Deeyah Khan: Walking Into Darkness to Find the Light

In this powerful episode of A Lighthouse in the Dark, Michael Fishman sits down with Emmy and Peabody-winning documentarian, artist, and human rights advocate Deeyah Khan for a courageous conversation about hope, humanity, extremism, dialogue, dignity, and the light that can still be found in the darkest places.

Deeyah has spent her career walking directly into the spaces most people avoid — sitting across from neo-Nazis, jihadis, misogynists, violent extremists, veterans, and people shaped by hatred, shame, fear, and isolation. But her work is not about amplifying darkness. It is about searching for the spark of humanity beneath it.

Together, Michael and Deeyah explore what it means to be othered, to grow up between cultures, to carry pain without passing it forward, and to choose curiosity instead of contempt. They discuss how humiliation can become a seedbed for violence, why dignity and empathy are essential human superpowers, and how real dialogue can create a third place — a place beyond winning, losing, and dehumanizing each other.

Deeyah shares the deeper mission behind her films: not simply to document hate, but to understand where society is breaking, where people are being lost, and how we might interrupt cycles of violence before they consume the next generation. She speaks with profound compassion about the need to truly see young people, support emotional intelligence, rebuild connection, and teach the skills of humanizing one another before fear turns into destruction.

This conversation is brave, tender, challenging, and deeply hopeful. It reminds us that holding on to our humanity is not passive. It is a practice. It is a choice. It is a form of resistance.

Because sometimes being a lighthouse means walking toward the darkness — not to become it, but to help someone remember there is another way.

Links for Deeyah Khan:

Website — https://deeyah.com/

Socials — @DeeyahKhan

IMDB — https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1821069/

TED Talk — https://www.ted.com/speakers/deeyah_khan 

Full episodes can be watched as well on YouTube @alighthouseinthedark channel.

For more connection and exclusive content please subscribe to the official @alighgthouseinthedark Substack.

Additional content is available across social media @alighthouseinthedark

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My guest today is a brave documentarian who is literally illuminating the world. When I thought about people I want to have on a lighthouse in the dark, her name immediately came up because she is diving into the places where conflict and difference run into each other and finding a way to shine a light and drive out the darkness and get people connected back to humanity. So welcome to A Lighthouse in the Dark, Diacon.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Thank you so much. Wow, what an incredibly beautiful intro. Thank you. That's very generous of you, but very, very moved. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Yeah, I'm in awe of the stuff that you're building, the way you've gone about all this stuff. And I have so many questions about all your documentaries.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

But I want to start with you, the person. And then we'll so it kind of informs where people are getting this information and kind of who you are, because I think that sets a baseline for all the beautiful work. Is that okay?

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Of course, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

I ask people in the beginning, like what lights you up outside of documentaries? What lights you up in general?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

People. People and how incredible people are and how they don't see how incredible they are. Uh I remember one of the very first films that I did. I did it about this who I thought just extraordinary policewoman who solved this very complicated uh murder case. And one of my colleagues at the time, he's like, What is it with you? You like pick like these very boring people. That there's what did he say? They're so ordinary. They're just not interesting. And I was like, why don't you see how extraordinary this person is, how incredibly special she is. That there's nothing ordinary about her. Um, so what lights me up is is uh seeing people and truly, truly seeing them, wanting to see them. I love people.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

I have this expression from coaching kids for for 26 years. All I need people to do to be extraordinary is do all of the ordinary things with a little extra focus, right? Everybody's extraordinary.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

They really are. They truly, truly are. And everybody has something to offer, and everybody is needed. We can't afford to waste anybody. And I think I think as a society, as kind of systems, we often don't see what people have to offer. We're willing to give up on people. And I I just I don't really believe in that. I I I do think people are extraordinary, and I think every person, it doesn't matter who they are, if I meet them for ten seconds or know them for ten years, I look for that, and it's always there. You know, so what lights me up, it's it's always people. It's always people and who they really are, despite whatever front of performance that they might put forth, but you know, who they really, really are is is just magical. I think people are incredible.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

Yeah, and I now I see even more of a through line with all your documentaries as you say that is you're having the conversation with the people that other people would run away from or dismiss, and you don't dismiss anybody.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

No. No, because I know what that feels like. I've I've been dismissed in several you know parts of my life. Uh and I know what it feels like. I know what it feels like not to be seen, I know what it feels like not to be for someone not to believe in you, for someone to uh be condescending or look down on you or dehumanize you, discriminate against you, belittle you. I know all I know what it is like to be on the receiving end of that kind of contempt for another human being. And I I no matter what somebody's done, I I won't pay that forward. I I'm just not willing to do that because you know the these cycles have to be interrupted at some point. So I want to contribute towards something different. There's enough of that.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

I agree, and it's part of this. When I was doing research on you, I was struck by how many similarities that probably from the outside don't appear that way. But I have lived my whole life at the intersection of East and West culturally, which I think is something we share.

SPEAKER_02 4:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

And then also feeling othered. Um, can you talk for a moment about in my childhood um it's this combination of not being enough of anything for most of the groups that I was connected to?

SPEAKER_02 4:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:28

And I've heard you say something about that. Can you talk about feeling like the other and feeling like an outsider and the superpower of being different?

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Absolutely. So, so how so when you felt like that, what was it in other people's behavior that that that felt like that to you? Do you remember?

SPEAKER_00 4:47

Yeah, for me, I remember being in first grade. Um, and it was the first real assignment, which was where was your dad born? And I wrote, My dad was born in Shanghai, China. And everybody assumed I was lying. And when my teacher wouldn't believe me, and I actually lost my recesses over it. And I remember the punitive part of it, and I had already started working on the Roseanne show. So I was around adults all the time, so I understood the bias that was associated with that. And then I remember her saying at the end of the day, she was going to call my mom to kind of get to the bottom of it. And when my mom told her, Yeah, his dad was born in Shanghai, China, and she was like, Oh. And then the next day, in those days, it wasn't Asian, in those days, we were Oriental. All of a sudden, I was in the Oriental group. And I was like, and I was like, oh, I've I've moved to a totally different group and community, and I wasn't enough of that for that group, but I was not enough of now the other, and I was no longer for some, I was no longer whatever white is, because I think that's a misnomer too as a title. And so I think it's all of those things at once, and then my my dad's a Chinese-Russian Jew.

unknown 6:04

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

So then when somebody asked about being Jewish, then I was even more strange because it was like, uh, what is that? And so I never had a group that I truly fit in, and then growing up working in television, my timeline is so different than everybody else's. I was never quite gonna fit in.

