American Thought Leaders - Mikki Willis: How Our Modern Age Is Severing the Human Connection to the Divine

Episode Date: April 20, 2025

In this episode, I sit down with Mikki Willis, an award-winning filmmaker and producer of the Plandemic Series. His new film, “Follow the Silenced,” tells the stories, over the course of three years, of individuals injured by the COVID-19 genetic vaccine.“We followed the science, we got harmed, and now Facebook won’t even let us have a group where we can talk to each other? What is happening here in this country? And so, we have made this film to give them a voice, and to make sure that their story and their sacrifice doesn’t go unnoticed,” says Willis. “The game we’re playing as citizens is a very different game than is being played by the policy makers.”We also discuss his views on spirituality and how human beings have become disconnected from the brilliance of nature and their divine intelligence.“We have the fables of the devil in the crossroads or meeting the devil and signing away for fame and fortune or whatever it might be—giving a piece of your soul. After 30-some odd years working in Hollywood, I saw a lot of people that I will say most definitely came in with a soul and left without one, incrementally giving away a little piece of themselves,” says Willis.Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

When we follow the science, we got harmed, and now Facebook won't even let us have a group where we can talk to each other? What is happening here in this country? We have made this film to give them a voice. In this episode, I sit down with Mickey Willis, an award-winning filmmaker and producer of the Pandemic series. We discuss his new film, Follow the Silenced. The game we're playing as citizens is a very different game than is being played by the policymakers. We also discuss Willis' views on spirituality, and now human beings have become disconnected

from what Willis says is the brilliance of nature and also from their divine intelligence. And after 30-some-odd years working in Hollywood, I saw a lot of people that I will say most definitely came in with a soul and left without one, incrementally giving away a little piece of themselves. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Mickey Willis, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. Thanks. Nice to be here. Mickey, we live in a very divided society. It's incredibly

obvious. You have a pretty unique way of looking at this that you've recently written about. Tell me about that. This being the crisis that we're all in together here? Well, I think one thing that most people know me as a filmmaker, and really, my life's work has just been a fascination with people. And really, through life's work has just been a fascination with people. And really, through anthropology and ontological studies, I'm just really discovering, like, what really makes us tick, and why do we do what we do?

And that was all just out of a curiosity to figure out who and what the heck I am. And what I noticed, though, is that a lot of the stuff that's occurring in the world that a lot of the stuff that's occurring in the world is going to continue to occur as long as we resist taking responsibility for the ways that we've participated in it. And there is, as we've all seen, a real concerted effort to divide the people, because united we stand and divided we fall.

Those words were spoken 2,600 years ago, and they stand just as powerful today as they did then. And the people that want us divided know that that's the case, that if they can keep us fighting with, you know, ideological warfare, with just these new social trends, if they can keep all this stuff in the media to where we're obsessing on all of these things, that they matter, but they don't matter as much as the energetics that are keeping us in this cycle. And what I mean by that is the core agenda is to in some way disempower the human soul, this thing we call our soul.

I use it interchangeably with the spirit. In 2008, I had a profound experience. I was driving down a single lane country road and there was a dead bird in the road, flat, and I had to drive around it. And as I drove down the road, this voice spoke to me, and this voice has spoken to me many times. Today I will call it God, but for many, many years I resisted, even considering that that's what it could be. But this voice said to me, the bird's not

dead. And I said, oh, the bird was clearly dead. Flat on the road, it's dead. And I kept driving, and it just kept saying, the bird is not dead. Until I got so frustrated, I put my brakes on, I backed up, and I looked at the bird, and sure enough, it was alive. It's lying there, flattened out on the ground, but looking up at me with its little black eye.

