The Rich Roll Podcast - Tom Scott on Why Meaningful Conversation Matters

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

At the root of our current political and cultural turmoil lies an unprecedented divisiveness. With all-or-nothing thinking fueled by tribalism, the result is a complete communication breakdown. And a predilection to convince rather than a willingness to listen and ultimately understand. Unhealthy and isolating, it's leaving us lonelier and angrier than ever. But more than anything, it's fracturing our humanity. So what do we do? Tom Scott says we need to talk about it. A graduate of Brown University with a Masters of Divinity from Yale, Tom is the founder of The Nantucket Project – an intimate ideas festival in the vein of TED — that brings together incredible leaders across a wide range of disciplines to talk story, with an eye on creating a better world. When the pandemic shuttered what would have been the 10th iteration of TNP, Tom decided to take his skills and curiosity on the road. Driven by a desire to engage with Americans first-hand, he enlisted his film crew on a slow route down the Mississippi River from Minneapolis to New Orleans, stopping in small towns daily to host get togethers with a wide variety of everyday people, chronicling difficult and at times painful discussions on politics, racism, and everything in between. What he discovered might surprise you. Returning for his second appearance on the podcast (catch RRP #360 if you missed it), today’s exchange with Tom begins with an honest acknowledgment of where culture currently sits. We discuss our fears and hopes for the future. And our shared concerns about the effects of quarantine on our kids and youth across the world. We shift gears to discuss The Neighborhood Project, an intentional conversation platform Tom and his team are creating for people to digitally gather, intentionally connect and share experience. Weaving clips into the edit lifted from his adventure down the Mississippi, Tom relates his effort to cultivate tactile, analog understanding between people who disagree. The wins. The losses. The glimmers of hope. And the challenges that remain. All told, Tom paints the picture of an imperfect America. But one that looks quite different from the highlight reel delivered by our respective social media feeds. Boots on the ground isn't twitter. And meaningful conversation matters. Therein lies promise. As someone I have known since 7th grade, my friendship with Tom runs deep. This conversation further cemented my admiration for this human. The visually inclined can watch our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. My aspiration is that you take this one on with a full heart and an open mind -- then find a way to better connect with your neighbor. Peace + Plants, Rich

One of the things that's developed in us is our righteousness. To be right is such a big deal in our culture. And to be right is largely measured through your rightness in social media. It's like we're not a kind. We have so many layers to every single one of us. And all the different inputs that come into sort of defining who we are and what we are, that notion that we're in like two or three boxes and the internet knows what those two or three boxes are is completely destructive. And it, you know, I would argue

that that is the obstruction towards some kind of a healing. But we all have these biases of who's like this, and you're of who's like this and you're not enough like this and you're not enough like that. And how would you know this? And how would you know that? And all those kinds of things. Well, okay. I accept that. And I think there's some truth to a lot of those feelings. So now let's talk about it. Do we actually have the courage to talk about those things? That's what conversation is. It is way more than like smart theories. It is completely transformational to who you are as a human. And I think it is also a place for you to understand yourself is to just be with other

people. That's Tom Scott. And this is episode 548 of The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, support and empower you to find the ideal level of behavioral health disorders, including substance

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recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment, an experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders,

including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you.

Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, so today's show. I think the greatest problem our country is facing, one of the roots of the turmoil and the strife and the protests and the political calamity is overwhelming divisiveness and this all-or-nothing thinking sparked by isolation,

social networks, social platforms, tribal mentalities fueled by Twitter wars, and predilections to convince rather than a willingness to understand, to listen, and to engage in nuanced conversation. We're lonelier, we're angrier, we're more calcified than ever around our respective ideas. And it's really prohibiting our ability to productively communicate, to find the common ground necessary to really solve the massive problems we face. And the result is a fracturing of our society and ultimately our shared humanity. So what do we do? How are we going to solve this problem? What do we do about it? Well, my friend Tom Scott says we need to talk about it. In a time where less than 4% of Americans say they even have conversations with their neighbors, and a third of Americans have never even met their neighbors to begin with.

Tom Scott is facilitating difficult, nuanced conversations across the country. For those of you who are new to Tom, I suggest you mine through the archive and give RRP episode 360 a listen. archive and give RRP episode 360 a listen. It's sort of a primer to today's conversation because Tom has a fascinating personal life story, which is worth diving into. He's an entrepreneur, a filmmaker, a storyteller. He's a fellow human in recovery and somebody who I've been friends with ever since we met in seventh grade. But I think more than anything, Tom is an artful conversationalist and a master of communication. A graduate of Brown University with a master's in divinity from Yale, Tom is the founder of the Nantucket Project, which is an ideas festival kind of in the vein of TED or Aspen, but more intimate, that brings together incredible leaders across a wide range of

disciplines to talk story, to talk ideas with an eye on creating a better world. I've been a speaker and I've also hosted both Russell Brand and Dr. Zach Bush in conversations at that event the last couple of years. And today's exchange begins with an honest acknowledgement of where we are in the world. Tom and I both express some vulnerabilities, some fears and hopes for the future, and our shared concerns about our kids and the effect of quarantine. We then shift gears to discuss the Neighborhood Project, which is this intentional conversation platform in which people across the country can gather safely via Zoom, connect with each other,

watch short films and talk. It sounds really simple, but it's been an incredibly powerful platform. And for any of you out there seeking community in times of quarantine, I suggest you check it out. You can learn more at theneighborhoodproject.com. We then turn to Tom's latest project, which is this experiment in community gathering that involved Tom and a film crew going on the road, starting in Minneapolis and then following the Mississippi River South, stopping in small middle American towns along the way to host these gatherings to confront big issues head on. He brought together a wide range of people

to discuss and chronicle their political views, their experiences in community, in racism, prejudice, among other difficult topics. I was able to see some footage from this experience, some of which we have woven into the YouTube version of this podcast. It's really powerful. It's really powerful. It's challenging, but also quite beautiful. I adore Tom. He's a cherished friend,

somebody I deeply admire. And I think you'll find this podcast meaningful and impactful when it comes to something we both believe, which is the import of meaningful conversation to solve our very real problems, to breed empathy, to enhance understanding, and ultimately to heal as individuals, as brothers and sisters, and as Tom would put it, as neighbors. So this is me and my friend, Tom Scott. as neighbors. So this is me and my friend, Tom Scott. Good to see you. Good to see you. It's been a minute. Yeah. A lot has happened since the last time I saw you, which was on the island of Nantucket for the Nantucket Project last year. And I'm anxious and interested in hearing about

what you've been up to to because it's pretty fascinating. Yeah. I mean, I know this is true for just about everybody. Like what a year, what a year. We won't make sense of this for a long time. I think it's mostly fair. I mean, this is hard to say, but there's good and bad in it for sure. I know that's true for me. And I want to say respectfully that that's not true for everybody, right? It's been a dramatic year. And in many ways, I think the most unpredictable of our lives, I don't know how you measure that, but that's how it feels. Just when you think we have a grip on it, another curve ball gets thrown. Yeah.

on it, another curve ball gets thrown. Yeah. There's nothing that's out of bounds this year. And, you know, I would say also, I have a lot to be grateful for. I'm extremely privileged. I get to continue to do what I do to make a living. My family is safe and healthy, but it's been trying in its own way.

I think the thing that I struggle with, at least with respect to the pandemic aspect of this is grappling with, I hate the word new normal, because it's not a new normal, but trying to get my hands around this reality that we find ourselves in where it doesn't appear that we're gonna resume any sense of what it used to be like.

Like this is just how it is for the foreseeable, not just immediate future, but as far as I can see. And it's challenging when you can't make plans and you struggle with what to look forward to and how that plays out on all of our psyches, individually and culturally. Yeah. Well, and I think it's also, you know, we use the word wonder for learning in our organization.

And for us, it's sort of derived from a hope for a humble approach to learning, right? To have the humility to learn. That sounds haughty, but it's true. That's how we talk about it. I think it's hard not to feel humble in this time because of what you said. Cause I don't know. I don't know what's coming. Who knows what's coming? You know, there's certain ways you can look at that, but the truth is, I don't know. You know, I just think about my kids,

my son's football season, which is canceled. These, these are, these are little problems, generally speaking, generally speaking. And my other son was just, you know, he was going to go back to school and then now he's not, this all happened in the last week, you know, and there's certain things I observe in them that are scary, I guess, scary in the sense that, um, they're certainly not having my childhood, right? They've got a whole different childhood going on here. Completely. Yeah. And so that's just one example of the unknowns. I mean, because I could very easily build an argument

that suggests this will make them stronger, different, more humble. And I can give you the other one, right? The other argument. Angry, resentful, a sense they're being robbed. Depressed. Certainly depressed. I've got a 16-year-old daughter who is in an art high school,

which she loves, the practical aspect of creating art with other kids and with mentors. Now she's on Zoom from 8 to 4 for classes, and then all her academic homework is done on the computer. And then she has to do her practical artwork by herself. And she ain't happy. It just makes me think this is horseshit, man. This is not what being a kid is. This is terrible. And for all the talk of how unhealthy it is, all this screen time to then pivot to like, well, you gotta be on screens all day long

from the moment you wake up in the morning until you go to bed at night. Yeah, yeah. And only time will tell how this plays out 10 years from now when this generation of people who have undergone this extraordinarily trying experience, what kind of people they're gonna be and what their worldview is gonna be be. Yeah. You know Phil Williams. Phil Williams is a guy that you and I went to

high school with who now runs a camp in Vermont, the camp that my children go to. He opened this summer and they did four weeks at a sleepaway camp. Amen. You know, God bless him. Scary. And I was in touch with him a lot. And you can imagine the risks. He's afraid. There's health risks. There's reputational risks. There's financial risks. He pulled it off. They all went. They were all there a month. They all came home. Nobody got sick? Nobody got sick. That's good.

Yeah. So it can be done. But he was getting nasty letters from other camp heads. And to his credit, he's like, I'm going to do this. And it's funny because he will have a net negative financially speaking. He'd have been better off keeping the door shut. But he said, you know how often parents tell me this is the most important thing in my children's lives? And he's like, so I'm opening. This is important. And he did it. Now, so I'm opening. This is important. And he did it. Now that's not easy.

I mean, there's certain elements that he has, isolation, geographical isolation, certain demographic, right? So there's certain things he could do as a camp head that would be harder to do elsewhere. But these challenges to your point, I don't know. It's the definition of a dilemma.