SPEAKER_01 6:24

Yeah, no, that's incredible. And and I recognize a lot of that in in my childhood too, where so I was born and raised in Norway. My father comes from Pakistan, my mother is Afghan, but then via Pakistan came to Norway through marrying him. She also has a bit of there's I think one part of her family is from Iran. And I grew up in, I always say, you know, in the land of the blonde and blue-eyed people. And you know, I grew up like this, and I I'm, you know, I'm not very tall, but I'm fairly tall. And just just everything about me was was kind of the wrong thing, just visually, something was wrong. I was like the the opposite end of what's considered normal or beautiful or the norm or what's accepted, uh, what you aspire to be. So there was that, uh, and I was I was very conscious of that quite early on because people would always, teachers, even in adults, would ask me, you know, so where are you from? And I would go, Oh, you know, I was born in Norway. And they're like, you know, but no, really, where are you from? And I remember going, well, really, you know, I mean, if you're asking about my parents, they're from this and this. So what you know, when are you going back? You know, do you know, you know? And I was going, well, I d I don't know. There is no back, this is it. Uh do you have Coca-Cola where you come from? Like, I mean, it's like like, are you from I don't know, the moon? I don't know. So there was kind of really subtle, kind of sillier things like that. To the um, I remember I remember being called all kinds of names, and it really, really just not making any sense to me why my skin color would be made fun of, why that was a thing. Um, I remember as a 12-year-old, a a grown, like a grown Norwegian adult person, uh, when I was walking home from school and I walked through this shopping center, he stopped uh and he spit in my face. And he called me, like, you know, you uh probably can't say the words, but anyway, and you know, told me to piss off back where I came from. And I just remember being horrified, just thinking, what is this? So there was that. So there was the kind of the racism and the othering, like you're saying, from the outside, outside of the home, and then from my parents' community. It was, well, she's a girl, she's not she's she comes from a Muslim family, she's not really behaving like a proper Muslim girl, you know, she's outspoken, or she's like this, or she's like that. So I very much relate to what you're saying about I never felt like I was enough of anything for anyone. And that was a real source of a lot of struggle and a lot of pain for me. So I I always felt like I sort of fell between all the chairs. I never could quite sit on any of them because it's I wasn't allowed to, or I wasn't uh, it wasn't okay. And I and I never felt like I quite measured up to everybody's expectations of what somebody like me should and can be. Um but when I was much younger, I used to think it was a superpower. I used to think that my difference and my ability to understand and relate to multiple people and multiple communities and feel at home with my grandfather who came from a village in Pakistan, being able to sit and relate to him and feel with him, and also sitting with, you know, my my friends who would be watching Roseanne or who would be you know watching MTV at the time, or you know, or whatever, finding myself completely at home in that kind of world too. I used to think that, wow, I'm like a bridge when I was younger. I used to think I'm like a bridge. I I'm I'm a I'm a connection point because I see you and I see you, and I can feel with both of you because I am both of you. Um you know, aspects of me belong in both. But as I as I said, you know, but as I got older, it's it just got more and more uh a source of conflict and contention and and uh fracture, both outwardly but also inwardly for me, me. And it wasn't until kind of working on more creative work that I started finding and doing human rights work that I started finding my people in a way and realizing that it's not about a place. It's not about this group or that group, it's just your people uh who you'll who you'll eventually find, and you'll you'll find yourself at home with people.

SPEAKER_00 10:38

Yeah, that was kind of my experience, is actually I think it made me a translator. I bridge is a beautiful analogy, but I also think translator, right? Like I could translate between the different communities, um between my grandparents who spoke Russian and Chinese and Hebrew, and who clearly weren't American enough for some, and very much had a very immigrant life, and then the very Western, all American kind of Midwest kid that I played on television, like growing up and spending so much time in the black community and then you know, in Latin communities, and being able to kind of blend between, I see it as a translator more than anything.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

I think that's a perfect word, actually. And and and uh because as a translator, I think you're also able it makes sense to you, but I think you're also able to articulate and process the differences and make sense of them with the different groups too, to some extent. Uh no, that's an amazing uh that's an amazing way to look at that, actually. But that is what it felt like is that you are this in-between, you are this in-between link, and realizing that that wasn't actually a disadvantage, that it wasn't um just something that would be a source of um pain, but that it's actually it is like a superpower. It it it has been my strength, and it became so even more as I as I got older.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Yeah, and I think curiosity, right? The curiosity of going between those and understanding that I, by other people's definition, wasn't enough of something.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Part of that was instead of getting angry, I got curious.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Which I think is the thing that separates going from extremism and hate to staying in a loving and like compassionate space is having the curiosity to want to understand.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Yeah. Yeah, wanting to understand rather than I think trying to change people or even yourself, like like finding your own kind of heart and your own voice and your own baseline of what you are, and then being willing and curious and interested enough in other people to want to seek out whatever it is that that person has within them. Um I think it's a matter of the curiosity, and I think it's a matter of realizing that different points of view. I think you got to practice that, and also your craft forced you probably also to be able to inhabit somebody else, right? So I think there's something in that skill set also that that trains, in a way, the muscles of of having to swap places, of having to inhabit somebody else's point of view and reality and having to absorb that as much as possible. And I think actually that's a practice that uh we need a lot of now, to be quite honest. You know, I think it'd be really healthy for people to have to argue the other people's, uh the other side's point of view, or have to make sense of it, don't have to agree with it, but just try to understand it. You know, what is it that drives other people? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:53

Yeah, more than one thing can be true at the same time, right? Like to understand that I don't inherently know everything, right? And actually accept the fact that somebody else can have a very valid point that I don't necessarily have to agree with.

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

But they have a different perspective.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

Yeah. And people have different life stories, people have people have different experiences, people have different parents, people have different realities that they've come from that that shapes them. And to not factor that in. I mean, I I remember when I was uh I did a f uh documentary about jihadis, and I remember this guy in London, this British guy in London, and he's like, you know, I've had problems, I've had rah-rah-rah, you know, so you don't see me wanting to blow myself, you know, what the hell? And I was going, you know, good for you. You know, you've had people that love you, support you. You've had, and he's like, Yeah, but some of these guys are doctors. I said, just because somebody's a doctor doesn't mean everything is intact. Doesn't mean that somebody's life experience hasn't been challenging or traumatizing or that there isn't something there that all of that is coming from. I mean, I'm a very hopeful and very idealistic person and choose to see the better qualities in people, but I also have seen, you know, incredibly, I mean, I've seen incredible darkness as well. So I'm fully aware of the fact that there are some people who have absolutely no empathy, who are sociopaths or psychopaths. I get that, but the vast majority are not. The vast majority of people that do dark things are not those, those categories. They are, that there is something else in the story of that life that has brought them to that point. And to write that off and to not acknowledge or want to understand or factor that in, I think is a mistake. I think then we as individuals and as societies and communities won't respond to the needs of that person. And we won't respond to the the way we can better handle some of these fractures in our society and and in people, the fractures that exist in people.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Yeah, I agree. I we also share something, is we were both young performers, but young performers who faced a lot of hate and backlash.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Talk about that experience for those who don't know about your performing background and kind of the pushback against you.

