with cell phones. Yeah. Now they took that seriously. They knew it was around, but they tried to find those. But you also had like you had different interests. I had a long conversation with the I don't want to get in trouble.

But you also had like you had different interests. I had a long conversation with I don't want to get in trouble. So somebody who was in the administration, I'll say, who was like, man, you know, they cut out smoking in 2010. And she was like, where's all this tobacco coming from? Like, what's going on? I was like, oh, like you got the wrong response to this. You're worried about tobacco. Like, is tobacco killing anybody? Like, is that really what you're worried about? You keep the tobacco in and you're going to have a peaceful prison. She looked at me like I was crazy. And I said, because you've got a tobacco man and you've got a parlay man, you've got a quarter board man, well, the tobacco man needs somebody to hold it for him and somebody to bag it up for him and somebody to sell it for him. So now you've all of a sudden got all this money that's being spread

out into four people rather than being one person's hands. The parlay man needs somebody to write tickets, somebody to call home and get the line, somebody to pass out tickets, somebody else to do gathering the money. So all of a sudden now you get that money spread out to five people. Whereas if you have one person with all that money, that's not going to go well. When you have like huge disparity in prison, that's when you get violence. That's when you get robberies. That's when you get gang issues because people don't have, and they legitimately feel like their only choice is to take it from somebody else. And it was, it was funny because her eyes kind of opened up and she was like, you know, I never thought about it that

way. She said, so you're actually saying, if we just like kind of let the tobacco and the gambling go, we'll be okay. And I said, yeah. And they did. That was their stance for the next couple of years. It was like, yeah, we caught you smoking. Like, don't do that anymore. Like if you got caught with a bunch of tobacco or something, they would give you a charge. But for the most part, it was just like, look, we don't care about that because we have bigger issues on our plate. Um, how do you light a cigarette in prison? Uh, either batteries or a sparker. So you can use batteries and what do you call them? Paper clips, or you can use or staples, or you can use a sparker. So you just basically take

like an electrical cord. Imagine you take the hot and the neutral, you know, that are outside of the cord, you like cut it off. And then if you put a piece of lead between them, it'll spark. You can actually make them up to where you have two pieces of lead or a piece of lead attached to each one. And we touch those together, you'll get just the right amount of spark. And then you roll up a piece of toilet paper, and you make a wick, and you actually get to the point where you can light your wick directly and then light your cigarette. I mean we're pretty resourceful in there. That doesn't trip a – that doesn't – thank you, Caleb. That doesn't trip a fuse?

As long as you do it properly no but yeah i mean people when they first start out they make like stingers which are to boil water or they make sparkers they don't know what they're doing they they don't get the cord length right or the pencil length right and they they trip the breaker and that's a huge issue because to get a breaker untripped you have to get somebody who has the keys to the lieutenant's office to go downstairs to open not only lieutenant's office but all the maintenance door go in there figure out which breaker it is and on the wrong shift they just won't do it because they don't know how to do it or they don't know what they're doing and that was one of the reasons i got on maintenance because i

wanted to be able to fix all the stuff that needed to be fixed so at like two in the morning i'm getting called out because the tv system's down and they want to watch the game over in the staff room it's like cool because if i fix it for y'all that means i'm fixing it for everybody else in the prison like it let me do something meaningful so you'll be asleep at two and you're the the tv repair guy and they'll be like someone will come over to your cell and be like jesse we need you and you get up and put and go that was better than when i was a medical worker and they woke me up at 3 30 in the morning to go clean out one of the cells where the guy had overdosed he was just puking everywhere so you have just like a vomit-filled cell.

That was not a fun wake up at 3.30 in the morning. But when I did the TV the one time for the big NBA finals, like I actually got a soda out of it. The CEO pulled me aside and was like, you know what, I'll tell nobody. When there were the COVID lockdowns, did they release a shitload of prisoners? I don't know the numbers on that.

So what they did is if you had a notice it got light like your friends were gone no no i mean i also didn't have any friends that had less than a year left with non-violent charges i was in a medium security at the time um but yeah if you had a non-violent charge and you were less than a year you could be eligible for early release even that like there was one guy um when i got sent down the dormitory there were more guys like that and there was one guy who would put in and he'd been waiting for like six months, and he only had like nine months left. And it was like, all right, if y'all's goal was to save money and lighten up the system, waiting six months to approve this didn't seem to make sense. But maybe they just didn't have the logistics in place or didn't have the board in place. I'm not sure.

Someone wrote here in the comments, a cell phone catching is the guard's wet dream. Yeah, big time i mean and again it depends who because you you got that you know those guards that are just there for a paycheck they don't really care you have those that take it a little more serious or have seen some horror story about like some guy ordering a hit out on the street which i'm sure does happen in some places but i've definitely never heard about happening where i was um but then yeah you have those like the the ones who tuck their pants in their boots and are just like gung-ho and they love sticking the dogs on people and like yeah those are the guys that just love catching somebody.

What's the implication of tucking your pants into your boots? I've heard you mention that a few times. It's I don't I don't think in a professional context, I think the people in the military and the police that have a legitimate reason to do that. But what it reminds me of is that guy who couldn't make it in the police or couldn't make it into the military, but got a job as a CEO. So he's putting on the form of what somebody sees. It's the guy who has't make it in the police or couldn't make it into the military but got a job as a ceo so he's putting on the form of what somebody sees it's the guy who has you know the flak jacket and the rifle but doesn't know how to use it's never been trained but he's like putting on the symbols of the person that he wants to be but he couldn't be because of his lack of training or lack of you know ability did you ever did you ever see um uh the prison ever break um

prisoners did you see people like oh fuck, this motherfucker is broken. The worst thing I ever saw, because Virginia has gone towards what's been like the national international standard of moving away from long-term segregation but it used to be like you could just go back to the hole and stay there. Like you could be gone to investigation for 90 days, they'd let you out for two days, put you

back under for 90 days. They could stick you back there for 90 days for charges. What's the hole? It's segregation like single cell no interaction with the world everywhere you go outside the cell you go in full shackles and leg irons um no no windows uh some have windows some don't it depends on the prison you're at um but yeah i mean if you do have a window you can't really see anything but we had one guy down there i remember i was down there for i think that was when i was down there for syrup there was one guy in the corner who had been down there for like years had just been stuck in there nobody knew why he had some serious mental health issues

and i remember they were they were going in there trying to get him out for a shower and he wouldn't come out he hadn't come out in like four or five days and they were worried about him so their response being worried about him was to get the goon squad get everybody suited up in tyvek suits and take the shock shield if you've never seen what the shock shield is, it's a riot shield with a taser on it. And they went in there and they hit him with the shock shield and then dragged him out of the cell, covered in shit and whatever else was going on and threw him in the shower and then turned the shower on. And I was like, you know, when that's your response to somebody who is so disorganized and messed up and struggling that they can't take care of themselves is to like literally treat them

like an animal probably work. I mean, if you did that to a dog you'd get arrested like if you tasered a dog and then threw it into a shower and turn the shower and you get arrested but they did that to a human being and it was just standard procedure dude that's a great example by the way when you say that compare it to a dog um did you witness that yeah well how did you witness? What were you doing that put you in that situation? I went to the hole for possession of contraband syrup. Oh. Oh, shit. And that'll fuck you up too, seeing that. That was rough. I was out filming one night, and I was probably like 20 yards away from a guy who rolled down the street in his Audi during a big party night.