Staying home isn't a good idea necessarily either the definition of a dilemma. Staying home isn't a good idea necessarily either. Going has its risks. Staying home has its risks. He took a calculated risk and did it and it worked. Right. Yeah. It's difficult to grapple with the nuance of it all. I think when we talk about the health risks of COVID, we have to also talk about the mental toll that's being placed on young people to be in this kind of isolation and what that cost is that we're incurring. And look, I wear a mask everywhere I go.

I'm basically at home all the time, except for the occasional trip to the grocery store. And then when I come here and we are as safe as we possibly can be, and half my conversations are now on Zoom, which is trying, it's not my favorite thing. This show is about being with people. It's very much in the ethos of what you try to create with Nantucket Project. It's about having an experience with another human being. And I really struggle with doing that on Zoom.

And again, this is a small problem in the grand scheme of everything that we're grappling with right now. And I just see so much confusion and chaos and discontent and upheaval. A lot of the upheaval is necessary. Some of this chaos, my hope is it creates ultimately a stronger, more cohesive nation, but we're going through it right now as a country. And I can't help but wonder about what the future is going to look like for, you know, not myself, but just as a nation and what we stand for and what our values are.

what we stand for and what our values are and whether or not we're going to find our way back to a place of being able to communicate in an effective and healthy way. Because that breakdown that we're seeing is real. You experienced this firsthand with this adventure that you just went on, which we're going to talk about in a minute. So what is your kind of sense of where we're at right now? Yeah. I mean, I can bounce back and forth on this, right? I can. But what I would say is I left my house on May 5th because I had to leave my house. By the way, I love my family and all those things. I'm sure it's difficult for people in a whole variety of ways to be in your house with your family all the time. There's good in it. But I move around. It's what I do. I interact like you. I interact with people. I go to meetings, right? I go to meetings. I did go to meetings every day as part of my recovery. And, you know, it would be disingenuous to not mention that because what I do every morning is I wake up and I go interact with people in a meeting pretty much at least six days a week.

It would be seven if I had the schedule time. It's a critical part of who I am. And that went away. I was doing Zoom meetings. And that's okay. It's better than zero. But so I left on May 5th and I just wanted to go out and see what was really happening in the world

because I do not trust it. Here's, I wanna be clear. This isn't about fake news. This is about, you cannot perceive the world through your computer and your TV. It just doesn't work. It's part of the story. And just to contextualize that,

I mean, you do this every year, like you take a train across America, right? And part of the intentionality behind that is to connect with real people, to get behind kind of what we see in our Twitter feed, to experience where people are really at when you interact with them in a meaningful, tactile way. Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna jump to the conclusion,

which I'm not giving away the secret here. I do not believe that there's any life challenge, any important life challenge that can be solved without conversation. I don't believe it. I just think that's a fundamental fact. And the more time I spend looking, the more I stand by that. I think it's just a fact.

It's always been. It's always been. Only recently do we have to lament its departure because we have found a dopamine-driven stand-in for communication. And it's not all evil. I'll get on my phone when I leave here for sure. Like, you know, I'm no saint here, but it has really screwed us up. It's really screwed us up. I would agree with that 100%. And it's one of the reasons why I'm doubling down

on what I do here because conversation matters. And the more that I do this and the more tumultuous society feels, the more I feel called to have difficult conversations, to invest in nuance because of the breakdown that we're seeing. And I think that the only way forward is conversation. Conversation matters and it matters now more than ever

set against a backdrop in which this thing that is so fundamental to being human has been fractured. And you see the trauma, our inability to listen, to be present with another human being and to seek to understand rather than to convince. That's it. You know, here's a thought, and I know you know this. One of the things that's developed in us is our righteousness.

To be right is such a big deal in our culture. And to be right is largely measured through your rightness in social media, largely. Or how that measures up against the tribe to which you ascribe. That's right. Now, that's really different than what we're talking about here. If you're someone who has had the blessing of, in the sobriety world, people will say, I'm grateful for covering this or that, alcoholic, addict, whatever.

That's a common phrase. If you're in this world, you know this. And as time goes by, for me, and I know it's true for many or most, you really believe that you really believe that you had the gift of being forced to get intimate with other people because it changes your life in so many profound ways. Well beyond stopping using a substance in an unhealthy way, well beyond like, that's just the tiny cherry on top. And I just, you know, for me, I will stand by that forever. But the point I wanted to make is the beautiful stuff, the life-changing stuff, the stuff you never forget,

it comes from everyday people. It doesn't come from the smarty pants. It doesn't come from the really intelligent person at Yale. Nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm not trying to be cynical here. I will just tell you that the people who have profoundly changed me most are regular everyday people with regular everyday problems. And often the way they express their beliefs, their challenges, their fears, is in really lame language. They stumble on their words as they're saying it.

That's what conversation is. It is way more than like smart theories. It is completely transformational to who you are as a human. And I think it is also a place for you to understand yourself is to just be with other people. That is lost. That is lost right now. Now, there are those who do see this and understand this. But even as I was speaking, I was picturing these people's faces. There was a woman named Gabby in Memphis who, she said, I hear you guys speak with language I don't even know how to use. said, I hear you guys speak with language I don't even know how to use. And then she told her story. And who gives a shit what her sophisticated language is or the theories that she's ascribes to? That's meaningless. I mean, as you know, you get these like shares on high when you're in a

meeting and then you hear someone tell the truth. That person who tells the truth changes everything. That person who speaks on high, if you've been around for a while, you roll your eyes. You just wait until that time passes. I'm sounding cynical here, but I just experienced it too much recently, and I feel so profoundly moved by it. And I just, I want other people to experience it.

I want other people to experience, I think, because I have love in my heart. I also, like, I don't want to live in a world that's so fucked up like this. Let's make a better world. Well, it's not going to happen, I think, because I have love in my heart. I also, like, I don't want to live in a world that's so fucked up like this. Let's make a better world. Well, it's not going to happen if you just, like, the book isn't going to do it. It's not going to do it. It is this hidden gift of sobriety and spending a lot of time in the rooms. the circuit speaker person who will deliver this incredibly tight, taut, unbelievably inspirational

kind of monologue about their story. And I think that has its place, but the emotional connection comes when you hear that person who's just working through their fear to be as vulnerable and as real as they possibly can. And the courage that that requires is something that you don't experience that often. And that having, you know, being a part of that community and participating in that informs everything that what I do. And in so many ways, like the show is an effort for me to like share some slice or sliver aspect of what that feels like and the healing that that creates in another human being. Totally. Well, and it unlocks your ability to love because you can spend a lot of your energy hating yourself, elevating yourself,

damning yourself, misunderstanding yourself. I mean, I said yourself a lot, right? Like just spending a lot of time thinking about yourself is just such a waste of your energy most often. To really interact with other people is to unlock that part of yourself that's useful to other people. Like that's how it gets unlocked is by being with those people and understanding these things. You know, you talk about service. It doesn't have to be a soup kitchen. You know, it doesn't have to be a place you check in and check out of. It can literally be a phone call. It can literally be a moment with your son or daughter, right? It can find its way in so many places. But if you want to know what it is you have to give, you got to be

with other people. It's just a fundamental part of it. I had this moment, so this trip, which was called American Neighbor, ended in New Orleans, and I did not speak the whole time. I would sometimes just introduce myself, but I was just there to listen. Well, finally on the last day, I did speak. I spoke on the very last day, right at the very end of the gathering we did that night. And there was a conversation going on about like, what was the agenda of one of our films that we showed? Which is so interesting because we made the film two years ago. The agenda had nothing

to do with what people thought it had to do with. And I said, I just want to be clear because I think it would be helpful to, if you want to understand our motive and where our motive comes from, and it comes from 13 years in a room that I discovered as part of a way to become a sober person. If that never happened, we would not be in New Orleans right now. That's why, that's how we got here. Now there's a lot of other elements that came to play, race, politics, lots of, you know, COVID for sure. But if I hadn't had this experience, we wouldn't be here. We wouldn't make these films. We wouldn't tell these stories. And I would add that I think our world is really messy, really messy. And I think if we try to

leave conversation out of the solution, it's just going to continue to be messy or really messy. And I think if we try to leave conversation out of the solution, it's just going to continue to be messy or get worse. It will. So let's create a little context here. 10 years ago, you created the Nantucket Project. It's sort of an ideas festival in the vein of TED, where you invite any number of Yep. Where you invite any number of extraordinary luminaries and also a variety of extraordinary human interest stories and people to deliver that message. And you invite a community of people to attend,

a rather small community, you do it in the round. The intentionality behind this is to spark and provoke conversation on a variety of matters. I've been privileged to attend two of them and participate. And, you know, I do a lot of conferences. What you do, and I've told you this before, really stands shoulders above any other similar type of event that I've participated in. There's just something really intentional about how you construct, not just the speaker lineup, but the environment and everything that kind of occurs around the stage. So maybe talk before we get into like the thing that you just did,

like talk a little bit about Nantucket Project, like how it came into being and how that experience has affected your life. Yeah. Well, you know, I always say the worst thing that ever happened to me is the best thing that ever happened to me. And life is long. I'll have others. Right. But the things that surrounded my moment of it's time to get sober were dramatic and painful and bad, like they are for most people who go through a situation like that. In some ways, it was built through excess of self-focus, what we might call success gone wrong, right? And that is true. But I would add that it also gave me an interesting glimpse at a young age of sort of the silliness of the world. To be exalted is sort of silly. It's exalted.

What does that even mean? To have money makes you better? To have likes or friends or numbers or whatever it might be? Our culture praises those people. And I was one of those people who got praised. And in some ways it destroyed me. And in some ways it gave me an insight that, wow, our values are kind of screwy. We have screwy values here. And that very often, maybe most often, because I've had nice things written about me and bad things written about me, neither one of them are accurate. I'm not the first to say that. You've heard that before.

Well, you know, what is the story of our culture? And, you know, we came along at a time where, you know, the three networks turned into 3,000 networks and then the three gazillion networks when the internet came along. And to win means you got to do drama. Like drama is how you get clicks. Get some dopamine going, you're in good shape. Don't get dopamine going, you're probably headed out of business. That's the general rule of what the 90s and the early 2000s taught us about media. And what gets lost? Truth.