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Yeah, so I uh so my father, because he experienced a lot of racism when he came to Norway, he had it, he just had it in his head that the only two professions where I wouldn't face what he faced was either sports or it was, you know, the arts, basically. And he loved music, so he was like, that's what it's gonna be. Like, you know, if you can outwork everybody else, if you just are diligent and you just know, you know, just work harder than everybody, then eventually it will be okay, and you won't be judged based on your gender or race or religion or ethnicity or anything like that. And so he, from the age of seven, he, I mean, I wouldn't say forced me, but he he pretty much decided that this is what I was gonna do, that I was gonna do music, and I studied North Indian classical music, and then started doing pop music and all kinds of different stuff. And with Norway wing being the way that it was at the time, and there being very few people of other um of any kind of multicultural background in the public space, I was one of the early people like that. So it just so I got a lot of attention, and I was this little child doing this weird kind of exotic music or whatever. So it was a big thing. But then the more attention that I started getting, and the more I was on TV or in the newspapers or whatever, so the better my career did, the more this backlash started building against me. On one hand, it was people writing in letters and complaining, you know, what is this, you know, dark-skinned whatever person doing on our screen all the time. So, you know, F off, basically. And right next to that, it was also my parents, very, very tiny uh Muslim community, but the very conservative and more orthodox aspects of that community started getting really frustrated with the level of attention and public presence that I started getting. So they would take their complaint, basically, to my father, who would say, who would show them the door and say, So, my child, it's my decision, and so you can leave. Then they'd go to my grandfather, who's very who was very religious, he helped build like a lot of mosques in this country and was very, very loved within the more conservative circles. They'd go to him and go, Look, we don't even allow like our boys to do this kind of you know profession, and you know, this is a girl, and you know, why would you allow, you know, your good family, why would you allow your child to do your granddaughter to do this? So do something. And he was like, Well, he doesn't listen, so I don't know. And then eventually started coming to me. And it started with people um just lecturing me and warning me and kind of uh telling me to watch my back to the point where it got so bad. The levels of death threats, harassment, uh my uh towards me, my parents became completely isolated and kind of pushed out of the kind of general community for a long time. I I can't remember how many times we changed our telephone number, and the I was we were inundated with death threats, and and it got so bad where I couldn't walk outside in the streets of Oslo, uh the you know, the land of the um, you know, progressive and very open society, open, very free society, without something aggressive or violent taking place. I mean, I've had knives pulled on me, I've had people attack me at my own uh concert uh where the police had to take me away, I had people try to abduct me from my own school. So it's it got so much that my mother eventually sat me down. And my father by this time also started breaking under the pressure. It was like, this is too much. You know, she's bringing shame and dishonor and you know, problems to the whole community. And one I remember one older guy walking up to me in the street, uh saying, you know, you're just all this kind of all these complaints and all this kind of gnarly stuff he would say. And then at the end he goes, you know, and because also because you know you're making our girls think that they can do whatever they like. And I remembered chuckling and going, and what's wrong with that? And of course he got even more pissed off. Um, but my mother eventually sat me down and she's like, Look, with your father now also getting wobbly and things being as as difficult as they are, she said, We cannot keep you safe anymore, so you're gonna have to go somewhere else. And do you do you understand that? Um, and at the time I was like, Yeah, I do. And so I bought a one-way ticket to London and left. And and I haven't actually lived back in Norway for for 30 years. So I left and I left, basically.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

And it was hard. As a young person, it was really hard. And I mean, I'm um I I don't know how you dealt with it. I mean, you you obviously, you know, your scale is so much bigger. You know, what the kind of presence that you had.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

I I never compare scars.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

No, but no, but we were so, you know, we all knew you, you know. We've all, you know, grown up with you in a way.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Yeah, but you built you built a legacy that you had to fight cultural and then social and then political all at the same time. I mean, I I live through the backlash of the national anthem incident. Um being backhanded by adults in public settings, um, people being violent, people wanting horrible things. There's this I'm I'm gonna go back slightly because I think there's this point that I want to make that where we probably overlap, which is, you know, my grandparents and my dad as an immigrant, there is this desire for exceptionalism as if that makes you safe that the immigrant faces because you have that diaspora of like community. So you all of a sudden, if I'm exceptional, then I'm more palatable to the larger community.

unknown 21:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:59

And then the reality. Is that doesn't save you or protect you and your own community at times really struggles. And I remember here I work on this show, and my grandparents are really proud initially. And then when the pushback comes and they're getting shame from their friends and loved ones and people associated with them, and I'm being called un-American by the president at the time, and I'm eight years old. You know, you face these things in your own way. You did something really brave though that I didn't have to do, which is you literally set out, changed countries, and started a whole different path. So you you had a support structure in one sense, but you had to create your own in another.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

Yes, I I I do agree. But but it was um it was it was in one way it was very public, in another way it's very hidden, uh, because the public part was that it was on the front pages of all the newspapers here that you know she's been threatened out of Norway, all this kind of stuff. And I remember my heartache at the time was, you know, this is all so public, and no one's saying anything. They're saying what happened, but they're not saying, okay, hold on, but this is wrong. Is this okay? Is this acceptable?

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Right, and no one's saying he's a kid. Don't do this and this is a kid, right? Like no one's coming to your aid and saying it no one is they're talking about the story instead of sharing the story, right? Yeah. Or the experience. And no one asked you probably what it felt like.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

