Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Part Two: Charged With Murder at 19, Sentenced to 40 years, and Came Out Freer Than Most People Will Ever Be — Shaka Senghor on Forgiveness, Shame, and Escaping the Prisons Nobody Talks About

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

You won’t believe the transformation behind this story. From a runaway teen escaping a traumatic home, to addiction to crack cocaine, being shot and living with PTSD, committing a murder that led to a potential 40-year prison sentence, and enduring 4.5 years in solitary confinement...this is the unbelievable life journey of Shaka Senghor. In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, the resilience expert and bestselling author of How to Be Free: A Proven Guide to Escaping Life’s Hidden Prisons shares the raw, unfiltered truth about the darkest moments of his life, and the mindset that helped him rebuild everything. What began in violence, addiction, and trauma ultimately led Shaka to become a global thought leader who now inspires executives, entrepreneurs, elite athletes, and audiences around the world. And the turning point? It happened inside a prison cell. Shaka Senghor breaks down: - Growing up in chaos & running away from home as a teenager - How drug culture & crack cocaine addiction nearly destroyed his life - The traumatic experience of being shot, and later discovering who pulled the trigger - PTSD & emotional trauma that followed - The night that changed everything: the murder that sent him to prison for up to 40 years - Support he wishes he had before prison - The desperate moment he tried to escape prison - The heartbreaking 4.5 years he spent in solitary confinement and other tragedies & injustices he witnessed behind bars - How literacy and journaling kept him sane - Wrestling with anger toward God & finding connection to a higher power through nature - How mentorship from older incarcerated men changed the trajectory of his life He also reveals the powerful mindset shift that transformed his life, including how he used the Law of Attraction to eventually get out of solitary confinement. One of the most powerful parts of this conversation is Shaka’s process of healing: - Learning to track the sources of physical & emotional trauma - Identifying emotional triggers - Releasing shame for things he wasn’t responsible for - Understanding how anger often grows from suppressed shame - Concept of “weaponizing the past” and how he learned to reconcile anger for what he did, and what was done to him We're also diving deep into forgiveness in ways you’ve likely never heard before. Shaka shares what it meant when the godmother of the man he killed forgave him, the life-changing moment when the person who shot him apologized, how that apology helped him forgive his mother for years of abuse, and why forgiveness isn’t weakness, but liberation. After finally being approved for parole, Shaka created a plan to rebuild his life from the ground up. That plan eventually led him to become a successful author and speaker, advocate for prison reform, and even develop a close friendship with Oprah Winfrey. Shaka also talks about the surreal experience of reentering society, including the technological shock of cell phones and computers, his lasting PTSD symptoms from prison, the impact incarceration has on families and loved ones (not just the inmate), and his advice for supporting someone returning home from prison. Even if you’ve never experienced incarceration, Shaka's story is more universal than you might think. He explains: - Why uncertainty is one of the hardest emotions humans face - How many of us live inside “hidden prisons” of fear, shame, & trauma - Why vulnerability, forgiveness, & resilience are the keys to breaking free - Why every human being deserves hope, love, joy, & success...no matter their past Shaka's mission is simple: Help people reclaim agency over what ails them and realize that freedom starts within. Shaka Senghor’s latest book, HOW TO BE FREE: A Proven Guide to Escaping Life’s Hidden Prisons: ⁠https://www.shakasenghor.com/how-to-be-free⁠ Follow us on Substack for Exclusive Bonus Content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bialikbreakdown.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠BialikBreakdown.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube.com/mayimbialik⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, I'm I'm Bi Alec. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to part two of our conversation with Shaka Sanghor. He's a globally recognized resilience expert, best-selling author, and a transformative thought leader. His journey took him from incarceration for 19 years, including seven years in solitary confinement, to a career where he empowers executives, entrepreneurs, athletes, and audiences around the world.

We're discussing his book, How to Be Free, A Proof. proven guide to escaping life's hidden prisons. In part one of our conversation, we talked about the journey that he took for the first 19 years of his life and how that ended him up in prison with an almost 40-year sentence. In part two, we get to his personal transformation and what we all can learn about transforming the limits of our own lives. If you've ever imagined yourself trying to accomplish something other than what you're doing right now, he provides the hope, the inspiration, and the way forward. We're also going to focus on forgiveness, anger, and the PTSD symptoms that have not left him since he got out of prison. Really, really important part two of our

conversation. We can't wait for you to hear it. Here is part two of our conversation with Shaka Sangor. Break it down. Once you got out, you were able to begin a career as a writer, which ended up being, I mean, I think better than your wildest dreams. This is your third book. So can you talk a little bit about how it all came to be that Oprah eventually read your book? It's the wildest story. So my journey as a writer has been the craziest whining road. you know, so I published this first book from prison. And, you know, the first thing I did when I walked out of the prison, they took me to the parole office,

and as soon as I got done talking about parole office, I sold my first book out the trunk in the parole office parking lot. And that was just like the greatest affirming thing of like, because I was telling this guy who was coming home, you come home and they give you whatever cash you have in your account, they give it to you in cash. And this guy probably had like $35. And I was like, I told him, I was like, yo, I get out.

I'm selling books, blah, blah, blah. And it's funny because like every year, you know, it pops up on Facebook and me and have our little celebration because it's a photo of it. It's a photo of me selling him the book. And he just gave me like pretty much more than half of what he had to buy a book. And I was like, I don't have any change. And he was like, keep the 20, you know. And so I sold that book.

And I got out and I was just like, I'm going to go and sell books. everywhere. And I literally went everywhere. Anywhere people were parks, strip clubs, I was like, I ain't had no money to make it rain, but I got these books. Like, yo, you want to buy a book? Trade a book for a lap dance? I don't know. But I sold. I mean, I went to churches. I went to parks. I would like take a backpack and just like, I got 10 books. I'm not coming back in until those books are so. And, you know, slowly but shortly people started getting kind of momentum. And, you know, and then I also had posted on, like, Facebook that, I'll post on Facebook, like, three days after I'm home. I'm just like, if you got music that I can review, like, just send it to me.

And because I was just trying to get caught up on music. Like, in prison, they had stopped us from getting CDs and tapes had went extinct. So there was a gap of probably about eight years where I didn't have access to new music. And a local newspaper saw the post and was like, hey, Can you review music for our newspaper? So I'm like, okay. So I started doing these reviews. And then one day, they was like, can you like cover this story?

One of our writers are down. I'm like, I told the editor, I'm like, I've never, I'm not a journalist, but I can try. And I'll go and I write this. I go and do this movie. The movie wasn't that great. But it was a movie about like this guy and God. It was like some type of gospel movie. It was an independent movie, but it wasn't the most amazing.

But the actor in it, he had an incredible story. And so I wrote about his life. He was, like, addicted to drugs. And then he found theater and movies. And so I ended up writing, and the newspaper gets, like, more responses than it's ever got from, like, any story. And so they started asking me to just, like, cover, like, local stories. And I would go and talk to business owners and people and, you know, actors and comedians. And I would just, like, write these stories.

that became a big part of the newspaper. And simultaneously, I'm just hustling these books. And then I started, I would put together like these books signs like, you know, 10 people would come out, five people would buy a book. And I started realizing when I would go volunteer speak at schools, you know, I would sell more books. And I started getting people just booked me to come speak. And my only agreement would be, can I bring like 100 books?

And I would like sell all of them at that I got done talking. And so that, that, what happened started to happen was that people would say to me, you don't seem like someone who's been in prison. Like the way that you speak, you don't talk like someone who's been in prison. They meant it in the most, you know, loving way. But I'm like, I just left the greatest philosophers, the greatest legal minds, the greatest thinkers and strategists. And we were having profound conversations.