And it amazed me, because I thought, what was that intelligence that knew something that was contrary to what I believed? So I took this bird off to the side of the road and because of that kind of mystical experience that I just had, I kind of felt this unexpected infinity towards this bird. So I said, I'm going to say a prayer for this little bird, Blue Jay. And as I was saying a prayer for this bird, I knew it was in its last moments, there were power lines above, and I figured out, okay, that's what happened. It got electrocuted. I just, my eyes started to tunnel onto this little bird's glossy black eye, and the physical world disappeared. It reminded me very much later when I saw the movie,

The Matrix, and they stood in that white room, and as Murphy has explained to Neo, all the truth of the universe, everything disappeared and it was just white. And this bird is kind of floating in this white void. And I couldn't look away from it and I couldn't blink. My eyes were watering but it was just this tunnel vision and I knew I had to maintain my focus on this bird. And in a moment this glossy animated window into the soul of

this bird just went flat. And I knew in that moment that I'd actually seen the life force of this bird leave. And it changed me in such a way to realize there's really something there that animates this bird. But what was crazy in that moment, Yon, is that hundreds if not thousands of ants, the moment that I went flat, they charged in and enveloped this bird. Not one of them approached this bird until its life force left.

And I just stood there and I looked at this and I was like amazed and I got fascinated by the the brilliance of nature and how this orchestrated itself with these little ants that we just write off as these meaningless little insects, but they were so aware of the life force of this bird and in some way waited almost honorably until it was time to approach it. And so since then I've been just pondering on this idea of like, what is this thing we call our soul? Then COVID shows up and I thought, what is the push here? Why are they pushing so hard to put something into the bloodstream of humans?

It felt like an experiment of some sort. It's one of the reasons we acted so fast to release Plandemic One May 4th of 2020, because I knew I could fill it in my heart. And I knew Anthony Fauci's history. Bad things happen when bad people are in charge, so something bad is about to happen. We've heard the fables as a storyteller,

as somebody who has studied mythologies for 35 years, the work of Joseph Campbell. There's always some kind of underlying message about the life force of the hero, the soul of the hero. And that's what the dragon was ultimately trying to capture. Not just trying to kill the physical body, but it's the soul. Anything that has to do with the supernatural or the devil or whatever, it's always about the human soul. Then we have the fables of the devil and the crossroads of meeting the

devil and signing away for fame and fortune and whatever it might be, giving a piece of your soul. And after 30 some odd years working in Hollywood, I saw a lot of people that I will say most definitely came in with a soul and left without one, incrementally giving away a little piece of themselves. Not their physical body, they're all intact, but when we say that they're giving a piece of yourself away, what is it that you're really giving away?

The technocrats are trying so hard to bring us into this stage of transhumanism, and they've succeeded in outpacing the human mind already. AI is far more intelligent than we'll ever be. But they cannot measure, duplicate, emulate in any way the human soul. It's become a real problem. And I believe more and more that the reason, the value of this thing we call soul, spirit, is that in some way is our umbilical cord our connection to divine intelligence.

All of the birds and everything outside this building right now, all the insects, the birds chirp in the morning. A few people even really stopped to even listen to that anymore. Why do the birds chirp in the morning? Do you know they actually trigger the plant life to open up and to pollinate, and it triggers the insects to come in and spread that pollination? There's a whole orchestration that happens every single day right outside our bedroom windows.

And so what is it that's informing the birds? What informs the birds when they're in that murmuration stage of flying thousands, moving on a dime as one body, how is it? It's not an audible cue that they're following. They're tapped into something that us humans have been severed from that leaves us unable to flow with such grace with each other. So instead, we're bumping into each other and harming each other. And so for me, that's the core of what I'm interested in right now.

So you think this is the root of the division among people, I guess, but people would say, well, it's actually a lot simpler than that. It's just politics. Some people would like to have less government and some people are perfectly happy to have a lot of government and want to put their trust there. Why make this so complicated, Mickey? We wouldn't need government if we were connected with this divine intelligence that I'm talking about. It's only when we're severed from that, then we suddenly need someone to lead us. I would say that the metaphor I like to use is once upon a time we all received our first PCs and they sat on our desk and they could only do whatever was programmed on the hard drive. You might be able to put a little floppy in and give

it a new word program or whatever, but other than that, it was limited. It was a closed circuit. And then I believe a lot of our inventions, maybe all of our inventions, are us trying to figure out ourselves, our deeper purpose on how these bodies actually engage with this universe, in this world that we live on and live in. And so I believe we create something like the Internet to understand what we're capable of. So we create the internet and now that little useless paperweight on our desk becomes a supercomputer because it doesn't matter what's on it, it just has to receive now.