No, are you okay? You know, do you need anything? And the only phone calls that I got at the time, because there was that, and then I felt I couldn't be completely open about everything either, because you're also carrying this thing of this community, like you're saying, you f you know, my father didn't didn't make it. You know, he didn't make his dreams. He wasn't able to live out the life that he dreamt about. And he's even said this to me in in later life that, you know, then you were born. And he said, you know, it's it's as if I was born again and I got a second chance at life. So I wanted everything for you that I could never have myself. So that's why I I pushed you and worked you so hard. It's so like you're saying that exceptionalism that's that's expected sort of within the community of, you know, you've got to be the good immigrant so that you're more acceptable and palatable to everybody. And as you know, so rightly say, it's never good enough. And and the sooner somebody realizes that, the better it would have been. But you know, it takes a long time, I think, especially for our parents and grandparents' generations to get that. And I don't know if they still get it. But also the different racist politicians and figures also started using my story for their political football. You know, look at what they do to their own, look at this, look at that, look at immigrants, this is why we don't want them here, rah-rah, all this kind of stuff. And you go, how do I be completely honest and talk about what I'm struggling with and how hard that is for me, and not place this entire community under the microscope and under scrutiny and under attack. Um, so I completely so I just shut the door and was like, I'm I'm having nothing to do with this anymore. I mean, then some of the phone calls that I would get would be even anti-racist groups who would say, take it back, take it back. You have no idea what it's causing, just take it back. And I was like, I can't do that. You know, and later on, the the kind of the whole uh step towards making films was partly also uh not not not breaking my personal silence necessarily, but but but breaking those stigmas down and and realizing that uh right is right and wrong is wrong. It doesn't matter what the perpetrator or which community does what, it's it's you either stand by justice and rights and dignity for all people, or you don't, you know, no matter who's throwing the rocks, basically. Uh, because I I did feel responsible. I don't know how you felt, but I I felt really responsible for many, many years that I needed to protect the community, my parents' community, because I, you know, they were under so much attack uh from you know far-right politicians and and activists and that type of rhetoric that I wanted to kind of go, no, I don't want to. And I remember as a child, the only newspaper stories that used to happen when I was growing up and that featured people who look like this in Norway, it was all at that time Muslims, you know, it wasn't terrorism, it was they kept going, oh, but they're all you know gang members and they're all this and they were just violent and they're raping our girls, like all that kind of stuff. And I remember when I first started coming into the papers thinking, wow, like look, I'm making them say something nice. I'm making them talk about music, I'm making them talk about art and culture and all this other thing and this heritage that she comes from. Uh, but as you said, and then it just turns. Um, and then you're by yourself.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

And then someone else tries to shape your narrative, right? Correct. Someone else tries to tell your story and define what it means for everyone else.

SPEAKER_01 27:11

So how did you cope with that? How how how did you how did you cope with that? And what does that what did that do to you? What has that done to you?

SPEAKER_00 27:21

Yeah, I would tell you initially I try to protect everybody. And uh the funny thing about protecting everybody is you end up becoming the keeper of everyone's secrets.

unknown 27:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:34

And at the same time, you end up carrying so much weight that you don't know what to do with that it's very hard. Because this is one of the first times of my life where I feel like I I'm I'm almost being mirrored back, so many of my own experiences at such an extreme level. And because I was the person who went out and did all the press. I was the person that largely was the shield for an entire almost corporation in many ways. And that's um, I think part of it is you have to choose to decide what are you gonna make out of it and then find the light in it, which is kind of the the genesis of where this show comes from.

unknown 28:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:14

Is I'm always trying to find the light. I'm trying to find the light in people, I'm trying to find the light in situations, I'm trying to be a safe harbor. I want to be a lighthouse that guides people back and reminds people of what the good is. I tell people all the time. I'm this kind because I know what cruel looks like. I know what it looks like when people are. I have faced extremists from so many different directions. And I actually kind of want to lean into something that I think I heard you say, which is that all of the violence that comes, all of the rage, all of the hate, it largely comes from other people's kind of shame and humiliation and trying to disperse that.

SPEAKER_01 28:59

Yeah. I'm so touched by what you're saying. I I've never heard anyone speak in the way that you're you're describing what you went through. Um I'm really, yeah. You're incredible. I just have to say, you're absolutely incredible, and I'm so proud and just grateful to get to speak with you.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Um I was I was feeling the same way about you, as I'm literally listening to you. I I think that might also be I I hate to use this term, but almost a little bit of numbness that we probably both have is our own story we're kind of numb to, but when we hear it from someone else, like I was literally sitting here almost heartbreaking and at the same time smiling, listening to you talk with the kind of reverence and love and understanding for our loved ones in our community. Like, you know, I love my parents and I love my family. But they don't fully grasp some of the things and some of the weight that they put on. And some of us we we have to find the way to bridge that gap and be willing to kind of forgive and let go of certain parts. I I look at it more as understanding than forgiving.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Me too. Me too, because forgiving becomes something else, I agree. But the the what you just also said about that you are this kind because you know what cruelty feels like and what it's like is just that's that capacity in human beings. I don't know what it is and why that happens, because you would be just as justified in a way, or people, it would be very understanding if you'd become very hard, or if you'd become very uh resentful or bitter or angry or judgmental or kind of you know pushed it all outwards, it'd be very, very understandable. I don't think anybody would begrudge that. Uh but the fact that you have this other way of responding, that thing, that thing, that capacity in human beings, I'm so interested in. And that to me is the light, right? And to me, that's what I'm always looking for. You know, that so many of my friends and colleagues are like, you know, what's wrong with you? Why do you keep looking at darkness so much? And I'm like, I'm not looking at the darkness, I'm looking for the lights, you know, because I know it's there, and it always is. It's I just have to keep looking, and it always shows up, and and it's that thing that some people really have, which is they are all of their experiences and they are all of their scars and all of their brokenness, if we want to call it that. We all are, but then what do we do with that? How do we um how do the cycles stop? How do they become interrupted? How do we carve a different path? Um, because it's also about liberating yourself. And what you said about uh it being hard to or becoming numb to your own stuff, I I remember for years saying that you know it's uh much harder for me to help myself, so I chose to help other people. But in that practice, as I started doing that, I had to put myself back together too, and it really helped me actually. Um because I got to meet people who you know who really have that other capacity in them. And you just realized it's we all have that, we all have access to that. Um so what of you know, what are we gonna what do we choose?

SPEAKER_00 32:29

It's the choosing, I think when I watch so much of your work, it's seeing the spark of change happen to people. And I think it's um I think when you can't find the light, then you have to be it, right? And I I think that's a big part of this. I've watched you have communication with people who for every justification in their world hate you and without any real knowledge. And once they get to know you, I think we share this is there's a dignity, I think is the right word. There's a dignity that once you find becomes undeniable.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

Yeah. And and to me, you know, you used the word humiliation earlier, and and that is what I have found is any kind of uh destructive behaviors, whether it's from a child or from you know a violent adult, it all comes. I I don't think I've seen a case where this is isn't true. It all is born from humiliation. At the very, very root, if you keep looking and looking, looking at the bottom middle, it will be humiliation. It's the same if you look at Putin or whoever else in our world right now, even at that level. Uh, an antidote to humiliation that I consistently keep seeing is dignity. That's the only thing that can that can meet humiliation and and transform that humiliation sometimes, not always, but sometimes into something else. Something else can become possible. But that's the only thing that I see works with with um with humiliation that works against that.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

I agree. Dignity and empathy, I think, are human superpowers that we're I think we're out of shape in using those muscles as a as a human species right now. But I I have hope in us.

