Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 487 - Chris Gardner & the Pursuit of Happyness

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

The year-end inspirational Timesuck is here! We wrap up 2025 with the incredible true story of Chris Gardner — a man who survived poverty, abuse, foster care, and homelessness (along with his toddler son) before becoming a multimillionaire stockbroker and global philanthropist. If he could rise from that kind of hardship to build a life of purpose and generosity, what might the rest of us be capable of overcoming?Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Time for some year-end inspiration before we begin another year with the dark and the weird, meet sacks. Today, as we prepare to say goodbye to 2025 and say hello to 26, I'd like to share the story of Christopher Paul Gardner, a man born in 1954 into what would become an early life mostly defined by struggle and fear. His dad was absent. His stepdad was violent and abusive in other ways. Gardner himself has said that what to find his earliest moments in life was not joy,

it was survival. His mother once told him, you can only depend on yourself. The cavalry ain't coming. That mentality, that you don't have any safety net, not really, that you should never rely on someone

coming along to save you, that first and foremost, you should lean into your own grit and your own choices, that would be tested again and again throughout much of Gardner's life. Long before he made it big in the world of Wall Street investing,

before he became a New York Times best-selling author, and an inspiration to millions, before he was the focus of the 2006 biographical blockbuster, the pursuit of happiness. Gardner was just a kid watching adults he loved get hurt, arguing over dinner, trying to make sense of a world that felt so very unfair from the very start. This is a story of a child who refused to become the product of his pain, a man who then took that survival instinct and used it to build a life of meaning, purpose, and dignity after being a homeless single father on the streets of San

Francisco. This is the story of Chris Gardner, and I'm telling it today to lift you up. to not just entertain you, but maybe also make you think if he was able to overcome what he overcame to build a beautiful life for himself. What can you overcome to help your life be beautiful

or more beautiful? Time for another year-end inspirational, not Kentucky Fried, but still a man searching for meaning addition of time suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to TimeSuck. You're listening to TimeSuck.

Well, happy new year, and happy Monday. And welcome and welcome back to the cult of the curious. I'm Dan Cummins, the master's suckers, suck nasty guy who still has so many vigilante murder fantasies that he probably shouldn't have, and you are listening to TimeSuck. Hail Nimrod, Hail Lusufina, praise be to Good Boy Bojangles,

and Glory B to Triple M. I got no announcements other than thanks for listening. to the last episode of 2025. Now, let's get into this story. Structure-wise, pretty straightforward. The majority of this episode will take place in your silly little butthole. No, in today's timeline, starting with Chris's birth, ending with what he's up to now at the age of 71 years young. After that, in the recap, I'll share a few words about saying goodbye to 2025, moving on over to 2025, moving on over to 20.

2026. Maybe moving on up. Oh, yeah. Let's all move on up. Next year is going to be the 10-year anniversary of time something. I chose from about 10 possibilities this year for the year-end episode. I ended up choosing this one because I just felt like it would be the most relatable to the most listeners. Chris's story takes place in America not that long ago. And Chris is not some infallible hero. figure. He fucks up. He makes him terrible decisions that almost destroy his life. And he doesn't make excuses for them. And that just makes him really, really human. We all fuck up. We all make bad decisions. But we don't all take responsibility for them. And we definitely don't all bust our asses to try and come back from them. A lot of Chris's struggle center around poverty, growing up poor

with no one able to help him when times get tough, no family able to pay for him to go to college, no one able to help send him money to keep him and his young son from being homeless. And I think that is sadly so relatable. Tragically, so many Americans are either homeless or would be homeless if they didn't have family to lean on. Or if they hit an unexpected financial hardship right now. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD reported 771,480 people experiencing homeless on a single night in January of 2024. three quarters of a million people. According to a 2023 survey from Secure Save,

a provider of financial technology to help employers provide emergency savings benefits, 63% of employees felt they were unable to cover a $500 emergency expense, $500 away from not knowing what the fuck to do, $500 away from possibly being out on the street if they don't have people to lean on, friends or family.

According to the federal, Reserve's report on the economic well-being of U.S. households in 2023, which draws from the board's 11th annual survey of household economics and decision-making, 18% of adult surveyed said the largest emergency expense they could handle right now using just savings was under $100. Only 10% they could handle an expense of $500 to $999 using just any funds. According to a 2025 in power research study, the median emergency savings for America. is roughly 500 bucks. There's a lot of info out there about all this. And it varies, you know. The numbers are going to vary from study to study. Not all of it is as bleak or is as bleak is what I've shared, but it's still pretty bleak.

A little more positive one was some J.P. Morgan data from 2024. They said 77% of low-income households can cover an unexpected $400 expense, though many must cover it with disposable income or short-term credit. also 23% can't and from the same data 43% of low income households unable to whether small expense shocks you know might be able to pay them off with access to additional credit but that's that's the positive most positive one I could find that's still pretty fucked roughly a third of American adults

based on numerous recent reports do not own a home about 25 million Americans currently do not have health insurance probably more by the time you hear this over 50% of Americans currently living paycheck to paycheck making them one emergency away from possibly losing housing. You know, again, if they don't have, you know, other family to move in with, if they don't have friends who are willing to let them stay in their house, they could be out on the street, even though they're, you know, they're working. There's a lot of working homeless. So Chris's story as dramatic as it is, also a common one as far as his financial struggles went. And while I wish America did a lot more to make life more comfortable for the working class and so much more could be done, substantial help might not be coming anytime soon probably won't be and that really speaks to

why i wanted to share this story not everyone has the mental acumen of course to eventually become a stock broker like chris did but a lot of people who don't have anyone to help them just like chris did not they could be scrappy they could not give up they could fucking fight like hell to make their lives better there's a lot of inspiration there i think chris really leaned on some advice his mom gave him to get through what he got through and it's the advice the quote i shared at the very beginning you can only depend on yourself the cavalry ain't coming and some people did help him for sure but if he wouldn't have leaned mostly on himself he would have been fucked and i really think while we all you know need help from time to time not expecting to get any is a fantastic mindset to have and now let's get

lost in a cool story about about what you can accomplish just you know one example of what you can accomplish if you just don't stop believing and you just don't give up on yourself. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time-suck timeline. Christopher Paul Gardner, born on February 9, 1954 at St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Betty Jean Gardner. I love the name Betty Jean. And Thomas Turner. born in 1928 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Betty Jean was 25 years old when Chris was born. She was the oldest and only daughter of the four surviving children born to her parents,

Archie and Ophelia Gardner. She was raised in Depression-era dirt-poor rural Louisiana, somewhere near the town of Rayville, population of about 500. So life was, you know, super easy for her. And she truly never had shit to complain about grown up. She and her family would spend their summers in Europe to a escape the crushing humidity, and once a winter, they would take a Disney cruise down to the Bahamas, you know, have some laughs and some fun little drinks. Most nights at home were spent recreating Norman Rockwell scenes of familial bliss, a lot of board games, merriment and mirth, wonderful meals, dessert after every dinner.

She had seven ponies, one for each different day of the week. Every six months, all the ponies would be gathered up and shot while she was at school, so she couldn't have to, you know, didn't have to see it, didn't have to experience that. and they would be replaced with similar-looking younger, fresher ponies. So she would never have to be sad watching ponies grow old. Pretty fucking normal childhood. And of course, I'm being ridiculous. No. Life was not a non-stop buffet of peach melbles and champagne and caviar and young ponies down in Rayville.

Betty Jean's brother Archie would later cry when he recalled what was like walking the long, dusty country roads to school in the 30s and 40s. He said he and Betty Jean had to work hard to keep their heads up as other kids not going to. the same school, kids of a different pigment, literally rode by in a horse-drawn wagon or on a horseback, looking down at the two of them, pointing at them, laughing, spitting on them literally, calling them racial slurs. Yet, in spite of hard times and hateful ignorance, Betty Jean's childhood was relatively stable and very loving when she was younger. Adored by her three younger brothers, Archie Jr., Willie and Henry, she was spoiled within the family while she grew up, seemed to have been her mom's favorite. She was a star student who finished third in her class,

when she graduated from the Raveville Colored High School in 1946. But then, whatever dreams and ambition she had quickly unraveled, the moment it was time to go off to college and pursue her calling as an educator, starting with the devastating and sudden deaths of her mother towards the end of her high school career. While she was still in mourning, almost overnight, her father remarried, leaving her to cope with a domineering stepmom, everybody ironically called Little Mama,

and a new set of competitive step-siblings that she did not care for. Just at a time when Betty Jean was dependent on the financial support from her father to be able to go to college, little mama saw to it that the money went instead to her own daughter, Eddie Lee, who actually graduated in the exact same class from the same high school as Betty Jean, but not among the top students. Even though her heart was broken by her father's refusal to stand up for her, he just wouldn't stand up to his wife and do what was right, Betty Jean didn't just give up.

She found work as a substitute teacher while she now put herself through beauty school. But that didn't pay very well. And she would still need financial assistance from her dad to pay for state licensing fees. And when she graduated from beauty school, unfortunately, very likely highly pressure by little mama, dad would not give that to her.

The long road of Betty Jean being disappointed by the men in her life seems to have begun with her dad. The next man to disappoint her was Samuel Salter, a married school teacher. You know, she shouldn't have been messing around with in the first place, but also a man who professed his love for her and said that he was leaving his wife for her. But he never did, not even when Betty Jean got pregnant with his baby.

And now not only did Betty Jean's dad and little mama not help her out, they made it very clear that she had shamed and embarrassed them, and they didn't want her hanging around living under their roof. They essentially washed their hands of her. So now over the next four years, she'll make a slow trek from Louisiana to Milwaukee, where all three of her younger brothers had already gone to live before her. And along the way, she will give birth to Chris's older sister, Ophelia,

named for Betty Jean's adoring and deceased mother. She also crossed past with a handsome stranger during a trip back to Louisiana during those four years. Chris's birth father, Thomas Turner, another married man who supposedly sold Betty Jean the same bill of goods as the previous married man, and just like him, left with another kid to raise on her own. Chris would hear very, very little about his bio dad growing up, just a name, a state, and a few other details like how his penis was exactly seven and a half inches long and bent ever so slightly to the left. And he heard how his dad was really good of juggling, but for some reason could only juggle oranges, not apples or other similarly sized fruits or balls, and only if he was shit-faced drunk. Can you imagine if that's actually what you heard about your dad growing up? Like, those are the only details you knew.

Just where he's from, what his name is, how big his dick is, how it bends, and what he can juggle while drunk. Now, Chris grew up knowing that Thomas was a farm laborer from Monroe, Louisiana, that he was not president at Chris's birth, and that was about it. Shortly after Chris was born in early 1954, his mother married a man named Freddie Triplett, a laborer who worked various odd jobs in Milwaukee, a guy with the penis exactly seven and a half inches long that curved ever so slightly to the right. Maybe. Why not? Freddy's presence would dominate the Gardner children's early years and definitely not in a good way. In his autobiography, The Pursuit of Happiness, the life story that inspired the major motion picture. Chris had the following to say about Freddie. Tall and dark, but not exactly handsome. At times, he bore a strong resemblance to Sunny Liston. Freddie had the demeanor of some ill-begotten cross between a pit bull and Godzilla. At 6'2, 280 pounds, he did have a stature and brawn that some women found attractive. Whatever it was that first caught her attention must have been a redeeming side of him that later vanished. Or maybe, as I'd wonder in my youthful imagination, my mother was tricked by a magic spell into thinking that he was one of those frog princes. After all, the other men who looked good had not turned out to be dependable. Maybe she thought Freddie was the opposite, a man who looked dangerous, but was kind and tender underneath his disguise.

If that was the case and she believed in the fairy tale that her kiss would turn the frog into a prince, she was sadly mistaken. in fact he turned out to be many times more dangerous than he looked especially after that first kiss and after he decided that she was his uh dude sounds terrifying bad enough to have an abusive stepdad worse to have one that is six two and two hundred and eighty pounds of mostly muscle that's a big fucking dude uh triplet was violent controlling and possessive he drank heavily and often chris would later describe him as a man who seemed to change shape when anger took over yelling hitting smashing objects terrifying the children and sometimes turning his rage towards Betty Jean. Chris recalled there were episodes of violence that made no sense to us as kids.

Freddie made the whole house feel unsafe. At some point early his childhood, his mother Betty Jean was prosecuted and imprisoned for welfare fraud. The investigation started off with an anonymous tip, and Chris believes currently that Freddie made that call, that he did that because Betty Jean was trying to leave him. Betty Jean was earning money at a job when the tip came in, feeding and caring for two kids, Ophelia and Chris. She had a third child on the way, her daughter Sharon, Freddie's child, and she ended up getting sent away for three years. And during that time, Sharon would be born in prison, and Chris and Ophelia would bounce around in foster care or live with extended family members.

And then when Betty Jean got back out of prison, she got back together with Freddie. But allegedly, not because she wanted to. according to Chris whenever she would leave he would track her down find her and beat the shit out of her can we in addition to executing pedophiles which I know we're not but I've often talked about wanting to execute chronically abusive partners

like Freddie triplet as well I just think that would be a nice start towards making the world just a lot better place right like if you've ever molested a child you know you get put down and if you've ever tracked down a partner to beat the shit out of them and scare them and to getting back together with you

you just get put down It didn't have to be crazy violent. It could just be just a quiet bullet to the back of the head. I just think that would take the world's population down by probably several hundred million people, sadly, and that would just be so fucking great. Right? We can dream. That's one of those vigilante fantasies. It's fucking daily.

I don't even want to have them a lot of times. Even if I'm not researching something, the intrusive thoughts are so real. One of the most surreal and painful childhood memories, Chris will later recall, outside of the domestic violence he witnessed, involved. while Freddy in a small handheld bell. This is so weird. I don't think I've ever heard of somebody else doing this, ever, that I can recall. Freddie would allegedly ring this bell regularly to summon the children or demand service from some member of the family, like his wife, the way that somebody would, you know,

the way that people used to summon like a servant or waiters at high-end restaurants over like a hundred years ago. Chris later described this behavior as humiliating and dehumanizing, a constant reminder that Freddie saw himself as a master and the rest of the house as his servants. Now, Bell would become one of Chris's earliest lessons in power dynamics, how some people misuse and abuse authority. And he vowed never to become that kind of man. And that's obviously fucked up.

And just so ridiculous. But also kind of wish I had a bell at the house right now. Not to do it like in a real way, but just to do it in an ironic, absurd, obnoxious way. You know, Kyler's home from college for Christmas break right now. I would love to be able to just summon him. Boy, come hither. Dad, what in the hell are you... What are you doing?

What the fuck? Bring me a piece of toast, boy! What? Why can't you make it? Why do I have to do it? Bring me my toast, you insolent fool! Stop! Why are you talking that weird fucking voice?