So it dials up. In the beginning, the dial-up was slow and crazy. We look back on it now and it would take forever just to get that online connection. But I think that over time we perfected that, now that our little phones and everything are just these supercomputers with infinite intelligence that we can pick up. We're about to learn what we've been severed from. If we go back in time and we look at the ancients and our ancestors

and the indigenous cultures, we always look upon them as realizing they were somehow connected to nature more than we were. They could hear when the buffalo were coming, or they listened to the ground and the water and the trees, and they were in communication with nature. And we have, systemically and by design, been severed from our nature.

Well, so if you let me jump in, what I was expecting you to say was that this connectivity of the phone to the whole online ecosystem and all the other phones and the supercomputers creating the supercomputer is almost like a replacement for that connection. That's what I was expecting you to say. I wouldn't disagree. I wouldn't disagree because in the sense that it's a distraction, I wouldn't disagree because in the sense that it's a distraction, it keeps us from that, so it does replace that. And it's almost like a pacifier, right?

So we get this little kind of connectedness and we can dial in AI now and get whatever information that we want, but it still will never match the immeasurable brilliance of nature. It won't. It can't. We have been conditioned for generations to see ourselves as a failed experiment. Like, humans are a failed experiment. All we've done is mess up this planet.

And we have done a lot of damage to the planet, but it's only because we're not informed by nature itself. We're informed by what we were programmed with, what our teachers taught us, what daddy left us with, with our social environment, however it conditions us nowadays, it's gotten even worse because it's, you know, it's this really demoralized social media that kind of window into the most demoralized behavior ever, and now our kids start to emulate that as if that's natural, but it's not. And I think that is one of the key issues to examine, is the difference between what's natural and what's normal.

And as a father, I've now, my oldest is 13, and we've been looking at this since our kids were very young. And we would hear all this advice coming at us from parents that had already had children and we were new parents, and they would say, oh, just wait till the terrible twos come. And my wife and I said, why don't we call it the terrific twos and see what happens? And what actually happened was one of the greatest periods of our kids' development ever,

because we realize it's not, why is it called terrible? And people think, oh, that's just natural that the kids just become tyrants. No, they're actually coming into being. Two years outside the womb, and that's about the gestation period where they start to realize, oh, I'm not in the womb anymore, I'm not my mom, and so let me make decisions counter to what my mom would make or what my dad would make to prove to myself that I'm individual. That's really all it is, and if you can support that,

it's no longer terrible. If we start to really look deeply at all the ways that we've been conditioned to see behavior as natural and understand that most of it has just been normalized, then we can start to really look at, then what would it be like? Who would I be if I were to behave naturally? What is that? What even is that? There's a few things happening here at once, if I may. People may think about the naturalist approach, as the Thoreau's vision, let the kids run a ferrule and they will figure

everything out. I know you're not talking about that. I'm wondering if there's a connection to nature that's been subsumed by this, you want to push towards transhumanism to this technology and everything else. But also, there's a connection to God or the divine. Those things are not the same necessarily. Maybe you can elucidate that a little bit. I think that they're intrinsically connected. There's

a reason that it's even hard to talk about the subject of God. And it's kind of like we've been conditioned that we're super happy to sit and listen to somebody self-deprecate all day long. We love that when someone just talks about how, I'm not good at this, I'm not good at that. We love to see comedians ripping on how dumb they are and all the mistakes they make, but to hear someone say, I'm actually really good at this, we immediately judge them. Like, what is it? What is it? Why have we been so conditioned to be repulsed by somebody who is confident and courageous and knows they are? I don't mean in an egotistical way because we also praise people that are egotistical. But one of the only areas that we've

allowed people to actually say I'm great is with professional boxers, right? But otherwise, we don't want to hear anyone say, well, I'm great. And it's all part of this agenda to keep us in this place of looking at ourselves as being this flawed thing. Because when we... Here's another subject that I'm looking at. We are flawed, though. And that's the thing that the mind has a hard time holding that duality of we're perfectly imperfect. And so it's when we get stuck on just the imperfect part. What determines