And these men are incredibly articulated. They're amazing. you know, all the things, and that's when I decided to write my memoir card, writing my wrongs. And so I write this book, and now I'm going from, like, I put my first book signing together around that book, and I remember going to the lady. I did that at the museum in this Charles H. Wright Museum in Detroit. And I remember going to talk to the lady about doing it there, and she was like, what are you talking about? He's like, it's like, you're about to spend money to rent this place out. And she's like, people are not going to come out like that for, like, books.

And I'm like, this is this great thing about being naive is I think when you're naive about something, you're willing to try harder. And, you know, and I was like, yeah, that doesn't sound like a lot of people to you, but I think I'm going to get a lot of people to come out. And so I just got out in the streets. It was passing out flyers.

Hey, I got this book signing coming. Come to the book signing, blah, blah. And like 400 people show up. And I literally sell 400 books the first time I do a book signing at this place. And I'm like, and it's self-published. And so I started getting booked more and more. I was booking myself. I was like my own speaking agent.

And then one time I get invited to speak, I became a fellow at MIT Media Lab. And one of the advisors of the fellowship was like, hey, wanted to come speak at this event in Utah. And so I'm like, I'll come do it, whatever, right? So this is the craziest thing. So they invite me, and then they send me this little booklet. And the booklet has who's going to be at the,

event. So I'm going through it. I don't know none of these people, except for two people. One was Melody Hobson, and I knew who Melody Hobson was because I was reading Black Enterprise when I was in prison, and she used to write a column on finance. And she was just so intriguing to me because she was this little sweet black lady who was like managing all this money. I had never heard of such a thing. And then another person was George Lucas. And I'm like, well, I know who George Lucas is. So I'm like, okay, if those two people in the room, this must be an incredible room, I go to the organizer and I say, hey, can I send you books to put in their swag bags?

And she was like, sure. I didn't have any money at the time. I probably had about maybe $300 in my business account, and I'm sending 100 books, which was like $25 a piece. It was like $2,500 worth of books. And so I sent it. and go and do this talk. And I just remember like a moment in the talk

and Melody was like sitting right, her and George sitting right in the front. I remember this moment like during the talk where Melody was just like tears and I was just like, man, I'm like, I felt like I was doing my thing, right? So they had a hospitality suite. I'm in a hospitality suite.

This guy comes up to me, he's a suit on, clean cut guy. He was like, this black guy and he's like, I got a bone to pick with you. And I'm like, oh, man, you know, I'm like, here we go. I'm thinking he's about to be like, you know, I'm tired of hearing these hood stories and blah, blah, why didn't you go to college? And he is like, man, he's like, he was like, man, I'm supposed to be hanging out with my wife, but she won't come out the room.

She's in there reading your book. So I was like, well, we should just have cocktails. We had a joke about it and have cocktails. His wife, turns out, used to be the president at Harpo. And she takes the book to Oprah after she reads it. This is like months later. She takes the book to Oprah. She gives Oprah the book

Oprah gets the book and was like, why would I read this book? This guy is on here, you got tattoos on and these like the prison photos. Like, it's ridiculous. Like, why would I read this book? And she literally said, Oprah said that she took the book and she kept moving it around her house because she doesn't throw books

away. And then one day she was flying from Chicago to L.A. and she decided to take the book with her. 50 pages in. She was I want to interview this guy. Mine be Alex breakdown is supported by OneSkin. Whether you try every new skin care product or you've been using the same things for years,

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and let them know we sent you. And so it's like all these just pivots these moments. And I remember when they called me to go out. Originally, I was supposed to go to Hawaii. Then they called back and was like, no, she wants you to come to California. And so the Hawaii trip was about three weeks out. And I'm like, okay, I can kind of give myself time to get my things together. And then when they changed, it was like the next week.

They're like, you're going to Oprah's house. And, you know, I went the night before I, I don't know if this is a cultural thing, but I know growing up like the night before school, we were just like lay all our clothes out on the bed and we're like, so that was me. The day before Oprah's like I'm laying on my clothes out. What do you wear? I had some jeans.

I had a polo shirt. I had some pheragamo, some great socks. I was like, the socks got to be right. And then I tried it all on. I was like, you know, I had to test it out, sit in the mirror, like, oh, this is how I was going to look. And then I went to her house and we were supposed to do an interview. for like 45 minutes.

We talked for three and a half hour straight. Wow. And she went on to say that not only was one of the best conversations in her career was one of the best conversations in her life. And then, like Oprah called me. This was crazy. She calls me, like, I get back to Detroit and she was like, hey, it's, oh, I just want to give you a call.

It's how? And, yeah, she's like, I want to give you my number because I want us to be friends. And I was like, I was like, I was like, Like, in my mind, I'm like, okay, is this just the courtesy thing that happens after our interviews? Like, you know. Or am I Mr. Oprah? Right, right, right, right. It's this not my homie, right?

And so, literally, she gave me her number, and we've been rocking ever since. Wow. And she is the, she's the sweetest. Like, I remember when my wife first started dating, and I was like, listen, I was like, occasionally, I might get a very late-night text. I'm like, but it'll be Oprah. It would be like, you know, and she was like, what are you talking about? I'm like, well, sometimes she's in different parts of the world, whereas more than there, we'll, you know, we'll have an exchange. That's your hall pass.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, text for Oprah. Yeah, yeah, you got to accept this one at three in the morning. And, yeah, and we ended up just, we really developed a sweet friendship. And, you know, anytime her and our in the conversation is almost, it's always the most emotional thing. and, you know, she's truly one of the sweetest people. And, yeah, and so I did that. I'm thinking of the guy in your cell block who said, this ain't Oprah.

Oh, I had a petty moment when I was pulling up to the time. I said, I wonder where this guy is at. Like, I'm pulling up at Oprah's house. Wow. Yeah, yeah. I have two questions about divine timing. The first is, really, I'm a little stuck on still the solitary confinement because of the inhumanity of it, right?

Like you see the moments, mostly in movies and TV shows where a prisoner gets thrown into solitary and it's like this horrific, like they know what's happening, right? And most people who are listening, like, they can't go 10 minutes without checking their phone for a distraction, right?

Like, and you're talking about years of not knowing, of not having structure, of also, and being left with yourself. like sitting that deeply with yourself. You basically describe the process of doing deep therapeutic work to examine yourself, to ask those questions. Why did I get here? Do you think you could have done that deep work in general pop not being in solitary?

It's always one of those things that when I reflect on the journey, that those questions arise from me, right? Like the what-ifs or what would have been different, what could have been different? from what could have been different. You know, there was some work I was doing in Gena, probably as far as like the reading, right? And it's just like that I was always reading and studying, but I think that the willingness to go deeper, you know, I don't know if that would have been triggered anywhere other than where I was

because I didn't have access to that information until I was there. So it's kind of like theoretically like, okay, what if I would have read that in General Pop, would I have had the same reaction. Now the time would have been different, right? The concentrated, focused, the ability to focus and uncertainty, which is very difficult. People think it would be an easy thing to do is just be like,

oh, well, you're in solitary, you should be able to do it. Solitary is chaotic. It's way more chaotic than general population because you're dealing with the highest levels of just like mental illness. And so the noise level, the just the abuse and the constant stimulation of officers coming in pepper spraying people and just brutalizing people and, you know, people just going to war

and I was in solitary in different type of prisons. I was in solitary in those type of prisons you see in the movies. The old school is, you know, it's a little small cell. You can stretch your arms out. I'm not the tallest guy, but I can literally touch both walls. So I've been in that version and then I've been in the more modern

where it's just like the steel door. And so you can't even see outside anything other than your window. And so I don't know whether it would have happened in a different way. I mean, I've met incredible guys who have figured it out without going through what I went through because they had access to information that shifted how they think. And then they had some structure where, you know, now in some of these prisons you get people who come in from the outside of running programs there.