Like real value, meaning it gets destroyed. And so when I went to the first Aspen Ideas Festival in 2003, and I was blown away by what I saw. I was also let down by a variety of things. I don't want to pick on a competitor, but some of the elitism and whatnot is a little bit painful to experience, and some of the mutual admiration society aspects of what these things have, we have it too, is disappointing to me. But I really did believe, like, wow, to be in front of other people

and to actually generously express ideas and then consider them and do something with them is cool. It's really powerful. And I was completely turned on by what I saw. But the idea of starting TNP was, can you talk about these super meaningful things? Can you build story in a way that's useful to people over time? And that's really what we started with. And, you know, I became sort of a Joseph Campbell disciple around the year 2000. And the part of Joseph Campbell that I'm most attracted to is this idea of, you know, the multi-thousand year story that man tells man and how important it is. Everything's a parable. You don't learn

through statistics. You learn through stories. And so stories are a big deal, a really big deal. But to tell a story requires a lot of things if you're going to do it with a certain level of respect. And so that was really what TNP was built upon. Now, I got to say, like anybody else, I got to pay my bills. I got to sell my tickets. I got to stay alive. And I had started something called Plum TV after I did Nantucket Nectars and it really failed as a business. And my idea was I'm going to make a for-profit PBS. And when that failed, it broke my heart. It really destroyed me. And I didn't do it right. Like it broke my heart.

Like it really destroyed me. And, you know, I didn't do it right. I probably made some bad decisions along the way. I know I did. Not probably. And that's so when we started this, I said, I got to pay a bill. I got to pay the bills every year. And the question is, can we both pay the bills and pursue these stories in a way that's meaningful?

And that's really what it was built upon. And that's what we started with 10 years ago. And I'll add one more fact, which is I knew from my experience with Nantucket Nectars and any other life experience I've had, sports, for example, is that you pay a price. You're going to pay a price. You're not going to be great in the beginning. It doesn't happen. It's not how it goes. I'm not Mark Zuckerberg. This isn't like the one in a gazillion business that's going to go to the moon quick. It's just not. So do you have the patience to go through that process?

And that is hard as hell. I know your story well. You know this. I'm gonna imagine like you go back to the beginning and you think like, wow, what was I doing? Well, you were learning. You were on a path. And you're learning in a public way, right?

Where you're open to that kind of critique. But on some level, you have to have the courage to do that in order to get good at what you're doing. I mean, all I see, I went to the ninth and the 10th one, or the eighth and the ninth, I don't know. Eighth and the ninth. So, I wasn't there for the early years. I don't know what the hard lessons are that you had to learn, but I saw like an incredibly high gloss polished

version of what I'm sure was not the case in year one through three, right? Right. Right. And one of the things that I'm struck by is, you know, in this intent to tell stories that are meaningful, there's a courage to take risks, like even in year nine, like you're experimenting and not all of the things are gonna work, right? But you're willing to walk that high wire act.

I mean, you've got, there's like President George W. Bush is here. You've got Candace Owens, but then you also have Susan Rice and Bryan Stevenson. Like it's this mix that crosses the, you know, the political divide and is creating these collisions of ideas that are provocative and don't always land well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yes, that is true. And I will tell you a good COVID news for me is I don't have to get that stress this September. I'm not doing it this year. Are you relieved? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is, I have a September mode that is really intense, like super intense. I mean, I can't compare it to you or anybody else's

business. I just know September for me. I can't imagine trying to pull that thing off. Oh, it's just crazy intense. And I care probably too much, you know, just like, man, do we put a lot of effort into that. And so I always think, and my team, anyone on my team who might be listening to this is probably rolling their eyes, but I always think of Serena Williams, that look on her face when she's in it. She's not all smiles.

This is not like smiles times. This is like war. Like we are in war. And we are gonna give everything that we have in that time. Like we are just going to lay everything out there. And I got to tell you that there's this, I don't remember what word you use, but sheen or I don't remember what you said, but something about this shininess of what we're creating. Because, yeah, I want some of that too. Man, do I not want that to come at the price of

a truth? And provocative is a great word. I'm so scared of that word because I do not want something to be provocative for provocative sake. And that doesn't mean I don't want to be provocative because that would be a misnomer. Drama matters. It matters. It's an interesting... But are you negatively pursuing it or are you doing it in the pursuit of something that takes you to a new place? And I want to believe we do that. I want to believe that we do that every time. The other part that I'll add to that,

which I think is so important, I mentioned the elites earlier. I mean, I have no doubt that people have mocked me for what looks like eliteness, right? Or probably is too, right? It bugs me big time. It bugs me big time because I don't think there's that much wisdom in it, you know? Well, you're an easy mark.

I'm an easy mark. You're a wealthy white dude. You live in Greenwich. And if you're going to sit across from me and we're going to have a conversation about race, And if you're gonna sit across from me and we're gonna have a conversation about race, it's pretty easy to take shots and dismiss you and me for that matter. Yeah.

And we have to call that out a little bit before we dive a little bit deeper into that. Like I'm not unaware of this. No, no, I know, I know. And on some level in this moment, you're disqualified from having a valid opinion about anything relevant on that topic. I think that's true.

I would say that I think any one of these conversations, and that's an annoying word, by the way, like the national conversation, like we need to have a national conversation. Like I don't think when people say that they're talking about the same thing I'm talking about. Because when I talk about conversation, I'm talking about what we're doing right now or doing it in a small circle, right? I think everyone needs to be in this.

Everyone. Everyone needs to be in this. Now, when you start talking about, you know, I didn't go on the road just now with Tom's theories. I did go on the road just now with Tom's forum. I just want to set up a forum where people who can deliver these things are given an opportunity to do that. And in many or most cases, those are regular people. Now, in some cases, there are experts for sure. I mean, experts have a role. I don't, of course. And so I don't really apologize for that. Like that part of it, if people would prefer I sit home, probably not going to happen. But critical in this equation are two lynchmen, Neil Phillips and Simon Greer.

Yeah. Like you don't go on this trip and you don't host Nantucket Project in the manner in which you do without those two individuals. No, those and many other people like them. Many others, of course, but those two guys, particularly in this Mississippi adventure that you went on are critical in helping to facilitate the kind of conversations that you wanna have. So maybe talk a little bit about who these two guys are, who've both played a massive role

in the Nantucket project itself over the years. Yeah. I have a thesis that there is a meaningful role for white people to play in responding to racism in this moment. White people created a racist system. White people benefit from a racist system. Black people didn't create that system. And so, isn't it weird to say that black people alone are gonna solve it?

The thing I have discovered along this journey, I want more from white people. I have been too satisfied with the try not to be bad position. We should all be saddened, embarrassed, angered by how far we've missed and continue to miss what were stated as the ideals of this country and how accepting of that miss we've been.

I actually wish both of them were here today. I know. It would have been great. I know, I know. And you and I have known Neil for a long time, right? And Neil, he's your best friend. I've known him since I was 14, 15 years old. Yep, yep.

And Neil, I knew this before, but I really learned this this summer, has an amazing heart. Like this guy's got like a crazy heart. He cares so much and he puts so much love into everything that he does. So Neil is, you know, he's a native of Jamaica and he moved to the United States when he was three. His parents came to the United States. They're immigrants that came to the United States. They're immigrants. They came to the United States to live a better life. And Neil was a great athlete, good student. And he's a six-foot-four, attractive, charming black man who has seen a lot, right? He's seen a lot in his life.

And he was captain of his basketball team, went to Harvard and was also all Ivy in football. Like he's just a guy who's had a lot of success. So multi-sport superstar. Yeah. And incredibly charismatic, charming, gracious, present, smart, like all the good things all the good things and and maybe most importantly to this story wakes up every morning at a charter school that he

founded in bradenton florida it's a charter school for boys primarily black boys um who neil will say he doesn't love it when somebody says the phrase, keeping kids off the street, because that is not how he looks at this. He looks at this as letting the light of these boys shine the way it does, and he's been incredibly successful at running this school now for about a decade. So he's in the middle of it every single day, operating his school, dealing with cultural, political, financial issues of many kinds every single day. And if you're familiar with these kinds of stories, survival is a question all the time.

So you're trying to build a school in a difficult area, in this case, Bradenton, Florida, in an area that struggles. You're trying to do it and pay the bills and build an ethos and succeed from an academic point of view, and he does all those things. And because he does all those things, he's deep in it. He's deep in it. And Neil's a guy who, for whatever it's worth, could have chosen a different life. He could make some money.

He could have been at Goldman Sachs. Right, right. He's a 54-year-old guy who's completely dedicated his life to this. So Neil was one who came on the road. And also before you move on, an extraordinary civil rights leader in his own right beyond the school.

Yep, for sure. Marched with John Lewis. Yes, yeah, I failed to mention that. He runs something called Visible Men. It's called the Visible Man Academy and the Visible Men movement is his strong belief is that the narrative on black men in America is way out of whack, that there are great stories of black men in America achieving in all kinds of places, in all kinds of ways. And he would say primarily

in the way that they share love with the people around them and that America has an obsession with a different story and that story is detrimental to the society at large but importantly to you know the the black society that he lives in and he finds it very frustrating so that's what his movement is and he so yeah he's marched a few times with john lewis, you know, that whole community from Bryan Stevenson to Cory Booker and others who he's worked with. And so this is his life, you know, this is his life. And, you know, when we invited Neil on this trip, by the way, I wouldn't have done the trip if Neil wasn't going. Right. There's no trip without Neil. Right. It's a misnomer to say that, but he,

I want to add that when you run a school during covid you are busy like he's got a lot of shit to do so taking that time for neil was a big deal um and but you know but he's a believer like he's a guy who's gonna stick his his nose into things he believes so so neil was one and then simon is the other and simon um simon greer uh he ran and and I'm going to blow the title, but he was sort of the lead community organizer in the Obama administration who over the years has run what are called courageous conversations with a whole variety of people.

He's done a lot of work in the Jewish community, many communities, where he basically brings strange bedfellows together to have productive conversations is really what he does. Yeah, his whole thing is trying to bridge this divide by sitting down and putting himself in the middle of, you know, an incredibly tempestuous issue to try to unite people around some sense of shared values. And he does it at, again, like great peril to himself. And it doesn't always work out. Like you've made a couple, you know, films about the work that he's done, you know, his personal story and the pain that he endured and himself putting himself, you know, in front of people that he disagrees with profoundly to try to find some commonality. And in that is this great hope and aspiration

that this is the solution to what ails us. Like he, despite trying and trying and trying again, he continues to show up for this very difficult thing that most of us shy away from, or just think it's not worth it, man, or what's the point? Right, that's right. No, 100% true. We started in Minneapolis.