imperfection? What does it mean that we have room to grow, we have something to learn, we make mistakes? Another way that this is described as being imperfect, but made in God's image. Right? Yeah. Yeah, that's another way of looking at it. But it's is described as being imperfect but made in God's image. Yeah, that's another way of looking at it. But it's when we get stuck on, I am just not worthy. So many people have that deeply rooted within them. A lot of it has to do with the commercialization of our world. For generations, we've all been bombarded with advertising,

billboards and commercials that say, these are the right people. You gotta look like this and live like this. And then you look at yourself and you go, I guess I'm not there yet. But there is no there. It's just, it's coming back into, and that's one of the things that keep us suffering, is this feeling that I have to get somewhere. We've taken the beingness out of the human being. Like, how do I be a good dad?

How about I just be with them? Like really with them. Not with an agenda, not with other things on my mind or whatever, but that's one of the most generous things that we can do is to just really give people our attention, to be with them, not with judgment or thought or analyzation or any other kind of hidden covert, but just being, you know? And so I think that a lot of this idea, we are flawed, but how do we relate to our flaws? Do we relate to it as let's hide those because it's bad?

Or oh, that's fantastic. That's the challenge. It's like we're climbing a mountain and we reach a point where it's like this is a really tricky part here. We need to strategize how we're going to get past the most treacherous part of this climb and that that if we look at take ourselves on like that that living through the filter of That disconnectedness from everyone else I think drives men all people but particularly men to a very destructive, self-destructive

way of being. One of the things that has kept me from becoming bitter, because there was a point in 2020 when the hometown that I lived in became so vile that they actually started a petition to make my family move. No one understood what I was revealing through the pandemic, the first one that I lived in became so vile that they actually started a petition to make my family move. No one understood what I was revealing through the pandemic, the first one that I revealed. And it was released at a very dangerous time. And I knew that. I knew there was a lot of hysteria and I knew that I'm about to hit send on something that's

going to be a juggernaut of information that is going to bring a lot of pushback. I didn't know that it would be as extreme as it was. I didn't know that I would be on the cover of major magazines and nothing good was being said about me or Judy Mikulovitz, the main virologist that was featured in Pandemic One. All I knew was the information was thoroughly researched and I knew that we were telling the truth.

That's all that mattered to me. And I was willing to let the chips fall where they fall. And but there was a period when I found myself getting really angry at people. Not just because of what they were saying about me online, but because they, no matter what I showed them, they did not want to see the truth. They should say, oh, I was wrong. Thank you for that. But instead they say, you're a Nazi. Get out of here. You're a grandma killer, whatever, you know. And so I spent some time really looking at this

and I found myself just getting really frustrated with people. Typically, and that's one of the problems, we stop there. We stop with the emotional experience, and then we label it for what it feels. They feel stupid to me. That feels wrong, that feels hateful, and we just stop at the surface judgment. But I went deeper and I started to really look at it,

and I said, what is going on here, why? And as I dug into this, I said, what is going on here? Why? And as I dug into this, I realized, Carl Jung would often talk about the real crisis within our world is the crisis of meaning, that not enough people are leading a meaningful life. So we have manufactured a society such that so few people are living and engaged in their life purpose that the controllers of these narratives, the more we can suck meaning out of their lives, the more we can distract them with a bunch of stuff so they don't have any time to meditate, to relax,

to go in nature, to spend time with their children, to have dinner with their families anymore, to work out, to be healthy. And they're just rats in a maze. Then when we convince them that there's this, you know, astronomical boogeyman that's going to kill everyone called COVID, and that there's this group of people that are the bad ones because they don't

listen to the science, and they are so selfish that they're threatening your life, your children's life, your parents life, all life. And all you have to do is put on a mask and be part of this meaningful tribe. The moment I got that I realized, okay, so when I show somebody irrefutable proof, what they're really saying to me is, that is so believable, that is so clear, that I don't like you because I finally just found a connectedness with a community that I needed my whole life. And now if I believe that, if I take that in, I can no longer feel good about this newfound connection that I need. It's intrinsic. I need this connection. This is what

changed things for me, Jan. At the core, they're operating from love. Their love for life, their love for their children, for their parents, for everything that they were told that I was a threat to. They're doing exactly what they should be doing. They've just been misguided, misled, and they've chosen the wrong enemy. And the moment I saw that from that perspective, I realized I would see this person not as a nuisance but as a future ally. Because I realized now all we have to do is let enough time to pass, let enough truth