There were kids everywhere, and he fucking just drove into the crowd and hit a bunch of people, right? people and i was there and he jumped out of the car and screamed i'm the angel of death and it was some fucking 18 year old kid who went to uc santa barbara what made me think of that is i just got um someone just sent me an article where this kid's up for uh he's trying to get out of whatever mental institution he's in right um. After 20 years, it's like the 20 year anniversary or 30 year anniversary. But that fucked me up seeing that because there were just mangled bodies everywhere. And then the dude got out and said, he's the angel of death. It fucked me up. Like in the moment, like I felt like someone dosed me with LSD. You know what I mean?

Like everything that was happening, I did not want to be happening. It's just complete fucking chaos i think that's one of the things that we don't think about and that's i say this for prisoners and for officers and for police officers witnessing traumatic things is its own kind of trauma we have the idea like nothing happened to you like you didn't get hurt you see enough of those things you see enough babies get run over or left in hot cars you see enough people get stabbed you see enough like that has an effect on you. And that's why correctional officers in this country have, you know, an average life expectancy of like 57.

They have one of the highest rates of suicide and substance abuse and spousal abuse. Like it's wearing on them. Like it's not just that the prisoners are having the, you know, the kind of bad into this. This is bad for for the officers too did you ever see any of them break down uh we had trying to think we had a couple who left because they couldn't take it i don't know that i ever saw one breakdown while on shift but actually i got a message from one last night one that i've had an exchange back and forth with we were talking about overdose prevention because one of the friends i spent the weekend with does overdose prevention for concerts like carries an arcane um and she was talking about her own experience and she was talking about basically having lost somebody and then coming into the prison and just not being able to function like she she can't cry around the prisoners like she

can't cry around the staff and she just said she was struggling she was lost so i i bet you the majority of those dudes in there those have some sort of substance abuse the guards yeah i would say that most based on the conversations i heard i would say most probably drink pretty heavily most do a lot of kind of escapist behavior yeah um what about chewing tobacco is chewing tobacco big in prison it was until 2010 so in 2010 they removed all uh tobacco products and it just seems like people it's easier to smuggle in um what just like regular tobacco than it is chewing tobacco so i think one guy got in um because you get caught smoking it right everyone can smell it i mean that makes sense it would make more sense i just i remember when they cut cigarettes out

somebody had old chewing tobacco that he'd used and saved and guys were buying it to roll it up and smoke it um fuck what was it like in there when they did you smoke when they cut it i i didn't smoke for years and i started smoking like occasionally there when they did you smoke when they cut it i i didn't smoke for years and i started smoking like occasionally right before they did and then once roll up started going for a dollar or two dollars i was like yeah i'm good like i'm done but yeah no did that break did that break people quitting nicotine is fucking hard were people losing their shit yeah now luckily they did the smart thing and they did like a smoke out like they had a last day for buying it and then it just wasn't available anymore so that way they knew like the black market stuff would be available

and it was like a slow tone down rather than just like day one you can't do it because they knew they would have had a riot like it would have been a problem but yeah you had guys like digging in the back of phones like out like trying to find anywhere there could be a cigarette butt from six months ago or six years ago yes rolling it up or selling it or it was it was rough to see well um i remember uh a common thing amongst uh homeless drug addicts would be they would collect everywhere they went cigarette buds that the college kids would smoke and they would fuck it and then they would just sit down and squeeze out because you know no one ever smokes it all the way down to the filter so then they would just roll it out and they'd have a fucking pile of secondhand tobacco.

And then they'd put it in a plastic bag and get some papers and that would be their tobacco for the month. Well, even before they cut out smoking, that was a regular thing. There were guys who didn't have any money or any jobs or any support that would walk around being like, hey, can I get that short? And you smoke it down or whatever you had left. You'd give it to them and they'd put it out and they'd put it in their little pile. Yeah. You had support from the outside and you speak about it being just vital to the key to your success. Yeah. I mean, that's the reason I am the person that I am is that I had, when I was the most hopeless, I had people who picked me up and every time I completely crashed and didn't

believe in myself, they believed in me and pushed me forward. They paid for me to go to college. They made sure I had money in my book so I didn't have to scramble with the scarcity complex just to have food or toothpaste. They made sure that I was able to read every book that I wanted to read. Like I was comfortable and I was okay. And I was able to turn this into like a meditation retreat in it, like a monastery, whereas everybody else was just scrambling to survive. Um, what does that look like that they were able to pay for your college? And are you, are you in Jess saying it was like monastery or was there like a point where

you're like, fuck, I'm going to, I'm going full monk. I'm going full ascetic in here. Yeah. I mean, they were able,

it took 15 years because it was at cost. There's no student loans. There's no benefits. There's no financial aid. So it took 15 years to be able to pay for it, but it was getting correspondence courses from Ohio University where you send the money. They send in textbooks and a workbook and, you know, whatever is related to the course. I have to fill things out by hand, mail them back in and then, you know, wait for them to get back through the mail, which is a long process.

But as far as I mean, it wasn't a month to the point that I shaved my head and I just said prayers all day. But, yeah, I mean, every lockdown for years, I did a meditation retreat. I sat in my bed and I would get down every 30 minutes and do a little walking meditation and get back in my bed for eight hours. I would like turn it into a meditation retreat. I tried to focus on like mental and physical and spiritual. It was meditation. It was exercise. It was reading. It was writing. It was, I'd gotten to the point where I was like done with the idea of just wasting my time. I wasn't going to sit down at the poker table. I wasn't going to be getting high. Like I wanted to do something with my time, leave me better off than when I started. And then, you know, I guess the bad habits then for me were

like, you know, watching too much TV because I felt like I was passing time because it was hard for me to have that mindset, but also have the elements of self-care. Like, yo, I just need to relax and watch TV or I just need to relax and do something that isn't like focused on performance because when I get in that mindset, I end up being like compulsive and i'm like a shark i can't stop swimming did you ever read um malcolm x's autobiography by alex the thing that one of the things that stuck i read it is a i don't know maybe 19 or 20 18 19 and one of the things that i mean he went through a crazy transformation he went through a couple crazy transformations in that book but one of the things that – I mean he went through a crazy transformation. He went through a couple crazy transformations in that book. But one of them was when he was in prison, he wrote down the entire dictionary supposedly.