Well, let's just define it, right? So you go out, you're gonna do this road trip. You, Simon, Neil, and a crew of people are gonna do this road trip. You're gonna start in Minneapolis and you're gonna work your way down the Mississippi River and you're going to stop in towns, cities, communities, and create gatherings at a safe distance in the age of COVID to have difficult conversations about what's happening in America. Yep. Is that fair? That's fair. And I'll just quick way of background when I was

saying earlier on May the 5th, I finally said, I got to go see what this real COVID world is. I got to get out of the house. I got to get out of the house. And me and another guy got in a car, drove to the northern tip of the Mississippi River, which is called Lake Itasca, way in northern Minnesota. And we drove to New Orleans and back home through the Mississippi Delta. And we stopped in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. We were in Nashville. We were in a lot of different places.

And it was profoundly affected me. And I guess as just a way to think about it, I remember having a conversation with a woman, a white woman, Trump supporter in Dubuque, Iowa, in a convenience store. And I remember having a conversation with a young black guy in Memphis. And, you know, at that moment during COVID, they both were struggling in a big way. They both felt a sense of being left behind. They had a strong sense of frustration,

frustration on many levels among among them certainly money, you know, because of the economic challenges that came along with COVID. You know, on the conservative side, there's a lot of leftover anger from being one of the basket of deplorable types, you know, who they feel like they've been forgotten and insulted by the left. And then there's, you know, this one of of the things the kid in, in, um, Memphis said that will always stay with me. I asked him, what was it like the day after Trump was elected when you went to school the next day? And he said, oh, it was like any other day because

we expected it. You know, meantime at Brown university, they're protesting and going crazy. And in this case, they're like, he's like, we were used to this. We, we, we know we're forgotten. You know, it was really profound. And so when I got home, I don't know, this is probably four days before the George Floyd thing happened. I was telling my friends and my team, I said, the world out there is not the world you think it is.

It is, we gotta understand this. All this stuff we're yelling at each other about in social media on the news is a myth. It doesn't mean there's not problems. There are problems, but they're misunderstood. Let's go back. That was my feeling at the time. And then the George Floyd thing happened.

And I don't know, within nine days, we were ready to go back, ready to go back and try to understand this. And to document it. And to document it. And to document it. And that's critical. So what we did was we did the exact same thing. There's one key difference, and that is that I drove out, a bunch of people drove out to, once again, the northern tip, and then down.

We had our first event in Minneapolis and basically over 13 days, we did 11 planned events down the Mississippi from Memphis, Dubuque, St. Louis, small town called Nauvoo, Illinois. We were in Vicksburg, Mississippi. We were in New Orleans. We were outside of Baton Rouge. So we did them in interesting and different places on the way down. That was at night. Every night at 8 o'clock, we'd start a gathering. They lasted two hours. And then by day, we'd follow up on people.

So can we come see you tomorrow? And we'd interview. We just did interviews the whole time. The thing I just want to point out, I've made a lot of films over the years, and I've also been to a lot of meetings over the years. The most profound things I've seen in my life over the years has been in meetings. You don't bring cameras to meetings, right? It's just not what you do. Well, in this case, we, from the very beginning, we said, we're going to capture this whole thing. So we're going to cover these, we're going to have real

crews in these meetings the entire time. And was there a fear that by doing that, you would somehow dampen people's feeling of comfort to be honest and vulnerable? Yes, for sure. And we spent a lot of time working on that, including things like where are the cameramen and where do they sit and how do they sit and stand and all that stuff. And it turned out to be no problem. I mean, so there's that.

And then the other side of it is Neil and Simon would run the show every night. Like they would run the show. And they are good at what they do. You know, they're very honest in what they do. And I think really importantly, they're ready to take abuse. Because you get abused. Right. That's part of what happens.

You showed me like a 16-minute rough cut of some of the footage, and Simon really takes it on the chin a couple times. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you asked the question earlier on, which is definitely the fair question. Who are you? Who's the Mr. Elite guy over here to go do this? You're going to come down into middle America and root out the truth?

Right. Like, fuck off. Exactly, exactly. There's something that feels gross to me about putting vulnerable stories in front of white people to get to them and hopefully they'll care and hopefully they'll change things. At some point, we just need to fucking move

and just let the movement move past us if we cannot support it. It could be a convenient story that we're going to just plow past most of the white people in the country. The guy I met with yesterday, he told me about the hot civil war that will come before 2024.

And this is a fully armed part of our country, and history doesn't teach me that we plow over them. It's never been the story. And so I don't want a pie-in-the-sky anti-racist lecture. What I want to know is what is the plan so that we can be the last generation that lives this way. And if it's easy to target me,

I've been called a race traitor by white people and a racist by black people enough times that I'm not pleased with it, but I'm not disappearing. So I think you're very smart, but I also don't like you the more I sit here. Like, it seems you have an agenda. That was my biggest fear coming here. I think you are part of the problem

because of the rich, liberal, progressive agenda that you seem to be pushing. So when we're telling our truth here, brother, you got to just listen. I told you from the jump. Don't ask me to turn around how I feel. You talk about the stones getting unturned. I don't know that there's any that got unturned. Like, we heard it all.

We heard it all. And it played out. You know, it really played out. I mean, I could go down a long list of what those things are, but we all have these biases of who's like this, and you're not enough like this, and you're not enough like that, and how would you know this, and how would you know that, and all those kinds of things. Well, okay, I accept that, and I think there's some truth to a lot of those feelings. So now let's talk about it. Do we actually have the courage to talk about those things?

Well, those things got talked about a lot. So you show up in Minneapolis. How long after George Floyd was that? Well, it would have been about six weeks, something like that. And it's intense. I remember when I went down i i watched um the second plane fly into the tower and in on 9-11 and uh you know it was really dramatic and i forget but like three or four days later i rode my bike down to ground zero oh you were you when

you say wash it you were in manhattan i in Manhattan, yeah. I think we talked about that before. And long story short, the minute I got up to the chain link fence, I was just crying like a baby. And it shocked me. I'll never forget it. In the same way, the day we got there, I said, let's go to the George Floyd Memorial, which I put it into my Google Maps, and there is. Like it's already in there. Right. There's a pin there for it.

And, um, same thing, same thing. I got to a road closed sign and I got very emotional. It was very emotional. I didn't expect that. I wasn't ready ready for that but that's where it all started and um you know that night we had our first gathering not not in that site there's something kind of sacred or there seems to be something sacred about that site but nearby and it was really intense really intense. Like, I don't know, sad, scary at moments, hopeful too, loving, angry, like a lot. It was a lot. And we did it two nights there.

So we were in Minneapolis for two nights. And Simon right away was taken to task, right away, right away. In what way? Like, give me an example. Well, in the ways I think you said, like, who are you? What are you doing here? The hell do you know? Kind of thing.

I think people made certain assumptions about like what Simon's role was. I mean, to Simon's credit, and you've seen him, Simon has his own political beliefs, but to say he has a political agenda, I think is unfair. His greatest gift is in his ability to get people to interact. And when the shit gets heavy, to put it in a place where it can become useful as opposed to just a big fight. Like that's really who Simon is. I think if you think he's coming to preach, you are biased. Like who is this guy?

But it's not really what he does, you know? But it doesn't matter because in the end, all those feelings are felt by people all over the world. Right? The most powerful one, and I don't know what town this occurred at, but it was in your edit, was the conversation around essentially reparations where this individual was really pressing Simon

and Simon seemed to get a little bit defensive with this idea that that's, this guy was basically like, you need to give up everything that you own, right? And Simon had a certain reaction to that. And then I thought Neil had like an extraordinary perspective to help kind of Simon understand where that person was coming from. Can you walk me through that?

Because that was the most powerful exchange. Yeah. So you've looked at a little bit of the footage. I mean, we have so much footage. Are you going to make like a feature-length documentary out of this or what's the intention? It's one of the reasons I'm in town. I got to figure that out. I feel a very strong obligation to do something with it that is most useful. I think it's actually best served as a series because a number of the people who we met

have such powerful individual stories. And I think if you fill in those blanks, it becomes so much more useful. Well, it is episodic too. You could do like a six, eight hour Netflix series. Yep, absolutely could. And I think that the stories of these individuals are so powerful and to understand sort of what they bring to those moments

is also so powerful. And I think putting those two things together is really vital. So I want to do that. The time that you're describing, so that was St. Louis. And as you might expect, first of all, the questions that people ask me at home in many ways demonstrate the problem because a lot of the questions people have are in many ways unrelated to the reality of what you see out there. So just as an example, I had a couple people ask me if I saw Antifa out there. Not once.

It's not actually all over the place. That's just one example. There's a whole variety. You weren't in Portland though. Exactly. But were people upset about this, that, or the other things? Like, no, this is like a whole different level of life. What about QAnon?

Never came up. No, never came up. But so what happened was, I know why I was saying that. I said that because a lot of people allude to the South. I bet it was really bad when you got down to Mississippi. No. I think that these conversations, the lack thereof, and then any degree of them actually existing

have been handled differently geographically in profound ways. And if you live in the state that is like the stand-in for racism in America, which let's say that's Mississippi, well, they've been talking about it. Like they know that. They know the rest of the country thinks that they're like the worst. And on the other hand, in Illinois, where people think it's up north and it's more liberal and more this or that, the worst of what I saw was in Illinois. The worst examples of racism I saw in Illinois. I don't know how you measure that. In some ways you'll have to take my word for it.

And St. Louis was like that. You know, the anger in St. Louis is really intense. Well, it's a fairly segregated city. Well, exactly. There you have it. Big time. Like it's not like Manhattan. You know, it's not like New York. Well, exactly. There you have it. Big time. It's not like Manhattan. It's not like New York City.