SPEAKER_01 34:19

Me too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

I really want this to be a conversation, and I I'm I'm in awe of so much of what you've already said.

SPEAKER_01 34:26

No, and I and I really appreciate that you're okay with me also, you know, asking because I'm really curious about you too. Because usually it doesn't go like that, usually it's just in one so I really appreciate you being willing, yeah, you being open and willing to also, you know, share your experiences.

SPEAKER_00 34:41

For for lack of a better term, you know, usually people just interview and then and then basically put you under front of the firing squad of questions and then come with their own agenda. And I want this to be different than that is I I want to see someone's soul. I want to know what lights them up. Like is a question that I would probably save for later, but since we're having this part of this conversation, is I would love to know, dear, what is the dream for you now moving forward?

SPEAKER_01 35:14

My dream is I didn't I didn't start making films because I wanted to be a filmmaker. And that really grates on the nerves of colleagues of mine who are filmmakers. So that's that I'm not trying to disrespect or downplay the filmmakers. Right. So that that wasn't the purpose. The purpose was always to try to understand, understand some of the most divisive, complicated, ugly issues of our time. And the reason for trying to understand them is to try to locate, well, where are the cracks? Where where could we as individuals or as societies or systems do something different? How could we intervene in some of these issues in a way that produces different or better results than what we're seeing right now? So whether that's violence or extremism or any kind of other kind of again, destructive uh outcomes in our societies and families. And so the moral of the story for me, after every single film that I've made, is that it's all it's all about our humanness. That's what it comes down to. It's all about people are just people. I know they've done things, I know they say things, I know they've got the whatever flags and slogans or whatever. But people are people, and every single one of us, every single one of us, it doesn't matter what seat we sit in and what life experience and story that we come from, we all have a need to be seen and to be heard and to be treated like we matter, and to wish that someone care about us and to want to be loved and to love, and to have someone that sees us and believes in us and is willing to take a chance on us and believes in us even when we don't. So we all have that. Um, and that has been the the kind of conclusion that that it all comes down to basic human needs that are unmet in our societies and in our lives. That's true for all of us. And then the next step becomes and how do people then address those needs that are not being met? Depending on what kind of circumstances and environment you are in, you either choose a destructive path, whether you either destroy yourself or people around you, or you choose something that's more productive and more useful, both to yourself and to the people around you. And the differentiator, why did I, and I would love to hear what it is is the case for youth, because it always bothered me when I used to sit with some of the jihadis of, you know, I would find myself relating to some of their experiences of discrimination and racism and falling between chairs and all the kind of stuff that we've been talking about. Many of them said the same thing to me, and wanting a sense of belonging and purpose and meaning and doing something greater than themselves. And I always remember thinking, well, why do I pick up a camera and you pick up a gun? What's the difference? And the difference is who shows up when we're at our most broken and at our most lost and at our most alone. Who is it that shows up? And for them, it was a recruiter that that targeted that pain very cynically, but met them with love, met them with everything that they were craving at the time, and then turned that, then weaponized that basically for their own agenda. Whereas I was lucky enough to have my mother and other women and people in my life who loved me, who were willing to stay in it with me as I figured my way through it. So that's the what separates us. So, with all the reason I'm saying all of that is so what my dream is, is I want to create a response in our society now, especially when it comes to our younger people, that addresses some of this, that trains adults that are in contact with young people. So, whether that's teachers or social workers or coaches or whatever it is, whoever works, you know, youth workers, whoever's working with young people, train them to truly see people and to truly be that person that lights that spark, that lights that light or sees that light in someone. And so to teach them the practice of dialogue, to teach them the practice of how to see somebody, teach them and how to support critical thinking and emotional intelligence in our young people, and make it safe for them to have the conversations that they typically avoid and to be the adult that is strong enough to sit there and hear the truth about what our young people are actually really feeling and actually really going through and what they really actually need from us and not be scared or or pushed away or thrown off by that. So I'm right now in the very beginning stages of forming a um a process, a methodology, a response that is based on everything that I've done up until this point in my life, but putting it into classrooms, putting it in the hands of people who can do something. Um so that's my dream. My dream is to do better for our next generation. And my dream is to be able to acknowledge the the human and to humanize each other and ourselves to hold on to our humanity as much as seeing it in somebody else, but really holding on to our own and teaching that as an actual learnable skill and and a learnable way of actually being in the world and being with each other. So the relational, the human, the interpersonal, really supporting that as much as I possibly can. As a long answer.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

It was it was a beautiful answer. I find myself nodding, and what I here's the first thing I'm gonna tell you, and I'm gonna say this publicly so you can hold me to it. Okay. You have a teammate. If there are ways that I can help you in that process, because I share your mission, and I am here to help you on that dream. Because I I think it's the difference. And um I was I was thinking in the middle of that. And this is something that I have kind of struggled with from my own perspective when it comes to this, and it just your words put it into almost crystallized it for me into a form that I can understand, which is what I realize now is so many of the most hateful and most destructive were the most delicate, open-hearted children.

unknown 42:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:07

But they never got love. And the only love they got was by doing something terrible. And so what they did is they leaned into the terrible. And I think we can give them a path for the other ones not to go down that path, but also I think we can create a path for some of them to come back, which I I think you've subtly done in a lot of your work, is you've given people an idea that they can be seen and loved and cared for and that they are enough just as they are. Yeah. And they slowly start to question the dark parts of what they've done.