to be exposed that this person, I'm actually proud of them for standing up so fiercely against me because now I see the warrior in them. Now if we can get them to just turn that strength, that fight towards actual enemies, then we're going to make progress on this planet. And that's what's kept me from hanging on to any resentment for the people that were definitely not nice over the last few years. There's been a lot of people who have had their families fractured through all of this. I think even you, perhaps, are certainly friends. I have been hearing lots of stories about people who were very antagonistic one day, behaving as if nothing had ever happened. I'm actually curious how you view that.

Right. Yeah. And so I'm actually curious how you view that. I've had a lot of that. I've had a lot of friends that were very vocal and went out online to make sure that everyone knew that they no longer were my friend, you know, distanced themselves from me. And then three, four years later, it's, hey, buddy, happy birthday. How you doing? And I'm like, it's the same person. I have to go back and remember. I thought they... I'd go back and look at old posts, yeah, they are the one who first married me in 2021. And they're back like as if nothing happened. It's okay with me. It's fine. I get it. And I accept it because a lot of the most important things are said without saying. I have a friend who told me, my dad never told me he loved me once, but he told me all these things his dad did. I said, that's the way he told you he loved you.

We don't always just say it in clear English. And so for me, I hear that as, I'm sorry, I was wrong. I couldn't see it. You're wishing me a happy birthday. You're saying, hey, I'm coming through Texas and I know you guys live there now and I want to stop by. And I had one very good friend, a very, very good friend. And this was one of the most hurtful ones because we actually had our birthdays together. I always called him my blue-eyed brother. He's much younger than I am but I just love him with all my heart. He went out and wrote, turns out his PR firm wrote a really detailed letter because I was

on his advisory board of his company and he had to let everyone know, they've removed my photo, I'm no longer on that advisory board and we do not support this person at all. And when I read this, I was like, from him? Wow, that really, that was one of the ones that was just like, it hurt. About two years ago, he got ahold of me and he said, passing through Texas, can I talk to you? I said, passing through Texas, can I talk to you? I said, sure.

He comes over, walks in, and no other business except for, can we have a private talk, please? Yes. We went on my back patio. Within three seconds, he's bawling. And he's telling me, he goes, I didn't write that. I had a PR firm write that. And I just hope you can forgive me. It was so sincere. It was so deep. And he was telling me, he goes, I didn't write that. I had a PR firm write that. And I just hope you can forgive me. It was so sincere, it was so deep,

and he was just bawling. I just sat there and listened to him, and I said, of course. I just think I just commend you for coming here. You're one of the only ones that have had the guts to come here and to make right. And now we're doing several projects together. Actually, we bought some property together. We're doing a big farming project together. So it's possible, but it does require a sense of humility. He was very

humble enough, and that's who I always knew him to be. That's why it hurt so bad, because I expected it from a lot of other people, but not from this person. And so it was beautiful. And today, every now and then, every week or so, I get a note from someone online. I joined social media again. So I'm back in touch with the people, which I was off for like three years. It was actually really nice. But I'm getting notes from people,

love private messages of people saying, man, I was one of the ones attacking you in 2020. And now myself and my husband were both vaccine injured and I just want to say first of all sorry now I understand what you were trying to do. You were warning us and also some of them have asked you know and I know that you're connected with a lot of good doctors can you help us because we're not in good shape. Well, tell me about Follow the Silence. So about four, over four years ago now, Steve Kirsch, who's become very well known in the freedom vaccine movement, because he was a very wealthy entrepreneur who invented things like the

optical mouse, right? And so he's known as kind of a legend for innovation and he was very, very, very pro-vaccine fiercely. And the way he tells the story is his carpet cleaner didn't show up and that was rare for this particular carpet cleaner. And when he finally did show up he said, I'm really sorry. He said, my wife and I, I guess his face is ticking or whatever, and he's like, we have this condition going on. And he said, how is it that you both could have a new condition? Was this predatory or did you? No, it just happened to both of us. And he said, that's not common. What did you do recently? And he said, well, it was right after the vaccine.