Toast boy! No! Right? I mean, you can see I get out phone with that. Growing up with Freddie, after his mom got to prison in 1957, Chris watched his mother try her best to maintain stability for the kids, despite Freddie's abusive and controlling behavior. She worked at a variety of jobs, factory work, cleaning, waiting tables, anything to keep the household afloat. Freddie also worked out of factory. But unlike Betty Jean, when he came home, his work was done.

He was going to be waited on now, and the whole house would obey him or else. His mom and Freddie had another child shortly after giving him. him back together, Kimberly, and Freddie will sadly beat her too. He'll beat them all. He'll hit Chris. He'll hit his sisters, hit their mom, hit them with his hands, whipped them with the belt. Sometimes he'll hit them for small things. A toy left out. A dish not washed, a noise. He just didn't care for. Chris recalled, quote, in our house, any moment could turn into an explosion. Betty Jean tried to repeatedly shield the children from the abuse, but despite being the one who worked the most, made the most money. She also felt financially and emotionally trapped. Freddy controlled the money. The house, the physical space. This was the environment where Chris learned his mother's most lasting piece of advice, right? That one I shared before twice already, right? You can only depend on yourself. The cavalry ain't coming.

When Chris is homeless years later, that advice will really resonate. At some point in Chris's young life, around the age of 8, 1962, based on Gardner's own timeline, Betty Jean reached her breaking point. After years of violence and humiliation, after years of still wanting to become a teacher, but not being supported by her husband her abusive husband to do that she attempted to burn the house down while freddie was inside her intention supposedly was not murder it was to escape uh but you know probably also murder it's easier to escape you know from somebody if they're dead if they've been burned alive uh the police saw only the crime and not the context which is fair as much as some people deserve to be set on fire thinking back again to last week's vigilante justice episode now you unfortunately can't can't just burn them alive, even if they are an abusive controlling bell ringing piece of shit, right? Which is, you know, a bummer, but that's the way the law works. Your fire has arrived, Freddie! I mean, that would be nice. That would be nice little touch while

burning them alive. Betty Jean was arrested, sent to prison again, leaving Chris and his sister, suddenly without the one protector they had, they were placed back into foster care, right? Scattered through Milwaukee's already strained child welfare system. And then sometimes they would also stay with relatives. Chris was, of course, devastated, loose. and his mom again, even temporarily, felt like losing the only person who had ever believed in him. Where Freddy was cold and abusive,

his mom had been nurturing. Her eyes would light up. When he'd tell her about a good grade, he got in school, when he showed her some drawing he made, or how he read this or that kid's book, right? She would beam. She was the biggest light in his life.

When Chris reentered foster care around nine years old in 1963, he entered a world of institutional coldness, but also relative safety. The first foster home he was placed in this time was run by a woman named Mildred who kept a structured environment where Chris learned that if he kept his head down, if he listened, if he stayed organized, he'd avoid trouble. These would become survival strategies that later helped him survive corporate environments, poverty, and homelessness.

Still, he felt abandoned, not by his mother, but by the world. His mom would write him letters from prison telling him to stay strong, stay focused, remember who he was. One of her messages will stick with him forever. Son, you can be anything you want to be. The choice is yours. one of the only stable male figures in Chris's young life around this time was his mother's brother, his uncle Henry, a Navy veteran who visited often, told stories, played with the kids, encouraged Chris to dream bigger than Milwaukee. Uncle Henry was everything that Freddie wasn't.

It was kind, patient, gentle, and present. Whenever he'd come around, Chris would light up. He held a good, steady job at Inland Steel, generous with his time and his money. Sounds like in addition to his brother's Archie and Willie, he hated Fred. but Freddie was a formidable force right again six two two hundred eighty pounds mostly mean and muscle not afraid of violence you know easy to think you know hey dude you know why the fuck don't you do more to help your sister and your nephew but would you stand up to Freddie triplet I mean truly if he was squaring off with you and threatening to

swing would you be like go ahead do it I ain't scared I mean I'd like to think I would but but would I risk ending up with the jaw broken way worse than Jake Paul's? By the way, that was a reference to the Jake Paul Anthony Joshua fight. That fight had to have been fucking fixed. Glad Anthony Joshua broke his jaw finally, but Jesus, that was a sloppy fight.

Anyway, sadly, 1963, the same year his mom went back to jail, shortly before his mom went to jail, Uncle Henry tragically drowned during a fishing trip in the Mississippi River. Same place where he taught Chris to swim. He was apparently fishing on some little island down the river when his boat became unmoored. He tried to swim out, make it to the boat,

but the current pulled him under. Chris, of course, is devastated. His mom was the one to break the news to him, and Chris remembered her saying something heartbreaking, yet defining, you have to be strong now. Sometimes the world takes the good ones early. He'd see his mom again at Henry's funeral,

accompanied by a prison guard, but wouldn't be allowed to hug her. That killed him. Yeah, this is a bad year for him. I also saw sisters for the first time since mom went back to jail at the funeral. they've been sent to different homes Henry's death would leave a lifelong imprint on Chris

He later joined the U.S. Navy inspired by his uncle's service Also wanted to become the father he never had Determined to give his future children The Safe, Loving Presence that Henry Had helped give him in some moments When Betty Jean was released from prison In 1964

Didn't stay in jail too long For trying to burn her husband alive She regained custody of her children Chris returned home reunited with his sisters hooray, but also reunited with Freddie. Not hooray. Uh, who nay.

Is that the opposite of hooray? Who nay? If not, it should be. Get over here and take your beating, Chris! That's his life again now. Freddie had found his mom again, not long after she got out, saw her in a taxi, ran over stop at the car, pulled her out of the car by her hair,

beat the shit out of her in broad daylight in the middle of the street, beat her bloody. Apparently there were a bunch of bystanders around. No one did. did or said shit. Freddie was that feared in the neighborhood. Betty Jean, surviving brothers and other relatives and friends and neighbors were all terrified of the huge, angry, strong guy who liked to hit people. After that beating, Freddy was back in the house, more abusive and controlling than ever. Chris learned to escape into books now, into his schoolwork, into daydreaming

about a future that didn't resemble the constant chaos that surrounded him. Also began studying people more intensely, mostly as a survival or defense mechanism, learning what triggers their anger, What caused their fear, what behaviors diffused to confrontation. These emotional intelligence skills will later become, you know, some of his greatest strengths in sales and relationship building. He'll talk or take, excuse me, rather, something born out of fear and pain and put it to good positive use. You know, he's seeing adults fight over bills, over alcohol, over dinners. He's seeing kids crying and hiding. He's hearing things.

No kids should hear. And he'll later recall, when you grow up with fear, you learn to predict danger before it arrives. at some point shortly after Freddie and Betty Jean got back together again after Freddie basically took his mom hostage Chris fouled that he was never going to be like Freddie he was going to break the cycle he realized that a man's value was not defined by violence or domination it was defined by responsibility compassion and presence

he didn't know yet how to become that kind of man but he knew the kind of man he did not want to become he entered to teenage years still living within the chaos of the triplet household but also developing a new identity outside of it He'll go to John Marshall High School in Milwaukee, where Chris doesn't stand out academically in the way his mother once did in Louisiana, but he does stand out for being resilient, observant, quick-witted, and incredibly adaptable. He'll earn a reputation for being the kind of kid who can read the room better than anybody else. The kid who knew, you know, how to sense tension before it even popped, the kid who knew when to be invisible, when to be charming, while his home life was still volatile, school was a place where he could breathe a little. One teacher remembered him as quiet but smart and always alert,

a kind of kid who didn't cause trouble, but who also seemed older than his years. Chris later wrote, When there was no peace at home, school became where I could imagine something bigger. School was good to him overall, right? He played some football. Again, I liked to escape into his classes. He dated around, had a few high school girlfriends, smoked some weed, read a bunch of counterculture literature, beat Nick stuff, Malcolm X stuff, grew out an afro.

He considered himself when in Milwaukee's first black hippies. Still didn't have a real vision for his future yet, which is, you know, going to make sense. He's just a teenager. Didn't have a concrete plan, but he had something new forming beneath the surface, ambition to get the fuck out of the madness that engulfed him. That ambition wasn't yet aimed at anything,

but, you know, it's brewing. It was also being nurtured by his mom, who told him in 1970 to hold on a little longer. When he was 16, he didn't know if he could take living with Freddie another day. He wanted to drop out of high. school she also told him son if you want to one day you could make a million dollars and he will remember that he will appreciate that belief in him uh in the summer of 1971 and chris was 17 about to become a senior in high school he met his first real love 21 year old sherry dyson sherry was

from virginia a senior at morgan state college in town visiting relatives and uh somebody who love to summon her lovers with a bell. Chris, get over here. This front butt ain't going to lick itself. Now I kind of want to introduce a little bell like that into the bedroom. Come here, Lindsay. I have an erection that needs your attention. Sorry, but not really sorry.

Everything I shared about Sherry was true, obviously, except for the bell stuff. Chris said she was brilliant and beautiful. She was kind. She had three front butts and seven breasts and seven breasts of different shapes, colors, and sizes. She had a sense of humor that put him in ease right away during their first conversation. She had a normal body, from what I understand. That was just another intrusive thought, so I had to relieve some pressure. Chris met her while he was walking down Wisconsin Avenue.

He said that he glanced up into the window of the Army Navy surplus store. Saw a girl through the glass holding a t-shirt up to her chest as if she was debating whether or not to try it on, and he was smitten. He thought she was very hot. One look, he just fell in love. Thought she was one of the most gorgeous women he had ever seen. He said that after they met, they spent two full days just talking and talking and talking and that Sherry had no idea he was four years younger than she was. Soon when she returned to Virginia, they would talk a whole bunch more.

He would run up a $900 long-distance phone bill back when that was worth a lot more than 900 is today talking to her and just about getting killed by a stepdad before figuring out how to pay it off before their phone got disconnected. The two would proceed to have an off-again, on-again, long-distance relationship for several years now. and we will reconnect with her later in the timeline. And before I jump ahead to 1972, time for today's first to two, Mitch Joe's sponsor breaks.

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Now let's return to 1972, or annoying mood. When Chris Gardner graduates high school. Chris graduated from high school in 1972 at the age of 18. He's lucky to not get drafted to go fight in Vietnam like so many kids had shortly before him. The mandatory draft was being phased out right around the time he was coming. of age. And Chris has actually my dad's age. This is not me just bullshit about my dad again. And my dad's actually was born in 1974, excuse me. And he has talked to me about this like a bunch of times, just the other weekend, actually. He was over and spoke about how strange it was to see

so many older kids get drafted in the years before he turned 18, right, just to just to grow up, you know, your identity forming years, fully expecting to be drafted and then have that go away in the nick of time and suddenly have a future that feels wide open. and full of so many different possibilities. After graduated and not shipping off overseas, excuse me, Chris faced the same question millions of kids still face today when they're done with high school.

Now what? What do I do from here? Especially, you know, if they're not going to college. Some people face that, you know, a couple years later. Chris didn't have the money to go to college. Wanted to, but couldn't. Had no family who could afford to help him. Didn't have any family members who had gone to college

and could really just give him solid guidance. Didn't have a good father figure in his life to help him find his way. Didn't have any mentors in business, medicine, or anything else. But he did have one male role model whose absence still hurt, Uncle Henry. And in 1972, Chris decided that he would follow in Uncle Henry's footsteps and drown himself in the Mississippi River. No, that's fucked up.

No, he would follow in Uncle Henry's footsteps and join the United States Navy. After Chris enlisted, he was given the choice to do his initial training in either Great Lakes, Illinois, or Orlando, Florida. Wanting to get as far away from Freddie as possible, he chose Orlando. He would write, growing up on the roller coaster ride, engineered by Freddie Triplett, I was relieved by the institutional structure. Unlike an environment in which I could never do right, the Navy provided clear-cut guidelines for doing right or wrong

and had a process for rewarding or punishing performance accordingly. It was definitely a part of me that resented authority and recoiled at the idea of having my individuality taken from me. But I understood the purpose and knew how to cope without losing a sense of who I was entirely. Of course, the transformation for being a nonconformist with my tie-dies, beads, afro, and light growth of facial hair to a clean, shave, shorn, uniformed sailor, was a shock and a half. Ironically, after boot camp, Chris was given the opportunity to train further as a hospital corpsman, a medical specialist, responsible for treating sailors and Marines. But he would have to do that at Great Lakes, Illinois, right? the place he had just turned down going to,

in a place not all that far from Milwaukee, just a three and a half hour drive. Despite having to be back closer to fucking Freddie, that piece of shit, he did it. He'd work at a nursing home towards the end of high school with his sister, or he had worked at a nursing home towards end of high school, with his sister Ophelia in Milwaukee, and he liked it.

So he figured he'd like this. Corman School was rigorous, but he did like it. There, Chris learned a lot about anatomy, bandaging techniques, how to perform basic surgical assistance, uh how to administer medications how to respond to trauma trauma obviously something he already you know knew about just not in a clinical sense uh chris would later credit the u.s navy hospital core school in great lakes illinois as being the place where he truly learned self-discipline and precision for the first time that's where he got his first taste of professional competence

navy didn't give two shits about freddie triplet or his chaotic childhood or his lack of money they just cared whether he could perform or not and he could in fact fact he excelled. He wrote years later, the Navy top of me that I could master something if I applied myself. That was new for me. He wasn't just surviving anymore. He was becoming capable of building a real life for himself. He was also learning how to effectively deal with assholes. Literally, so many assholes. Chris spent a good portion of his time in the Navy knuckle deep, one asshole after another, lubing them up, rooting around, getting inside, just drowning in butt when he was given the assignment of working in proctology. He would write, one of the hardest yet most powerful jobs

for any medic in a hospital caring for hard-boiled marines is definitely proctology. Certainly this job requires unique skill set. It involves principles that could probably translate to other fields of endeavor, who wouldn't benefit from experience working around a bunch of assholes. From the general surgical war to the surgical clinic, I eventually became the base's foremost proctology expert. this meant that every Monday morning every asshole with the problem was at my front door whether that problem was hemorrhoids thrombose hemorrhoids

pererectal abscesses oh fuck pillinal cysts anything to do with the rectum anus and vicinity they came to me en route to see the actual proctologist after a while however the doctor just left me in charge and headed out to the golf course yeah I bet it's a little nicer than you know

being fucking in buttholes all day got to the point that I could drain an abscess and eat lunch at the same time oh god huh okay all right uh didn't bother me my expertise included any kind of dressing application or charge or excuse me or change uh plus a variety of procedures to treat patients with pillinal cysts uh basically a cyst develops in the crack of the ass and hair gets in it and it becomes infected very common the cyst can just blow up and look like a third butt cheek oh yes they can i've had many when i was younger i lance drained and packed it making sure that the infection was out and the gauze

was packed properly to continue to draw the infection out full bird colonels with chest full of ribbons came to me with the range of these problems. Rarely did I get any respect from the officers who were there to see the doctor and didn't feel they had to be gracious to the medic, even though I was the one responsible for setting them up in the upside-down dental chair used for exams. One colonel was in position, ass up in the air, when the doctor walked in and said, okay, I'm going to leave you here with Gardner, and he's going to set you up. That was power.