You know, when I first went to prison, you can go to college and then they took it away, like, probably about a year or so after I was in prison. You know, so it's one of those things where I'll tell you this. You made a point about people and how they can't. They can't sit with themselves. Right. We're constantly looking. We can't do four and a half minutes alone.

So one of the things that inspire writing, you know, how to be free was I saw that during the pandemic. Where some of the most accomplished, successful. wealthiest people in my network, dear friends and associates were struggling with being alone. And what they were really struggling with with uncertainty. Because they would say, okay, the pandemic is over this month. Nope.

Maybe it's over this month. Nope. Maybe we'll get back to it now, right? And so what happened is I saw some of my friends who were struggling here in L.A. and they lived in apartments and condos and different things. And I had just bought a house like three or four months. I bought a house in December 19, like literally December 2019.

And so I just said to my friends like, hey, you can just come and work in the back. None of us knew what was happening, right? But it's enough space for people to spread out. You can come work in the backyard. And then I was like, I started talking to friends. And I was like, oh, they need some tools. And so I wrote this piece on Medium about here's the, I can't remember what the number was. Here's seven things I learned in solitary confinement.

that you can apply to what's happening right now in the pandemic. I write this thing, I literally wrote it from my friends. The thing goes viral, and then I literally get a call from open. It was like, hey, so I heard you wrote this piece and I might have sent it to her, she was like, I think you can help a lot of people. And so we should talk about it.

And so we ended up doing a conversation around, here's how you use these tools, right? Journaling, meditation, mindfulness, exercise, like setting some, structure so that you can have some control. And so to your point, it's really tough for, the uncertainty is probably the hardest part of solitaire, is not knowing when the thing is going to come to an end. And I've seen that with people, which is one of the things that inspired, you know, the overall

book was like, I know how hard it is to navigate hard things. And I've done the hard work for you. And so I'm going to provide you with a framework that actually helps you access different parts of who you are. I think a lot of people are still struggling with uncertainty. World events are uncertain. Political divide is uncertain. Absolutely.

Progression of technology is extremely uncertain in terms of how quickly a lot of industries are changing. There's a lot still that people can't anticipate. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that's where I think the book is really going to be super helpful in terms of like oftentimes when things are turbulent and they're, you know, it feels like the world is literally coming apart at the scenes,

which is what I think we're all experiencing right now. There's these moments of like we forget about what do we really have access to. You know, because if you just get stuck in a news cycle and then doom scrolling, you think that's the world. And that's a part of the world, but it's not all of the world. You know, if you come out, what if you come out and you have an experience with your neighbor, that helps you like mentally process like, okay, yes, the world is. coming apart, but this part that I have agency over,

I can help me get through another day, right? Like, I pulled up yesterday. I have neighbors. So there are these three little kids. Two of them are twins, and they love me. They're like, it's the funniest thing. Like, when I pull up, if they're, like, out, they just come running, like, these little bitty kids,

and, like, the twins are, like, two or three, right? And, like, in that moment, you know, nothing that's happened externally matters. It's just that I get a chance to see these little kids, And, you know, I bring them joy and they bring me joy. And it's like, that's real life. That's the all the time life. These are big, big moments.

I don't want to minimize like the moment we're in. This is a big historical moment that we're going to look back and figure out, what do we do wrong? What do we do right? I can write a book about that. No, we're going to need a lot of books written about these moments, right? But then it's also in the adversarial moments. where the best of what it means to be human tends to show up,

and we can access that, you know. Well, and I think that's, you know, and I want to sort of get to how to be free. You know, I, I mean, first of all, the book is organized in a very, I like how your brain works. It's organized very logically. So you have, you know,

I don't want to call them like the seven deadly sins, but you basically take the hardest emotions, grief, anger, shame, right? And you drill down. Yeah. You drill down on each of these kind of what it looked like in your life, what it looks like for everybody's life, and then what are the ways to literally kind of work through it. And you offer, you know, writing prompts and exercises. But you then sort of flip the tables and you say, what about vulnerability, forgiveness, resilience?

What are the things that it takes to build up the muscles that allow you to experience hope, love, joy, success, right? all these things. And I will say, you know, one of the things that I felt on page one is I felt incredibly guilty because here I am like, oh, my kid won't do what I want them to or I can't, you know, remember to like work out when I'm supposed to or like, I don't want to go to therapy. You know, all these kind of like first world problems. And I wonder if you can help us understand how you write something, no, that people are not experiencing the level of complexity, pain,

like that you were forced to go through, right? Because of a decision on one day, right? Yeah. How do you frame that? Because you know what I mean? I'm like, I have grief too, but I'm thinking it's nothing like what you're talking about, right? How do you sort of frame that? Where's the balance of where your experience is universal and you do achieve that?

That's a great question And it's one that I actually love to entertain For a variety of reasons Is that we live in this world Where now A lot of times we can't even accept Ourselves if it does not

If it's not attached to The severity of pain To somebody else suffered And it's one of the reason That I wrote the book Like not all grief is created equal Right But in most families

We're all going to grieve at some point And it doesn't minimize your grief because somebody else is a little bit more extreme. And that's important to really understand because that's why the subtitle was the hidden prisons. And it's hidden because a lot of times we are either in denial because our experience isn't as bad as somebody else's.

So we'll tuck ours to the side and hyper-focused on something that exists outside of us. And meanwhile, this thing that we've stuffed down is reaping havoc in our lives. And so what I wanted to do is really, you know, I've done a lot of the hard work for sure. But at the same time, it's all relative to a person and how do you experience it? And these tools are universal tools to help you. Because grief is not just even a life loss.

Sometimes it's a love loss. Sometimes it's a friendship. It's an opportunity. It's a moment, you know, if you're a parent, you're going to grieve at some point when your kids flat a nest. You'll be happy about a lot of things. but there's other parts where you're like, man, did I get this right? Did I send this kid out into the world? I miss those sessions of just hugs, right?

And it's not a severe grief, but if you can unpack it in a healthy way, it leads to greater opportunities to be really connected. And so what I wanted to do with the book is even in the structure, let's handle the tough things up top, right? Now, the metaphor is that is that I actually patterned it after how I served time. I started my time in the hardest way possible, but I started to work my way down through it, and I started to just get lighter and hopeful,

and things started to look up. And, you know, I described like this. I have a letter from my dad, and I remember he wrote that, you know, son, while this is a dark, dark time you're in, there's light at the end of the tunnel. And I remember thinking to myself, well, not all tunnels are created equal.

You know, if you're looking at a quarter mile tunnel, you can probably see that light at the end. But if it's a 10-mile tunnel, you can't see that light. So what you need between that 10-mile tunnel and you is just these little slivers of light, just to give you a little bit of a path forward. And so the way that I structured the book was like, there's these little slivers of light that you'll see yourself in.

The same chapter was so profound to me because I had read Brené Brown, and she was just talking about, you know, tell the story, and I'm like, now I'm tired to telling the story. The story is a hard story to tell. But I realized that agency over the things that elves us is really what she was saying. It's like if you can say it, you can own it and then you take away the power of it to be operating in the background.