He took a dictionary. Did you do any crazy shit like that, like make a jigsaw puzzle or work on your penmanship? Or did you see dudes doing shit? You're like, whoa, this is like some fucking mandala shit i mean some of the guys like so when i first got locked up you could do your floors like you could wax your floor so guys would like cut out tiles of different sizes and different colors and make these incredibly complex like you ever seen like uh like arabic art where it's there's no no uh like symbols or figures it's all shapes you'd have like these incredibly complex like

geometric patterns on the floor or they would do like paper bags, but each paper bag would have a different depth. So it looks like your floor was waving and then it would be waxed over guys would, you know, we're in the jail. We had a guy paint a mural on the wall. Like he made paint out of like M&Ms and other stuff he got off commissary and painted a mural on his cell wall. I mean, you would see these incredible acts of, of just like creativity. Probably one of the most amazing ones I saw, we had a guy named Paul who would do boxes. He would build boxes out of Popsicle sticks and then he would do this intricate like Gaelic or like Celtic scroll work. And it would take him six months to do one. So he would take nothing but fingernailnate design things that would be tiered and layered and textured. And six months later, he would send it home to his family and guys would be like, man, I want to buy that. And he's like, dude, what could you possibly give me that is worth six months of my life?

Like, how could you compensate me? Like, yeah, you're tripping. They let him take that shit. They let him send that shit home, huh? Well, you're actually so we used to have more regular access to like glue and popsicle sticks and art supplies. And then they restricted all that and like they sell they sell popsicle sticks but don't sell glue so now you have to make glue out of creamer you know whatever else you can do but yeah you're encouraged to work on projects and then once they're completed you can't keep them you have to send them home so one of the things guys would do is always have like a 99 completed project be

like yo i need to put that last stick on there that way they couldn't take it um when they when they released you um on august 16 2021 did you did i hear that right you put back on the clothes that they arrested you in 19 years earlier no they hear that okay no so when i when i first got to prison when i was transferred from to prison, they put me into the clothes that I'd been arrested in. And then when I got there, every single thing they said, you can throw it away. You can send it home, your commissary, your clothes, your boots or whatever. And I was like, man, I got like eighteen dollars on my books. Like, I'm not spending that to send home some clothes I'm never going to see again. So all that was thrown away. Instead, what they did is they have release clothes like you're not allowed to walk out in the blues you were wearing.

So they give you these like tan, tan, almost like khakis and a tan shirt. My tan khakis literally hung out over my feet, over my shoes. The shirt actually fit fairly well, but I just kept it. I struggled with that for two months because I kept it because I was like, look, this is a shirt. It's a good shirt, but I was like, I can't fucking wear it. There's too much attached to this. I've given it to goodwill because i was like maybe if somebody doesn't know where this came from it'll be a shirt they can put on and they can wear and they can be comfortable the khakis i got rid of right away because they were just they were rough but how much can someone if you if you have someone on the outside

can they just put as much money as you can they put like a million dollars on the books for you of course i know i mean i've never seen anybody have a million dollars to be put on their books but i think there's probably a limit on each transaction but i don't know what it is because i remember there's a big issue i worked in the law library and the person there did grievances we had a guy who had enough money on his books to pull 32 000 off to send for his son to buy a truck and i remember they charged him a money order fee for every 150 dollars it was like whatever 32 000 is divided by 150 times like 50 cents or something so he ended up being like yo you can't charge me all this money to like send money off my books but they said yeah we can no that's crazy because that means let's say let's say i live in a house

and it's worth three million dollars and i go to jail and i just have someone fucking sell my fucking house and put that money on my books i would own the jail pretty much it doesn't it doesn't always work that way and we had a millionaire that it didn't go well for he had a really good run for a long time because he kept everybody happy but all it took was somebody young and stupid that had enough support to like put pressure on him to the point that nobody wanted to back him up because of the guys that he had with him and the guy ended up checking in and leaving the prison and everybody was pissed because this guy had spread money out i mean he had paid guys to play softball he had paid guys

for gambling like he he spread money out he made the prison a much better place but this young guy got you know too kind of young and greedy and brought all those people and said, look, you're going to give us money where else. And that messed it up for everybody. So. Fuck. Um, when, when, uh,

when I would go to, I had a boss and I would go to a hotel with them and he'd come with like a stack of, you know, he'd have like $2,000 in twenties, you know, in his pocket and every single, you know,

you roll up to the four seasons and every single person that you see, you give a $20 bill to. The whole time you're there, every employee. So you walk up and there's five bellmen. They each get 20 bucks. You leave 10 minutes later, they all get 20 bucks. And you're just all, every person, the guy comes to your room and brings your luggage. He has 20 bucks. And by the time you're there for a week, every fucking person there works for you and not the hotel.

I believe that. You know what I mean? And I don't blame them them like i used to park cars like i get it the dude who tips you five bucks you know in in 1989 when i parked cars over his car stays up in the front you know what i mean for five dollars your car goes um and so when we say the prison is corrupt, that's one of the elements, money moves things. Well, money inside, which is that's a corruption that people talk about, right? Like, you know, you have guards that make like $13 an hour and have families. They can't support their families. And this guy says, hey, go see my brother.

I'll give you $1,000 a week. That's hard to argue with. But I think the greater corruption is the whole idea of the prison industrial complex. I think the greater corruption is the whole idea of the prison industrial complex. So if you look at GZL or you look at Kifi or you look at one of these companies that makes $500 million or a billion dollars off of a prison service, off of phone calls or off of commissary. The military is the same way, Jesse. Exactly. All their shit's fucked up too. Yeah.