All of a sudden, the brass was completely vulnerable. up in the air, cheeks spread with tape, and I walked out, returning a moment later with the scope. The next thing I knew, he was my best friend, saying, oh, doc, oh, doc, no, please, by the way, let me know there's anything I can do for you. Sometimes, thrown in a little proctology humor, I claimed to be out of loop. Badass Marines would turn into whims. Oh, oh, doc, oh. When the doctor wasn't in on one occasion, I prescribed suppositories for an officer, a full bird colonel. He was suspicious. Don't worry, I told him. I'm going to take care of you. Use these supposities. and we'll see you on Monday. That Monday, he and his wife marched into the ward, demanding

to speak to my superior officer. Both looked at me with disdain, as if to say, who are you anyway? You're not a doctor in you're black. Though I didn't know what I'd done wrong, I could see that he intended to write me up. Finally, he bellowed irately. You don't know what the hell you're doing. You're dangerous. You shouldn't be here. And for all the good these pills did me, I may as well have been sticking them up my ass. Took all my self-control not to bust out laughing. He had taken the suppositories orally. This colonel was flying a $50 million jet, and he was taking rectal suppositories by mouth. Now his ass was still hurting, and he was wondering why. Sir, I said calmly, those pills that you took, you are supposed to be sticking those up your ass. That's the way they're

going to relieve your pain and swelling. Sure enough, after I turned him upside down on my chair with his ass exposed, his whole attitude changed, and he became a wimp just like the rest of them. They also forgot about write me up and after his pain subsided he was grateful as the rest of my success stories i never thought about the power of proctologist holds makes sense right i mean you know when you know someone's going to be messing around in your bottle yeah you do feel vulnerable yeah i had multiple surgeries for pillinal cysts when i was younger and now that i think back about it i i think i was very very nice and quite humble towards the doctor and the staff every single time uh best behavior before we knew it chris's four-year term of

enlistment was six months away from being up and he was starting to wonder will i be able to find a steady stream of assholes in the civilian world will i still be able to get my daily sniffs in will i still be able to sneak my tongue in there from time to time if only for a tender moment while their butthole is still numb from the anesthesia will i be able to tell them it's my finger and really it's my whole dick in there uh i'm not sure if that's the kind of stuff you wondered about let's hope it wasn't crisp being a sexual predator would make this episode much less inspirational. But we should pretend that sometimes Chris would use a bell at work. Come hither, face down, ass up. I demand you be silent and gaping. Jokes aside, Chris did

start to wonder if maybe he could have a career in medicine. And then he met Dr. Robert Ellis, a.k.a. Buffalo Bob, as some of the sailors, affectionately called him, shortly before he was done with the Navy. Bob had received his medical training at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston with two of the world's most renowned heart and cardiovascular surgeons, Dr. Denton Cooley, and Dr. Michael Dabakey, or probably Tabaki. Dr. Ellis was about to be discharged himself, and he told Chris that he was leaving for San Francisco to set up his own research lab at the University of California Medical Center and VA Hospital. You can come help me, he offered, letting Chris know the job was his if he wanted it.

But it only pays $7,500 a year, he said. Not much, not very much at all. but a little bit of an improvement over Chris's Navy pay and it was a chance to be trained under one of the top doctors in the field in San Francisco, a place that felt very exotic to Chris, felt like you'd be visiting another part of the world. Think about it, Dr. Ellis said, let me know. Chris said he thought about it for about two whole seconds

and then said, I'll take it, I'll be there. Chris was discharged to the Navy at the age of 22 in the summer of 76, and he moved across the country, dreaming of someday becoming a doctor. He rented a room at the YMCA and the tenderloin in that neighborhood and he quickly made some new friends, including a guy named Bill, who would actually join Jim Jones's People's Temple Cult just a few months later, and then would die just a few years later in the Jonestown massacre in 1978. That's fucking wild. Bill's death would stick with him, of course. He'd seem like such a smart guy, spiritually curious, but very smart. And yet, he had fallen for Jim Jones's nonsensical bullshit.

He still drank the flavor right. Chris said it was incredible to be young in San Francisco at such a culturally unique historical time even though it was no longer the heyday of flower children of free love in the 70s, the mid-70s, the city was still a mecca for a guy with some hippie leanings and he loved the counterculture. He would write,

after coming out of the military where everything had been about discipline, process, order, and structure, I experienced the city that celebrated individuality and non-conformity above all else. My favorite stomping grounds became hate Ashbury. once the cradle of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, still jumping with music clubs, restaurants and bookstores, head shops, and a crazy street scene that was colorful and live. Yeah, Chris would work a lot of hours in the lab each week, but he'd also have time to make new

friends, you know, catch some concerts, but he did struggle dating-wise and he struggled financially. Being a research assistant in a very expensive city was, you know, rough that way. Chris was able to move out of the Y, get his own apartment at 381 Turk Street, but he said he was still slumming it, still couldn't afford his own car, couldn't afford to take people out on dates. After getting lonely, he found himself picking up the phone more than usual to call his long distance off and on girlfriend Sherry Dyson. They had never stopped talking. He'd still never quite gotten over her since the first time he saw her with that t-shirt in the window of the Army-Navy surplus store back in Milwaukee. She had since gotten her master's degree. She's a real go-getter.

She's working as an educational expert in mathematics in Virginia. And one night he realized there was no one who had ever quite understood him like Sherry no one who could just tell him Chris you're full of shit when he was acting too full of himself and in a spontaneous romantic rush out of the blue you know just impromptu he asked not expecting her to take him seriously

okay so when we're going to get married and without skipping a beat Sherry said how about June 18th and with that on June 18th 1977 the two did get married at a park near Sherry's parents' house back in Richmond, Virginia Sherry planned the whole thing and her parents paid for all of it.

Chris bought her a diamond ring for 900 bucks on credit in the jewelry district on Market Street and San Francisco in route to Virginia on the airplane said he was so nervous carrying a diamond ring in his pocket that he had to check on it every five minutes to make sure it hadn't been mysteriously stolen.

It was the nicest, most expensive thing he had ever bought for anybody. Chris's mom, Betty Jean, was able to attend the wedding. She was overjoyed for baby boy, love Sherry. Doesn't sound like Freddie made it You know, not surprised Would have been fun for the story though

If he had attended And brought his little device Wrap it up! She's born, I'm hungry If we don't move things along with the reception soon Someone's getting punched Some Navy friends attended as well You know, life was good After the wedding, the newlyweds drove Sherry's Blue Dotson

B-210 all the way across the country To San Francisco And in no time she got a job there As an insurance claims adjuster shortly after that, I found a new place for the two of them to live. She just told Chris, I found a place on Hayes. I fell in love with it. It's a third floor walkup with hardwood floors, bay windows, and French doors.

The place was in an area known as Hayes Valley, which Chris said had a lot of other young black people living there. Many of them young professionals and artists. It was a very cool scene. The couple settled into some version of young domestic bliss. Then less than a year later, Sherry found another place to live. And again, she's ambitious, right? she does want to move on up. This epitomizes her ethos.

Chris said she met him at the door one night and just announced, wait until you see the place I found on Baker. It's one of those Victorian buildings I've had my eye on. Chris, you'll love it. It's got five rooms, great sunlight. Off they move again.

You know, Sherry always want to, you know, keep pushing things ahead. Get a better place, get a better job. You know, do bigger and better things. Chris would write, She was opening me up to a lifestyle that included theater, comedy, and social gatherings with fascinating intellectual conversation. We filled my few nights off with trips to comedy clubs to see the likes of Richard Pryor, or to dinner parties with a serious creative crowd at the home of Sherry's cousin, Robert Alexander, who was a writer. Whenever we were there, I would gravitate to the same group with three guys, very smart, hip, and active in the arts.

One was a brother named Barry Shabaka Henley. Other two were cats named Danny Glover and Samuel L. Jackson. Little did I know the three would later be in the top tier of actors on stage and screen. That is fucking wild. What a cool scene to be a part of. Or at least to be like a round in the periphery of, you know? Danny Glover? Right?

I'm getting too old with this shit. Samuel L. Jackson, right? Fucking Pulp Fiction, so many great movies? Barry Henley's no slouch either. Despite how life was going, around this time, Chris started to have doubts about his marriage. While he and Sherry loved each other, while they rooted for each other, they also were not the same in a lot of ways. Sherry did not really like the party the way Chris liked to or still

like to, right? She didn't care about the remnants, the counterculture. She didn't like to hate Ashbury District. I wasn't really into weed. She liked to go to higher-end restaurants, more conservative, refined places that Chris found stuffy at that point in time. She was also much more into church than Chris was. Wasn't nearly as sexually adventurous either, at least not

according to him. But then Chris's inner conflicts about their relationship, about what really was the best kind of life for him those were pushed to the side when Sherry got pregnant. Now thinking about his future in a different way, thinking of a child to raise, Chris starts to question working at the research hospital. Did he actually want to become a doctor?

Even though he was making up to $16,000 a year in the late 70s, that still wasn't going to support a family and pay for Chris to go to college for four years, then to med school for another three years, right? Not even close. He didn't know what to do, at least not long term. For the moment, while he kept trying to figure his shit out, he went out and got a second job.

But then at the end of her first trimester, Sherry miscarried. And now without a child tying them together, Chris really began to question his marriage. He kept his second job, which was working as a security guard some nights and on weekends, like the extra money. But really, he liked the excuse not to be home as much even more. He starts spending less and less time around the house.

He gets more and more used to spending less time around the house. And soon on some nights, when he's not working, well, he's heading out to meet up with friends without Sherry. going to clubs and bars on hate street other nights he's hanging out with some characters he had met the neighborhood watching football games smoking weed etc a lot of people the sherry didn't really care for and they are growing apart and then towards the end of 1979 with his 26th birthday approaching fast he tells sherry that he has decided he's not going to be a doctor and she's baffled and she asked him why i mean isn't that what you've been working towards he explained that he'd had a serious talk about it with his mentor dr ellis and dr ellis was concerned about some of the trends that were about to radically alter the health care field at that time. Precursors to what would become HMOs. And Dr. Ellis predicted that a top surgeon

who might make several thousand dollars per surgery could now be looking at as little as a few hundred dollars for the same services in the coming decades. So now made less sense to Chris to take on a bunch of debt for seven years of school, right? Just to struggle during that time financially then possibly not make enough at the end of it all to make the financial sacrifice worth it.

He explained to Sherry that there were plenty of other options in the medical field he might be better suited for in administration and sales and pharmaceuticals, the insurance business, and that he would start checking out some of those options as soon as he could. Sherry is not happy. She had been telling friends ever since he had agreed to get married that Chris was going to be a doctor. She was very taken with the dream of being married to a doctor, right? It's prestigious, carries a lot of status.

Now that dream's over. So there's more attention in the marriage. Not long after making that decision in early 1980, Chris and Sherry go to a party together in the neighborhood, a party that will radically change both of their lives. Because there, Chris will meet a young dental student named Jackie Medina. Her age doesn't seem to be listed in any sources. I'm guessing she's two or three younger than him.

Two or three years younger than him. I don't know what I just said. Chris gets her number, and within days, they start a torrid affair. She only lived a few houses down. He said, for the next 30 days, they fuck like rabbits. before work, after work, on his lunch break. Right, he'd sneak out in the middle of the night, you name it. And then just a month after meeting her,

she reveals to him that she is already pregnant. Damn, and now he has to choose between Sherry and her, and he chooses Jackie. In the late spring of 1980, Chris told Sherry that he was leaving, less than three years after they'd gotten engaged. Why, less than three years after she'd moved across the country to start a new life with him, he said it just destroyed her, and that doing that to her will hurt him for the rest of his life.

She was his best friend. He had betrayed her devastatingly. He had fucked up big time, and he knew it. But now with the kid on the way, despite his heart not really being with Jackie, he wasn't going to do what his dad had done to him. He wasn't going to just be a sperm donor. Sherry soon moved to Oakland. Chris moved into a studio apartment with Jackie and Berkeley.

And though Chris and Sherry will now have very little contact for the rest of their lives, it will take nine years to become legally divorced, partially because of how painful it was, and partially because of other drama. that was about to come in the ensuing years. Before we get to that drama, before Chris and Jackie's son is even born, Jackie wants Chris to quit working to the hospital now,

find a better paying job. She's studying to pass her boards to become a dentist. She does not want to be the only breadwinner. She doesn't want that financial pressure. She wants Chris to pull his weight. And on January 28th, 1981, Christopher Jarrett Gardner, Jr. is born. Chris will write,

the arrival of Christopher Jarrett, Medina Gardner, Jr., on January 28, 1981 at San Francisco General Hospital changed every focus, every priority of my existence. He had to be the most beautiful, the most brilliant, the most agile, the most intuitive, the most musical, the most soulful, the most athletic infant in the hospital ward. He had a wisdom and greatness about him from day one, no question. When I cradled him in my arms the first time, I had a strange feeling of familiarity, as if he and I knew each other from a previous lifetime. Without words, I swore on everything and everyone

that I cherished in this world, reaffirming my lifelong promise that I would always care for him and that I would never be absent from his life. Chris Jr. stared right up at me knowingly, as if to say, all right, Papa, I'm counting on you. Then he studied me in a way that I never knew babies could do, as though he was seeing me when I was a little boy,

not knowing who my father was or where my mother was. It was my imagination, of course, but he seemed to be saying, and you can count on me too. My son made me a better person, and bridging purpose and, excuse me, bringing purpose and meaning to my life to an extent I'd never known before and would only fully appreciate later.