If you can name it, you can tame it. Yeah, yeah. And if you think about like a lot of the things, like we live in this, this society is so weird now where it's like, you know, and I do like just to be clear, the world is not fair. Like it's just not a fair world. Some people are going to be, you know, six, five, you know, just based on genetics and become amazing basketball players, right? And somebody who's amazing basketball player that's four or five, probably will not get

that same opportunity. It's just life is what it is. And like, we're not comfortable saying things are not fair. anymore. We're not comfortable saying that, hey, I was lucky to be literate. Like, I'm telling you, I would not be here if I wasn't literate. I was literate before I went to prison. I was lucky. That was my luck. And that luck changed my complete life outlook. And so what happens is that the society has got us into a space where we're like, well, I can't talk about my shame because it's not as great as this person's shame.

And it's like, no, that's your hidden prison. You deserve to get out of that, too. Like, you literally deserve to get out of that too. And that's where we can create purity as like, we're all deserving of the best of what it means to be human. And we had to create pathways for us to access that. And that's one of the reasons I wrote the books. I wanted people to know, look, we're all in our own iteration

of these hidden prisons. And some of them are hard, some of them are very hard. some of them are not hurt but they have very I mean there's well-intended prisons like you know you break up with a lover and you're like you know

wasn't meant to be in a relationship but we'll remain best friends and occasionally we'll hook up if we happen to be in the same space but meanwhile you're like I want to get married and I want to have kids I want to have a family but you're anchored to this old thing that you won't cut the ties

because you're not having the arguments you're not having the dust-ups and it's cool and it just works. But then it's like, are you getting to what you really want if you're holding on to something that's just a fill-in? And so that's one of the things about the book. Yeah, so hidden prison. Yeah, you have a list, actually.

The helicopter parent who never lets go. The lover-turned friend who stays out of comfort rather than love. The CEO who wears a mask of toughness because vulnerability feels like weakness. The privileged child whose comfort breeds complacency. And you also talk about, you call them kind of the more personal prisons, comparing our lives to celebrities and influencers,

carrying the pain of a marred childhood like an invisible weight, toxic relationships we cling to out of fear or habit, and the cultural mindset of entitlement. And I do think it's the lessons and sort of the tools are there and so incredibly universal. There's something about forgiveness that you talk about. And this chapter, you know, it encompasses, Compass's forgiveness for your mother, and that kind of runs throughout the book, forgiving yourself for what happened.

But I have to tell you, and you fell off my chair, you found out who shot you when you were 17. Tell us about how you found out, how old you were, where you were, and what you learned from that. My M. B. Alex breakdown is supported by No CD. Have you ever found yourself replaying conversational? over and over worried that a friend secretly hates you or maybe you've spent hours researching some minor ache even after a doctor said you're fine but your doubts and fears just won't go away. Distressing unwanted thoughts that get stuck in your mind and make you feel you have to try to solve a problem can actually be a sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder. OCD is nothing like the stereotypes about liking things organized. It's a serious condition that can focus on anything. your identity, your morals, your relationships, your sense of reality, and what makes it so debilitating

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and get it before it's gone. Yes, I got shot March 8th, 1990. And, you know, when the shooting happened, it was literally a matter of 20, 30 seconds. You know, me and this guy, we got into an argument. He literally pulled up in the car. We had never met before. So our first meeting was this quick argument. And I'm thinking, oh, school, he'll get out the car. We'll have a, you know, we'll have a fight.

And he pulled out a pistol and shot me multiple times. Where were you shot? I shot twice in the leg and once in the foot. And then he just peels off. And I never see this guy again. I mean, like, after I get out of the hospital, you know, I'm in a retaliatory kind of space of mind. Like, I'm going to find this guy.

and, you know, never could find this guy. One of the things that I didn't realize until later in life was the hardest part about that is I never really saw his face. So it's kind of like this ghost that just kind of sat in the back of my life. And about the turn 50, I think it was 20, 22, somewhere in there. So you never knew the whole time you're in prison. A whole time. You never knew.

Never knew. Never knew the guy. Never knew his name. Never knew his face. And Lydia, a friend in my. He texts me. He was like, yo, he was like, I got this letter. And I was like, what are you talking about?

And he was like, he was like, do you know this woman named Angie? And I was like, yeah, it's like her boyfriend, like, wrote to her ex, you know, baby's daddy or whatever wrote to this letter. He wants me to give it to you. And I'm like, I'm like, what? And he's like, it's the guy who shot you. And I was like, yo, I was like, send it to me like right now. I'm like, don't even wait to send it to me in the mail. just like, send me a, like, I want, you know, send me the screenshots.

And so he sends me the letter, and I'm reading this letter, and this guy is like, he was, he's in prison. He's serving life in prison now for a murder. He's, uh, and so a couple of things happened. One, it triggered like an old feeling of, like, revenge. And, like, that's one of the things that I think is. so important for people to understand. It's like, old things will come back, you know. In the design of the book, there's a little door at the chapters. And the door is because sometimes you go in and out of these things, right? And so it triggered that 17-year-old boy who wanted revenge. And I'm

like, oh, you're in prison. I'm well-respecting it. I can just, you know, put a cup of dollars on somebody's books and have you taken care of really quickly. And, but I'm reading the letter, and it's the wildest thing. So this guy was on the phone in the cell block. Another guy is walking past him and he has my book. And he's talking about,

they're talking about what books they're reading. He's like, oh, I just got finished reading this book to write my wrongs. And he's like, let me read it. And he's literally reading the book and there's a story of me talking about when I got shot in the story.

And he literally reals lives, he's the shooter. And so he writes, So he had never known that he was part of your story. Never known. Never known. He writes me this letter. And he was like, I'm the one who shot you and I feel responsible for how your life turned out.

Because I believe if I wouldn't have shot you, you probably would not have went on to shoot somebody else. And I remember this moment of like, this is what I, so we talked earlier about God. in spirit. And I always tell people, you know, when you are on this journey to live a different life, you got to be prepared for how it's going to show up in your life. Like your principles, the things that you say you believe are going to get tested. So for all those years, up until I got that letter, I had been saying that people should not be held hostage to their worst moment. And that forgiveness is for you.

you and not for the person. And the universe was like, to-da, here you go. About now. You'll see what you believe now. Let's test this out, right? And I was like, and I sat with, I was actually in my garage,

my garage office, and, you know, and I just sat with it, and I just remember sitting there. And I was like, okay, okay, so I'm going to write this guy a letter. And I'm going to say, you know, thank you for, you know,

this letter you wrote and apologize, you know. I started writing and I just bawled it up and I was like I was like that's not what I believe forgiveness is I don't owe him a letter but I can accept his forgiveness because it's really for me to let go and so I went and I looked him up I just wanted to see his face see what he looked like so I can close that part of the chapter

and I was like oh that's the gift he just gave me the gift I could see him but what it did is it inspired me to write my mom this letter about really seeing and understanding her because she had started to open up to me about all the things in her life that led to her becoming the woman that she was. And, you know, it's this powerful thing that happens like when you're an adult parent and you started to look back and you think about

how old your parents were when they had you. My mama had her first child when she was 16. there's no way that that woman who had been abused, she had been sexually abused as a kid, she had been beat, like it was no way she could be any other kind of parent than the parent that she was. And I just wrote her this letter and just told her,

I was like, you know, I'm happy that I'm in the space in my life where I can forgive her and that I can be present with her and that she gets a chance to see, you know, this version of who I am as a man, you know. but that's the power of the forgiveness was like, you know, it's really for me, you know, and like my instinct was to write that letter to him. And I was like, wait a minute, that's like, it almost felt performative.