It's very segregated. And so if you talk about things like white fragility, whiteness, white guilt, white privilege, okay. Those are important things and things that we should all try to understand and judge them for yourself when you maybe understand it. It's hard to understand a lot of these things. But when you see it and you see the reaction that it brings, it was really intense. If you remember that guy, that guy's name was Hal,

and Hal basically does what a lot of people in his position do which is like i'm going to show you why i'm innocent of all charges and i'm with you kind of thing that guy the other guy his name is tory he wasn't having any of that right so walk us through that so hal basically talked about some of the volunteer work he does in the black community um he said that there's a lot of good people with good hearts in St. Louis. And then, and I'm, by the way, I'm paraphrasing and generalizing because there's more to this.

But then Tory, Tory was the black guy who talked to him about reparations and talked to him like, if your wife and child were murdered today, would you wanna come here and have a conversation about who's racist and who's not tomorrow? Is that what you believe? And he talked about, well, what would you want me to do?

I'd want you to give up everything you own. And he said, is that a serious? Simon said, yeah, are you being serious? Right, are you being serious? And he said, 100% serious. And that night was a very emotional conversation around those topics. Welcome to Racist St. Louis. I guess I feel a little resentment in the blanket statement that white people are all racist. When I happen to know a lot of really good, solid Americans

here in St. Louis, white Americans, who are really trying to make a difference in this city, and I hope that I could be counted among them. I would assume that you would want some brownie points doing some charitable things for some little Negro kids in North St. Louis. I don't do this for brownie points. I don't sit in a room with white folk, to be honest with you. This is the whitest I've been around in probably about three or four years.

I found another white person who honestly believes that what they're doing is what the black people want and that they're probably not racist. I found another so-called ally. Why don't you tell me what you think I should do? What I think you should honestly do? Yeah, I want you to tell me. I think you should go get every white person and relinquish all your things, that's first.

Every single thing that you own. Every possession. Relinquish. Relinquish. Is that a serious proposal? That's 100% relinquish. How could it not be? How would you feel if I slaughtered your wife and kids yesterday?

Would you want to have another conversation? Would you want to talk about who's not racist and who is? Would you want to have another conversation? Would you want to talk about who's not racist and who is? Would you? He eventually left. That guy left. He got up and left. You know, and why did he leave? And should he have left?

And who's right and who's wrong? And all those questions. You get to see it played out. And, you know, Neil, going back to Neil. So there was 15 of us on our team. So we witnessed the whole story. Now I want to qualify that. We witnessed the whole story from the point of view of the events each night, but during the day we would divide up and some of us would go visit different people and interview different people. So the big story at night, we all sort of share that

together, but we would all come across these little stories individually. So we were all sort of impacted in different ways and we're all different people. But the point I'm trying to make here is that the 15 of us would then meet each morning and review what we heard and saw and described how we were feeling. You know, we had 15 people, all mixed race, all coming from different points of view. So you really got a mix of opinions on things. And the thing I'll say that going back, at the very beginning, I said, conversation is just so vital to all of this. Everyone evolved. All 15 of us evolved. And all 15 of us at different times found ourselves in different places. And what's interesting is a day later, two days later, five days later, we'd be in a little bit of a different place. By the end, I know, I know,

because we all said it, we were all forever changed. I think we were all made more healthy by it. And one of our mantras throughout was, let's not leave it in New Orleans. I hope, I hope, and I don't know this, but I hope that we're able to represent the things we experienced in such a way that other people find it as useful as we found it. So that's the hope. And that's why I'm saying that in light of what we just described,

because I want to respect those people. I want to respect Tori. I want to respect Hal. You know, they came and they were like generous with their time and generous with their honesty, almost entirely. I mean, we all are sort of bullshitters and we're all a little bit afraid and certain people are probably more open than others. But I don't know. I don't wanna in any way disrespect what they gave us by handling it in the wrong way. Yeah, I think that my sense is that there's this impulse on behalf of white America to just figure out a way

to heal and heal quickly so we can move on. Yeah. But in truth, and what I think you did a good job in portraying at least in the clips that I saw is that you can't have healing without reconciliation and a precedent to reconciliation is understanding. Like these people need to be heard.

Like don't be so quick to try to move to the healing part. Like we're not there yet. Like there's a lot of work that has to be done before we can even get to the conversation around healing and moving forward. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.

That's, you know, it's kind of like, I mean like what we were talking about earlier, the COVID confusion, the where do we go from here feeling that we all have. And I think it's probably an instinct amongst many people to think, by the way, it depends on who you are, right? It certainly depends on who you are. But let's get this problem solved so we can get back to it. Right. Well, what is it? What are we talking about here? We've got to get back to our jobs. We've got to get back to letting the stock market grow. What is it that we've got to get back to?

And so maybe— You could even take that a step further. I mean, isn't that what Make America Great Again is all about? This idea of getting back to some idealized version of our past that's rooted in fantasy. And when you look at COVID, just even in the shorter term perspective

of getting back to the normal that we had a year ago, yeah, what is that? Was that all that functional? Now we have an opportunity to deconstruct all of this. It's like, we can look at it like, oh my God, all this racial uprising. And then on top of that, a pandemic. Well, perhaps the pandemic is just God's way of saying, all right, I'm really gonna make you stop and sit with this right now. And I'm not letting you out of the penalty box until you fucking figure this out. There is no getting back to it.

Let's redefine what it is. Yeah, yeah, that's right. I don't have answers. Like I really, again, I'm sorry for being a broken record. Get out there and start interacting with people is the best I have. I have my own opinions on certain things. But we're not allowed to right now. I know, I'm sorry for being a broken record. Get out there and start interacting with people. It's the best I have. I have my own opinions on certain things. But we're not allowed to right now.

I know, I know. Well, you know, that's the thing. I know, but I do. Well, let me say a couple of things about that. One is I think doing a version of a virtual conversation, which is what we've been doing, is better than nothing. It actually, I think think is a really useful step towards something. I mean, here's the thing I'll say, and you know, I'm going to jump to the last

day and just, and there's going to be a corniness factor to what I'm about to say. I'm giving you a pre-warning, but on the very last day, which was in New Orleans, we, the 15 of us gathered and, you know, it was very nice of the people in New Orleans to let us stay in the space because we're talking like 1 a.m. And they probably all want to go home. And how are you creating these gatherings? You're just putting the word out generally? Like how are you figuring out who shows up at these things? Because they weren't large gatherings.

No, they were like 18 a night, right? COVID, we had COVID challenges. And then also just a productive conversation. They were two hours long. And so if you think about two hours, if you get above 18 people, you really can't have a conversation. But the answer is there was three people on our team, and you know Joe. You know Joe? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Joe was just an animal and really worked so hard to find the right people to gather each night. And we would show up in each town. And I don't want to diminish the work that a couple of other people booking it did. So those guys were

good too. But Joe is just the most passionate person you've ever come across. Very enthusiastic. Very enthusiastic. And so we'd show up in each place and people are like, where's Joe? Where's Joe? And Joe had these incredible relationships. By the way, still does. Like we're still interviewing those people you saw in the film. We're still interviewing those people because Joe gets on and they talk about it. And this conversation is continuing on. And this conversation is continuing on, on our platform in great ways. It's great. I'm very proud of that. I'm very happy for that. Virtually, think of it as a version of Zoom is how we're doing those things. But in these cases, Joe would just work it hard. There's a woman named Jessica

who lives in Anna, Illinois. Anna, Illinois, the name Anna, Illinois come, it's what's called a sundown town. I didn't know what a sundown town, a sundown town means black people aren't allowed after sundown. And Anna, the name Anna comes from ain't no N words allowed. Okay. So Jessica runs Black Lives Matter in Anna, Illinois. Jessica's a young woman. She's probably 20, maybe 30. And Joe found her and it was not on the route. So Joe and I had to drive off course to go find her and speak to her. And she was beautiful. She was amazing. This woman, you know, she describes her life, like she'll be walking down the street every day and someone's going to call her the N-word out the window. This is in Illinois now, okay? And man, was she just something else. I mean, she's obviously hurt by a lot of this, but she's also just brave and hopeful.

And I'll never forget her. I mean, you haven't seen any of that yet because we haven't even gathered it all yet. But I bring her up because Joe is so passionate about making these connections and meeting these people. And the places that it brings you is just magical. And there's only one answer to that. And answer is joe's passion joe's belief you know he's the aaron brockovich yeah exactly asian yeah and then you know the generosity of somebody like her to sort of bring it out but um man i was scared you know there's a there's this woman named Tina on our team. She's a young black woman. And I don't know, like the third day,

there was a loud pickup truck that drove by. And she could tell I got scared when the person drove by. And she's like, are you afraid? And I said, yeah. And she said, are you afraid of the white people? I said, yeah. And she's like, why? And I said, I don't know. Like, I don't think people

like that, like people like me. And I don't, I don't know. Like when I see a rebel flag. Imagine being her. Well, exactly. And she was like, I had no idea that, you know, I thought all white people didn't fear other white people. And I was like, no, I definitely fear that person. I bring it up in this context though, because while I was, while we were with Jessica and Anna, we saw it. And I was like, no, I definitely fear that person. I bring it up in this context though, because while we were with Jessica and Anna, we saw it and I thought, if I'm Jessica, I'm definitely afraid. Absolutely, I would be afraid.

And I think she is, but she's also just has a crazy courage. Anyway, the answer to the question though is conversation. Like that's how we met all these people is you pick up the phone and you talk to them and then you connect with them and then you sort of grow a relationship. And that's really what it was, a lot of hard work. So what was the corny thing about New Orleans

that you were gonna get to? Yeah, so, and I actually think it explains well the philosophy and that is we got to New Orleans, we're here at the last night, and Simon says, okay, and you can roll your eyes at what he said, we're all going to silently look each other in the eye, one by one, as a way to share how we feel about the trip. So, you know, there's 15 of us. So I'm going to look at 14 in 14 people's eyes. And I was like, ah, you know, this is stupid. Um, but by the third one, I realized it was unbelievable and I'm bring it up because one, it's very difficult to describe in many ways.

I have to take my word for it, But two, that's what conversation is. That's what it is. I mean, literally, that's what it is. And that, you know, when we think of conversation, we think of it as the words we share with each other. And that is such a small part of the equation. It's being with each other. It's the emotions that we share. It's the feelings and the role that our eyes play

and the way we feel and the things that we say. And so, and the sense that you're being seen. Yeah. I've done that practice. It's sort of a yogic practice where you sit across from somebody and stare into their eyes for just a painfully long period of time.