I fucking love that. I love hearing about somebody loving their kid like that. You know, it truly is such a powerful special bond, you know, which is why I just don't understand people who just bail on the kids. Like bail on them when they don't have to, right? You know? I mean, it's one thing to have a kid when you're like 15 and poor

and you're scared and you're still a kid yourself and you put your kid up for adoption to help them have a better life then you know you'll be able to give them you know that's a sacrifice that's one thing but just to just to bounce because you don't you don't feel like it it's an inconvenience eh i just don't feel like raising this kid when you're perfectly capable of doing so there's just no honor in that i think my favorite thing about this episode is just hearing about how much chris loves his son uh chris is 27 uh when christopher's born still uncertain about

his career uh he of course wants to be a better father than freddie had been to him that his dad Thomas Turner had been to him, wanted to protect his child in ways he'd never been protected. And he would write, when I found out I was going to be a father, I promised myself my child would never know the fear I knew. But he was not yet living a life capable of keeping that promise, right? Not close. Chris and Jackie, just like Chris and Sherry had before, well, they start to argue about Chris's income. When's he going to quit his research assistant job at the VA? When's you going to contribute more? Jackie also starts to express concerns about Chris's ability to be a father, considering he still doesn't know his biological father, and sure his shit doesn't have

a good father figure in Freddie Triplett. And Chris responds to that by summoning Jackie with his bell. Wife, come hither. Bring the boy. What the hell do you think you're doing, Chris? Silence, wife. Come hither. Bring the boys I've instructed. How dare you talk to me that way, Chris? Silence, woman! I've... Oh, how can I show you what a great father I am if you continue to talk and be insolent? For real now. For real now, I do kind of want to get that bell now. But Chris responds by tracking out his biological dad in Louisiana.

He called director information. Got the phone numbers for five different men in Monroe, Louisiana, all named Thomas Turner. A lot of Thomas Turner's in Monroe. And the second number he called was the one. A man in a deep voice answered. When Chris told him who he was, he said, I've been waiting for you to call for a long time. What a crazy life moment for both Chris and his dad.

Thomas encouraged Chris to travel in a row to meet him and his siblings and to bring his son. Chris agreed. But before he could afford that, he got a new job as a sales rep for a medical equipment and supply company called CMS. Based in San Bruno, which is, you know, near San Francisco in the heart of the then-developing Silicon Valley, CMS sold primarily to laboratories and the hospitals. He's going to be starting out just under 30 grand a year, nearly 2,000. twice what he made in research, with the potential of making twice that. So he dove in, clocking hundreds of miles a week now, and his sporty new maroon Nissan

hashback, packed the gills with brochures, supply samples, equipment to show in demos, traveling daily from his place in Berkeley to every far corner of Silicon Valley and back, unloading, loading sales materials countless times a day. He quickly learned that sales was a numbers game, that you had to brush off rejection quick, right? Rejection after rejection. after rejection, waiting for that rare success. Even on a good day, had to stay positive in the face of a lot of negativity. He also learned in making repeat calls that the more down-to-earth and personable yet respectful

he was, the more he remembered names, the secretaries and little details about, you know, buyer's lives, the better his chances were of making a sale. And he did start making sales, made enough to quickly get poached by another company within his first year, Van Waters and Rogers, a better established competitor in the medical equipment and supply field that paid him more money. Not too long after starting his new job, now 28-year-old Chris was able to purchase a plane ticket for him and little Christopher to travel to Monroe, Louisiana. And before we move on to Chris finally meeting his birth father, time for today's second and two

mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for, thanks for listening to those sponsors. Again, I do hope, I do hope you heard some deals you like. I can't fucking control what you like. I do want you to know that. I'm not going to take that part back. Not the sentiment, but I do apologize for the volume and the tone. Now let's see how Chris's first meeting with his birth father goes.

During the long nerve-wracking flight from San Francisco to Memphis and then another little flight to Monroe, he can't stop thinking about what his dad might look like. Now what he might be like. Keeps going back and forth between excitement and anger, excitement over meeting a man who might be a whole hell of a lot better of dad than Freddie Triplett ever was. And also anger over abandoning him, leaving him to grow up with Freddie. He wrote the following him about seeing him. for the first time.

The moment I got off the plane, you fucking, wouldn't you know it? I heard another goddamn bell. Boy, boy and smaller boy. Get your ass over here. I'm hungry. Get over here and make me a goddamn sandwich. No.

I'm sorry I've been beating that bell like a dead horse. This is what he really wrote. The moment of truth arrives as I lead my son down the rolling stairway of the prop plane and look over to see him standing there. Six, six, two hundred and eighty pounds black as night. a countryman who's been in Louisiana forever. He towers in front of me nothing like I imagined.

The first thing that crossed in my mind, well, I guess I won't punch him, which as a kid was the first thing I envisioned doing to him. His presence is huge, stunning. Beside him are two of his daughters, my half-sisters. Between me and Christopher and those three, we all look just like each other. Thomas Turner looks like he had just spit me out.

There was no doubt. And then I love that he adds this. as awkward as this encounter is he seems fairly comfortable with it that's because I later learned this scene has been repeated more than a few times before the joke my sisters tell me later

is that it's pretty much like the Olympic Games every four years somebody shows up it's fucked up but if you know if you're one of your kids I guess you know healthy to laugh about it man imagine having a dad like that you know someone who clearly

has some real strong swimmers when it comes to sperm and someone who also does not like to wrap it up or be faithful to whoever they're with just impregnating women left and right, not sticking around to raise the kids, and then over and over, you're being introduced to more half-siblings, you know, to track them down. Oh, my God, I feel like you lose a lot of authority when you have a lot of illegitimate kids. You know, when you're like, listen, what do you think you're doing with your life?

But seriously, dude, you're going to fucking tell me that I'm making bad choices? Shut the fuck up. I'm so glad that despite fucking up plenty in a number of other ways, especially when I was younger, I didn't fuck up in that way. I mean, talk about really overcomplicating, not just your life, but so many other lives. When they all got back to Thomas's house, Chris's sister Deborah and Janice gets known. He's taken to meet his grandma as well, visits Rayville, where his mom grew up, meets more family there, visits Shreveport, meets three more half-siblings, two brothers and his sister. Chris and little Christopher spend four days in Louisiana, and he will write that the following moment was his favorite, but also most bittersweet.

he said Christopher with me on the train to Shreveport to meet my sister Mary and my father went to the station with us not too late yet it was already one of those tar black country nights with only twinkling slivers of stars and moon glow to light our surroundings as we waded out by the tracks behind the station off to the side was a set of tracks heading off in another direction that Christopher found interesting we were early so i saw nothing wrong with my son going to check out the rails with his grandfather especially since the two had gotten comfortable each other right away. The sight of the two of them walking along the railroad tracks made me catch my breath. There was my father, then in his mid-50s, massive like a black oak tree, patriarched more offspring than any of us may have known, walking with my son, a 14-month-old toddler, energetic and talkative. My father held Christopher's little fingers protectively, proudly. As one of those memories that you capture and that retains unchanged throughout the years, the image of the two of them walking along and that night produced a surprising reaction in me. that would come back every time I recalled it.

What first flashed to my brain and my heart was, how come that couldn't have been me? How come I never got a chance to do that? As time went on, I recognized that it wasn't anger, of course, but I was jealous of my little boy, ridiculous as that was. Below that layer, in the core of my being, was simple hurt. The reservoir that stored all those years of abandonment that have been stirred up by the sight and now hurt like hell.

Well, despite the pain the visit brought up, also brought a sense of closure. Chris had spent his entire life wondering about his dad. Who was he? What would meeting him be like? You know, who were the rest of his family? Now he didn't have to wonder about that stuff anymore. He met him.

He knew. And because he had met him, going forward, he'd be able to spend time looking forward more than looking back. He said that when his plane landed back in San Francisco, he felt like he was ready to take on the world. And not long afterwards, he will have another chance encounter that will dramatically change his life again.

He had just driven in San Francisco General Hospital, where he had delivered samples in a catalog to Lars Nielsen, the guy who ran a lab he wanted to do some business with. And then when he was exiting the building after being momentarily blinded by the sun's glare, he saw a shiny new red Ferrari 308, circling the parking line. I thought it was beautiful.

When the young owner of the car dressed in a perfectly tailored suit, not much older than Chris, approaches Chris as Chris begins to get into his car, hoping for his parking spot, Chris just asked him what do you do how did you get that referring to the car well the guy guy tells him his name is bob bridges and then he works as a stockbroker with donaldon lufkin and genrette and he blows chris's mind when he tells him that he makes eighty thousand dollars a month the top sales guy chris's company made eighty thousand dollars a year so naturally chris is beyond intrigued uh he gets bob's number and bob is nice enough to you know offer him a

a lunch, take him out to lunch, talk some more. Chris does no jack shit about stocks, but he is very curious. He starts to think leading up to the lunch, how different can stock brokering really be from anything he's done before? From working at the Heartside Nursing Home in high school to the Navy Hospital at Camp Lejeune, general surgery, and the proctology clinic, to heading up a laboratory at the VA hospital and University of California Medical Center to sales and Silicon Valley. He thinks about how he has walked into job after job with no real knowledge of the field, but he has still had some measure of success at all those jobs. Why can't he have success as a stockbroker make a lot more for his family?

Towards the end of their lunch, Chris asked him, Bob, let me see if I got this right. You talk to people, some of whom you know, some of whom you don't know, some of whom you get to know, and you tell them stories about these companies and these investment ideas and opportunities, and they send you money? That's what I do, he says, with total sincerity. And with total sincerity, Chris announced. is I can do that and you know what I want to do that for the following few months chris

interviews at brokerage firms all over the bay area while he continues to work in medical sales bob helps him set up his initial meetings he keeps getting shot down over and over and over again though and the reason is always the same right he doesn't have a college degree also he has no experience in finance but he doesn't give up and just when he's about exhausted every other option at a meeting with E. F. Hutton, they tell him that they're going to give him a chance at their training program. He said he practically tap danced out of their office. Then right before he's about to give his two-week notice at Van Waters and Rogers,

they fire him for poor performance. He performed poorly because he was more focused on job interviews and sales. So he didn't give a shit. He was relieved. He was all in on the future. He'd also still get one more check. Then he figured he could draw on employment for a little while, and by the time that was over,

he would be done with his training program and kicking ass on Wall Street. Easy, peasy, life is wonderful. Except sometimes it's not. Sometimes life is a real brutal, heartless motherfucker. When Chris heads in for his first day of work at his new job, the receptionist is not expecting him. When he explains who hired him,

she informs him that sadly that guy had just been fired right after hiring him. So the job that was waiting for him doesn't exist anymore. Just like the job he left to take this supposed new job no longer exists. And just like that, Chris goes from, taking a, you know, or expecting a big pay increase to not making shit. And Jackie is less than pleased. Now they're arguing all the time, right? Money, the number one thing statistically that couples fight about, ahead of even sex.

Not knowing what else to do with the moment, Chris is back to taking the odd jobs he sometimes took to make extra money when he worked at the VA. One day he makes 50 bucks paying some houses all day for a friend in the contracting business. Next day, buddy hires him to work on a roofing job. Day after that, he cleans out a basement. day after that he does some yard work right and so on he's just taking whatever work he can get most of it manual labor also still had not given up on his dream of being a stock broker he still had a hail mary left to throw he had met a guy a while back named joe dutton who was a local african-american entrepreneur in tech met him in a business conference and he thought you know what if i can get joe to vouch for me maybe he or maybe i can get you know another interview at dean whitter of brokers that hadn't given him a job but also hadn't explicitly told him that they would never ever hire him. Apparently that was the one place that hadn't completely rejected him at this point. Truly his last chance. Luckily, Joe comes through, gets him that last interview. Now Chris approaches his interview as if his life depends on it. But before he can make that job interview,

drama. So much drama. Chris's life is unraveling. He and Jackie get into a huge fight. Starts on a Thursday night after Chris and Jackie heard the news that Chris's friend LaTrell's little boy, Sebastian just a toddler had been killed he was playing on his tricycle in the street when a car hit him chris said the tragic news added to an argument they were already having and things escalated to the point that they bared all their grievances and an epic showdown that was so exhausting lasted so long they finally both fell asleep without any resolution and then the next morning when they woke up right they picked this epic fight right off or you know back up right where left off and after jackie got dressed to leave when she headed out the front door Chris

followed her out and he yelled where are you going we got to work this out you ain't going nowhere until we do not a good move you don't get to tell another grown up when they have to have a discussion with you you don't get to demand it or i should say you can demand it but you probably shouldn't ignoring him she starts down the steps and he runs after her and attempts to take her by the hands and turn her around also not a good move don't grab your partner in an argument try to force him to do anything, right? Great way to end up getting arrested for domestic violence. According to Chris, as Jackie pulled away, he grabbed her by both wrists. And when she pulled back again, trying to get away, he lets her go. And she falls back into some rose bushes and gets

scratched up. When she stands up, she brussed herself off and yells, you're getting the fuck out of here. Chris told her, I'm not going anywhere. He slams a door, goes back into the house to get Christopher into his bath. While he does that, Jackie, unsurprisingly, calls a police. About 10 minutes later. There's a knock at the front door. And with Christopher wrapped in a towel and in his arms, Chris opened it to find two young Berkeley police officers in uniform on his doorstep. Behind them is Jackie. One of the officers asked, are you Chris Gardner? He answers, yeah. And then the second cop says, we have a complaint from the woman who lives here. She said you beat her. Cue Chris being placed in handcuffs and taking to jail in front of the neighbors.

Then once in jail, Chris learns that while Jackie is not going to press battery charges, at least not at the moment, he has $1,200 worth of unpaid parking tickets and fines that have accrued on those tickets that he racked up driving around to job interviews and, you know, become a stockbroker and illegally parking. So, uh-oh, time to pay that piper. And unless he can pay those fines, right now, he's going to stay in jail over the weekend before he can talk to a judge. Well, he can't pay his fine, so in jail he stays. Then on Monday, the judge sentences him to an additional 10 days in the county jail for not paying those tickets, and that means he can't make his job interview at Dean Witter, right? Shit.

He is able to call and reschedule the interview, though, from jail without letting him know he is calling from jail. Some random guard shows him a bit of kindness. He'll now have his interview the day after he gets out of county jail, so at least, all right, things looking a little bit back up. But then, when he is released, he heads home to find Jackie and Christopher, not only not at home, but the house is empty. He's been cleaned out.