It's almost like, oh, that's a nice thing to do is to write this guy a letter and just say thank you. I was like, no, I don't owe him that. You haven't written a letter? Yeah, no, I haven't. Do you think you will? I don't know. I mean, every now and then I think about it. Let's write it together.

Yeah. Every now and then I think about it because I think about what the impact would have on the other men in the cell block. And so that's the part where sometime I'm like, maybe I'll write that letter one day. Yeah, because I'm thinking maybe some young guy will say, you know, oh man, maybe I should apologize

to the person. You had a moment that I think people should better understand. You got a letter from the relatives of the man, that you shot. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, about five years into my sentence, I get a letter from this mysterious woman named Nancy. And, you know, one of the things that happen in prison is, like, people, like, randomly will just write people who are incarcerated

to start pen pals, and some of them are, like, love interest and all type of things. But you get a lot of people who are, you know, whether they're coming from, you know, spiritual space, sometimes they're coming with as college students. I get this letter. I had never saw the name. Didn't know who this woman was. And I opened the letter.

And the letter starts to lay out who, David, the man whose life I'm responsible for taking, who he was, you know, the father, the son, the friend. And Nancy said that she was his godmother. And she said to me, like, despite this devastation you've caused, I forgive you. and not only do I forgive you, I love you because that's what God would do. And, you know, I wish that would have been, you know, one of those moments that you see in movies where it's kind of like that come to Jesus moment and you're like, all right, life is forever changed. But at that time I was like so deep into my own hurt that I couldn't even comprehend the power of this gift that she had just given me.

And so initially I wanted to just ball a letter up and throw it away. I wanted all to go away. You know, when you're a broken kid and a broken human being, you want the hard things to go away. You know, you don't want to deal with the discomfort of not knowing what to do emotionally. But something was like, don't throw that letter away. And so I would just read the letter week after week, just read the letter and try to feel like a change,

try to feel like what forgiveness felt like, you know? And it wasn't until years later when I began to start to forgive myself when I was journaling and really writing through hard things where I'm like, oh, here's the truth. Like these are, yes, you did very bad things, poor decisions. But here's all of who you are. the whole of it. And that letter was integral to self-acceptance and all of it because like we

corresponded. We went back and forth for years, you know, just talking about, I remember her asking me about the night and I gave her a very, very generic, you know, kind of rendering of that night. Like here's just the boom-boom facts of the thing. Like here, just beat by beat, this is what it is. And she was like, no, who were you? You know, who was that 19? year old kid with a gun in his hand. Like, who was that person? What led you down that path? And, like, she wanted to get to know this deeper part of me, and that was like,

it was not comfortable because I was like, who was I? You know? Because at that point, all I feel is like I'm a bad kid. I'm a bad person. I've done this horrendous thing. I've caused all this harm and devastation. And so it took years of, like, peeling back those layers of, like, okay, yes, you did a bad thing.

And here's the circumstance that set you away. up to become a person who can do a bad thing. That kid in that moment who is experiencing a flood of emotion, who were they at an emotional level? Yeah, at a very molecular level, emotionally, it's a highly traumatized kid that had, I mean, the levels of trauma I've experienced in my life is like almost impossible to comprehend. And like, even as a writer, I've never read. and all of them, you know, because some of them, I mean, in this book, I talk about a very

key thing that happened that I hadn't read about, and I hadn't even talked about with my parents until I was about 50 years old. And I just called my dad, and I was like, do you know that a neighbor that you all trusted us to be in the care of attempted to molest me? And, like, I suffocated that feeling and that thought and that betrayal for years, and I acted out of that. You know, like, I remember burglarized in this. house just to kind of like say to him like that was wrong what you try to do.

And I got in trouble for it. And my parents, they didn't do their due diligence to really try to understand. Well, your dad said he had a feeling that there was something more behind that burglary. Yeah. But he couldn't put his finger on. And also, especially at that time in our culture, we didn't talk about this stuff at all. Men didn't talk about it. And especially in the black community, right?

This is a very, like there's an extra. set of stigma surrounding this kind. I mean, it's really, and you talk about the significance of vulnerability. Yeah. And in particular for men that you said that is your strength. Your strength is being emotionally available to feel and to act on the understanding you have of your emotional state. That's enormous.

Yeah, to me, I think it's one of the greatest mental unlocks in the world. It's like when we can lean into the things that. you know, make us wholly human, you know, like love, joy, compassion, empathy, vulnerability, and recognize that that takes strength to, like, be vulnerable, you know? And it was scary, like, to write

these tough things. Like, these are, like, tough things to, like, talk about as a man. And, like, you know, because what happens in those moments when you're feeling that level of vulnerability is, like, can I protect myself? You know, do I have agency? And I, you know, I always attribute, like, my ability to maneuver out of that situation,

because that's literally, as a kid, that's what it was. I had to maneuver out of the situation. I attribute that to just having older siblings who, you know, they just kind of trickle down effect of, like, they've learned how to navigate things, and they, you know, they just teach that as you're going up. But not all kids have that. Not all kids have that safety net.

I want to explore something that feels almost unfair, but you talk about the fact that people, have very different backgrounds, very different experiences, but there's a through line. And why it feels unfair to talk about is because the emotions that were running through you based on the intensity of your whole life and all the trauma that you had gotten experienced led you to do something that most people don't have the experience of, right? You had, in that moment, you took an action that you couldn't take back. The similarity, not on the same scale, is that a lot of people have actions that they regret, right?

Like, they lose it. And the similarity is in that moment, you lost it. You lost control. And I assume acted, the emotions acted through you versus you acting. Yeah, absolutely. And other people can relate by either they've said something they can't take back or they break something or... They've cheated on someone or they've hurt someone or they've ran their car aggressively and caused an accident. like I've had my own experience.

I remember an accident, car accident that I was in, I was pulling out of a driveway and I was so frustrated in my life. My emotions were driving that car. I wasn't. And I didn't look right away. And I was just like, wanted to get out.

And I got sideswiped. And thank God my son wasn't in the car, but the car was totaled. So we know that emotions unchecked can take us and in a split second change our lives. Do you ever think about the core of that emotion and like are you monitoring it you know you've changed and or become a totally different person but is there ever a thought of like oh i have to track when the emotion bubbles to a point right

because i think we can all relate to like after my car accident and i was like i got to make sure that i've never acted like i got to i got to you know keep the monitor on and have a red alert if i get to that place of of heightened emotions so that it doesn't drive me it's a great question you know one of the things, the chapter I write is on anger. I was terrified of becoming angry. Because the last time I became angry, it lets me be in a solitary confinement for, you know, four plus years plus the time out,

the anger that lets me being in prison. And so for years, nothing, I would let nothing bother me. Nothing's going to get me to that point of anger. It's dangerous. Yeah, because I, I'm like, I don't know who I am if I get there. So I got to be able to be even killed, balanced.

I got to practice hypervigilance around, okay, I feel something escalating. What do I do here? Mindfulness, meditation, you know, what are the tools in the toolbox? And it's great to have the tools, but I also being dishonest because I was putting a cap on it. I was telling myself this bullshit story of like, I'm not upset about that. I'm not going to let that give me upset. I'm not going to let that get me out there because I was really afraid of what would happen. And then what ended up happening when I actually embraced the anger was one, my brother was killed in July 2021.