And it does seem hokey, but you realize how little of communication is actually verbal. And if you sit long enough across from another human being and stare into their eyes, there is some deep, profound sense of understanding that you ultimately arrive at where you're like, I know this person. Yeah, yeah.

It's crazy. It really is. So I don't think it's hokey or corny at all. And I appreciate that. In many ways, I wouldn't expect you to as much. But I'm like a crazy hippie, so. Right. Well, and that's, yeah.

And I think it is at the root of what we're talking about here, which is what you saw on film there, that's not Tom's theory of anything. If I have a theory, it's just if you get people together and you do this, the greatest story, the greatest theory, the greatest feeling will come out. And so you talked about Neil and Simon as being critical, definitely critical.

Those people you see there, they are the most giving, useful, brilliant of all by far. Right. You say that you go into an adventure like that though, with as a blank slate, like I'm not going here to inject my perspective, but we all have our cognitive biases. So I would imagine that you had some idea of how this was gonna go, how it was gonna play out and some aspiration of, you know,

where you would arrive when you got to New Orleans. So how did this meet that or defy that expectation? Like what was different? You know, where did it go? I mean, I can't imagine you thought this is going to be kumbaya. No, no. You know, but I would also suspect you're an optimistic person that you would think like if, and with your conviction, your belief in the power of conversation that there will be some healing, right? And that was kind of thrown back in your face a couple of times.

For sure. I mean, I wouldn't say that those moments surprised me. I think what did surprise me was the way I and others evolved by what they witnessed and the disagreements that we had amongst our team were really strong and very unpredictable. You know, I wouldn't have predicted the way that different people would react to different things.

That's gotta be as much of the narrative as the conversations with the people who live in the towns. For sure, yeah, yeah. You know, there's something about young people. Now to be clear, I think us old people need it. We need it badly, but there's a brilliance amongst people in their twenties. And we had a few of those in part because they were raised differently than we were. Like their perspectives are just so different. And some of the things that they said and some of the ways that they reacted,

I don't know. I, I, you know, You remember the woman who said she was inadequate from that film? She's amazing. That woman is – there's something incredibly special about her. And so I sort of had the gift of watching her evolution throughout this trip and the things that she learned. Because I think on a certain level, we're all pretty naive. And if you go through an experience like, like not many people do this, like who, who

takes, you know, in my case, three weeks, because there were, there were other weeks that we tacked on, um, or at least a week that we tacked on. There's more to this trip, which we don't really need to go into. But the point is you're talking about, you know, in our case, a-something-year-olds and in their case, 20-something-year-olds. And we didn't have time. There was a hurricane during it all. We missed that. There were so many parts of regular life that we were completely disconnected from.

We were all in on this thing. And we were paying attention. We were really paying attention to what was going on on the ground. paying attention. Like we were really paying attention to what was going on on the ground. Well, if you're doing that and you're not living in your social media or in whatever your regional bias might be, you're going to experience things that you just have never experienced. And that's true across the board. So when you would see that with somebody like this woman, Liz, who I'm describing, who calls herself inadequate, she's brilliant. Like the idea that she would be inadequate in any way, which by the way, we all have that.

I don't fault her for that. And then to see her rise and fall because there were moments where I saw like hope and happiness in her. And there was moments that I saw despair and anger in her. That's an experience that's just irreplaceable. So in light of that, you know, having indulged in that experience, when you open up your newsfeed now

and you see what's going on in Kenosha, how does that color or change how you process what's happening? Yeah. Like here we are again. Yeah. It saddens me for sure. I guess, and it will take me time to sort of understand how I feel about it, but the way I feel right now is very much in line with what we said before,

which is that there's something at play here that is so much bigger than me and that the work is so vast and it will write its own path. I feel like the very best we can do is be at our best as we sort of roll through the things that we're going to continue to roll through next. It doesn't change the way I feel about the power of conversation. And it doesn't change the way I feel about the work that we were able to witness on the trip. But it does certainly elevate my own belief that this it that we were going to go back to is silly.

And that it, maybe Kenosha is the it. Like that's the thing we've got to go to. Like we've got to go to these places and deal with these things on a more important level. I mean, I think in the end, because, you know, you heard a lot about capitalism and other sort of structures that exist in our country as the causes of the challenges we have. And without taking a position on how I feel about this, that, or the other of those things, I think one of our greatest problems and challenges is that when you think about prioritization, you know, we live in a country that consumerism and capitalism is way at the top, if not the top, right? Well, what if that was in like the fifth spot? What if love was in number one and we actually talked about it? And I'm in Cornyville right now and I know I'm in like Utopiaville right now, but people in history have lived this way and I know I'm in like Utopiaville right now.

But people in history have lived this way. I mean, cultures in history have lived in a way where the primary role of the culture and the community is to help the community in acts of love. And then beneath that is like, we gotta feed each other and put the shelter in. But if you're living in a culture where consumerism is right at the top,

well, that's the it that many people are talking about if the it is to care for each other well that's a completely different question like totally different and and when you if let's pretend capitalism and consumerism is at four and five or three and four well you're gonna have a very different view on what capitalism and cult and consumerism is if it's three and four well you're gonna have a very different view on what capitalism and cult and consumerism is if it's three and four as opposed to it being one and two and to me kenosha is a reminder of we got to be thinking about love as one or two or one i want to add that one of the big debates throughout this whole process was systems versus humans, love versus structure. Like that was a big debate that kind of went back and forth

throughout the whole thing. And I think what you see in Kenosha certainly has elements of both of those things. Best as I understand it so far. Yeah, I'm thinking about where anger sits in all of that. Like I'm thinking about the little clip in the video of the hardcore Trump supporter slash white supremacist that you come across.

And when you speak of love and you speak of understanding and conversation, like it's a sticky wicket, right? Like how do you approach somebody like that? Who's entrenched in a very antiquated way of thinking, who is never gonna be able to see the world the way that you see it or come to some place of understanding around race and society.

Yeah, I know. I know that's a real hard one. I'm going to add a little bit layer to that story, which isn't the answer, but it certainly is illuminating to a certain extent. That guy, about eight or nine years ago, he became a YouTube addict of a kind. I know that in part from him, and I know that from his neighbors.

And he'll sell you too. He's like he watches YouTube all day. And that algorithm knows that guy, and that guy gets the story he wants all day. So he's been wherever he fell on the radical spectrum, YouTube served to further radicalize him. Serves him all day. Have you listened to the Rabbit Hole podcast series by Kevin Roos? No. It's all about that.

It's all about that. It's fascinating. Yeah. You should check that out. So I just want to say that I don't know the answer to your question, but I do know that the fundamentals that I just outlined are part of the problem. And you think about it, like, who's running that algorithm? Is it Larry and Sergey?

I'm not trying to point a finger, but, you know, Jesus, that's a bummer. Isn't that supposed to be this enlightened company that- It's an AI that just is designed to deliver you more of what you've shown interest in. Yeah. If all you do is watch cat videos, then that's what your feed is gonna look like.

But you start going down the quote unquote rabbit hole of a particular political perspective, then you're gonna get served up more of the same. And that's problematic, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, because it will further entrench you in your perspective without providing you with counterpoints to get you to think more broadly.

Yeah, I know. And it's just a real bummer. You know, I find it very depressing and I feel like, you know, one of the problems. And so every night when you, when you come to the conversation, we all come packaged in nice little boxes that the internet defines for us all day long. You hear it all day long. You're one of these and you're one of those. And I don't know, like who makes these packages? What are we talking about here? Yeah. And the antidote, of course, is to contravene that by having difficult conversations between two people that share a different set of beliefs. And like we said at

the outset, it doesn't always go well. Like a perfect example to me, and I don't know how you feel about this, but at the last Nantucket project, when Simon had the conversation with Candace Owens, like, I don't think that that went that great. I don't think that we arrived at some greater sense of understanding for different perspectives. I feel like it quickly landed in a strange, uncomfortable impasse. Probably so. I mean, I think that's true. And I applaud you for programming that. I think it was compelling to see that and to wonder, how is this going to go? Yeah. Yeah. And I guess, you know, to me, it's part of a path to a better place, you know? I guess I'm old school in the sense that I believe we should play these things out. We should have these conversations. We should learn these things. And, you know, it's who I am. I'll read right-wing books and left-wing books, and I'll listen to

right-wing things and left-wing things. I have'll listen to right-wing things and left-wing things. I have my own strong opinions. Some of the stuff I do online, I have a very strong feeling, a strong negative feeling towards Donald Trump. I imagine. I know a lot of people do, but a lot of people don't. And I mention that because my strong negative feeling

towards Donald Trump includes a willingness to hear what others have to say about his philosophies and his practices and whatnot. And ultimately, me as a human, I judge him as a human who is unhealthy and destructive and divisive and detrimental to our world. And part of the way I get there is by listening and observing and judging. And I'm just a regular guy. I think we're all capable of that. And I think part of what you've, you know, the path towards discovering these things is listening, you know? And look, in the end, you know, some of the philosophies of the ancients and learning and considering and trying on

and shedding off, it's a big deal. I think it's everything. I think it's everything. I mean, that's, you think about the meetings, right? Think about our life in there. You hear a lot of bullshit. You hear a lot of bad shit. Well, if that were, you know, if it didn't,

if it wasn't for the love of the people who were willing to ride through that and be understanding for people who are on a bad path, can you like, what's the alternative there? Well, it's an important distinction. I mean, the difference being that that's a safe place to do that. It's a judgment-free zone

and people are encouraged to engage in their vulnerability in that way. And the promise or the implicit agreement is that it will be received with love and compassion. That is very much at odds with our current cultural moment where we're not allowed to make any mistakes and we're not allowed to evolve and a misstep can result in you being canceled forever. And there's a fear, you know, there's a lot of talk about like first amendment rights. Like it's not necessarily a first amendment right, but there is something to the idea that if you say the wrong thing in a, forum, that the consequences are going to be dire. And there is a chilling effect,

like is it really worth sharing my thought on this important issue when the consequences are so high, like if I do it wrong? And so there's a withdrawal from that conversation, which I think is degrading the productivity of our ability to reach some level of understanding and to grapple with these difficult issues. It's much safer to resort to the talking points of our respective tribe to signal to those and step back from anything that even has a hint of being controversial or is sort of at odds

with party lines. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely true. And that lack of nuance, like this is part of why I like to do this. You know, over two hours, people are gonna understand who you are for better or worse, right?