But so they have a vested interest. have a vested interest if i made a billion dollars this year it's in my interest to spend a hundred million dollars lobbying for stricter sentencing laws or worse conditions or whatever limitations are going to make more people have to use my phone calls there's a guy somewhere right now who's sitting on a beach in aruba making three million dollars a year because of fucking chips he sells prisoners i fully believe that yeah right i mean and then there's another guy who's been giving you the same shitty napkins that don't fucking work in prison and he makes 10 million a year and he's sitting on a beach in fucking costa rica and no one's gonna say shit to him even though it's so obvious there's a thousand napkin manufacturers that make better shit for cheaper

right i agree and that's the corruption you're talking about the fucked up straws the stuff that people don't even use in there that's being that the taxpayers are paying for you're saying it's just fucking like that like the milk like the milk like the hospital it's funny you talked about a recidivism and and you know in several of your videos and um uh the the sick economy works the same way, right? Someone comes in and they have a type two diabetes instead of telling them to change their diet so that they can be free from type two diabetes. They, they bring you in and they get you on insulin, right? They start, they start or metformin or whatever the shit is. And they bring you in as, as you

know, and no one ever tells you, Hey, you could stop eating snicker bars and unfuck yourself. I completely agree. Man. I mean, there are a lot of people who have a vested interest in people coming back to prison. And it's not the state. It's not the taxpayers. It's not the DOC. Although maybe there's some people in the DOC who love their job and want to perpetuate it.

Yeah, there are a lot of financial interests and people not changing. And if you follow the money behind that it's a really disturbing story uh it oh i remember as a kid doing a in high school doing a or maybe it's college doing a paper on the privatization of jails that's that's absolutely batshit crazy i'm for the privatization of a lot of shit a A lot of shit, because I believe competition is really important. I agree. But jails, you can't do that to jails, right? I'm thinking clearly on that. You can't have people being like excited to lock people up and make money off of it. Yeah. I mean, if you just look at the kids for cash scandals and the history of that,

it's it's ineptly. I mean, it's like innately corrupt. I don't know how you could remove, anytime somebody has a financial incentive for someone else to be incarcerated, that gives them a financial incentive to make more people incarcerated, make stricter laws that don't serve any purpose, have stricter sentencing, like it literally incentivizes punishing people that don't need to be punished. If you look at the rates of incarceration in this country over the past 50 years, we don't have more criminals. It's it's not like i mean maybe our society is sicker or maybe we need more help but we're not fundamentally worse people but we're locked up at a fundamentally higher rate and it's like there's a correlation here and the amount of money that is being spent on prisons each year seems to connect to that correlation and it just makes worse people every time you lock someone up there's a there's a price

to pay humanity pays a price yeah and i don't know why 15 increase from 2019 28 decrease from 2010 i don't know i'd have to look at that um but it was one of those things if you ever watch uh if you ever listen to you're wrong about podcast no spell it can you say it again you are or you're contracted you're wrong about sir okay okay uh she did one on prisons that i thought was just absolutely incredible because she talks about the history and how nobody wanted prisons in their community because it was considered a bad thing and then all of a sudden when they started getting tax breaks and there was this financial incentive communities started advocating and petitioning and lobbying to get prisons in their communities

and it's inevitably a poor uh it's inevitably a poor community that doesn't have access to resources or doesn't have support or doesn't have job opportunities. And then the prison becomes the company job. Like the company town is run by the prison. It's fucking crazy. Fucking crazy. When you get out on August 16th, 2021, how long – can you tell me your journey to a smartphone and your first social media experience and post, like signing up for your – was TikTok your first social media account? It was. I mean I had an existing Facebook account, but I didn't even know you could post videos on Facebook. So yeah. So the first thing that I did was go spend some time with Courtney, getting to know whether we were

actually as compatible in person as we were, you know, over the phone. And then we went to Walmart and it was like, all right, I got to go to Walmart. And it was funny because I didn't have any panic about that. Cause I went straight to the back. I got a phone. I was like, Hey, I got a hundred bucks. Like what can I get for a hundred bucks? I got the phone and I left. And I was like, all right, cool. I have a phone. Like I can, you know, text people and I'm like texting people are going on Facebook and telling them. So, and then I went to Costco and had a complete meltdown because I was like, wait a minute. I need clothes and I need food. And I like, what am I, I don't have anything. I've got like a phone and some blue shoes and some khakis that hang out over my feet what phone did you get uh a cheap i can't remember

what it was it was like it was a 50 on sale phone um i don't even remember the brand name it's like k50 or s50 or something as a droid then right yeah it was an android though yeah and you're still on a droid i so i went this weekend to the uh the kind of gathering of social media people and everybody's like yo you gotta you got to get an iPhone. I was like, really? Why? I got like a Google Pixel, and they got a better camera. But we did a bunch of videos, and they were on somebody's phone, and they couldn't airdrop to my phone, and they were saying my quality of – they just gave me enough crap that I was like, all right, my phone's half messed up now anyways. I've broken it like three times and had to send it to insurance.

So I'm going to go out, and if I can get a deal, I'm going to buy an iPhone today. I'll tell you the – I'm going to propose it to insurance. So I'm going to go out, and if I can get a deal, I'm going to buy an iPhone today. I'll tell you the real – I'm going to propose this to you. Do you know why all of us are enslaved to the iPhone? What is that? Because the proprietary technology around iMessage. I think all the smart – I think the droids are better phones and all the smart people use them, but us iPhone users are such fucking snobs that we don't want to text with you droid users because then you're green.

And you fuck up the text threads. But that's it. That's it. The whole thing is a fucking scam. And I'm part of it. I participate in the scam. I can't break out either. But I've never held a droid and been like, wow, this is a piece of shit.

I'm always like, wow, they're like five years ahead on everything. Like Apple's like, look, autocorrectrect and like droids had it since 1987 you know what i mean it's like it's crazy but but it's just we we don't want to text with droid users we're we're like we don't want to text with you you're green fuck off like even this morning when i text you i'm like ice green well i'll have to keep that in mind because i mean that was my thought is like i read a bunch of articles that were like you know iphones will like limit what you can do and it's gonna be harder to transition from iphone to a droid but if you go from a droid you can do whatever you want and so i was like all right cool and i mean people are telling me this weekend that my video quality isn't good enough and i need to work on my cinematography and i need that i was like dude

i'm some fucking dude who got out of prison and went on top of a mountain with a 50 phone and made a video and like that's how my social media journey started so good your shit's so good it's so concise and it's so disciplined um it's so disciplined okay so um by the way i went to costco for the first time in 20 years uh a couple weeks ago and completely fucking overwhelmed and i went with my dad he goes dude you're looking around like a little kid who's never seen this before i'm like i was actually to be frank i couldn't believe the way the people looked i i just the the gluttony around me just the the people in there um there was a guy in there you know 200 pounds overweight with

a fucking mask on getting free fucking like something out of the microwave i was like dude fuck off like i like it broke my heart well i need to know some of your diet stuff because i'm trying to make some changes to my diet i woke up all i've eaten today courtney knows i've seen courtney courtney knows she's a fucking beast what a fucking rock star you got she knows she's a she's a crossfitter she knows yeah um i'm i'm i was i was stoked to see that connection i had i had no idea that uh that you were somehow connected when you're doing the the martial arts club in jail where do you guys go initially, or is there some sort of acceptance from the guards? Like, did you have to pay off the guards or how do you do a martial arts club?