His neighbors all think of him is nothing but a fucking dirty wife be. and the lock on the door has been changed right shit just keeps getting worse and to add insult to injury he only has himself to blame now he has no job no place to stay doesn't know where a son is this is the first time he and christopher who's only around a year old at this point have ever been physically separated feelings of continuing the cycle of not being a fucking good dad not being president in his child's life being an authoritarian abusive asshole flare up inside of him feels like all his dreams are dying he's becoming, you know, the man he hated growing up, he's not going to be any better than Freddy or his dad. And while dealing with all that shit, he has the most important job interview

of his life the following morning. He will make that interview. He'll show up after sleeping on a friend's couch, wearing the same clothes he was arrested in, bell bottom blue jeans, a t-shirt, a maroon member's only jacket, and paint speckled sneakers. He immediately apologizes for what he's wearing, shares part of the truth, uh, and, uh, that is, wife and him got into a huge fight and that she left with his son and has all his stuff including his clothes and he doesn't know where they are and he locks the fuck out his new boss mr albinez tells him yep i've been divorced three times i get i get it and he ends up commiserating with chris telling him all about the problems he's had with women and tells him that yeah you got

the job randomly him fucking up like he did might have actually endeared himself to mr albinis uh enough that you know he got the job where he might have otherwise not have gotten the job Life is definitely sometimes funny like that. Chris has now been accepted into their training program, and Mr. Alvinez will personally walk him through his new role on the following Monday. After months of rejection and false starts, after getting fired from Van Waters and Rogers, after the E.F. Hutton Rugpole,

going to jail after getting arrested for domestic violence, after his wife taking his son and disappearing, he finally has at least one foot in the door of the world he's been chasing. And life is technically looking up, you know, at least one way on paper. but inside his head and in his flatline bank account well very different story chris's new job is basically an internship one where he'll only make a thousand dollars a month for over 60 hours a week of work which won't leave any time for a second job or any extra money and it could take up to six months or longer if he doesn't pass the exam at the end of the training on the first try

and he quickly finds out that many of the other trainees have already flunked this exam the series seven exam at least once. Chris now surfs on couches for the first week. He's out of jail. He's able to borrow some friends' clothes, able to borrow a little bit of money to buy a BART transit pass. You know, he can't afford a car. Tries to track Jackie and Christopher down, but he can't find him. A buddy of his loans him a suit, two sizes too small and a pair of shoes, two sizes too big for him to wear his first week of work. And despite looking ridiculous, despite being in constant emotional agony, he compartmentalizes the pain and he walks tall and proud into work that first day. He could not be more focused at work.

He knows that the best chance he has to become a big part of his son's life again is to make sure he crushes this new job. After a couple nights, he starts sleeping at work under his desk to cut down on Bart Train Fair. Damn, he'll lie down after everybody else leave for the day, then wake up before anybody else shows up and just pretend that he had gone home for the night and come back early. He'll wash his face in the office bathroom,

freshen up as best he can, right, brushing his teeth. teeth and hair, splashing water from the sink onto his body, doing some paper towel drying off, throwing on some deodorant. Sometimes he'll wear the same clothes, two or three days in a row. Other times, he'll change his suit and shirt with extra clothes. He'd, you know, change his suit and shirt and changing his clothes that he brought in a hanging bag. By the time anybody else was in, he would already be on the phone, making sure he got a head start on at least 200 cold calls a day. He'll finish with his calls early in the evening, making sure he gives himself plenty a time to study. The test he needs to pass to become a stockbroker is supposedly rigorous as

hell. With a 60% or higher failure rate at that time, it covered nearly everything Wall Street related. Financial instruments, products, stocks, bonds, municipal bonds, corporate bonds, convertible stock, preferred stock, regulations, etc., etc., to a depth rarely covered in any college business course or even in some MBA programs. Containing 250 multiple choice questions, the test had several sections, and he would have to pass 70% across the board, options, equities, debt, municipal finance, corporate finance, regulations, and rules. And if he failed even one section of the test, that meant he failed every section of the test. And if he failed every section, he would have to take the entire training program all over again,

up to six more months, at the same $1,000 a month, if they kept him around. They could also just can him. So there's a lot of pressure. a few weeks in still hasn't found his son so there's more pressure but he does find a place to stay he found a low-cost rooming house in oakland not far from downtown in lake merit a flop house of sorts where everybody there was struggling with something mostly mental illness homelessness and addiction very spartan right nothing even remotely fancy but his room's secure right he's got a clean bed and it includes three meals a day he's never actually there long enough to eat those three meals

but at least sometimes he'll get a free dinner. He continues to keep his personal problems private and his head up. He later reflected on some advice his mom gave him that helped him get through this trying time when he's feeling less than the other trainees. Their lives, as far as he knew, not as chaotic as his.

They had their own apartments or houses. They're not separated from their kid or kids. Their partner isn't hiding from them. They hadn't gotten into a physical altercation with their partner, hadn't just been in jail, had more than a couple bucks to their names. Chris is feeling like a pretend. her like he doesn't belong and he shouldn't be there.

And all this made him think back on something his mom had said to him when he was little, when he had dreams of becoming an actor. One day during that time, he had asked her for $5. Instead of giving him $5, she suggested that he worked on his acting, that this was a great opportunity for him to act like he already had $5. And that is very funny to me. He said that that cooled him off of being an actor real fast, but there was something else in her message that became relevant now.

no matter what he had in his pocket, no matter what his suit cost, etc., nobody could prevent him from acting as if he was a winner. Nobody could prevent him from acting like he belonged, acting as if his problems were all in the process of being solved. So he started thinking that everything's going to be okay. Then no matter what, he's going to get through it. He's going to fix things. And pretty soon he said his acting was so convincing he started to believe himself. And it began to think of the future as if he'd already passed a stockbroker licensing test. this story here good reminder for me of how you never know what a stranger is currently going through right somebody working customer service who maybe they get snappy their attitude is terrible you know they get kind of short with you know maybe they're just an asshole maybe they're a brat lazy you know entitled whatever or maybe their fucking mom just died or maybe they were just diagnosed with cancer maybe their partner just left them for their best friend maybe they just got evicted from their home and they don't know where they're going to sleep that night right so much respect for chris keeping his head up in this situation you know and again again

he should have never grabbed jackie but if he was a true dirt bag he could have just bounced you know oh you're gonna lock me out run off okay fine fuck it then fuck you i'm just to look out for myself myself only just like my own dad did but he didn't do that uh about three months after jacky left and took chris for with her uh chris takes his series seven exam to become a stockbroker and he felt good about it. I didn't feel stumped by any of the questions, but then, you know, while he waited three days for the results, he started to get nervous. Had he been too confident? Did he get a little cocky? Did he actually pass it? Three days later at the office, he gets the call to tell him either yes or no. And he is shocked to hear his stepdad, Freddie's voice and a bell.

Loser alert, you fucked it, dummy. You're going to be poor forever. You're never going to see your son again. Uh, no, no, he passed. That'd be a nightmare. Uh, no, he got an 80 percent. but he didn't pop the champagne bottles just yet his problems are far from over jacky's called him shortly after passing the test they'd finally reconnected when she reached out she'd been keeping tabs on him somehow apparently the whole time and then about a month after the test they were sitting together at a berkeley coffee shop she had thought about taking him to court for domestic violence but didn't and she also gave him the key to a storage locker where all his stuff is but she doesn't have christopher with her and she will not tell him where he is chris won't take the bait to start to arguing and pleading with her, he just takes his key and he leaves. And sure enough, the locker does actually have all his stuff. He just doesn't have a place to put it yet. He still can't afford a place, right? He's only made $1,200 for his first month as a broker, barely better than the $1,000 monthly stipend he was getting while he was training. And then the same day brings yet another big twist. Later that night at the rooming house, while Chris

is airing out the suit, shining the shoes that he pulled from storage after pausing to admire his stylish brown leather heartman briefcase something he had spent a hundred bucks on he is startled by the sound of someone knocking at his door he opens it up and is jacky and in jacky's arms it's christopher dad and baby boy are reunited uh baby boy's now 19 or 20 months old and according to chris looking more like a three year old between shock and euphoria uh chris was speechless and then jacky handing him over simply saying here she also hands him a huge overstuffed duffel bag in his little blue stroller. As it turns out, she was not just letting Chris, you know, have a visit with his son. She was handing Christopher off for an undisclosed amount of time. Apparently, she was

drowning, trying to raise her kid on her own while also trying to get her dental career off the ground. And she literally just left Chris without setting up any kind of custody schedule, without any timeline when she might be back. That's fucking insane. After Jackie leaves, Chris tells Christopher that he has missed him so much, and Christopher surprises him by telling him missed you too. First time you heard him speak a full sentence, right? Chris is overjoyed. You know, this is a powerful emotional moment, but also simultaneously confused and scared as hell. He has his son back, but now he is also homeless. And he doesn't have anyone else to lean on to help him raise Christopher. He's homeless because children were not allowed at the rooming house, no exceptions. And Chris's days of crashing on the couches of his friends, you know, that's over too. He'd cashed in too many favors.

Luckily, Jackie had showed up late on a Friday, and the rooming house, supervisor would not be in until Monday, so he had the weekend to try and find some other place to stay. And the next day, of course, he starts to look and also to look for daycare. The daycare center he wanted near his office in San Francisco was $400 a month, and he couldn't do that. With rent, going to be at least $600, that would have eaten up all he was earning after taxes, leaving nothing for food, transportation, and diapers. He checked out another place that looked good in the East Bay, but also out of his budget. And they didn't accept kids who were not potty trained, which Christopher was not yet.

He takes Christopher out in his stroller, walking around, looking for someplace he can't afford. And as Chris is looking around, he notices that this one daycare in Oakland has a sign on the wall declaring the center to be a place of happiness spelled with the why, not with an eye. And for a minute, he starts to question how good a child care facility can be if they can't spell happiness correctly. He says the word out loud, and then he hears Christopher repeat it.

Happiness. And in that moment, he thinks about how that's all he wants. wanted happiness for he and his son Christopher and to get that he has to fight for stability the ability to spell is not chris's main concern when he calls some numbers he has given by a friend uh for some other providers for a woman named miss llewellyn at one house or another woman named miss bessie at another and then a third place on 35th street all are babysitters who kept kids on a regular basis but they are not daycare centers uh they're not licensed uh the woman on 35 tells chris he can bring christopher early on monday and he can pay her by

the week 100 bucks so not any cheaper by the month than the daycare he wanted most but since he can pay by the week it's the only place he can afford after locking that up even though he's nervous about the place not being you know like properly registered come monday you know he at least has a place to take christopher but he needs to find a place to sleep at night unable to pay for a permanent option he can't afford a full month's rent he gets a room over in west oakland on west street at a city motel called the palms a place with one palm tree in the courtyard second one on the corner about 200 feet away. The rooms are mostly rented by the day by sex workers.

He doesn't love what Christopher might hear in a place like this. There are apparently no other kids stand at this place from what he can tell. But the doors have double locks and he can turn up the TV loud enough to block out noises seeping in from other rooms, he figures. It costs him 25 bucks a day for the room, which in addition to a color TV has one bed, a desk, a chair, and a bathroom. Not ideal, but better than out in the street. Chris tries to be positive about this

His new philosophy is Wherever we are, we're here This is where we're at And we're going to make the best of it For now Also tried to zoom out And look at the big picture He had the right job

To change our circumstances In lives forever He just had to stay focused And not let the tragedy Of his current circumstances derail him He had to stay mentally strong He couldn't break down

Over hearing sex workers Service in John's next door Couldn't crack When Chris sobs screams for him When he drops him off For the new babysitter Couldn't let the world

weight of not knowing when Christopher's mom Jackie might come back, might want to spend more time with her son, right? Crush him. Couldn't focus on how hard his life is at the present. Has to stay focused on the future. But also, the present does still give him some truly beautiful moments. Like one evening, when he and Christopher came back to the palms and one of the sex workers working the street out in front approaches them. She and her fellow ladies the night had seen Chris and Christopher, you know, with Christopher in the stroller on numerous evenings. They were curious as hell. Chris figured they had never seen a black man with a little boy in a stroller,

a single dad staying at this motel before. The woman brought a little Christopher a candy bar, but Chris said he couldn't have it. Jackie had a ruling against sugar, and he was trying to abide by it. Christopher naturally starts to cry. Don't cry, the woman said. Then she reached down into her cleavage and produced a $5 bill handing that to him instead, and Chris did not object to that.

That single $5 bill bought Chris and Christopher dinner around the corner at Moselle's at night, a soul food kitchen both of them loved that same woman and a couple of the other ladies will apparently start giving christopher five dollar bills on a regular basis and chris will claim there were a number of days when they would not have been able to eat a proper meal without that money and chris was blown away by these women living such incredibly hard lives harder lives than his and yet they helped him and his son out over and over and they asked for nothing in return it was just acts of kindness pure and simple he said that from that from that moment on, he would never tolerate anybody bad-mouthing sex workers in his presence.

When he's not at the poems, or otherwise with Christopher, Chris is in the office, busting his ass. In his words, dialing and smiley. At work, I am soon the master of the phone. The ultimate cold call salesperson is my life force, my way out. With every single one of those 200 calls, I am digging us out of the hole, maybe with a teaspoon, but bit by bit. The urgency increases driving me that much more when I look at my son and have to leave him every day knowing I don't have the luxury to just be positive and persevere.

No, I've got to get there today. It's not like I can cruise for a bit and crank it up tomorrow. Hell no, it's now. There's nobody handing me business. I'm not one of those veterans with existing books, just servicing clients. This is all on me.

Every phone call is a shot, an opportunity to get a little bit closer to our own place to the better life I want to live, a life of happiness for me and my son. Sometimes when Christopher, I love that. Sometimes when Christopher is especially upset about being dropped off, and when he can't afford that week's babysitting,

Chris will actually bring his son to work. He'll do his best to keep him entertained, and after everyone else leaves, usually by 5 p.m., Chris and Christopher will stay on, continuing to call. Then he and little man will both stretch out and sleep under his desk. Apparently Christopher was an exceptionally good, quiet little kid who's self-entertained easily. He'll lose himself coloring or looking over a picture book. But then, things get even worse.

While Chris is trying to build up a climb base It's taken longer than he thought it would Month after month He is not making much more than $1,000 a month And soon he can't even afford to stay at the Palms Motel And so one day in the rain He carries his duffel bag, his briefcase, his hanging bag, A Pampers box, and an umbrella

As he moves the two of them down the street Some place he referred to as a trucker motel Worse than the previous place A place whose name he forgot Where instead of having a color TV for 25 bucks a day They had a black and white TV for 10 bucks today. The neighbors were now mainly truckers and the sex workers who catered to them, and this place was, I guess, right off the freeway. After eating dinner in a very bad part of town, after eating dinner, Chris and Christopher will lock themselves up in their room for the night. Chris will turn up the TV to block out the sounds of the city of sex and arguing all around them. They will not go out during the week at night, even if the weather's good. There's no place within walking distance. It feels safe for a little kid at night. No nice parks, no playgrounds. Still doesn't have a car. Sometimes on the weekends, though, they will still. splurge and head into San Francisco from Oakland. Again in Chris's words, on weekends when

there's no rain, we take advantage of San Francisco's many public parks and opportunities for free entertainment. One of our favorite stops is a children's playground in Golden Gate Park, where Christopher can play in the sandbox or climb on the jungle gym while I sit in a swing, mulling over how to get from today to tomorrow. One day I only have enough money to either get us back to Oakland on Bart and stay in the truck or motel or get us a drink and a snack from the refreshments. stand. No drink, Christopher. I try to calm him down as he starts to cry. We'll have a drink and popcorn next time. This kills me. The next time we have the same dilemma. I buy him what he wants, unable to say no this time. That's one of the nights that's balmy enough that we sleep or try to sleep

on a grassy corner of Union Square, not far from the same spot where a guy who tried to pick me up once called San Francisco, the Paris of the Pacific. We sleep close to the side of the park that's underneath the Hyatt Hotel on Union Square, not as luxurious as some of the other other hotels in the neighborhood, but clean and modern, a beacon of security and comfort that somehow makes me feel better, even sleeping in its shadows. Diagonally across from our corner is the city's truly dangerous real estate, particularly at night, bordered by the tenderloin, the part of town where I first lived, back when it was easy to rough it.