That's when Steve went, what? He's fully vaccinated. And he started to dig into it. And then he called me a little over four years ago and he said, are you tracking all the injuries that are happening here because they're being buried? No one will listen to them. And there's, apparently, there's a bunch of people who did the all the trials AstraZeneca and Moderna and Pfizer and and they know that they're injured and they had all the people that were doing the trials that some of them are in wheelchairs and breathing through tracheotomy instruments. And I said, yeah, I'm getting a lot of those messages too. I don't know what's going on there. And he said, yeah, I'm getting a lot of those messages too. I don't know

what's going on there. And he said, he goes, I'll kick in a little bit of money if you want to investigate this. And so I said, okay, let's go. So we started that four years ago. And we've been on this film without stop for four years. We thought it'd be released in one year. But it's perfect that it's coming out right now because quite honestly honestly I don't think people would even have paid attention to it three years ago. It would have been written off as just another conspiracy theory. But there's too many people now and people in powerful positions who have experienced their own myocarditis or whatever it is. And so we took the film on. I hired one of my top directors in my company because I was already committed at the time I was making The Great Awakening. So I said I'm pretty tapped out as a director.

Great Awakening is very complex and I have a lot of research to do. But I will oversee it as kind of executive director and I'll bring Matthew Guthrie in, my top guy, and we'll do this thing justice. And so here we are four years later, it's a beautiful, powerful documentary, tragic, but also very inspiring because it turns out to be a story of this group that formed that now call themselves React 19. I'm not gonna give up. I mean, it was hard.

Imagine being so trusting that they were excited to be the first in line. And then they're confined to a wheelchair and they're having spasms and seizures and nonverbal, whatever it is. And then when they speak out about it, then the establishment tells everyone they're just a bunch of crazy people. It's all in their head. That's pretty much what all of them were told. They have the same exact story that everyone just said, it's in your head, you're crazy. And so they found each other, hundreds of them, thousands of them came together. And then those Facebook groups and everything they formed would be shut down and they couldn't

understand it. Like we're victims of this situation. We follow the science. We got harmed and now Facebook won't even let us have a group where we can talk to each other. What is happening here in this country? And so we have made this film to give them a voice and to make sure that their story and their sacrifice doesn't go unnoticed and that it's serious and that we understand moving forward as a people that it's probably not a good idea to ever succumb to anything experimental that could do us permanent damage. I just want to say gratitude to the Santa Monica Film Festival who's been very supportive of our work. The Great Awakening won last year, and they've

asked us to come back with the film this year. And they chose to premiere it at the Directors Guild of America, which is pretty amazing because it's right in the belly of the beast in West Hollywood. But we needed a bigger theater than they could find in Santa Monica, because there's such anticipation for this film. React 19, I know, has actually helped so many people, helped support so many people that have had these injuries. Fully volunteer-driven, it's actually quite a remarkable organization.

It is, yeah, with really, truly incredible people. The way that they've supported each other. It is, yeah, with really, truly incredible people. The way that they've supported each other. I tell you, I think many of them wouldn't be here with us today if it weren't for this organization. I think 80% of them said in their interviews that at some point they had all reached a point where they felt that death was an easier life than dealing with the injuries that they were dealing with. But when they met each other that all changed. They talked each other off the ledge and said, no, life is worth fighting for.

And you know, some of them have improved and some of them have not. Some of them have gotten worse and probably will continue to do so and probably have a reduced lifespan as a result of this. Not everyone has been injured, but that's the danger of when we start treating medicine as a one-size-fits-all situation. It's got to be very personalized, and we have to understand how everybody responds, particularly to new technologies that have never been injected into the bloodstream in this way before. It was very, very reckless. And as you've had on your show many times, one of my dear friends, Robert Malone, is one of the inventors of mRNA technology. We'll say that

he that's something that he never imagined they would have done with this thing that he was one of the inventors of. It shouldn't have been done. Right. At the level of development that it existed. Yeah, that's right. Going back to this crisis of meaning that you've been outlining, and we've been dancing around in this discussion. I think one of the things that was common to many of the people that I talked to that came through these last few years whole, where they had this