It wasn't paid off, but initially we did it only in the cell and it was, you know, that way we could close the door and nobody could see it. We were kind of kept away. Um, then we got to the point where you used to have a boxing program at Buckingham so it was you could um you could basically like box on the yard you could you know hit pads you could do something you were good but then it became well you know maybe if you just hit pads on the yard you can throw in a couple kicks and they won't say anything like you get away with it and then it was the wrestling was the hardest part of the grappling was the hardest part because they did not like they did not like the idea that but what we had was we had the old school staff who'd been there when we had the

boxing program who had seen the good that came out of that and saw that we got this dude who's got three stabbings on his record and we've got this dude who's been in like 18 fights in the last five years and they're hanging out with y'all and they're not doing anything they're like chill and they're breaking up fights rather than getting into them and they were like look man like we don't know what y'all are doing but we think it's good and they actually pulled we had this this old head this guy named jc who i love to death they pulled him aside we're like look we can't tell you this is okay but like as long as everybody wears a mouth guard and everybody wears gloves and you do this like we're we're gonna turn the other way and that was it like

they they realized guards huh that's pretty that that's pretty astute yeah well they for the longest time you had to go to medical and say that you ground your teeth to get mouth guards and then finally get to the point where so many people were getting teeth knocked out playing basketball or playing softball or doing something that they were just like all right we're gonna sell them through commissary so wow and how long did you have the martial arts club and how often did it meet um i'd say probably about two and a half years we would do depending on how many people because it cycled through how many people were there uh we would usually do three classes a week we would do like a striking class just a boxing class

and a grappling class i it depended like sometimes people wouldn't be available or had to work or things were different but generally there'd be three a week and each one of those would be about whatever training we were doing that day and then at the end like the the circle you know kind of circle up and it'd be like look you know what are you proud of what did you struggle with this week like what do you see in another person or it would be like sit around we want everybody to say something about you know with this one person in the group but it was it was a bonding experience with some meaningful stuff do you have a gratitude practice i do every day i have a gratitude list and i list the things that i'm grateful for do you have a a definition of gratitude that you like i've never thought about

it um i just i realized a long time ago there this, what sounds like a really corny line, that gratitude makes whatever you have into enough. And that's what I found, that I've literally been locked into a cell in the hole and not even had sheets to put on the bed and found something to be grateful for and been okay. Because I felt like that restored my sense of freedom. I wasn't the victim of this situation. I had the choice. I could choose to do. I could choose to do,

I could choose to go over and kick the door until they brought me some sheets or I could choose to meditate or I could choose to do whatever and connecting to the gratitude for whatever options or whatever good or whatever experience I had or whatever I could learn from a difficult situation, recognizing that that perspective

changed the way I experienced it was one of the most fundamental kind of shifts in how I thought. the way I experienced it was one of the most fundamental kind of shifts in how I thought. There's this – well, there's this Taoist saying, if you give up everything, you will receive everything. And then there's talk about in these self-help books like how to become a multibillionaire. There's this thing called the abundance mindset. And one of the manifestations of abundance mindset is that you give everything away.

And unfortunately for some people, a lot of people that I've seen, especially in the hippie culture that I came from, they believe in something called karma. And think like, I'm going to give someone a cigarette now so I can get one later. But that's different than the abundance mindset. The abundance mindset, you don't even think about it. You're like living it. You're not doing it because you're a good person or you're a bad person or because you're trying to help your karma. You're just fucking doing it. You're in that mindset. If it's transactional, I think you're missing bad person or because you're trying to help your karma you're just fucking doing it you're in that mindset if it's transactional i think you're missing the point if you're doing something for what you got well said okay explain that a little bit more to me if it's transactional you're missing the point so if you're doing something to get something which is i mean okay in areas of life you work

a job to get money to pay a bill but if in a moral sense you're something to get something back, you're not doing it for the right reason. Like you're not giving because it's the right thing to do. You're not helping somebody because it's the right thing to do. But you're also then like maybe running yourself too thin because you're like, I need to give the last of my money because it'll mean I'll get something, which means you don't have food for your kids that night. It means you've taken this mindset and you've taken it away from let me be present and let me give all that I can give to this person who's in front of me or this opportunity or this experience. And you turn it into, I can do this because I get something in return. Now, ultimately, I think that in some ways, a lot of things are transactional because, you know, when I do good

stuff, I feel good and I can accept doing that, but I'm not doing it to get something in return. It's like, uh, the, the, there's the store I go to that only accepts cash. And once a month, there's someone in front of me who doesn accepts cash and once a month there's someone in front of me who doesn't doesn't know that okay and every time i just pay for them but they're like oh i gotta run to my car fuck i can't get it or it's like always like some mom with a kid or something but i don't i do it because i want them to get the fuck out of the way they think i'm being nice and shit and i'm like i got that and the lady will be doodle bake no no it's no big deal i'm like no no it's fine and i'll take a cheese quesadilla

with bacon please and i'll be back in 15 minutes and then i just get the fuck out of the way but uh it's kind of it's kind of hard um do you think you're pretty – what are some of the nice things you do for people? What would you brag about now that you're out of jail that – if you don't mind. I know it's not fun to do, but if you could brag about something nice you do that maybe people who didn't spend time in jail do for other people. I think it's easier for me to connect to people and really give them my attention. Because I built relationships from a long distance in a place where there was no, like simple interaction, you couldn't just go get laid, or you couldn't just go do something together. Everything was about expressing and listening to and connecting with. It was like long letters and long emails and long, you know,

phone calls. And that makes it easier for me to like sit down and connect with somebody. And in this busy, crazy world, I think I've found the biggest problem is people that don't, everything is so fast paced that there's no depth and they don't feel seen and they don't feel heard. And one of the things that I'm happiest to be able to do is help people feel seen and heard. So even, even over social media, which is just this incredible fast paced transactional kind of environment, I have people who were victims of crime who say, hey, the person who hurt me has never accepted responsibility. Like this gives me hope or even I'm really getting angry because I got hurt and like this person wouldn't accept it. And I can listen to them and I can listen to be angry or call me names or do whatever.

And if at the end of it, they feel a little bit, I've done something like I've given back. People who have family members are incarcerated or people who were incarcerated. And I thought I was the only one who had this issue. Like, I thought there was something wrong with me. Like I thought, you know, I was broken and they say, seeing this or being able to talk to you and being able to feel seen is a positive thing. I interviewed these three guys, um, a while back. I should interview them again. Now that I have a better platform, they were doing, uh, they were doing life in prison. One guy had life and the other two guys had like fucking hundreds of years. Right.