Excuse me. Wow, man. He just grabbed all their shit, would take it with him to the park. So if they could sleep there and save the couple of bucks it would take to ride the bar, you know, back to Oakland. and they would also, you know, save the $10 for the truck or motel. That's just crazy like having to pack your shit up every single day. And also sleeping in a park in a major city with all the crime that comes with that with your toddler.

Oh my God, no fucking way you get good sleep in a situation like that. I'll be so worried that somebody's going to come by, try and take my kid, maybe mug and beat me, leave my kid on his own, or be worried that my kid would wander away in the middle of the night, so many fucking nightmarish possibilities. I also totally understand, you know, just like wanting to buy your kid that popcorn, you know, oh my gosh, when Kyler Monroe were little and then we get so sad that they couldn't have something, it just, oh, fucking crushes you inside. In addition to saving money by not paying for a place to stay some nights, they also save money on meals by eating at soup kitchens, places like Glide Memorial Church and the Tenderloin where the Reverend Cecil Williams and activists in the community would feed the homeless and hungry down in the church basement or at Mo's Kitchen, a place they handed out free meals three times a day. uh seven days a week 365 days a year apparently those places were super kind they handed out

big portions you know huge help for a big guy and a grown boy christopher will grow up to be six eight and two hundred and sixty pounds big dudes in this family not sure how much chris weighs weighed then i'm just judging my pictures i guess i don't know about two hundred pounds he was a six two uh chris said that the uh sermons given at glide memorial church also fed his soul reverend cecil william's sermons reminded him of what he kept forgetting that the baby steps counted, even if progress wasn't happening as fast as he desired. After church service, without fail, the Reverend would stand outside the sanctuary in the hallway or on the steps outside, hugging every single person as they left.

Anybody who wanted a hug got a hug. And the first time Chris went to get a hug, it felt like Williams knew him even before he knew him. With what looked to be a smile, permanently etched on his wise, round, ageless, handsome face, and with his larger-than-life stature that convinced Chris, he was much taller than he actually was. his arms were outstretched as he bare hugged him and told him walk that walk after several weeks of meals at his church chris talked to reverend williams about a brand new homeless hotel that the reverend had started down the street the first homeless hotel in the entire country housed in the concord plaza at o'farrell and powell was started by reverend williams with the ambitious idea of giving women and children without homes a place in which to transition to start over to be empowered

Many would eventually go on to work at the hotel, at the restaurant, or in one of the many different expanding programs that Glyde offered. Though rooms were free for the night, for reasons of safety, fairness, and efficiency, there were rules of conduct that had to be followed explicitly. When Chris talked to the Reverend, he acknowledged, obviously, not a woman, but I'm homeless, and I do have a child. Also had a job, just needed someplace to live. He could tell he could put together the money to get an apartment.

Fine, William said. Not thinking twice. he'd been watching him with Christopher and he just said go on down there when chris stepped inside the first time he said he was swept up in a sea of fading pea green pea green carpet peeling pea green wallpaper said it looked pretty much like any skid row tenderloin hotel they just recently been taken over by glide needed a lot of work still but it was beautiful to him all the same uh the rules were different there than a motel room no one no one was admitted into the hotel before six p m everybody had to be out by eight a m no one ever received received a key. There was no going back out once you were in for the night. And there was no leaving your things in the room because they would be gone by the time you returned. When you left the room, you had to take everything you own with you. No one has ever assigned the same room two nights in a row. So this was just a place to sleep overnight, not actually a place to truly live. If you didn't get there early before the hotel filled up, you were shit out of luck. There were no

reservations. No one was going to give you special treatment. No one's going to say, oh, we knew you were coming until we held you a spot. The rooms were all different. Most of the room. to them just the basics, a bed in the bathroom, some rooms had TV, some did not. Chris wrote of his time there. For the rest of my life, there will never be enough I can do for Cecil Williams and Glyde. He was so beautiful to me, to my son, and to generations of San Franciscans from all corners of the community. Every Sunday morning in church, as I prayed to find my way out of the problems of this period,

I just knew that if I could hold on, everything would be so fine I'd never have a care in the world after that. Once the Concord Plaza took Chris and Christopher in, without having to spend 300 to 600 a month on somewhere to sleep, he was able to get Christopher into the San Francisco Daycare Center in Hayes Valley, which now cost $500,000 when he was still only making about $1,200 a month before taxes. But it was a place where he knew Christopher was getting excellent care every morning, long before 8 a.m., Chris had the two of them packed up with all their gear. on the weekends when the two had to be out of Concord Plaza during the day they developed a routine of pursuing every free bit of entertainment in the city

they went to the park they went to the museum they went to another park to another museum to another park then another museum then if they had a couple extra bucks Chris was trying to save up for a house they'd ride the train over to Oakland get something to eat then head back in time to make sure they got into a room sometimes if they didn't get there in time for a room they slept in the park or if it was too cold or it was raining they'd hop on a train and just sleep on the train riding it back and forth up and down the line all night long other times they would sometimes sleep on the floor of a bathroom stall in one of the city's bar stations fucking crazy oh my god can you imagine with your little

baby boy sleeping on a piss you know covered floor in the fucking bathroom uh this is the life that the two of them lead for six seven and eight months and now you might be wondering where the fuck is Jackie? Yeah, still M. I.A. She just hand it off baby boy, hasn't seen her son in over six months. Hasn't called, hasn't checked in any way. Chris still doesn't know where she's staying, doesn't know if she's still in the area, doesn't know if she's alive. How the fuck do people do that? Even if you're not a good place to raise your kid, how do you not, at the very least, check in on them? Chris and Little Man continue to just be on their own. It's just the two of them against the world. Finally, after bouncing around, being homeless with his son for around eight months,

one Saturday while Chris is still pushing Christopher and his stroller down the sidewalk in Oakland near the old Palms Hotel they used to stay at. He sees an old man sweeping down a little patch of front yard, mostly covered in concrete on 23rd and west, if you are from the area. There's a little rose bush peeking up through a crack in the concrete. It's the first rose bush Chris has noticed in Oakland and he's just fascinated by it. He strikes up a conversation with the old man whose name is Mr. Jackson. After some friendly chit-chat about the weather in Christopher,

just as he's about ready to keep on. rolling, Chris notices that the front windows of the first floor of the house are papered over, and he asked Mr. Jackson if anybody's living there. No, ain't nobody living in there, he says, explaining that he and his family own the building and live in an upper unit, that they've been using the lower level for storage for almost three years now. Is it for rent? Chris asks.

Could be. Mr. Jackson shrugs. Then he offers to show Chris the unit and the work that will be involved to get it ready if someone wants to live in it. And Chris's words now, the minute we walk in, right as I'm drowned in a funky, musty smell of a place that hasn't had any light or air in a long, long time, I see this whole downstairs space covering the entire length of the building, and the smell is suddenly minimal. It's so beautiful, even in the dim lighting, I'm speechless. There's a front room, then a big-ass bedroom, perfect for Christopher, a bathroom over here, a kitchen next to it, a dining area, there's a little doorway to another room that could be my bedroom. now comes a test

Can I rent it? I say right at the top And before he can say no or start the qualifying questions I let him know from the get-go Look I'm fairly new on my job I have my baby here and there's no wife in the picture But son he says You can stop right there You done told me everything I need to know

Y'all can move in here For a few moments I don't trust that it's over That the long night of homelessness is over That I've won Mr. Jackson confirms it by saying that All I need to give him is the first month's rent and a $100 cleaning deposit. What if I cleaned it up myself and saved a hundred?

I counter. As he studies me for a beat or two, my heart races, as I worry, he'll change his mind now. But then he says, okay, son. And that was it. That was the most beautiful spot in the world to me. Somewhere to call home for me and my son.

There is no feeling in the entire emotional spectrum of happiness that can ever come close to the feeling I felt in those moments. And on that fine spring day and every day that followed, wherever I've returned in my mind to seeing that rosebush in the ghetto and having it lead me to our first home off the road of homelessness. Appropriately, it was not long before Easter,

a celebration of rebirth and resurrection, a time of new beginnings, new roads. To remember this time from these days on, I made it a point of trying to get back to glide for Easter Sunday each and every year. No matter how far away you're busy I was, not to relive the painful memories of where I'd been before,

but to celebrate the miracle, that happened next. The weeks have followed, that's awesome. Weeks that follow are magical. One friend gives Chris a bed, another gives him a table. Some others give him, you know, other little accoutrements around to make the place a home, more help him clean it up and paint it. And for the first time around eight months, him and his little boy have a place to stay

where they can leave their stuff where they don't have to pack up everything they own and carry it around every fucking day. Life was the best that had been in a long. long time. Hail Nimrod. But then, Mr. Jackson and that family upstairs? Well, they will turn out not to be the Jackson's. They will turn out to be the infamous Sawyer family of Oakland lore. A group of inbred cannibal butchers estimated to have killed and eaten seven different families between 1971 and 1983 when the authorities finally figured out what the fuck was going on. Authorities will later speculate that they snuck up from the building's basement in the middle of the night while Chris and Christopher were

sleeping. On the night of February 13th, 1983, they tragically killed Chris first, cutting him to pieces with a chainsaw. They'll then bury some of his bones under that rose bush he liked in the front yard. Then they got a hold of little Christopher decapitating him. Authorities will later find his head in the basement, but not his body. He was believed, just like his father, to have been eaten. And that will take us out of this timeline Good job, soldier You've made it back

Bear No, that's fucking crazy That would be a nightmare If that was true This would make this a terrible choice For your end inspirational episode No, the new place was great And the family wasn't

They weren't cannibals Or murderers or butchers from what I understand Money was still tight though Even with the modest rent, Chris was paying He's never said exactly how much that rent was, by the way, but apparently it was a good deal. But still, money was tight enough that at Moselle's sole food, the place they used to go to sometimes with back when they stayed at the Palms, he was now able to negotiate a line of

credit so he could pay every two weeks when he got his paycheck instead of having to pay as he went. Him and little Christopher will share a plate for meals. Chris will make sure it's something high calorie, you know, good calorie to dollar ratio that will keep him feeling full for a long time. Not long after moving in, Chris also starts to take Christopher. to the Oakland Daycare Center, where they had misspelled that word happiness.

Its location was now the most convenient, and it just felt right. Their new routine was now a hell of a lot better than it used to be in the mornings at 7 a.m. Chris dropped Christopher off at daycare, grabbed his train, arrived at work early. In the evenings, he's back in time to pick him up at 6 p.m. Then they grabbed some soul food for dinner.

After that, maybe stopping to visit a friend like TB Joe, some dude who owned a store by that same name that sold and repaired TVs. things were still rough Chris wasn't able to pay the electric bill some months and they would have the house lit with candles instead of lights but overall so much better. And then finally in early

1983 when Chris is 29 after not seeing Jackie for nearly a year she shows up randomly for a visit no call ahead of time, just pops in, business or something for a few hours and then is off again after letting Chris know that she is moving down to Los Angeles when will he see her

again? Who the fuck knows? You know we've talked about Deadbeat dads. So many times. Easy to forget, there are also deadbeat moms. Women who just walk out on their kids and are gone for months or years or forever. Crazy shit, right? She's a dentist. It's not like she can't afford to be in her son's life. She just, I don't know, just didn't feel like being in it. Or so it appears. About a year after Jackie dumped off Christopher with Chris, not long after she left her L.A., Chris got poached away from Dean Witter by another brokerage,

a bigger, more lucrative brokerage, Bear Stearns, right? This is huge. He's not Bear evil, unfortunately, but Bear Stearns. You know, he was still just getting that base salary of a thousand bucks a month at Dean, and because of an unfavorable commission split,

only making a few hundred dollars extra a month, plus they kept taking the best clients that he'd find doing cold calls, and they would just hand them over to a more experienced broker. But at Bear, Chris was, offered $5,000 a month as a base, plus he would get to keep any clients he landed and take a 50% commission on whatever he earned to investment fees on top of his base.

How incredible did that feel? How many tears of joy were cried? How much lighter did Chris feel? On his first day at the job, he gets a phone call from Ace Greenberg, the senior partner and CEO of Bear's turns, responsible for building the firm up to where it was at that point in time. He just wanted to welcome him to the company. and Ace tells him, God, I love this. We want you to know something, Chris Gardner.

Bear Stearns was not built by people who have MBAs. Bear Stearns was built by people with PSDs. Chris has no idea what a PSD is. And then Ace explains it. PSDs are people who are poor, smart, with a deep desire to become wealthy. We call them PSDs. Welcome to the firm, Chris. That's fucking amazing.

oh my god i love that uh chris was able to uh splurge now uh with the extra money he's making in his words there was no splurge big enough for little chris as far as i was concerned at two and a half three three and a half he understood what it meant to have new things a new bed new clothes new toys he was excited what was more he and i were so connected emotionally he could feel my peace of mind we could do fun things in san francisco not because we had nowhere to live but because we wanted to go to golden gate park we wanted to fly a kite or to try and ride a skateboard together that I'd made instead of buying, because I could. Now unlike the days when he and I had to find shelter where we could sleep or escape from the rain,

we spent rainy weekends going to the movies, sometimes seen as many as three or four in a day. Sometimes the same movie. We went to see Ghostbusters during which Christopher freaked out at the side of the monster Pillsbury doughboard, thundering down the street. Papa, he whispered to me, I want my seatbelt on. During one of our many trips to see Prince's Purple Rain, Christopher had an accident and pete himself, probably because we had stayed inside the movie house too long.

But I snapped and said, all you have to do is say I got to pee. We marched up to the bathroom so I could wash him off, and he saw that I was still annoyed. Just wanting things to always be easier, and he said very seriously, Papa, I don't want to make you mad. I want to make you happy.