type of connection with God, that they found newfound meaning. Many of them found newfound meaning through the difficult circumstances that they were placed in along the way. I want to make it clear that everyone has a different purpose. That purpose might be just raising children. That purpose can also take place wherever you are. I've met a woman who worked in a bank and she goes, I just I can't do anything until I get out of this bank. So what do you want to do? She goes, I just want to, I want to make people happy. Make them happy. Like start doing it right there at your job. Like like don't just treat it as I'm just gonna take their transaction, give them

boom boom and they're gone and it's another person moving through. Make that human connection with them. Let's come back into that natural way of being where we actually look into each other's eyes and give each other a moment and sometimes doing that thing we don't want to do. I always tell my boys, I go okay I've had 12 hours of editing today, it's 830 at night. I'm going to the gym. Do you think I want to go to the gym? They go, no. I said, but that's the difference of I don't let my life be ruled by just what I want and don't want. It is very uncomfortable for me right now. And the thought of after this long day, driving 20 minutes to the gym and lifting heavy weights is

this long day driving 20 minutes to the gym and lifting heavy weights is the opposite of what I want to do right now. But I'm disciplined in my commitment to being healthy. So that overrides my addiction to making excuses to find a back door to my commitments. And so when you make those personal commitments live by them, stay strong, but particularly to yourself. Because that then becomes strength. In 2008, I was building a digital distribution platform for independent movies, and I was studying user interface, user experience, and I was very fascinated by it.

Where all the buttons go and what colors they are and what causes people to click and to be engaged and what loses them. Too many clicks and they go away. And right during that time Facebook changed their awesome button to a like button. I remember thinking that is so counter to everything I'm learning right now. What an odd choice that the biggest platform in the world would make. I think it's a bad choice. Why would they do that? I could never understand it until 2020. Because the thing that got me was I was this guy that was really liked by a lot of people and suddenly my likes are going to do

to do to do to do to do. And I went, oh they know how to manipulate us. We are all addicted to likes now. All these creators are self-censoring because they're looking like, oh, when I talk about that subject I get downvoted. When I talk about that I get upvoted. So they start to self-censor based upon how much they're liked. And what was really driving the pain that I was experiencing, my fear of telling the truth was, I may not be liked anymore. There's going to be half this world, half this country for sure that's not going to like me. And as a man who spends way too much time trying to be liked, that was a painful thought. And the

moment I let that go, I just realized that's part of the mind control, that's part of the trick. Where now that's the dopamine hit. I got that go, I just realized that's part of the mind control. That's part of the trick. That's the dopamine hit. I got to like dopamine. I got to like dopamine. I got to down vote, decrease in dopamine. I care about the amount of views our films get because I see it as, well, that's impacting more people, but not of self-worth.

This modern world is conditioned to make us care so much about what others think about us. And while we should, while we should be good people and moral people and kind people and loving people and courteous and all these good things, not to the point of where it's now shaping, pulling us away from being honest and saying what needs to be said. I'm the friend that will say things to my friends and like everyone's talking behind their back, I think Bill's drinking too much. Everyone's saying, I notice every party gets drunk, whatever, and I'm the one that says, Bill, I think you're drinking too much. Let's

talk. And it's not that hard. Some people get mad, they get defensive, but they come back later and go, hey, you're the first one actually called me on that. Yeah, you're right. I'm in AA right now. I had a problem. I didn't want to say it. Thank you. Well, so as we finish up, given everything you've just said, let's go back to this idea of how to deal with people that have dramatically different views. What makes a good movie, a good story, is conflict. And you could also call it contrast. Contrast is a part of life. Scientifically, they say that we live in the third dimension,

that this world is a third dimension reality. As a digital artist, I'll tell you that the difference between original very beginning stages of animation what they call 2D and 3D was one element shadow. Shadow is what has an image jump off a page and make it 3D and when I look at that as kind of a metaphor to this life I realize we the shadows always going to be here this is a third dimension reality we're always going to have the shadow. The problem is when the shadow attempts to take over the entire image in darkness. And so instead of crying about that, I see it as a calling for us to shine brighter. And there really is

something to say about this light we carry within us. Every sacred text, scripture talks about the light, about being the light. And people say we're in dark times and I would say, yeah, we are in many ways in very dark times, very curious times, but also very wonderful times. I think it's an extraordinary time to be alive, but it all depends on how we relate to it. Are we going to just see it as darkness and run from the darkness or join the darkness? Or are we going to take it on in the way we would in extreme support, a challenge, and say, let's step it up? And it's a humility. It's kind of like that old fable.