unknown 42:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 42:42

Yeah, because you know, I mean, you know this more than me, you know, be uh being the our artist that you are, the the that we're all the hero of the story in our own heads, right? So so even the neo-Nazis that I've sat with, or the jihadis, or the guy who killed his his wife, they they all in their mind they don't wake up. Again, there will be some psychopaths and some, so there's that caveat. There will always be people who just are absolutely numb and disconnected, and it's just cruelty and sadism, and that's just what it is. So that absolutely exists. But the vast majority of people that again do things that are violent or that are destructive, they still think they're the good guy. In their mind, they're the good guy. They're not, they don't wake up every day thinking, uh, okay, I'm I'm the villain of the story, I'm the bad guy. They they everybody thinks I'm doing the right thing. I'm not doing and one of the the neo-Nazis that I can't even says it. Yeah, it justified that this is the right thing, this is righteous, this is I'm doing this, or I have to do this type of violence, or this, or this, because out of loyalty for this person, or because I'm protecting somebody. So it's there's always some sort of noble or righteous or meaning given. There's some sort of story built around that that puts you at the center. Of it as a hero, not as the villain, right? Because we all have because most of us don't have the capacity to do awful things to each other. So we have to tell ourselves certain stories. Storytelling is so, so, so powerful. So we have to tell ourselves certain stories to be able to harm other people, to be able to dehumanize somebody else, to be able to also cut ourselves off from our own humanity as well. So if we are to interrupt that, it is to take that impulse that most people have of wanting to do something good, of thinking I'm a good guy. And giving it, like you're saying, giving it a way, a way and a form and a way to express that, that can hold people, that can hold something that they're trying to hold that isn't violent, that isn't hateful, that isn't awful for other people and for themselves. I mean, I remember talking to one of the neo-Nazis who subsequently left, because I used to talk to him, going, don't you get tired? Isn't it too much? Like, isn't it, I mean, to be that angry and to be that uh hateful every single day you wake up thinking this stuff. I mean, and and he in later years he did go, yes, exhausting. It's actually exhausting, and you start feeling sick, like it's it's really, it's a heavy feeling even in my body. Um, so if we could, if we could have enough alternatives for people that they can see themselves in, and if we can have enough pictures of the future where people can see that I do belong in that picture as well, then we're doing something. Do we, you know, cure and fix everything? I don't know, but I I know that most of many of the ills in our society are born from us, completely discarding the emotional part of what it is to be a human being. But everybody that targets us, whether it's the algorithms or it's advertisers or it's um politicians, they know what buttons to push. They know we're emotional, right? And and so they completely use that and acknowledge that that's a huge driving force. And we on the other end of it don't. We just go, no, we're just rational, we're just very logical people, we're very sensible people, and we're not. We're not. We're both, we're both, and the integration of both is really, really important.

SPEAKER_00 46:28

Which is again where stories come in.

SPEAKER_01 46:29

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 46:31

And and by showing people healthier stories, correct. It makes it easier for people to pick and identify the between the two sides and imagine a world where people are together as opposed to being someone needs to be a scapegoat is a really short-sighted story because it means someone is inherently always losing.

SPEAKER_01 46:52

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

And it's destruction.

SPEAKER_01 46:55

It is, but that's also why, just even as a simple kind of uh illustration of it, it's why I I'm never a fan of debates. Um it's why I always use dialogue. Like dialogue to me is the practice or the posture to be in. Because when we're talking about dialogue, it's about two people who are could be very different, could disagree completely, but at the end of dialogue that is productive, it contains a part of you and it contains a part of me, and it's gone somewhere else. It's gone to a third place that didn't exist before we met. Whereas debate is I win, which means you have to lose. So again, the shame and the humiliation comes back in, and it's not about understanding. Dialogue is about understanding, not agreeing. So it's it's you know, so I think the way our society also behaves and is now more and more so, it is this um comfort in I'm right and you're wrong. I have the correct politics, you have the wrong politics, I have the right friends, you have the wrong friends, and I'm and it feels good to be self-righteous. I mean, I'm not gonna lie, I've done that too, and I do it still from time to time, but it's I try not to. But it is very satisfying. But to but to really try to see something from someone else's point of view is absolutely, I mean, it's crucially, crucially important. It is the muscle that we're losing, and it's and it's the most important muscle we need right now so that we can hold on to each other. So we then all just retreat into our separate corners, you know, talking to AI instead of with each other.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

Yeah, we and and people are doing that because it's easier, but again, AI is only feeding you and regurgitating back to you what you want to hear.

SPEAKER_02 48:45

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

And again, there's no growth there. The the debate aspect is it it's not an additive form, it's a competitive form. And while life has a nature of competitiveness to it, there's a place for that where the collaboration is you get something greater than the individual.

SPEAKER_01 49:05

Correct. And our survival has depended on, I mean, just as a species, has depended on our capacity for collaboration. You know, despite what the Elon Musks and all these people talk about, empathy being toxic and this not being okay, and you know, just encouraging more and more division, the divisions are the beginning of the end. I mean, that's that's division is not going to lead us anywhere productive. It's the collaboration and being able to tolerate and not even tolerate, but being able to understand each other and accept that we have differences. Accepting the differences doesn't mean that we agree. It doesn't mean that we give permission or it's okay or anything like that. It's but it means we still have to coexist. We still have to find a way to live together without destroying each other, or without completely cutting ourselves off from each other. I mean, that's just to me an unacceptable uh outcome of everything that's going on, is okay, well, let's just separate, slice the, slice the groups farther and farther and farther and farther down into narrower and narrower boxes. It doesn't work. You know, I remember even speaking with one of the neo-Nazis. He's like, oh, you know, I want the white nation and I want this and I want that, I want people you out, don't want any immigrants, I don't want you people, don't want and I was going, okay, it's fine. Let's say you get that then. Fantastic. You got your white nation, then what? He's like, well, then everything's gonna be great. I said, it's not gonna be great. I said, then suddenly you're gonna pick on somebody who's Catholic or somebody who's Protestant or somebody who has red hair or somebody who doesn't have brown hair, or so you know, it's you do you don't have blue eyes, you don't have red eye, whatever. You will always, that that path never ends. That's splitting us more and more and more and more down to you live in this kind of house versus that. It's never gonna end. So at some point, instead, let's figure out okay, we have this planet, we have the resources here that we have, we're gonna have to figure this out. We we do share this. We we're gonna have to we have to coexist. There is no alternative. There really isn't. The only alternative to dialogue and coexistence and making this relationship work is violence. And that never works. It's never worked. Eventually we talk. After all the wars, eventually people talk. So let's skip the violence, let's skip the destruction and talk now.

SPEAKER_00 51:23

Right, and the truth is at the end of that, you wasted so many resources, but most importantly, you wasted the most important resources, which is all the beautiful souls that you sacrificed in the war. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 51:34

And for what?

SPEAKER_00 51:36

And you can't get them back.

SPEAKER_01 51:37

You cannot get them back. You cannot write that wrong. You just cannot.

SPEAKER_00 51:42

Let me ask you, in reference to that, you have a documentary, which is Americans Veterans, The War Within. It's a tough watch. I come from a military family. I always tell people like, you I think it's important to reveal your prejudice or bias. Like, I came into that and knew it was going to be tough for me. And I watched, I was astounded by the amount of pain that so many of them had, but also the weird, strange justification at times. Talk to me about dehumanization. That used to be something that was largely happening in militaries or in subgroups, and I think that is invading society as a whole. Because dehumanization allows you to do things to people you would never do in any other sense.