And without that nuance, I think we're handicapping our ability to reach this level of understanding that can foment the compassion and the understanding that we need to productively move forward. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I mean, one of the things that I have learned the hard way more than once is that my own stupid theories, my own erroneous beliefs are exposed to me when I say them. are exposed to me when I say them, you know? So it's in a conversation that I discover things about where I'm wrong. Man, what if I never got to say them? Like, would I ever evolve? But there's an impulse to be teachable that's built into that, right?

And I think a lot of people aren't quite there yet. Yeah. They don't wanna, they don't, they're not interested in evolving in that way. They're interested in being affirmed for their perspective. Right, right. Well, I'm gonna be the broken record again and say that that's why I so much believe in conversation.

If there's one thing I wanna get out of bed and do and promote, it's that, because I think that people can go on those journeys and discover those things that, you know, there was this woman, well, do you remember the woman that when the film opened, that older woman? The older woman. Yeah.

She was the sage. Like, that woman was incredible. I grew up in a neighborhood of storytellers, and you would fall asleep to the sound of people talking. We'll see you next month. If nothing happens and the creek don't rise, there was much more the culture of talk on the front porch and in the evening time. And I think even today, I think that we have lost a lot of that.

She reminded me of, what do they call her in the Matrix, where they go to the oracle. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I call her the sage, you know. And every word out of her mouth was just such beautiful wisdom. And I don't know. I feel like hers was the voice of God. You know, hers was somebody who's been through it and who ultimately, I'm judging to a certain extent, although she did say some of these, some things that were exactly in line with what I'm about to say. You know, she loves people through their pain. She loves people

through their struggle of understanding. I mean, I feel like with so much of what, you know, as a white person, there's so much to be learned, so much to be learned. And some of it's going to come at a great deal of pain. Some of it's going to come through sadness, right? All of it's going to come through some kind of an experience. And I find, for me, that if I just understand the theory, it's not going to work for me. It's not. It's not going to give me the thing that I need.

And I feel like what that woman said was, you know, love yourself and love the others around you as you go through this experience. And that experience is like the dance of life. I know that sounds corny. We're having a dance of life on the phone all the time. It's very unsatisfying and it's very shallow in what it ultimately gives us. So going through those moments in those times is so valuable to me. you know, Neil is, is Neil Phillips is, um, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Like he took a lot of abuse too. He took a lot of abuse from the black community, from the white community. And, and there were moments where I saw a Neil that I'd never seen before, but I bring it up because, because I had the gift of watching it over a number of weeks and seeing the journey that Neil went on,

he's forever changed. And he didn't- In what way? Well, first of all, he didn't run from anything. He didn't have to, because this isn't the first time he's experienced these kinds of things. That Neil, in sort of collaborating with you on this,

is complicit more in the problem than in the solution. Potentially, yes, yes. And he gets that in his work. At a time, he was an outsider coming into Bradenton, Florida, right? Well, now he's been around for a while and he's like of the community. But Neil, his energy and love bends and grows through that abuse

in a way that's just so useful. And I was really proud of him as I watched it. There were moments where, you saw it in the film there, where he is defending a kind of like abusive interplay. And in the moment, you feel like there's an injustice. I felt like there was an injustice. You're talking about the reparations exchange? That exchange, yeah. And it wasn't, the debate wasn't around

the right or wrong of reparations. The debate was around style, was around the way we're treating each other in those moments. My take was that Neil was pointing out to Simon a blind spot when it comes to his own white fragility or the extent to which we process events through the perspective of the kind of dominant white point of view. Yeah, I think that's fair. You know, and I guess watching that conversation continue

over the next couple of days for those two, between those two, with the backdrop of those other comments that Neil gets, it's, you know, it's a really profound example of the power of the love of an individual. That being in this, I'm talking about Neil in this case. It's a really profound example of the power of the love of an individual. I'm talking about Neil in this case. Because the bottom line is Neil is Neil.

Just like we all are we all. It's like we're not a kind. We have so many layers to every single one of us. And all the different inputs that come into sort of defining who we are and what we are, that notion that we're in like two or three boxes and the internet knows what those two or three boxes are is completely destructive. And it, you know, I would argue that that is the obstruction towards some kind of a healing. What did you learn about from Neil and also just going down the Mississippi and having these encounters about the role of the white individual?

Like how can somebody who's white in America be part of the change we wanna see? Like I think there's a lot of confusion among white people about not wanting to do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing, but also, you know, be an active participant in creating the world we'd like to see and not being sure about how exactly to do that. Yeah. Well, I'm going to use very basic arguments. You know, one is when Bryan Stevenson says be proximate, the idea being you've got to spend time around people who aren't like you.

There's a whole variety of ways of doing that, but I think if you sort of walk around with that mantra, that's the reason I had to get out of the house during COVID because I'm not being very proximate. There are certain things I can do through Zoom or in our case, our new platform, which I think is very real by the way. And then I think the other part

is to be really active in conversation with each other. And when I say each other, yeah, if you can go have conversations between different kinds of people, I'm talking race largely when I say that, but also with people just like you, you know, I think we got to talk to each other about these things and really come to understand what we actually think and be willing to, you know, it's funny. Like if you look in the, this world, uncomfortable is mentioned,

courageous is mentioned. Like you hear it all the time. Well, if you're in a conversation and everything's feeling great, you're probably not in a good conversation. And so that's what we're talking about. And it's like, are you willing to do that? Do you wanna do that? Here's the thing. I actually really believe this,

that almost everybody likes it. Likes it in the sense, knowing that there's pain in it. It's like working out or any other thing. Pain is part of the deal, but I don't think we'd work out and go through these challenges unless we didn't actually really like it. And I think that's-

Well, there's an unmet hunger for something that's real and authentic. Yeah, yeah. So that's my strongest recommendation. I mean, I'm gonna say that one of the reasons I believe very much in film, deeper, faster is the short answer. You're like, why film?

One of the things that film does is it, if done right, it can model people being courageous and people being authentic. And like a good share in a room, the modeling is so powerful. and like the shares that follow tend to be these really powerful moments and these powerful opportunities but i want to add a layer to that and that is that you know i was i was at a friend's house this morning and i was watching her son on his ipad and he was he was on heroin i mean he was like fully locked a 100% locked.

Like, hey, say hi to Mr. Scott. And the kid was just completely, and we've seen it before. I've felt it before because I do it too. A good film, it can be a powerful antidote to that. It's a bit like doing a drug. I always, as an example, if you passed around a joint at a party, the conversation you were having before the joint

and after the joint are gonna be two different conversations. I think film can really serve to bring us to a place where you're in a position to have something that's really fruitful. And that's part of what I believe. Like I really believe, like share a story. Like, I don't know if you, I'm sure you have seen our acceptance film,

which is one that is just powerful. You could watch that film and then talk about race. Not that race and acceptance have anything to do with each other other than modeling like courageous sharing. I think that's a really powerful tool, really powerful tool as an antidote to the phone, as an antidote to distraction,

as an antidote to the fact that, I mean, before we started today, we meditated as an antidote to the fact that, I mean, before we started today, we meditated. It brought us to a place that was more useful. I think it serves that way. At the same time, it's a very binary thing. There's the film and there's the audience. There's an interplay between those two things,

but in certain respects, it's static without comprehending, like including, you know, a capsule to contain the conversations that are incident as a result of whatever that provokes in people. What you've done with Nantucket project is capture that aspect of it, rather than just here's the content, it's just here and available. Like, no, the content is only as valuable as the exchanges that take place as a result of it. So you've created these neighborhood projects where there's these,

they're like Tupperware parties for conversation where people get together, they watch these movies, they have these conversations, and now you're really scaling it with this new digital platform where you're taking 10 years of content that you've accumulated, not just from the Nantucket Project event itself, but all the documentaries that you've made over the years, which really have never seen a public audience before. And then not just making them available but really mindfully curating a presentation of that content that is driving people to collide with each other so talk

a little bit about like what's behind that yeah how you've kind of arrived at this yeah so um gather wonder practice like those are the tenets of everything I've learned over these years. And gather, I think is obvious, but get with other people and have a conversation. Huge part of sort of, I've said it too many times today in this talk, and I apologize. But this notion of wondering,

and I mentioned it before, this is just a way we have a lot of stories. Now, most of our stories, most of my work, I mean, there are times when I take on an editorial role, for sure, right? But by and large, I just gather people who have editorial voices, who tell stories. And when people ask, like, what do you look for in a spirit? I'm always looking for spirit. And the right spirit, it's so powerful in what it does to people. And if people can wonder, at a minimum, often we think of that as learning. It is learning.

It is also the greatest path into humility there ever was. The more you know you don't know, the more useful it is. And the more you know you don't know, now when you gather, now when you actually interact with other people, now you're getting somewhere. Like that's what a good meeting is. That's what a good conversation is, right? Those two things together. So this notion of gather and wonder, and it's all manifest in this platform. I mean, you can go and you can join groups. You can, you know, have one group you always talk to, or you can go participate in others.

But then the last piece being practice. I woke up this morning, I journaled, I worked out. I do a gratitude list. These are the things we do. And so within that is this place, which we call Kaleida. And Kaleida is the place where you can just keep track of what we have nine of them, like reflection, service, community. It's just a place to keep track of those things.

Because I think those are the things that like, what do I do? Now, what do I do? I've taken this in. I've had this conversation. How do I incorporate this into my life? this conversation? How do I incorporate this into my life? Or how do I create a daily habit around an idea or some aspect of self-care and community sensibility that will actually have impact on my life and the life of other people? Right, right, right. And I think those are the things on a day-to-day basis, which only after time can I reflect and say, man, on a day-to-day basis, which only after time, right, can I reflect and say, man, on a

day-to-day basis, do I feel healthier, clearer, more able to help other people and therefore more joyful? There's a selfish aspect to it for sure. Only when I do those practices, do I feel those ways, period. Like that's just an absolute truism in my life. So that's what this platform is meant to do. It's like a place to live that life. I mean, technically speaking, a lot of the people, people you met in that documentary and we're, you know, we do conversations with, with those people, right? You want to talk to those people. You want to interact with those people. You can do it through this platform. You want to talk about the things you see, you can do it through these, this platform. And I think that part of it, I just think it's like a whole brave new world.