I will not do it justice to try to recite it, but that old fable, I've heard it told from a Chinese point of view and an Indian point of view of the farmer's son who's called off the war, but then he breaks his leg and he isn't able to fight the war and then they get a cow and the cow dies and whatever, the whole thing, right? And the whole answer to all this, good news and bad news is the farmer says, maybe.

The neighbor says, how tragic that your son broke his leg. Maybe. And it turns out broken leg prevents him from going to the war and getting killed. Turns out to be a blessing. That type of just let's sit back a little bit and not react so suddenly. And I just, I say that about everything. Maybe, you know, that someone say, oh, this is a really great thing that Trump just did. Maybe.

Or it's a really horrible thing Trump just did. Maybe. The game we're playing as citizens is a very different game than is being played by the policymakers. You know, let that be kind of a lesson for us to know that we're constantly evolving and changing, and let's give each other the space to respond. I think one of the themes that has emerged as I've been listening to you talking is be ready to forgive. I think without that, it would be very difficult to overcome these divisions that are for better

or for worse a reality we're in right now. Yeah, I think it's important. I think there's even a stage beyond forgiveness of really understanding that in some mysterious way, they said, God works in mysterious ways. And in some mysterious way, we're all playing exactly the part that we came here to play. And so at times, maybe forgiveness is the right course of action.

And maybe sometimes it's just acknowledging, I don't really have anything to forgive you for. You were playing your part. And your part has now forced us to look at a situation deeper than we were before. And the result of that is is that where they say what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. And I will say that I know a lot of people that are a lot stronger today than they were in 2020. As I toured around in 21 and 22, I was always dismayed because the audiences were at least 80-85% women and I was always dismayed because the audiences were at least 80, 85% women.

And I would always ask them, where are your husbands? We called them the mama bears, right? Like the mama bears rose up because there was something about protecting the child that was there, but where are the husbands? And a lot of times, you know, they would have a good reason that he's working or he's just not into this stuff or he's at home watching football or basketball. And then gradually, as I sort of to kind of gaze out at the audiences, they were changing. It was becoming equal. The men were there now. They showed up. And I saw that as a very positive trend to the

men realizing like, I've been kind of rooted out of my role as the hunter, the gatherer, the protector of the family. I was told that it was toxic every time I try to... the real me comes out, I'm told to quiet down or it's too manly, too masculine, and I didn't know what my part was anymore. But we've reached a point now where it's so serious, where we now understand that we are fighting a really big Goliath, that I'm left with no other choice than to stand up for my family. And I think that's a beautiful thing because it's kind of reinvigorating that primal intrinsic purpose of men to realize that's our role. And so you see

them now, you see them finally stand up. I was like, where are you when there's this big push to have biological men harm women and contact sports? Why weren't the daddies standing out? It was the moms speaking out for the most part. Where were the dads protecting their daughters? Now they are. And they're speaking out fiercely. And so when you look at that, the trajectory of all the different ways that we've kind

of been forced out of our comfort zone, then you see the value of this tragedy. I don't find myself needing to forgive people anymore. I usually just thank them for playing their role, their divine purpose role, being the agitator that forced me to look at myself. So the ones that were the harshest towards me were the ones that forced me to look at myself. So the ones that were the harshest towards me were the ones that forced me to identify my weaknesses. Because I thought I was a smart man until 2020. And I realized, wow, I'm so fragile that somebody says something mean about me and it matters.

You know, like somebody on a keyboard typing 200 words and that suddenly now has affected the way I'm feeling today and the way I'm treating my children. I had to really look at that and think, that's weak. That is weak. I thought I was a strong man. So those people have forced me to reanalyze who I really am. And so in a very strange way, I don't forgive them. I thank them. Well, Mickey Willis, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you. Always great to be here. Thank you all for joining Mickey Willis and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.

I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.