I remember being angry about that, you know, but I had some tools of like, how do I remedy that, right? In October 2021, we had this beautiful, beautiful puppy name Indy that we took to a train. The first time going off with this trainer, and largely because he was a big American bully, and we tried to do the kind of other, you know, intermediate trainers. He was just a big, big loaf of a bully, and like, if you're not a real dog person, he's intimidating. So I wanted him to be with somebody who really understand working dogs, knows what to do. We take him to this trainer, and within a day, our puppy is dead. and the trainer so we drop them off

I want to say on a Sunday because I was traveling and we needed them to be housed somewhere drop them off on a Sunday Monday evening he's dead they call me to the vet and I get there and you know the trainer is just like telling me this story and instantaneously I know it's some bullshit

and basically what his first version of the story was that He was walking Indy and somebody was walking past and Indy tried to bite him. And I'm like, I know this is just not true. One, you're stereotyping the dog because you think because he's a bully

that this is a, you know, what he would do. But he doesn't understand that American bully is way different from a pit bull, but also we have a very pedestrian neighborhood. Indy walks with my kid who he outweighs. Kids walk up and,

pull his ears and rub on them and touch them and, you know, you know how it is. You're walking a dog, and especially if it's a beautiful dog, people are like, hey, they just go in for the rub, right? So you can't tell me that this is the story. Then the second story was that he was walking him and he tried to bite him and he slipped out of his collar. And I'm like, dude, the dog's head is this big.

So he definitely did not. And I've seen how you train. why I took him to you. Like, you're a working dog training, so you got a choke collar on him. I know the things, right? And so the story is he slips out, runs out, gets hit. What we, I didn't notice the true,

I'll tell you about what we found out after we sued him because he didn't anticipate that I would sue him. So he tells me this story, and I'm going home, and it's heartbreaking. I'm like, this is my son's first puppy. and I got to explain to him, you know, what happened. And so, you know, he's nine at the time.

And I tell him the next morning, he just lets out this whale, you know, and calls out the puppy's name. And I'm broke. I'm dead. I'm like, it's hard broken. I'm hugging him. It's going to be all right. We're going to be fine.

Next morning, I'm scrolling, aimlessly scrolling, and the dog trainer's page comes up. And he's literally with his daughter, and they have a beautiful, I think it's a little Melanese, one of those beautiful hyper shepherd type dogs. And I'm just watching this baby play with this puppy, and she's so happy and she's so joyful. And that enrages me. And so I tell my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, I'm like, I'm going to get in my truck, and I'm going to go around here and run his dog over, so he can see what that feels. like as a dad. And like just saying those words was like,

first this is the most absurd thought to have, but it's also a genuine thought that I had. And just being able to talk it out of like, you know, I'm never going to go and cause harm to an animal let alone something that's going to hurt the feelings of another kid. But that was real anger. And the real anger was that as a father, you see the joy that you're a child has

and you can lie to me as a father and say that this is what happened to the dog instead of just being a man and telling me the truth. And so that angered me to the point where I was just like, you know, I verbalized what I thought was like an angry response. And after that, it was the most liberating thing to say,

okay, it's okay, you can have an angry thought. It's not irrational. Like you're an adult, like other adults get hurt and harmed and upset by injustice. That's really what that was, injustice. And so once I got through that part of it, I was like, okay, now how do I handle anger when it comes up? You know, and sometimes it's not the best way

that I would, you know, I'm still growing as a human being. Like I could fly off the handle like anybody somebody cuts me off and trapped, like, what are you doing? You know, which is a very thing that you deal with a lot in L.A., but I'm not about to go chase somebody out and get into a fist of cuffs. I'm just going to do the universal gesture of, like, what was that? You know what I'm saying? But there's power in that, you know, there's power in in recognizing when we are upset

and to channel it in a healthy way versus letting that energy lead. like and you know you storm out the house or you rush off into traffic and you're you know you cause unintended harm because a lot of times unintended harm comes as a result of unchecked anger but the real thing is to get beneath the surface of like if you're angry all the time that's different than you're angry because of injustice occurred and really getting beneath the surface of what is that thing that unsettles you and when I was angry all the time

And it was really getting beneath the surface. And I realized it's because I had this suppressed shame. And I had these suppressed betrayals that I didn't have language for when I was a kid. And so I stuffed them down. And I acted out of that, you know. And once I went on this adult healing journey, I started to realize that perpetual anger is typically there is something that lives beneath that. And for me, it was shame. And even in prison, the first part of my incarceration, the first,

eight years or so, like I was angry. You know, I didn't have language to make sense of how my life ended up here. You know, I didn't have the tools at hand to separate what I was responsible for versus what had happened to me. But once I started to build those tools and I started to be able to create a framework,

I was like, oh, here's the harm that I've caused. Here's the things I'm absolutely responsible for. Here's the things that I have to atone for. these are the things that happened to me that had nothing to do with me you know that perverted man who attempted to molest me that was his own perversion that he has to reconcile if you know if he can

I can't own that you know the the beatings from my mother that was her journey that lay her down that path like I wasn't born some bad kid like I wasn't born some kid that should just be hit and you know out of anger and so being able to just separate those things was powerful.

And then, you know, I was able to get to the truth of what, you know, was beneath my anger. I was angry at myself. You know, I'm a smart kid. How am I in here? You know, I'm the kid that breaks up fight. How am I in here for shooting somebody? You know, so it was like all these things of like, man, when I get out, I'm going to

have this forever label, you know? And how do you become somebody else? And I mean, it's been times like that's been weaponized. You know, my past has been weaponized. And, you know, and it's like if you don't heal from the shame of it, then you're like back in the anger stage, you know. And so it's really understanding the things that exist beneath it. And by the way, I'm jealous that you were on Jeopardy. I just realized that's what that was.

Oh, that's right. It's my other favorite. That's right. nerdy thing to do? Kind of a lighter question. You're a couple years older than me. Yeah. So you went to, you went into prison basically when I was, you know, graduating high school.

Wow. You know, right about then. So we're, you know, around the same age. And I'm thinking of what happened, you know, culturally in that 20 years. And I'm curious, like, when we were in high school, there was no cell phones. Yeah. You know, like, it was a very different world. What was it like coming out?

What was, like, the biggest shot? I mean, computers, cell phones. Like, what was that like? I describe it as like Fred Flintstone walking to an two episode of the Jets. It's like that's literally what it was like. It's like, I'm coming out of this cave-like world into, like, all of this technology. And, like, there were moments for sure where, you know, I remember I didn't know the between a word document and the internet.

And I would freak out every time I had to save a document because all I had heard in prison was about computers getting viruses. And I'm like, I don't want to get a computer or virus. Like I, you know, so I would like, I had all this anxiety. I had a ton of anxiety around any place I had to go. And I got a million and one questions. Like, okay, what do I park? What is it like?