I mean, I have the gift of having been on the ground and meeting all of these people. And now I have some kind of a community with them, stronger or weaker, depending on each individual. Well, anyone can have that. And I think that part of it is really cool. I think it's gonna be really interesting to see what happens with that.

So when is it, it's in beta right now, like this platform hasn't launched yet. What's the idea? Yes, we're going to roll out on the 24th of September. We're going to do a gathering that will be about this. So you come, anyone who wants to come can come. It's on the 24th of September. And it's at tnp.us, which is our home.

And it's at tnp.us, which is our home. And that's the day we'll open the doors and anyone who wants to can come in. And it will all be built around a conversation like you and I just had on this trip. So you'll get to meet Neil and meet Simon, meet the characters who are on the road. We'll look at film and we'll have conversations that day. Right. So this is the stand-in for TNP 10, right? Exactly. Basically.

Exactly, exactly. And the gift to me is, I mean, God, which I do believe, I mean, people can think I'm corny or disagree. Well, you went to divinity school. Right, right. Well, so God said, hey, take a year off, meet new people and interact with those people in new ways and that was the gift i got this year where is the opportunity and the crisis yeah yeah i mean it's amazing when you

think i mean for us let's if you go back to march 12th i think it was march 12th whatever the date was bang like overnight we lost a third of our revenue. Within two months, bang, we lost another third of our revenue. Our business was truly destroyed. Our ability to keep the doors open was massively imperiled. How many people do you employ? I think we had 33 at the time and now we have like 24. I mean, it ravaged us.

We're the live events business. You were doing like that kind of roadshow, right? Like on the Hudson, you were doing curating evenings with Kelly and- Yes. Yeah. Anything, most of what we did live. I mean, if you look at our entity as a means of survival, gathering live is our business.

And that was totally eliminated. So that was really scary. That was really intense. And so we were going to build this platform anyway. That was already in the plan before COVID came along. And thankfully, supporters and others helped us get into a position to say, we're going to build this thing as best we can. It's funny, when everyone agreed to do that, which was around April 1st, we still thought we'd meet this fall and that we'd still have revenue opportunities between tickets and other things that we do

to sort of pay the bills. And then on June 1st, when we shut it down, like that was hard. Yeah. Well, when it all began, I don't think any of us could have imagined that come September, October, that we'd still be in this lockdown situation?

No, no, it's very, it's just a crazy interesting thing. You know, I do these shows with RP Eddy, you know? Right. And- Are you still doing those every day? No, but I do them twice a week. And RP Eddy's the guy who built for Bill Clinton, the pandemic plan.

And he had warehouses full of PPE and ventilators and all the stuff. It was all sitting in warehouses. And he wrote a book two and a half years ago that said, it's coming soon. Here it is. So he knows what he's talking about, and he advises governments and companies all over the world on COVID. And the thing about COVID that I just find so fascinating

is that mathematically, it's pretty straightforward. It's pretty straightforward that this thing's flying around. It's flying around all the time. If you wear a mask and you stay away from each other and you keep your hands clean and you stay outside, you're in pretty good shape, pretty good shape. And if you're not, you're kind of going to be screwed, it's just a matter of time. And then every other part of it is a psychological interaction with what I just said. And it's overwhelming.

Now in certain cases there are people who obviously are in very difficult, if you're a bus driver, for example, that's a shitty, that's a difficult situation if you're a nurse, if you're a doctor. You're in a tough spot. For most of the rest of us it's a question of sort of what do we want to endure and at what price. I don't know, like these colleges open and then, I don't know, there's 250 kids sick here and 500 kids sick there. And like, there's no sensibility. There's no logic in all of this. It's being driven by politics and economics. I mean, I feel like we're in this no man's land in the middle here where we're kind

of half-assing it, which means we're just going to perpetuate this ad infinitum. If everybody went home for two weeks and didn't leave their house, we could really get on top of this, but we're not going to do that. And when you see these colleges opening, they're opening because they've got bills to pay. And if they're going to survive, they have no other choice. And so it's no surprise that even with the two-week sort of quarantine that these students have to undergo in their dorm rooms, college campuses are not hermetically sealed environments. Of course, there's gonna be outbreaks

and kids are gonna do what kids do. I mean, straight up. And you know what it's like to be 19 and like you're invincible, like who cares, right? So of course this is happening. So short of herd immunity or a safe vaccine, we're gonna just be in this state, I think. Yeah, yeah.

So when I did the first trip, so that was May 5th, when I got to Wheeling, West Virginia, and I went to check into the hotel, like nobody had a mask on. And then there were a variety of states throughout the trip where that was the case. This trip, we left on July 17th. There was a restaurant in Michigan I went into and nobody had a mask on. The rest of the trip, everyone was wearing masks. There were masks in the Delta in

Mississippi. There were masks in Alabama. There were masks in Missouri. There were masks. I mean, total change. That's interesting. And that definitely contravenes what I would suspect based upon my Twitter feed. Right, right. No, masks are everywhere. And I think what happens is, I mean, it's so interesting because we're so, remember the picture from the pool in Missouri?

And it was like, oh, look at those bad guys. Lake of the Ozarks, whatever, and they're just having a spring break. Well, that's what the Italians thought of us. I mean, when the Italians like, look at the Americans, like what are they doing? And then, you know, like look at the people in Missouri, like what are they doing?

Look at the people in Manhattan. I mean, I don't know if you remember the early days in Manhattan, they'd show shots inside bars in Manhattan. This is a weird thing, man. We live in a time where we actually knew the truth. We as a species knew the truth, but how the truth gets laid out through a culture is a really interesting dynamic. And then even though the president said, I forget how he put it, like, be courageous and do your own thing. Well, even his own supporters after a while were like, I'm gonna put a mask on now.

Well, it's this weird rugged individualism that's woven into the fabric of our identity that is at odds with what we need to do in order to like cohere around a strategy that will get us over the hump here. What is RP Eddy's perspective? Well, I mean, I think he's getting more hopeful on a vaccine. And I think he thinks we will get back to a more normal life around May of next year. And I would say that he, you know, I think he looks at the dynamics of how this will all kind of come together culturally as minute to minute. Like it's, you know, I would also say,

I mean he's an interesting guy in the sense that he worked for George W. Bush and he worked for H.W. and he worked for Clinton. So he goes both ways. Spans the administration. Right. He's like politically, but he is very negative on this administration in this world and and feels like beginning now like he threw out he said september and october are going to be very hard months because of the

election largely and all the dynamics that'll come into play with that you know i think i think he's he's an eternal optimist type but he is very anxious about what's about to happen. Yeah. Well, I think that's a whole other podcast we could do. I know, it really is. I gotta let you go. You got other things you gotta do, but this was great.

Thank you. I really greatly appreciate the work that you do, the care and the heart and the attention that you put into it. I think it's rare. There are a lot of things that you could be doing with your time. And the fact that you're so devoted to conversation and to how to share what's meaningful and important speaks loudly about who you are as a person. So I'm proud to call you a friend. Again, we've known each other our whole lives,

but we've really gotten to know each other quite a bit better in the last couple of years. And that's been very meaningful and healing to me. So I appreciate that. And I'm here for you, man. Anything I can do to help you out. Yeah, well, I feel the same. A lot of the things that I went through

in the last few months, which again, I'm just one guy. We all went through a lot of the things that I went through in the last few months, which again, I'm just one guy. I mean, we all went through a lot of stuff in the last three months. But then I just sort of look at where the world is now and, you know, the work. One is I really admire your point of view, right? And point of view is a gift if it's, you know, diligently arrived at. And I think your point of view is diligently arrived at. And then two, the same thing. I just think, you know, your willingness to sort of get out there and share those things. I'm not trying to pick on this one guy, but I do think of you as sort of another end of an important spectrum. And that is, I forget, I think it was last year that Facebook netted $26 billion, right? And just that's an overwhelming number. And just

to compare it, like Ford Motor Company netted like $3 billion in their best year. So they netted $26 billion. And if you own Facebook, well, you have to net 32 the next year, right? Some number bigger, like that's your job. And if you start asking yourself the question, how you're going to arrive at that bigger number, it's a bummer. It's a bummer on what that does to our culture. And, and I'm okay. Like it's America, like do your thing. But I think that you sit on the other end of that spectrum largely. I mean, we all have our own contradictions in the way we interact with the digital world,

for better or for worse. And there's better for sure. I want to be clear on that, even within Facebook. But that's a massive important war that we're in right now. It's just, it's a big deal. So I appreciate you doing what you do. Yeah. Thanks, man. We'll come back when you figure out what's going on with this documentary. I will. I'll know a lot in the next few days.

Publicly and we'll talk more about it, man. Thank you. Love you. Thanks so much. I appreciate you. Thank you. Peace. How are you guys doing? A lot to ponder there. Perhaps we should allow this to percolate, to simmer for a little bit. It's very heavy, but impactful, potent, and beautiful all at the same time. To learn more about the Nantucket Project and the Neighborhood Project, go to nantucketproject.com.

You can start your own neighborhood project, by the way. You can find out more on their website. Let me and Tom know how that goes if you move forward with that. And if you want to connect with Tom and the Nantucket Project in general, be sure to give Tom a follow on Instagram. He is at TWS44 underscore. He is at TWS44 underscore. And there he's doing these daily IGTV kind of podcast-esque conversation drops with a variety of interesting people.

You can follow the Nantucket Project on Instagram at the Nantucket Project. Links to all of that and so much more can be found in the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. So check that out. And if you would like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, comment on it on YouTube, on Apple Podcasts, and on Spotify.

Share the show or your favorite episodes with friends or on social media. And you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com slash donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on today's show, Jason Camiolo for audio engineering production, show notes, and interstitial music. Blake Curtis for videoing today's show. Jessica Miranda for graphics. Davey Greenberg for portraits. DK for advertiser relationships. And theme music by Tyler Trapper and Harry.

Thanks. I love you guys. See you back here in a couple days for another scheduled roll-on, roll-call AMA. Your questions answered, plus so much more. Look forward to that. Until then, try to reach out and engage with your neighbors. Create your own neighborhood project. We are all a community. The more we can embrace that, the more we can indulge our native human impulse to be connected to our fellow human beings, I think we're in a better place to be happier and solve the world's dilemmas.

Thanks, you guys. Love you. See you soon. Peace, plants. Namaste. Thank you.