And someone who worked in the prison hooked it up so that I could interview them live on my podcast. Oh, wow. And, and they were part of this fucking freaky program. They were so fucking cool. These guys,

they had started a CrossFit program in one prison and it was so successful that these three guys were being moved to another prison to start it there which was i guess was unheard of for dudes who had life sentences to be given any shit like that and one of the guys i started asking him about his parents and how they are coping with his life sentence and i had to stop the questioning because I started empathizing with, because I, the reason why I asked the question is I started imagining what it would be like if my kid went away to prison,

it would fuck me up. It's like that. That's really the only, that's like the reason I'm alive. And so I, I couldn't even go down the questioning I wanted to ask because I was coming unhinged. I was like, I started, yeah, these guys, these three guys. And I started asking them about how their parents handled it. Wow, Caleb, good job. I got to get these guys back on.

How did your, do you ever think about that? Like what this hat must have done to your mom and dad? Like you're their greatest creation. Like they've experienced no love greater than their love for you. And it was far harder on my parents than it was on me. I think that, you know, I can talk about my dad. Is that a trick?

Do you really believe that? Or do you just say that? 100%. Yeah. It's fucking nuts. Yeah. You know, my mom was always going to struggle with a sense of guilt. She was always going to struggle with, you know, feeling like maybe she could have done

something differently than the pain of not knowing. Like I knew, like even at the worst situation or the most that my life was in danger, I knew what it was. Like I could see what was in front of me and she always just had to imagine. She had to like try to imagine not the worst thing, which would probably make her think of the worst thing. And that I think is the other thing, because I get a lot of messages from people who have family members locked up. And they're like, look, when you tell these stories, and you talk about it just being life in there, like, yeah,

horrible stuff happens. Yeah. It makes them feel a greater sense of hope or safety for their family members um uh one of my friends who spent you know um i don't know three or four years in jail he did people's legal work for them he had always told me that i'd always heard that story and i didn't i kind of didn't believe him but that's how he survived and then i heard you mention it not that i didn't believe him i had trouble like understanding and then you said that like that's hey that's one of the ways to get by in there if you can do people's legal work for them. I was like, oh, shit. And now I have another friend who just went to jail. And everyone's so fucking concerned about this dude that something fucking bad is going to happen to him.

And, you know, in the first few weeks, his letter's coming out of there that he's scared for his life already. It also depends on where you're at. Like California's prison system is a much more difficult place to get by. And weirdly, like it also then has much more opportunities or, you know, kind of beneficial things. It's a trade-off, but yeah, I'm really grateful to have been locked up where that I was and not have that daily thing. And I've seen people come out, like there's a guy that I talked to on social media. He says he doesn't know how to walk around without a knife out here in the world. He was like, cause I need one in there. And I feel even more threatened out here. Cause I don't know anybody. I don't, I don't know the politics. Like who are you with? Like, who do I got to watch my

back for? So I think some places have even more trauma. Would you ever, did you ever get settled in prison? You did. So there were days that you would actually have like where you i don't know if it's cortisol or what the chemical is but there'd be days where you were like you had a good day like you didn't you weren't looking over your back yeah strangely enough yeah that's amazing so so you accept you assimilate i did and adapt but and i apologize for this i told the producer I got a meeting at 12. So I really. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. Sorry, Jesse. Sorry. You the man, brother. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate you having me. And you got my number. You can see my green text. You can write me nasty messages.

Right. If I get that iPhone today, I'll text you and it'll actually show up blue. Yes. Text me when you're blue. All right. Thank you very much for this. Yeah. And I'll and I'll be and I'll stay in touch with you, brother. Thank you very much for this. Yeah. And I'll, and I'll be, and I'll stay in touch with you, brother. Thank you so much for coming on. And I appreciate all your time. All right. Take care.

Bye. Wow. Can you come on? You can't come on. Hey, this kind of fucked up thing to say. There's kind of a component to his life, to what you're doing, huh?

Yeah. It's like Groundhog Day every day. And you're in jail too, but you're just not. They just don't call it that. But you have very restricted. That's your bed. That's where you can go. This is what you'll eat.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I would say they probably, i mean this the food's probably a little bit better but same thing like our i would say our rooms are probably the same size if not smaller um what's someone here uh says um seven do you uh believe in death penalty for this dude cleotha absent i don't know who that is. I don't believe in the death penalty at all. Zero. And here's the two reasons. I'm concerned they're going to kill the wrong people. And I have no wiggle room for that.

That's just fucked up. And when you kill someone, you make a killer. There's no way around that. So when we send 200,000 boys spread out over the globe to protect our freedoms here in the United States, we're bringing home killers, murderers. And those people need to be taken care of. There's no acknowledgment of that. We have these Navy SEAL squads that go, and then those boys come home as killers. And you have to see that.

There's this Taoist saying, if they lie for you, they'll lie to you. If they kill for you, they have the potential to kill you. It's just the way it is, and and we're lying to ourselves to see another way who is that guy do i even want to look that guy up cleotha absence i just looked it up like while you guys were talking i think they kidnapped and murdered a woman in memphis or something like that oh man so you know i think about the cain velasquez thing quite a bit probably once a week it pops up into my head that dude fucking molested his daughter and he chased him down and shot at him and instead of hitting the guy who molested his daughter he hit the dude's dad yeah i'm struggling like i

i like the rules i like rules but I'm struggling with keeping him in jail. I'm really struggling with keeping him in jail. Oh, for sure. As soon as it happened, I think everybody was pretty much in agreeance that that was necessary. I'm behaving – and I realize that that's woke mindset. Like I'm not being logical. I'm being – To keep him in there is woke mindset or to keep him out to let him like like to let him out like

basically what i'm saying it's like it's like it's like vigilante shit it's like um i would you know what i mean it's it's blm shit it's safe spaces shit it's blue hair it's blue hair shit but how many times has somebody committed a crime similar to that and gone away with it? What Kane did? No, not what Kane did. What the guy did. Oh, yeah, all the time. Dude, that's the scary part.

As me and you were talking, some kid is fucking probably being raped 24-7 on the planet. It fucking is nauseating right so i i mean i would imagine he uh i would imagine it would be justified i i i that that's the thing i i can justify it in every way except i just don't like um vigilantism michael see my mom told me that the first real night of sleep she got when I was a teenager was when I got arrested. Oh, because she knew you weren't going to get in a drunk driving accident or get killed. That's amazing. That's pretty bad, Michael. Just got out of prison in 2020 for kidnapping a lawyer, then kidnapped her while jogging and killed her.