How fucking adorable is this kid? There weren't enough times that I could tell him after that. You make me happy, little Chris. You make me the happiest. If I had learned anything about being a parent, that right there was the most important lesson just as my son said it kids don't want to make us mad they want to make us happy i literally i got emotional and texted my son kiler to tell him how much i loved him after uh how proud of him i was after reading that passage right how he's a wonderful

human being which he truly is uh yeah i just thought about him as a little boy and him and i hanging out oh man yep just you know just a joyous little kid uh thought about texting my daughter Monroe but I didn't uh you know she's a she's a dickhead and she doesn't deserve it no no I'm kidding I leave her notes or letters about how great she has a lot actually I've been been working on that this last year right expressing feelings when I get him instead of just you know keep it in my head moving on uh but yeah that story just made me think of kiley with the old dad's son connection uh within a year of landing the bear stern's job one of chris's cold calls lands him a huge texas oil guy he'll refer to in his autobiography only as jr for the next two years jr will be

Chris's biggest client. Chris will make him an insane 30% return on his first investment in the first year. And the commissions Chris will make, uh, you know, will pay him about 200 grand a year on top of his base salary of 60k a year. Woo! I got to hit this button again. Where we're moving on up. He's fucking killing it. Loving it. Christopher. Just fucking moving on up. 1995, while still working with JR, Chris decides to move to the Bear's Turn's office on Wall Street, right? The Mecca. But before then, during another random visit from Jackie, where she stays the weekend to see Chris, they hook up, and she immediately gets pregnant again.

Late in 1985, Jackie will give birth to Jacintha Gardner. My God, these two. Their first go-round, she gets pregnant within weeks of just meeting Chris. Now she gets pregnant again while visiting him for one weekend. their reproductive systems loved each other and clearly they had some dynamite sexual chemistry not good together overall

but I'm guessing the sex was fire while the two of them do not get back together they do come to a much healthier co-parenting arrangement Chris is able to provide plenty of child support money for Jackie to be able to take over the primary parenting duties for a while raising Christopher and Jacintha

you know for about two years down in L.A. He'll also be able to help Jackie establish her career down there while he builds his own in New York. And then after two years of kicking more ass on Wall Street, after missing the hell out of little man and his daughter, staying focused on his career so he doesn't have to be a workaholic forever. In 1987, Chris, now 33 years old, leaves New York for Chicago where he sets up his own brokerage firm, Gardner, Rich & Company, returning to a spot not far from Milwaukee in his mom's place. And it'll be in a town where he has plenty of relatives. Gardner,

Rich & Co. is described as an institutional brokerage firm, specializing in the execution of debt, equity, and derivative products, transactions for some of the nation's largest institutions, public pension plans, and unions. The rich in the name was in honor of commodities trader Mark Rich, who had no connection to the company and whom Gardner had actually never even met, but Gardner considered him to be one of the most successful futures traders in the world. Jackie moved to Chicago as well. This is all part of the plan where Christopher and Jacinto will now be raised jointly by Jackie

and Chris, even though they will, you know, stay separate as far as romantically, after Gardner sells Gardner rich in a multi-million dollar many years later in 2006, he becomes CEO and founder of Christopher Gardner International Holdings, which will have offices in New York, San Francisco, and Chicago. All the big, you know, places he was during a visit to South Africa. To observe elections around the time of the 10th anniversary of the end of apartheid, Gardner will meet with former subject Nelson Mandela to discuss possible investment in South African emerging markets.

Gardner was planning an investment venture there, which he hoped would create hundreds of jobs introduce millions in foreign currency into the country's economy. He will decline to disclose details of this project, citing securities laws, so who knows how successful it was. He will definitely become a philanthropist who will sponsor many charitable organizations, primarily the CARA program, and the Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco. Fuck yeah, where he and his son received shelter, kindness, and love. He helped fund a $50 million project in San Francisco that created low-income housing and opportunities

for employment in the very area of the city where he was once homeless, as well as offering monetary support. Gardner also donated clothing in shoes and for years made himself available for permanent job placement assistance, career accounting, and comprehensive job training for the homeless population and at-risk communities also in Chicago. Gardner additionally became a board member of the National Education Foundation with sponsor two annual education awards, the National Education Association's National Educational Support Personnel Award and the American Federation of Teachers Paraprofessionals and School-related Personnel Award.

In 2002, Gardner will receive the Father of the Year Award from the NFI, the National Fatherhood Initiative. He'll publish his autobiography, May 23, 2006, before becoming an associate producer of the major motion picture, The Pursuit of Happiness. Released by Columbia Pictures, December 15th, 2006, his part is played by Will Smith. never sought but uh you know heard good things 2008 spoke of his daughters graduation from hampton university in hampton virginia and then today chris works according to his website uh primarily as a motivational and commencement speaker focusing his speeches towards helping teaching young people how to accomplish

their goals also continues to work as a philanthropist and as for christopher his son i fucking told you he was eaten by cannibals no according to an interview chris junior gave in two thousand I saw it on YouTube. He was working at that point for his dad, had still been working with his dad, just worked for his dad his entire adult life, truly sounded thrilled to be working with his dad in a capacity that honestly sounds like he's kind of his dad's manager,

helping decide which speaking engagements, other projects his dad should take, what investments they should focus on, etc. Spoke of having a two-year-old daughter at that time who had her grandpa completely wrapped around her finger. He was laughing about that. Chris has said his dad was getting soft in his old age, called his situation with his dad quote

the ultimate blessing seems like a great dude who had so much love and respect for his dad right how fucking cool the dynamic duo they stay together and what about Chris's mom Betty Jean

I don't definitively know what happened to her did Chris buy her a house did you finally get away from Freddie what happened to Chris's birth father he didn't really write about that hasn't really commented on that publicly but you know what I think we know enough about him

he fucking did it he overcame right Let's wrap up this story now after the timeline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. Chris Gardner repeatedly said, through later interviews, that the driving force behind everything he became was a promise.

When I found out I was going to be a father, I promised myself my child would never know the fear I knew. And he kept that promise. He didn't just break the cycle. He saw growing up, right, of dads either not sticking around or sticking around as an agent of abuse instead of as a loving, nurturing parent, right? He obliterated. His son grew up very loved, very supportive, very safe and educated. So did his daughter.

And Chris didn't stop there. You know, he became a motivational speaker. He wrote books. There's three on his website right now, Christopher, or excuse me, Chris Gardner.org. He's worked as a mentor. He's emphasized a central message of no matter where you start, no matter how dark or unfair or cruel, you're your beginnings, you can rewrite the ending. At the end of his autobiography, Chris writes,

The world is full of people who want to tell you what you can't do. Don't listen. You have a dream? Protect it. How beautiful and powerful is that? Right? It sounds simple. But coming from a man who grew up in poverty, watched his mother beat and saw her

imprisoned twice, lost the only positive male model he had grown up, survived Freddie's abuse, entered foster care multiple times, blew up his first marriage, fell apart financially, became homeless, raising a toddler alone while being homeless, took showers using an office, sink, slept in bathrooms, public bathrooms with his son, got arrested, got evicted, still fought like hell every day. Well, it hits different, right? He has some credentials there. At the end of the year, or, you know, at the end of a life, what do we really measure?

Not the monies, not the houses, not the cars, not the symbols of status. Maybe most of all, it's the distance traveled. Chris Gardner began a life in a world where he seemed destined to be small, silent, and scared, but he refused. He began adulthood with no privilege, no degree, no money, no guiding light, but his own will, and refused to settle. He became homeless with a toddler in his arms. He could have easily given up, but he refused to do so. He walked into a financial world uninvited, uncredentialed, underestimated. He refused to let that stop him from succeeding.

And at the end of it all, what he really teaches us is maybe this. If a kid from Milwaukee who survived abuse, poverty, foster care, abandonment, homelessness, so many bad choices, many of them his own, if he can climb out of that pit and change his life dramatically, well, then what might you be capable of? What could you do if you stopped waiting for the cavalry and you became your own? And now before we head to the takeaways, I just want to take a few minutes just to thank everybody for listening to, you know, this podcast this year, for still being on this ride. truly thank you so much for letting me keep continuing to do this. Definitely an interesting year, regardless of your beliefs, political or otherwise. You know, 2025 was objectively, just statistically, a very tumultuous year, right? Culturally, a lot of protests, a lot of change, a lot of divisiveness, right? We all feel it, we all see it, a lot of hardship for a lot of people. Also, from my perspective,

a lot of things that didn't used to be viewed as political, much more. more commonly interpreted as being political this year. And things have certainly been trending in that direction for a while, but it got worse this year. I never would have guessed in a million years, nearly a decade ago when I started this podcast that I would get accused of being woke, of being some leftist shill, essentially,

for not believing that teachers and librarians are grooming children in mass, or for defending science. How the fuck is that political now? Just defending science in general as being something, I don't know, it's pretty good. You know, that's a good thing. We should trust science more than unqualified pundits and conspiracies and politicians.

Hell, I've gotten shitty emails this year saying how I've lost my way or that I hate America, essentially because I'm standing up for working class Americans and veterans, right? And, you know, disenfranchised populations. Because I think that the government should support these people more, right? They should have, I don't know, cheaper or free health care, like due process rights and shit. That makes me some kind of socialist scum apparently. it's fucking insane make standing up for you know make a standing up for the downtrod and being a bad thing that makes no sense a lot of things make no sense this year strange times where it feels more than ever before my life that the truth for a lot of people is just now up for interpretation like any truth right sharing actual documented history not sugar coding history is interpreted by many at least in my experience based on the emails i have not shared as being anti-american it's just not true the constant deluge of propaganda being spewed by so many people so often the constant definite lies being shared publicly, you know, have changed the way that a podcast built on sharing brutal truth is perceived. For sure. In that sense, it was the most difficult year so far. Hopefully the pendulum swings back in the other direction soon. Will 2026 overall be a better, smoother year for more people? I fucking don't know. I don't know anything anymore. I admittedly am very

confused about the current state and trajectory of reality in America and the world, just in so many ways. There are so many prominent cultural figures right now who, to many people, are obviously, like blatantly over the top, morally bankrupt, just blatant grifters. You know, people who a lot of people think, like, who the fuck does he think he's fooling? Get out of here. but yet millions of other people will see the same figures and seem to earnestly think, oh, this guy's the best. Love it!

Could not love it more. There's a growing chasm. Not just in America, but all over the world. When it comes to, you know, who or what embodies good, who embodies noble, moral ideals, you know, who is terrible? It's dizzying in moments. So when it comes to looking in the future, who the fuck knows?

Kind of feels like all bets are off, doesn't it? Like the Matrix is just degrading right now. You know, maybe in 2026, there'll be a movement where a bunch of people start to think that serial killers are heroes and that people who make fun of serial killers are pieces of shit. You know, they had it hard.

They had it hard, and you know what? Overall, they're doing the right thing. Maybe there'll be a big movement where people like, you know what, cults are awesome. I'm tired of people shitting on cults. I had so many moments of being shocked. with rage reading the news early this year so many moments of what in the actual fuck is going on

or how do people think that how is that allowed to happen that for the first time ever this year I set limits on my phone on social media consumption and also news feed consumption I now only give myself 15 minutes a day of news and 50 minutes a day of social media no more doom scrolling there's just too much doom to be scrolled

also I started to find myself getting so jaded towards terrible news, just the fucking sheer volume of it, that something that would have shocked me in January just no longer shocked me at all come October. I was like, this isn't good. I'm getting way too numb.

Eventually, I decided I had to stop trying to keep track of it all. And I had to start pouring less energy into trying to mentally solve current problems, at least what I consider to be problems, and pour more energy into trying to just embody the values that I would like to see more of in the world and create the best and, you know, the best informative, entertaining episodes I can.

It was either that or just burn the fuck out. I had to pull back and change my expectations for what I'm able to accomplish as one person because I definitely, one of my biggest struggles, constantly in my adult life, is trying to do too much. Lindsay will often talk about my, and I've had other partners previously,

talk about apparently I have very unreasonable expectations about how life should work oftentimes. Always have. Actually, my mom used to complain about the same shit. You know, not a good thing. When I worked with troubled teens before comedy, I burned out very fast because, you know, I wanted to save them all.

For some reason, I thought I could. But I didn't. I couldn't. And it fucking killed me. I had a very hard time focusing on the few kids. I did actually help. It just never felt like nearly enough. Maybe I would think of statistics.

You know, I was a huge baseball card kid. And I would think like, you know, a good batting average is, you know, like 3.30. That's great. You know, anything above 300? Over 250s average. But if I'm like, you know, helping one out of 20 kids, I'm like, well, no, I would get, you know, kicked out of the league.

That's a terrible bad an average. But looking back, it wasn't. It was enough. It was more than enough. I just didn't see it that way. You know, I mean, really helping just one person that matters so much. And I feel like I lost sight of that for a while this year as a podcast. I've lost sight of that here and there my entire life.

I started to focus on feeling like I wasn't doing enough instead of focusing on, you know, like all the positive emails that did come in. Some I shared, many I didn't, were so many of you. You know, shared with me how this podcast, you know, was a continue to be a source of positivity in your life. How you still love to learn about weird shit and to also hear, you know, some good values being promoted. So, so fucking thank you. Thank you to everybody who took the time to send him one of those messages. And thanks to not all the people, but some of the people who sent in critical ones, the people who weren't just fucking weird dickheads.

Thanks for reminding me that I don't, you know, suddenly need to just do more. that what I've been doing has actually been plenty all along and with that you know inner conflict I guess sorted out for the moment I'm looking forward to tackling all sorts of new topics next year

looking forward to staying curious you know I'm looking forward to learning more just like I learned this past year you know this past year I learned about you know some new things about the nature of addiction

I didn't know about learned about China's rise not that long ago you know how it might be limited hopefully by some population imbalances you know learned about the cultural influence of Go Ask Alice

randomly not before that Almost 10 years in That kind of shit Still excites me And I'm so grateful For that And I'm even more grateful It still excites

You know many of you Again based on your messages Also still love Getting lost In a fucking batch of crazy story Like the king of Beaver Island Oh my God I love that one Action Park

That might have been my favorites This past year Love learning about The History of Grifting Russian Wizards Love learned about the bone wars that launched this little tasty earworm Dinosaur bones

Yeah We want to see them Dinosaur bones Yeah Where can we see them Where the fuck are they? It was so fun to learn about the cultural impact To Dr. Seuss

Scary but fascinating To learn about Russia's cyber war Against the West That's still going on Learning about Japanese soldiers Still fighting decades after World War II ended about the history of literal shit That's where 2025

I've started, by the way, with that shit suck. Doesn't I feel like that was forever ago? So, you know what? Let's keep this going for 2026. Stay curious. Let's keep learning. Let's keep laughing. Keep getting deep in moments, emotional in moments, silly others.