SPEAKER_01 52:28

Yeah. No, and you're absolutely right. We're seeing that we're seeing that all across the US. I mean you're seeing it across many parts of the world, but in particular in the US, you're just seeing it openly now. It happens so quickly. Uh and I think the the I do think that in order to dehumanize somebody else, I think you have to first dehumanize yourself. And I think that's why what was really interesting to me, what one of the veterans talked about, was the training. Uh, why it used to, I mean, I know things have improved, but I'm assuming it'll be undone now. But um that the ruthlessness of a lot of the training to the soldiers, that the de so that the dehumanization actually starts there. So the dehumanization doesn't start with an enemy, it starts with you. So it's you have to be dehumanized first, you have to be belittled, you have to be shamed and humiliated. And the more you then that starts chipping away of your soul and who you are, yes, their justification is it makes you more efficient, you know, there there's a uniformity there, and the the following of the hierarchy and orders and all of that's very important. But there's also something else that happens, which I believe is very kind of strategic and deliberate, which is it also starts removing your inhibition towards committing violence against somebody, somebody else, which you need to be able to do if you are in the military, right? So the dehumanization I think starts with uh you slowly, slowly finding your own humanity compromised. Because you have to lose some part of yourself in order to take someone else's life. You know, in terms of our societal kind of tendency that we're seeing now, I think dehumanization it's it's starting with words and it started with the stories. It started with the stories that were told in both in the news but also in Hollywood and how we cast who gets cast as the hero and the villain and what type of roles or life experiences is somebody allowed to have in our public space. You know, the vast majority of people never met Muslims, for example, you know, I mean, pre or even really post-9-11. But the way the whole kind of Muslim story has been told in America is very specific and very particular. And when you really look at it more critically, you can see how Muslims over these decades have become dehumanized, or immigrants, or any other group, or you know, African-American people, like you, you can or women. It takes time and it plays out in all these different spheres. And now we've got social media where dehumanization is absolutely constant. Where, you know, calling somebody names, uh uh encouraging somebody's rape or murder or you know, some kind of harm towards somebody is complete commonplace. So I think we're we're living through an age of dehumanization, in fact. Because you're right, it it was reserved for battlefields, used to be, but it isn't. But this is how genocides happens, you know.

SPEAKER_00 55:44

I was gonna say, and so but those people come home and so many of them from your film. It was a it was uh incredibly powerful example of how many of them hate the things they've done and cannot forgive themselves, which is also part of the reason why we're seeing such shocking numbers of suicides and PTSD and and the anger and rage is being turned within because they're realizing the things they did outwardly there's no way to atone for.

SPEAKER_01 56:16

Yeah. Yeah, and and what was really the the reason I wanted to make the film is every film that I've made on some level touches on violence. But most forms of violence that I had addressed up until that point are all forms of violence that are considered illegal. So they're considered crimes. So whether it's you know, beating your wife or whether it's you know terrorism or or anything like that, they're all illegal forms of violence. Whereas war is a legal, even a celebrated form of violence that we engage in. So I wanted to look at what does that do to the soldiers themselves? You know, we've seen a lot of the films, you know, we we we hear a lot of the stories, but really firsthand from them, what does it really do? But then secondly, I wanted to look at that because this whole, again, this war on terror happened, you know, Iraq happened, or Afghanistan happened, Iraq happened, and then all the other uh, you know, Syria, Libya, all the others also happened. But there's been no dialogue and no processing and no self-reflection around any of that in the US. There's been no facing it, there's been no even talking with the veterans of what happened, you know, what what what did you see? What did you do? What happened to you? What's left of you? What do you need? You know, so and so many of them that I spoke to, they were like, Yeah, we just get medicated to just push it all down. You know, it's it's just, you know, or we self-medicate. Um, I remember speaking with one of the guys, and he was he was in Iraq, and he said, he said, I just I keep wanting to get that part of myself back. And he said, I will never, I I I it died. I will never get it back. So what is that? Why don't we as a society, we're all there waving the flags, sending people flags, and you know the parades and sending people off to war. We're all there clapping and cheering and thank you for your service. But when they come back and they've lost whatever they have lost of themselves or have taken of somebody else's, we don't talk to them. We find it too uncomfortable. We don't want to face it, and we don't face the fact that they're doing it. We say, Oh, well, you know, all the sacrifices that they made for us. Yes, but then so where are we after that? Where I mean we're not listening, we're not willing to listen to them. And for the most part, they don't even really want to talk to us because they know that we wouldn't understand, and we wouldn't understand, but we have to try. There was one incredible person, it's this was and it didn't end up in the film, but there was this incredible uh man, he was a special forces guy who's been to Somalia and many other places, Iraq and many places, and he said he really struggled with alcoholism and struggled with his rage and all of this. And he said, um he said, because of everything that he's gone through, he's studied a lot of other cultures and what they did with their warriors. And he said, you know, the Native American cultures in the US, he said there was a place for the warrior, there was a place for the person who had to go and do those things. And he said, What one of the rituals that they had, which he tries to recreate now, and I would have loved to have filmed it, but it just never quite worked out. He said, the the warrior is forever changed. When he comes back from battle, he is forever changed, and he will never be the same again. And he said, What we tend to do in American culture is we'll just call each other, and we're already half empty or half full, and we keep pouring our trauma into each other's glasses, and just we just keep passing it back and forth to each other as veterans, and that's it. And he said, Where where is what they were doing in this these some of these older cultures is because the warrior is forever changed, the community also has to be forever changed. So they would sit and they would speak and they would pour their trauma into the rest of the community so that the community had to tolerate and absorb part of the pain and part of what had happened in their name. So in their name is not just waving the flags, it's to take real responsibility for what our countries are doing to other people, but also to our own soldiers, to our own brothers and uncles and cousins, right? So that and and then the incre so there's the trauma of war and violence and what happens there, but then there's also the lies and the hypocrisies and what they were sold. One of the veterans that I spoke to, he said, he said, Look, I went after 9-11 and I was gung-ho, and I wanted to defend my country, and I want and I knew I was doing the right thing. And he said, and then I got sent to Iraq, and he said, you know, and I was really just right there. And he said, and then the story starts changing. Then there's no weapons of mass destruction, then there's not this, then there's no 9-11 connection, then there's no bin Laden. And he said, and he said, I was already starting to feel a lot of pain and a lot of trauma because of what I was witnessing and what I was doing. He said, but I used to have a story I could hang all that around and I could justify it. And he said, but when that story from our politician started to crumble and started to no longer make sense, he said, I had nowhere to hang it anymore. And he said, That's when I want to kill myself. Because then it has no place, then it was for nothing. What was it all for? And that those questions, we have to face those questions with them. And we don't.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:54

Yeah, people need support. And I will say, as um as the son of a Vietnam veteran. That was, I think, in many ways the beginning of us sending people off to a war that that you very much can debate the the reasons for and then all of the way things were carried out. But when they came back, as opposed to being welcomed back, like in World War II, we welcomed people back and we constructed a transition period for them.