Oh, shit. Really? Man, this show is taking a dark twist this guy has this guy's youtube station is so cool it makes me want to um start doing um two or three posts one minute post on my three playing brother's uh youtube channel every single day yeah he posted a shitload of stuff a shitload it took me like half the show to scroll through his instagram yeah i couldn't um i tried to scroll to his first youtube uh on apple tv i tried to scroll back to his uh oh, can you pull up his YouTube account? Excuse me. Wow, that's a long show.

Hour and 46. I should be like running away. I should have to pee or something. When will Sevan get out of Instagram prison? I don't know. What's weird is they haven't erased my blue checkmark account yet. I still see it in my, when I check my accounts. And I apply to have it reinstated on the reg. You need to get friends like Mike Glover has,

because he just has a bunch of his friends are getting reinstated. Who? Say that again? He knows a guy. Who? Mike Glover. you see him in the comments no he's a another like big instagram guy he's a former green beret or whatever but he has a friend that works for instagram and he's getting all of his friends out of uh instagram jail should i uh oh shit he texts me Instagram, Dale. Should I?

Oh, shit. He texted me. Sorry. I don't think he has YouTube. Are you talking about his Instagram? No, no. He has a YouTube. Go to Jesse.

Let me see if I can find it. Because I went to Apple TV yesterday. Jesse Crosson. J-E-S-S-E. C-r-o-s-s-o-n yeah jesse crossin youtube oh here it is no that's facebook let me see uh oh what's funny is it comes up the podcast video is the first one that comes up god i'm a baller oh it's the wrong Jesse Crossan. What the fuck? I know.

I don't know where it went. Jesse Crossan. I wonder if it's called something like prison reform. The thing is, oh, there it is. It's called Second Chancer. Got it. Got it, got it, got it. Now I'm going to go to all his videos, and I'm going to sort them by oldest.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I've been thinking about cultural identity a lot. I'm trying to get this lady on. She's called the Identity Doctor. And there's this thing. lady on she's called the identity doctor and there's this thing um i've been watching we we talked about in one of the other shows about kids who uh parents kind of lead them down the path of of transgenderism or being non-binary or whatever those things are called where you basically don't

help your kid establish an identity you or you don't you don't coach your kid having identity you give them freedom to pick their own identity and it's so it's so uh it's so convoluted what a massive bank right i does it say how many videos he's made um oh excuse me. A lot. Yeah, well, he's committed. I just thought, man, this is what a cool little thing. That would be a cool thing to do to – it's low stress. His TikTok account has 500,000 followers, and I think his Instagram is 86,000. Yeah, he's got quite the following

when i when i was a kid i remember i was like in the second or third grade my my best friend jeff holman was like hey it's pretty cool that you're armenian and i go why and he's this tall handsome white kid and he's like it's just cool that you are and then i never understood and then you know that subject would come up over the next 20 years we were friends and um i never understood – and then that subject would come up over the next 20 years. We were friends, and I never understood why. And now I get it. You want your kid to have a strong identity. Ideally, they earn it. I'm seeing it in my own kids now.

Ideally, they earn it. My kids know that they know how to – they see themselves as skateboarders. They see themselves as a boys. They see themselves as having two loving parents. They see themselves as tennis players. They see themselves. Um, they have some negative self-talk too. Like Ari will always say, you know, once a week I'll be like, he'll, I hear him say, no one likes me that, you know, that's like part of his identity. Um, Avi the other day said, he's like, I want a haircut. And I go, nah, I like your hair. He goes, well, will I still be cute without

short hair? And I said, of course. These are all, everything that they're doing or saying. Your kids are having some existential crises. Everything I hear them say or doing, it's all identity stuff. And that's all we do as kids

we're trying to build an identity what the fuck is that can you hear that yeah is somebody ringing your doorbell or something oh i don't even know about that but i'm looking at um i hear like a leaf blower outside my today thursday today's wednesday wait hold on one second Thursday? Today's Wednesday. Wait, hold on one second. Jeff, you know what's funny? I didn't even remember that today was the birthday.

So thanks for reminding me. There's a leaf blower. Sorry to leave you hanging. Did you start sweating when I walked away? You're like, fuck. No, I responded to Jeff's comment. Happy anniversary to Caleb, U.S. Air Force, Caleb. So, oh, today's your birthday?

No, no, no. It's the Air Force's birthday. Oh. Oopsies. So if you don't give a kid an identity, and you can lose your identity. It's fine. Like, I had this idea. Yeah, I feel like it evolves over time. Yeah.

And then when you're 25 like you may just choose to abandon the whole fucking thing or you may achieve some sort of enlightenment and realize that the whole thing was a facade and a joke but basically what happens is you're born and you're given a name my name is seven and then you spend the rest of your life until you die try to trying to hold together a personality or an ego or some sort of idea of who this person is and that's i mean that's part of the reasons why life is so death is so scary because you know that's the end of that fucking imaginary game you're playing and uh the whole the whole facade of it and yet so few people can

think deeply enough to to even go there i feel like people just like build that identity in like high school and college and then they just stick with it they don't they start to think it's real they never make enough space to realize hey it's not real right it's just things that you do it's not like it's your real person

I mean yeah we start to say stuff like I'm sad I'm happy when the truth is you're you're not those things. You're just experiencing those things. But but it's so hard because we're programmed to. But it's OK. It's OK. But what happens is, is these parents are actually helping their kids build up these fucked up identities instead of giving them functional, capable identities. fucked up identities instead of giving them functional capable identities and the things you don't want to fuck with in someone's identity is their sex that's a that that that there's so much fucking power there that drives the rest of the ship you don't want to tinker with that you don't want to convolute that conflate that you want kind of want to leave that alone. Let everything else build around that and just educate around that. But you don't want to push anyone in one direction anywhere with that. You will make something fucked up. Have you seen this Project Veritas stuff that they've been coming out with with these school teachers?