What I got to be there? Who's going to meet me? You know, it's like on and on and on. there was a my my debt perception was like way skewed like I couldn't like it was hard to determine how far

away a thing was because I had only been around you know a prison yard walking in circles I mean the pace at which people drove like driving totally changed from that in those years

I think when I went in it was like 55 was the limit came out of everything like people were 70 which means in Detroit 70 means 90 is normal. And so that was crazy. I remember I first was driving. So in Detroit, you can drive across the bridge to Canada. And, you know, I didn't have, I had like a 99 civic that was on loan, a Honda Civic. And so I only had like these paper directions. And I'm like driving. I'm trying to get somewhere. And I almost go to this last style. Like if you, if you go one exit, you're going to

Canada. And you can't like just turn around. And I'm like, freaked out because I'm like, I'm going to get stopped. Right. I can't lead a country and then I'm going back to prison because they're going to be like, you're trying to go over it. So I'm like, I'm white knuckling it. I'm like, I got to get off here. But it was wild. I mean, like, I remember one night, me and my cousin, we had went out

and we went to like a bar. Oh, drinking totally changed. Weed changed. Oh, everything changed. Literally, everything changed. And we're like living in a bar. And all of a sudden, it's just like a lot of people coming in at once. And I had a real panic attack. And I was like, I was like, I started sweating. I was getting dizzy. I was just like,

okay, I got to go. I got to go. And I remember like going and I walked like two doors down. I'm, you know, called my cousin. I'm like, yo, I'm outside. And he like, you know, he's like, what's going on? Like, he's like, all the parties is popping. I'm like, I'm like, dude, I can't. It's too many people, you know. And so it's all these things that like, you know, I tell people when they're loved ones are coming home, the party is great. Everybody, you know, I want to thought you're coming home, partying all the things. But it's like, they're a real. things that, like, you don't go through that, and I have scars. I have scars that, you know, when I first came home, I would have, like, these intense

night sweats. I didn't have a lot of dreams about being back in sight. I've definitely had them over the years. But it's just everything was new, you know, getting used to just, like, all the aspects of life, you know, and the technology was like, so because I'm, like, a really nerdy, like, I loved it. I was like, I remember the first time, like, I did a Skype call. Like, I think I was probably on the screen looking so stupid

because I was, I was just, like, smiling the whole time. Like, yo, this is what the Jetsons used to do. Like, in my mind, it's like, it's really happening. And I mean the first time I got in the car that, like, talked. Oh, yeah. It, like, freaked me. It startled me. I was like, who else was in here with me?

But I'm like, I mean, as a kid watching Night Rider and Kit, the current, like, talk. I'm like, oh, this. It's the most, and not it's like so normal. I always feel like David Hasselhoff, so that makes sense. How was the experience of quiet because there's a level of quiet that you didn't have access to for years? Yeah, it's really interesting. The first time I woke up in a house alone.

Like that was hearing birds chirp. Like in most of the prisons I was in, like there's no birds around because there's no trees. And I almost remember like the first of a lot of things, like just being around plants. The first time, I think the first time I rubbed a puppy, it had to have been over 20 years, you know. And I was like, oh, like this little squirming thing is like a real puppy. So it's like all these things and just like being under the shade of a tree. And that first time I was home and it was like I was up early. And it was just like the morning, the birds were just like chirping.

And I just remember like sitting in the kitchen like drinking orange juice like, orange juice was really good too, by the way. It was like definitely not good for you, but it was great. But just hearing those birds chirping was just like, man, this is like I'm really out, you know. And so it's like all these very nuanced things that you experience like a hyper way. You know, and I mean, I've been out now 15 years. Yeah, tell us what your life is like now. That's incredible.

Another son. Yeah. It's like surreal. Like your wedding was in People magazine. Yeah, that was wild. It's like, that was the craziest thing ever. It's pretty, though. Yeah.

My wife did an incredible job, like designing it. Yeah, no, I mean, life now is, you know, it's still surreal. You know, I'm, I think more than anything that I have such a higher, you know, appreciation for the details of life. You know, my life is big in a lot of ways. I do a lot of incredible stuff. But it's really the details of life that I get the most excited about. You know, I'm still, you know, when I come home off the road, you know, I'm watering the plants.

And, like, that excites me. That brings me joy. There's a bookstore that I go to in my neighborhood. It's called Side Show Books. It's like a used bookstore. But it's like complete chaos when you walk inside. And it's the kind of bookstore where if you see a black guy walking in, you're like, oh, this is the start of a horror movie because it feels like that's how a horror movie

should start. This is walking to this mysterious place that lowers you in. You're never to be seen again. But I find so much joy in just going in there and reading through old books and searching those books out and just being fully present with my life. You know, nature is a big thing that brings me joy. You know, I'll never forget what it's like to be instilled in concrete and now to be able to be out in the midst of like, you know, all these things.

So that part of life is great. I love being a dad. It's my favorite, you know, thing in the world is just to really be a dad. It's an incredible kid and travel. You know, I travel all over the world. You know, I mentor. I work with kids just recently in Detroit. They opened the Shackerson Gore Literary Lounge.

which is like it is still surreal. I haven't fully processed it. Yeah, congratulations. Thank you. But when I was there, you know, just seeing kids hold my books. It's like that's the dream. That was the dream. I wrote that down and one day these kids will read my books.

And the coolest thing is that part of the design of the lounge is my original writings from prison. And like that, I remember just being in there and the first time. and talking, and it was like these kids sitting there. There's like a little cubby where my writing is on the wall and this bookshelves and these kids are just sitting there. And just looking at them babies and just like, man, they'll find meaning and words and they'll love the art and the craft of writing and telling stories, you know,

which is one of the thing is technology advanced. If there was anything that I know that I want to be super intentional about is to make sure that kids still write. And they still tell their own stories. And they still find, you know, joy and imagination. And so having a lounge, you know, like that is just incredible. And so... You know, there's so much, obviously, every chapter has exercises,

kind of ways to drill down and kind of, you know, get to those really deep layers of all of these different chapters. But I wonder, you know, I think a lot of people when we think about incarceration and if you've seen the 13th, I think that's a really good place for a lot of people to start. But I wonder, you know, I think a lot of people feel uncomfortable around it because it is such an enormous problem and it's so systemic and it feels like there's nothing that can be done. And I think a lot of people want to shut it away. You have really great resources here for sort of the books that helped you, you know, make your own transformation. But do you recommend any resources

for people who do want to get involved with being helpful, whether it's donating books or education or funds, or do you have other suggestions of how we as a society can start to think differently about what it means when people are imprisoned and treated this way and what it does to society at large? Yeah, no, tons of thoughts there. First of all, shout out to Ava DuBernay in the 13th.

I mean, that film is the most comprehensive film. on really understanding the roots in the history and a culture of prison, you know, the prison industrial complex. As it's known, you know, it's rooted in the 13th Amendment, which is where that title gets his name. I actually was in that film, which was, you know, just an incredible honor to be able to talk about, you know, these big ideas. There's a new film out that is, I think, one of the most important films of our times

It's called the Alabama Solution. It's a tough watch. It is a tough watch. What I've told people in my life is like, you can read my words and you can hear my story. But this film is a visual representation of the things that I talk about. And these men basically made this film with smuggled cell phones. They literally put their life at risk.

And we're not even certain how their life's going to be. going to turn out because they're always throwing them in solitary confinement. And Alabama has a history of the highest level of brutality to people who are incarcerated. So I think people should watch that and sit in the discomfort of that film. You know, Marcel Alexander wrote the new Jim Crow, which is an incredible book. You know, Brian Stevenson's Just Mercy's incredible book and his TED talk is phenomenal. There are some organizations that are doing incredible work. I used to lead an organization here in L.A.

called Anti-Recidivism Coalition, or better known as ARC, which was founded by Scott Butnik. It's one of my favorite orgs to support, donate to. I'm also a board member of Prison Creative Arts Project out of the University of Michigan. That is one of my favorite, favorite orgs for the joy set of my life. Because what that organization does is it uses art as a restorative vehicle for people, both inside and outside and they host the largest art exhibition in the world

of prison-based art so they do that every spring at the University of Michigan campus incredible work and in terms of yeah so I think those are great reads I think those are great starting points obviously the classic Malcolm X's autobiography

I just think everybody should read that in general I think it's the it's the kind of foundational piece of like what a transformed life looks like my early body of work writing my wrongs is you know I think it's the most

proximate people will get to a story of someone who's guilty of a violent crime a lot of times we try to separate you know crime categories violent versus nonviolent but the reality is over 90% of people incarcerated will come home

we get a choice in how they come home are we contributing to them coming home healthy and whole I will say this the work that we've done you know, different orgs I've been a part of for the last 15 years, has dramatically changed the idea around what's possible for prison reform in America. The commissioner in Maine, he's doing incredible work for Commissioner Liberty.