And now before I move to the techways, I want to share some thanks to some amazing meat sacks who work every day to keep our online community being an impactful, magical place for so many who need a helping hand. Or a new friend to joke around with, you know, to ask advice of. people who have struggled to find community elsewhere, but have found it with us weirdos. If you're not active in any of the Facebook groups associated with time suck, or you want to find out what groups there are,

we'll head to the cult of the curious three out of five stars. There's still an awesome group of meat sacks active in there. Sorry, I don't get in there, don't get in there personally. Lindsay keeps me abreast of what's going on. I don't because, not because they don't care, but I'm still spending too many hours each week on content between this show and scared to death and the nightmare fuel stories that those are the stories

that just keep taking up more and more my time because I love them so much and I'm just trying to get better at creative horror fiction but yeah this thank you now big thanks to our all seen eyes

Colt of the Curis three out of five stars moderators and admins Geraldine Lancaster Drew Peacock Liza Hagar Josh Miles Michael Graham

Christina Gregory Jeffrey Bistran Deja Arnold Josh Jenkins Myelin Mendoza Julia Ann Homo Paul Johnson

Adam Gustafson Gustafson Jesus Christ I always You know Adam I can never fucking say her name right James Weber

Sarah Tripp The Crimson Crusher And again Sorry if I missed anybody Sorry if I said the Wrong name Thanks for moving on up Thanks for continually moving on up

our group Does that make sense? I don't know I like pushing that button You know it makes a lot of sense Moving over right now into some inspirational take words

Time shock Top five takeaways Number one, Chris Gardner grew up surrounded by violence, poverty, instability, and emotional trauma conditions that crush a lot of people before they ever get a chance to stand But despite all that, he refused to let his childhood Define his adulthood

The story reminds us that the life you're born into Is not the life you are obligated to stay in Number two at Dean Witter Chris was surrounded by Ivy League graduates, Polish trainees, people with far more conventional qualifications, but none of them were hungrier than a homeless single dad who had to outwork everybody just to keep his kid fed. The story proves that being underqualified on paper doesn't matter if you're willing to out hustle every obstacle in your

path sometimes. Number three, Chris never had a stable father figure, yet he became a remarkably present and loving father, even while surviving homelessness. His entire trajectory is proof that generational cycles of abandonment, violence, and instability can be broken. No matter how deeply rooted they are, he made the deliberate choice to become the man he needed as a child. Number four, after becoming a multi-millionaire, Chris devoted his life to philanthropy, mentorship, and supporting homeless families, especially single parents. He says that real success is defined by the distance you've traveled, not the wealth you've accumulated.

His life embodies the idea that the greatest measure of achievement is the impact you have on others and still works with baby boy, who's a big man, but he's still baby boy. At number five, new info, Reverend Cecil Williams, the man who helped Chris and Chris Jr., more than anyone else, when they were homeless in San Francisco, just passed away last year. April 22nd, 2024, at the age of 94, truly rest in peace. Let me share a bit more about this remarkable inspirational man. He was one of the first five African-American graduates of the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. Subsequently, he hosted political rallies, which drew in very diverse key speakers as a result of the events, inclusive. and inviting nature.

Drawing on his experiences in the civil rights movement, Williams was also one of the first African Americans to become involved in the gay rights movement. Under his leadership, Glyde Memorial became a diverse 10,000-ish member congregation of all races, ages, genders, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. To this day, it's the largest provider

of social services in San Francisco. For years, his official title of Glyde Church was Minister of Liberation. He retained that office as well as his position as CEO of the Glyde Foundation until officially stepping down in 2023 at the age of 92. Or actually, actually didn't say the exact date. Maybe even 93. That's crazy.

Dude did not retire until his early 90s. If you want to learn more about all that this incredible church has done and continues to do, and this is from a very non-religious person, you can go to glide.org, which is glide.org, G-L-I-D-E. If you don't want to learn more, well, let me at least share their mission statement. Glyde is a nationally recognized Center for Social Justice dedicated to fighting systemic injustices, creating pathways out of poverty and crisis and transforming lives. Through our integrated comprehensive services, advocacy initiatives, and inclusive community, we empower individuals, families, and children to achieve stability and thrive.

Gleide is on the forefront of addressing some of society's most pressing issues, including poverty, housing, and homelessness, and racial and social. justice. Glide's mission is to create a radically inclusive, just, and loving community mobilized to alleviate suffering and break the cycles of poverty and marginalization. Our core values emerge from Glyde as a spiritual movement. They are rooted in empowerment, recovery, and personal transformation. Our values inspire and guide our behaviors. They are the ground we stand on. Hail Nimrod to that. And if you thought, oh, that's gross. That felt political go fuck yourself time suck top five takeaways the inspirational true story of

chris gardner's pursuit of happiness has been sucked thank you to the bad magic productions team for your help and making time suck thanks once again to queen of bad magic lindsay commons for all year long give me the space to work on these episodes uh late at night on this one uh thanks to Logan Keith, the old Art Warlock still. Helping to publish this episode designing merch for the store at bad magic productions.com. I did the research on this one because I didn't know what I wanted

to talk about until the last minute. Also thanks again to the all seen eyes moderating the cult of the curious private Facebook group that I thanked individually. Also the Mod Squad making sure Discord keeps running smooth. Everyone over on the Time Sucks Suburbitant and Bad Magic Suburid it. Sorry to get the Discord

names in time for this recording. Just rushing, And now let's head on over to this week's TimeSucker Updates. Updates? Get your TimeSucker updates. Let's start with the correction from the email sent in to Bojangles at Timesug Podcast.com. This one comes in from Come and Correct Sucker, Andrew X-Line, who sent in a message with the subject line of Brian Thompson. And he wrote, You got the time wrong on Thompson's murder. It occurred at 6.44 a.m. not 9 p.m. He was headed into a.

hotel to prepare for shareholders' meeting that was scheduled for later that day, a shareholder meeting that they still had, despite the CEO's murder. You also only once referred to the case as alleged. All the evidence is currently in question. The search of Luigi's bag was likely illegal, and the chain of evidence was repeatedly broken. I think it's a little reckless to attribute the words in that notebook to Luigi. Based on what we know for sure, it could be just as true that the notebook was planted inside the backpack. Hell, Luigi was never even given the chance to sign the property receipt to attest that the items were his well andrew uh appreciate the correction truly man with the proliferation of online articles that sure seemed to be written uh with the help of a i and a i

search results summaries finding accurate information has gotten a little trickier uh not sure what the source listed nine p m uh i didn't think to double check the actual time uh which is my bad um good reminder that you know you got to double check more these days uh which is why time I'm like, well, always truly suck so much time. But yes, you're right, 6.44 a.m. And I should have said allegedly more. I felt that was implied since his trial is upcoming, but you know what? I should not have felt that way.

Words matter. All of them. Details matter. Facts matter. Yes, we do not know for sure what happened because he has not been tried in court yet. There's been no, no judgment. But if he did write that letter, well, he made some good points. Next up regarding last week's suck, another important correction.

Idaho sack, Jeff Wade, sent in a message with the subject line of lynching in Idaho. Hello, Dan, and all the good people at Bad Magic. I just finished listing to your episode on Vigilantism and wanted to tell you a story. Why can I read all of a sudden? That quote you shared, which listed Idaho among states that have not had a recorded lynching is wrong. I'm in a good place to be able to tell you about this because for the last few years, I've been writing a book about the vigilantes of Idaho. I keep getting sidetracked by other writing projects, but I hope to finish writing it by 2026.

In short, vigilantees stories make up a good deal of the mythology of early Idaho. In fact, the first elected sheriff of Ada County, where Boisey is, was hanged by vigilantes for being a crook. Among the vigilantes who were possibly involved in that was the editor of the Idaho statesman, as well as William J. McConnell, who went on to become Idaho's third governor and helped get the University of Idaho built in Moscow. There's a lot more to that story, that story, but there were certainly examples of racially motivated lynchings as well. In 1885, five Chinese men were hanged near Pierce, Idaho. A merchant had been stabbed to death, and the five Chinese were arrested as suspects. While being taken to the court, Murray, Idaho, the sheriff was confronted by a group of masked men who told the sheriff to leave the arrested men with them.

The five men were found hanging from a tree shortly after. A historical marker sits near that tree today, and thanks for including that picture. Then there's a story of Peter Malik. He's half-nez Pierce, half white, or who was a long time ago, Malik served a short stint at the Idaho State. penitentiary for horse theft, where he was freed early by the parole board. Malik attended the Indian school at Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where he was expected to learn a trade, please do an episode on the Indian school someday. Instead, he was booted out for bad behavior. Upon returning to Idaho, he married a young school teacher named Josephine Gaddy, and the two started a farm

on allotment land near Grangeville. And Grangeville is, yeah, where I was born, not far from where I grew up. Josephine was also half-nez-Pierce and half-white, but she'd been raised by a white family and taught school to the white kids around Grangeville. On July 2nd, 1911, Peter came home from a long night of drinking and beat Josephine until she was unrecognizable and left her for dead on the family farm. When she regained consciousness, Josephine had to crawl several miles to a neighbor's house for help. Peter was arrested and held to the jail in Lewiston until the trial date could be set. When the date came, he was moved back to Grangeville. The night before he was to face the judge, a mob of mass men rode to the edge of town, left their horses, and walked quietly to the jail.

one of the masked men knocked And when the jailer opened the door He was grabbed and held down by several men The rest of the vigilantes moved to the cells A voice rang out There he is And the crowd gathered in front of the cell As Peter was awakened by the noise

His last words were Take off those damn masks, you cowards Before a fusillade of shots Echoed through the jail After killing Malik The vigilante mob fled back into the night No one was ever arrested or identified The lynching of Peter Malik

Set off an intense public debate about whether or not the government can protect its citizens, especially Idaho's parole board, which had released Malik from prison early. Nothing much has changed since that time. I will attach Peter's booking photo from the Idaho State Pen. I know this email has been quite girthy, but I can talk for hours on the subject.

In fact, I will be given a presentation on Idaho's vigilantes at the Wild West Seminar at the Oahuahe County Museum in Murphy, Idaho, March 14, 2026. You'll be interested in one of the other presentations, which is about Wyatt Earp's time at the Cordillane Mines. I hear Captain Whiskerhorn will have a booth set up and you might be able to indulge your inner

Wajonaringo. Hit me up if you decide to take a road trip. Hi-ha-ha-ha! I hope your 2026 is fan-fucking-tastic. If I could get a blessing from Nimrod to help me finish the book this year, I'd be delighted. Please never stop sucking Jeff Wade. Oh man, thank you, Jeff.

Yeah, I double-checked. What had previously been a great source to Equal Justice Initiative's website, to make sure I didn't miss something about Idaho supposedly not having vigilante killings. But yeah, they don't list Idaho as a place where those went on. I think the problem here is that what constitutes a lynching, what gets categorized as vigilante justice,

perhaps varies from place to place, or the records, you know, for a lot of the stuff, have been tough to find by keyword searches or something. I don't know. And yes, Nimrod blesses you. He wills you to complete that book that is so cool that you're doing this, and good luck on your presentation. And then finally

let's get weird and silly. Insane sucker, Scott Green, sent in a message with the subject line of fuck Bob's bountiful bonsai fruits. Scott wrote, Dear Dan, suckmaster extraordinaire. I write to you disgruntled and angry, greatly disappointed and frankly in pursuit of Bob.

His bountiful bonsai fruit trees, while tiny and beautiful, led to an extraordinary bout of unfortunate diarrhea. Not that any bout of diarrhea is fortunate, but I digress. You see one night, while extremely high on LSD, triven my literal balls off. Like, I had my balls in my hand,

and all I could see was the eternity inside of them, thinking about the babies that will never be born for my eager and unused sperm, simply being created and wasted as my normal biological cycles take place throughout time. I was listening to TimeSuck, and Bob came on yelling and screaming about the FBI and being on the run, blah, blah, blah.

Well, the idea came to me in a flash of brilliant opalescent fireworks, opalescent behind my eyes, like my synapses, all at once heaved and blasted my small, gray think muscle with one notion. Why not get a couple pallets of these trees and make freeze-dried snacks? I'd save a ton of money on labor as the fruit itself was small, so no cutting here. Just harvest and dehydrate or freeze-dry and then package.

Boom. Sell that delicious snacky to people at parties, raves, concerts, whatever. Just a quick and easy buck. Daddy like. So after a little research and some peyola to the right people, I was on the phone with Bob. He and I agreed to some pallets of his plants for a couple thousand. American greenbacks, and we arranged a place deep in the woods to meet. For reasons of anonymity, I acquiesced to redacting this location, as he was and still is afraid the feds

might be listening, reading any correspondence with yourself. Well, Bob, fuck you. We met off Highway 49 in the Mark Twain National Forest in the Ozarks. Your small poison fruits turned my normally regular soft-served scat into a torrent of ungodly demon soup for days on end. And no, it wasn't the drugs. I was so excited to get my business off the ground, I immediately went into product research, sampling a little of each small, delectable fruit to determine the combinations of tongue-bending flavors to match with, and then it started to occur the growl and rumble of mistakes made in GI displeasure, distinct and inevitable, hit one hour to the minute from first intake, thinking it was maybe the Taco Bell or perhaps some of the gas station jerky, I went about

my business of making my business. These notions were disregarded as, of course, these items are perfectly safe and have never had the reputation for hasty hot shits. Unfortunately, my business became trying to keep my entrails inside my body as my asshole literally projectile puked hot lava, ruining my pants, plastic chair, hastily built office, and anything that was in a 30-foot radius of my anus on that unfortunate and fateful afternoon. So now here I sit, 15 pounds lighter, sad and looking to recoup my losses. Dan, as a promoter of Bob, by allowing him to advertise and update on your podcast, I hold you as partially liable for these events. Now, there's no saving my pants, chair, or dignity, but you can do the right thing and cancel any upcoming business

with Bob. If anyone out there is going to have a colonoscopy soon, Bob's bonsai fruit might just be for you. And if you see Bob any time soon, let him know that the feds will be light work if I ever catch up with him. He'll only wish he shit his pants. Absolutely love the show.

3.5 stars out of five. Don't change the thing. Hope you and yours have a great Christmas. Loyal listener to the end. Scott Green. Well, Scott, I am sorry. Damn it. I'm sorry to hear your troubles. Fucking Bob. him and his stupid tiny fruit

His ridiculous business practices I apologize for promoting his services I am liable I owe you and your butthole a huge, gaping, drippy apology May your bowels be strong in 2026 May your scat Not be too fat nor too loose

May it always be just right As it dives from your caboose May your wives be clean Your turds be lean And your entire digestive system function like a well-oiled machine I wish you nothing but the best, Mr. Green. Nothing but the best for your best butt.

Next time, suckers, I needed that. We all did. Well, thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast, the last of 2025. Man, count some of the early bonus episodes. I think we're around a 500 total episodes. That's a lot of suck. Happy New Year.

Be sure and rate and review time. suck. If you haven't already, unless you really hate it, then just, I don't know, fucking throw yourself in trash can. How about you do try to overcome adversity this week? At least try. Keep on keeping on. And keep on sucking.

Hear ye, hear ye. Happy New Year, meet Sacks. Happy New Year.