Oh, it's insane. Oh, it's insane. I've been watching. If they want to be a mermaid, let be a mermaid yeah what it my my kids my kids will be in the yard and they'll you know like one minute they're iron man the next minute they're elsa the next minute but at the dinner table they're just like they're aviari, Ari, and Joseph. It's like – it's so weird. The lack of understanding from those parents who don't realize that they're leading – we're leading our kids' places, and that's fine. But to lead your kid to something that's going to be struggle bus their whole life? Think about how that's going to play out 20 years from now when they're in college and they think they're a mermaid they're going to be the fucking weird kid that nobody wants to talk to

right associate with anybody or how does it play how does it play out that your parents pushed you to uh to think it was okay to think you're a girl and to pursue that when it just would have been easier just not to pursue being a boy or a girl. When they say non-binary, they don't actually mean that. That's the other thing that's misleading too. They don't mean that. They don't even know what it means to begin with. They don't have a definition for it. Yeah, they're basically pushing you down to not have not build an identity or to go against what what is

already uh given it's like this to allow allow is not the right word to coach a boy to become a girl is like also coaching someone who has hands to tell them it's okay just to put your face in a bowl and eat your food. Like you're limiting them. Like you have hands to cut food, use the fork, put the utensil in your mouth. This is a tried and proven and great way to eat. Keeps your hands clean. Keeps everything clean. It's sanitary. It's functional. Oh, I don't want to teach my kids that. proven and great way to eat keeps your hands clean keeps everything clean it's sanitary it's

functional oh i don't want to teach my kids that that'll push them down the wrong i'm we're free eaters i'll let him discover how to eat that actually is more rational and healthier for your kid than um than letting them make those decisions decisions is the right word not giving them some structure and discipline around their sex fucking people uh i i i didn't want to go down this path maybe if i I talk to what's his name again? Jesse again. Basically, in prison, they're just pumped CNN. Basically, it sounds like they're just fucking indoctrinated. It sounds like the entire prison system is one indoctrination camp from a lot of the videos you watch. He probably doesn't know he's sharing that, but it sounds like it's one indoctrination camp for the democrats it's it's kind of scary you think that's why he doesn't watch tv now because you're sick of that i mean i'm not sure i suspect i suspect because he's with

a journalist that he's and and i've seen the people in his videos that he's pretty hardcore in the woke camp. I'm pretty – I just – I have no – I would just speculate that if I had to bet. in what he's dealing with and that he might not know that he's dealing with is the fact that um in the woke camp that one of the the tenets is is that uh you blame people and there's not personal responsibility and personal accountability and yet he knows you can tell he's a total personal responsibility personal accountability person and uh it's a uh he's he's i think he's just gonna he's he has his foot on one plate that's going this way and his foot on another plate that's going this way and it's gonna just rip him apart at one point he's gonna have to make a fucking decision he's finding his new identity yeah he's gonna have to figure

out which camp he's gonna be in i think that would be my guess i'd love to talk to him in a year or two years and see if i'm right i didn't want to i i saw another podcast he was on and i i almost regret watching it because the people were such fucking douchebags how so well for starters this podcast has been around i think they said since like 17 years since like before youtube before there were podcasts and they still only get 120 views per show or something. That was, that was part that,

that was like, that's not a reason you're a douchebag, but that's a correlate for sure. Like, Oh, um, Jay, they thought they knew him and they thought that they were being,

um, they thought they knew him and they thought that they were being cool by asking the tough questions about soap dropping and shit like that and keistering they thought they knew something about being in prison yeah they just like being bros with them it's like nah dude we weren't in prison together

you've never been in prison yeah they were just trying too hard and I just You've never been in prison. Yeah, they were just trying too hard. And I just – yeah, they did all the cliche prison talk shit. And although that's fun, I liked it. I just – I wanted to make sure I didn't do it. So how do you keystone an iPhone? How do you keystone an iPhone?

I meant to ask him if he's religious. I was really curious about that. Is he religious? He meditated a lot. Not that that means you're religious in any means. It just means you want to take care of yourself, right? Take care of this. I would imagine.

Probably get a lot of time to yourself. Travis, Travis Bellinghausen, the owner of vindicate, uh, made me a skateboard. Really? Coming over to my house to take it back. If I don't post it,

put it up behind me. I don't know where it's going to go. I think one of my, you're going to hate this Travis. I think one of my kids is actually going to it here soon and uh and ride it ride your artwork it's a what it's one of one it's the only one i know but it has to be uh tomorrow morning we have carlos meje meje us meje us uh it's our affiliate it's our affiliate owner show Carlos Mejias. Mejias? Mejias. It's our affiliate owner show.

He owns CrossFit Cathal. Cathal? C-A-T-H-A-L. Cathal. Cathal. Let's go with that. Oh, I haven't sent you pics. I know.

That's stupid. If you want a Sebon Podcast skateboard, you should contact this guy. If you want any of the Sebon Podcast shirts, you should contact this guy. His website is vndk8.com. Oh, there it is. I think you can just go to vndk8.com. Don't accidentally click on the Hiller shit. Just bypass all the other shirts he sells and go straight to the Savon Podcast shirts.

Don't waste any of your money on Andrew Hiller's shit, please. Unless you have a ton of money. Unless you've already bought one of all my shirts. I think that's it. Oh, my goodness. And Life is Rx has so much cool shit too. CEO shit. Yeah, I'm jealous. Those look dope.

Are you large or extra large? Extra large. Okay. I'm going to have him send one of these. I like that. Yeah, this is cool. Is it like a thin pullover? No, it's thin, but it's the real deal.

I tried to wear it in here, and I started sweating. Damn, that's awesome. It's cool. Those are my favorite kind of pullovers. Actually, all their shirts, the Life is RX stuff, all their stuff is less. I feel like the stuff Vindicate makes is like a softer, more cross-fitty stuff. And the Life is RX shit like this is a little more like rigid, like it hangs a little bit. I don't want to say better, but I can hide my gunt.

But I wear all their stuff. Those love handles. Yes, the love handles. All right, guys. I'll see you tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Yes, the love handles. All right, guys. I'll see you tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. We don't have anything tonight, right? No. I'm trying to do just one show a day now for a couple weeks, give myself a rest. And then we don't have anyone scheduled.

I don't see anyone scheduled Friday morning. No, I don't think there's anything there. Oh, but we should be doing a UFC show. Oh, shit. I better send a text. Crazy UFC fights, right? we should be doing a UFC show. Oh shit, I better send a text. Crazy UFC fights, right? I'm going to send it

to our thread. UFC show Friday. Will you be on that show? Probably. Should be able to. If you'd like the UFC too maybe Jesse's part of the becomes part of the UFC show

ooh maybe and our prisoner Jesse oh shit Hiller just sent me a picture of a Stairmaster where is that dear Bill and Katie please send me a Stairmaster Dear Bill and Katie Please Send me a Stairmaster

And some new ropes, 15 foot ropes There's no chance my ropes are gonna break Right? They're outside, they've been outside for a couple years I'm not gonna be like I'm surprised they haven't broken yet, but I guess you probably don't get a ton of weather Oh fuck Alright guys, everyone say bye to Caleb. Say happy birthday, Air Force.

Talk to you guys. Bye. We'll talk to you guys. I don't know.