He's just out the box with it. Like he, I mean, these men and women are doing organic farming and make sure that the health and nutritional needs are met in a prison in a sustainable way. I mean, there's somebody in Maine who works in Silicon Valley as an engineer from a prison cell because he recognized that being a contributing member to society is one of the most important things we can do for anybody. There's a parallel between unemployment and high incarceration rates as it is with education and literacy. So they're doing out the box work. They just opened up an incredible center in San Quentin, which is a model for what happens.

happens when you actually put the resources into not just housing people. When I got sued, they itemized how much it costs to house me a different prison. And that's how they got to that number of like almost a million dollars for the lawsuit. And you think about what we're paying for as a society and are we getting our eye on an investment, right? So just think about this. If 70% of people get out of prison go back. back. That's a very high failure rate. If you were invested in the stock market, you would be like, let me get my money out of there fast. If this does not look good on the books, right? But we

continue to invest in that way. Well, it speaks to the incentive structure. What is actually the goal here? Yeah. Is it to run private prisons or is it to help society? Yeah, privatized business are a big industry. It's a big, big industry. I mean, at one point, I was paying $15 for a 15-minute call. You know, so you think about these corporations that are benefiting from people being incarcerated. Well, and also the labor that is, I mean, a lot of people don't want to know about that, but the amount of labor that is actually, we're using prisoners to provide labor at, what was it, 17 cents an hour or something? Yeah, I started. Yeah, I was working 17 cents an hour in the, in the,

school, I mean, in the kitchen. And then at one point, I was just like, I'm only doing jobs that help people. Because that was the only way I can wrap my mind around. Like, I'm not, you know, I mean, they tried to put me on a yard crew. I was like, I'm not going out there. I'm not picking Dandelions for like 17th in an hour. And so I've always just tried to keep jobs in like either tutoring, working in the law library, or working in recreation, because I can directly help people and do things that

I would do without any pay. And I think my highest paid job was working in the law library, and I got like $54 a month. And that job that I had is the equivalent of like a paralegal. And so you think about $54 a month versus for, you know, doing that level of work to help people, which is really difficult in there because it's like you're dealing with, you know, literacy rates as well. But those are some of the resources. Yeah, this, you know, people can follow me and I'm always happy to point them to it. I do, I think everybody should visit a prison, you know.

I think that's important because, you know, you think about like, we're paying for this. And so I think that people in society should like go. I've taken people in a prison all the time. I actually go to prisons across the world. I was just in a prison in St. Martin like two weeks ago. I've been in prison in Ghana, Germany, London. Germany definitely does it way different. You know, there was a thing that I learned over there

that blew my mind is that they think of their people who are incarcerated as still citizens. And like, so they don't, they, there was a moment I was in the cell. So we went with this contingent to Germany and it was a lot of people from corrections and it was kind of like that seminary type thing. And me and Scott, who I talked about earlier,

we got boys. board and we're like you know we should like sneak out and go like run around the prison and so we did we was just like bouncing around and and there was the sale was open and so I went in the cell and I was just like I was having a moment to myself of like man it's crazy that I did this much time in like a space like this and the warden came in and she was like she was like are you okay and I was like yeah I was like I was just thinking about you know I did a lot of time in solitary confinement like seven years and the warden started to weep and she said we would never do that to one of our citizens and i mean when they first invited me to go to germany i was like why would i why would i go to

germany or germany prison like do you not know the history of germany like that that seemed like these people would have it all wrong like they you know what i'm saying like this is just what i thought and then i was like okay well let me go and be curious and let me drop judgment and i got over there and it was mind-blowing, like the idea of like restoration. How do you make sure that people are reintegrated into society in a real way in that they don't lose touch with society? So as part of their constitution, they have to be able to have access to their families.

They have to be able to work in community. And I'm like, if you think about what we're doing to people is we're cutting you off from essentially what is the most important thing is a social group. You know, if you even think about people as you get older, what do they say we need more than anything to prevent dementia outside? Like all these counters is just human interaction, a social circle, things that you can do with other people. And we're saying, no, we're going to see you as far away from that as possible. And then wonder why you come out angrier than when we put you in there. And I see social when you don't, you know.

Unable to function. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, you know, it's not to compare people to animals, but, you know, if you think about what happens when you put a dog in a cage for a long time, and like as soon as you let them out, they're going, like, you know, they're turned up because that energy is not meant to be contained.

Like, the energy is meant to be fluid and whatever type of capacity shows up, and it's meant to move and to occupy different spaces. And so the brutality of our system is such that it really is undermining real rehabilitation. And it creates a real threat to society. Like, that's one of the things I'm, you know, when I deal how to be free,

even though this is not, I just want to be clear, it's not a prison book, right? Part of my life experiences, obviously, are integrated in it. But when I released a book, I gave it away to prisons, to like 1,300 prisons in jails on a platform called Edovo,

because I know that the hard work has to take place while you're in there. In order to adjust to life out here, you need to have tools, and you need to have a framework, and they're not going to give it to you. So I feel like, okay, if I can give it to close to a million people, then that's what I should be doing. And then I started my prison tour, actually, on Rikers Island. So I kicked the prison tour off with my brothers and sisters in there.

And it's, I never thought I would go back in prison. But I had the best fellowship when I go inside, you know, those my people in there. You know, and it doesn't matter what state I'm in, what country. There's just a kindred spirit that we have when I go in and, you know, some honor to be able to go in and show love. And I'm happy to take y'all in if y'all ever want to go. I'll definitely take y'all on the trip. The book is How to Be Free, A Proven Guide to Escapeing Life's Hidden, prisons. Shaka, thank you so much for being here. We really, you're a miracle. I mean, it's a really

miraculous journey that you've been on, and we're so grateful that you shared it with us. So thank you. I'm truly honored and thank y'all for having me. This has been such a cool way to spend time. Awesome. Especially, you know, you think about the things we're talking about in the world today, and hopefully this book helps a lot of people. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me. One of the things we didn't get to talk to Shaka about was some of his writing on resilience, greatness, our need for perfectionism. And he says greatness is about persistence, not perfection. And obviously, it's not a complicated concept.

But when you think about it in terms of the work that he's done, I mean, the success that he's, has achieved. Selling books out of your backpack. It's just like we all want someone to do the work for us, right? Like we want the publisher and we want the book contract and we want the advance and we want them to handle the marketing campaign. And like, he's just like, I'm going to make this happen. His blueprint for success is own your shit.

S is for success. H is for hustle. I is for intelligence and T is for talent. Own your shit, he says. And I also just this notion that we can learn something from someone who is in a literal prison to understand the prisons that we hold ourselves in and that it's not about comparing suffering. It's not about an Olympics of suffering. It's that anger is anger and it will eat you up, whether you're angry about the post person getting your mail wrong or about being wronged in a deeper, more devastating way. anger is anger, forgiveness is available for everyone.

It's really, it's a beautiful book, and I'm so, so glad we got to speak with him. Unbelievable story and an unbelievable man. Please make sure to join us over on Substack, and, yeah, check out Shaka's books, really just so inspirational. And like I said, it's just miraculous. And, yeah, we're so glad that we got to have this conversation from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. Breakdown, she's gonna break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience Ph.D. or two.

One fiction. And now she's going to break down. So break down. She's going to break it down.