unknown 1:02:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:26

We started to distance ourselves from veterans, and that generation internalized it and buried it, and that burying it became the standard. And as you get to our generation, when people like I was in that group post-9-11, you know, I actually started paperwork to enlist with this idea that I was going to be serving this greater purpose and protecting my loved ones. I I had a child already, and then my wife actually ended up being pregnant again. And I had other things I had to do here, because that's the other thing we don't talk about, is so many of our enlisted, this is their only way out of uh oftentimes poverty, and being ushered into this with this promise of what they're gonna get on the other side of that if they give this service and then they come home and we don't give them either the support that we promise them, but also we don't support them as a selective group in our society, and we don't ask them their stories, and it like you said, most people don't want to share theirs. I mean, I grew up in a household where my dad in those days we didn't have PTSD, right? Yeah, now we would call it PTSD, and and there would be more discussion of it, but we still don't have the mental health support for any of those people, and there's a portion of what happens at war that I don't know that you can justify or explain. They experience things that are beyond, I think, what human beings are supposed to.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:02

And culturally, old old communities used to get together, tribal societies used to get together and acknowledge, like you said, that they were changed and that the world was changed because of it. We have to take accountability that it makes all of us more selective about when we send people into these situations because you realize there is a cost to every battle.

unknown 1:04:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:26

And that cost is not paid just one time. No. The violence usually occurs in specific moments, but the cost continues for a lifetime.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:38

Yeah. And it's generational, you know, it's it's one of my colleagues who was uh there filming the film with me. His father was a Vietnam veteran as well, and he he said some of that too, and he was like, Oh, you know, we just used to think that he was just, you know, in a bad mood, or we just tried to avoid him when he was tired, or you know, and I didn't realize that actually was this, or he would never talk about that, or he would make this comment and not it's just this thing that we like to uh romanticize and and make into this big uh kind of poster thing rather than the reality of what it really is and what it does to people and what we don't do then as a result, the fact that we choose not to then, you know, thank you for your service, and then looking back on your phone. Really? There's this lack of engagement, this lack of willingness to listen, and lack of, like you say, accountability and responsibility that we contribute to this. You know, us wanting our oil prices this way or that way. I mean, all of that has consequences, and people go and have to do things and have things done to them that that shouldn't really happen. And like you said, the very actively are our young men and women targeted, especially young men targeted. In in uh underprivileged, uh in marginalized communities with the promise of this is a ticket out, this is a ticket to this and that college, or this is a, you know, this is a ticket for for just even a salary, an income for a while. And it's uh the people who make the decisions don't send their children. And that's you know, one of the vet no, and and that's the tragedy of all of this is is the incredible lack and disregard of what America's young men and women really go through and what they do to to facilitate the flag waving. People aren't really looking at that properly. And don't want to because it's too uncomfortable. It's it's uh and it's too dark. But we have but we have to. We truly have to. And then the next, I mean, so you know, because my th thought also was there's been no accountability for what the these militaries did in all those countries. Like there's no, there's no, there's not even any real numbers of the level of devastation that was caused there and those countries that have been uh destroyed for generations to to come now. So let's park that over here. But the fact that they haven't, you know, the the the leaders of our countries in in the US and Britain and all these places, there's been no accountability and no reflection. There's been no reckoning on what they even did to their own kids, their own sons and daughters of these countries, what they did to them and didn't do for them. Uh so I think that that's shameful. I think it's despicable. They should send their own children. Everybody that makes a decision to go to war should put their children on the absolute front line and then say, Go, we're gonna do it. Putin, Trump, all of these people, they should put their own children and own grandchildren on the front lines. If you're willing to sacrifice your own child, then tell me that I should sacrifice mine too. So it should be easy.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:06

Yeah, if you won't go, then you don't get too much. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:17

When we talk about that portion, right, let's talk a little more about like Islamophobia that has grown partially out of this concept. We we have villainized a group of people that most people in the United States very know very little about, if at all. Can you talk about Islamophobia a little and explain it for people? Because I I I think people pretend they know, but most people don't have a good concept.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:43

Islamophobia, how I would describe it, is is the dehumanization of Muslims. The the kind of the blanket broad brushes Muslims are either terrorists or they're rapists, or they are they all beat their wives, they're all abusive towards children and women, and that they're so barbaric that somehow it's justified that we, you know, I mean, when Afghanistan happened, you know, George Bush was beating the drum of we're gonna go liberate Afghan women, and of course it has nothing to do with Afghan women. All the kind of the warmongers, I would say, they they try to dress up the the this type of dehumanization with some sort of self-righteous, well, actually, we're again we're the heroes, we're doing the right thing, these Muslims are the barbaric people, they blew up the trade centers, and therefore all of them must be that. Uh and and you're right, I think in the psyche of of Americans, Muslims didn't particularly exist uh in any kind of pronounced way pre-9-11. I think before that maybe it was like flying carpets or some kind of other, you know, ridiculous picture that people had in their heads about Muslims. But you know, from the moment 9-11 happened, there was there was that was an opening, I think. Obviously, something, you know, that was a huge and devastating attack. And that that cannot be underestimated or under uh appreciated. So something needed to happen, but something else could have happened alongside with it, which is really starting to open up the door to try to understand those people. What is going on over there and what has been America's role in those countries pre-9-11? You know, what is this entire relationship with that part of the world? How does it relate to us? Why does it relate to us? What is all of this? But none of that was done. And and I remember even the I was in the US on and off even then, and I remember watching the CNN uh coverage and all the kind of mainstream news coverage around it, and it was all war drums. It was all we're embedding with soldiers, we're doing this, we're doing that. There was no critical questions around, so but what is this? What is the point of this? You know, and and what is this gonna cost? What is this gonna cause? And what do we do? I'm angry, I know I'm angry, I just got attacked, I'm angry, but but so then what? What do I do after I've lashed out? What then? There was no critical uh uh examination of any of that at the time I remember. But anyway, going back to your your question about Islamophobia, it's it's basically the dehumanization and discrimination against Muslims based on the fact that they are Muslim and all the kind of tropes uh uh around you know what what these kind of incredibly caricatures uh of Muslims has become in American kind of popular culture or in huge parts of the US where people haven't met Muslims, is this that they are violent, inherently um uncivilized or barbaric or you know terrorists, and they all hate us and they all want to blow us up. I I do put a lot of blame on on the media, I have to say. Because they they told that story. They didn't tell a different story. They really didn't. And then later on they they did kind of did some placating, and oh look at how they pray, and oh, how nice, and let's go home with a Muslim and how do they fast and how do they but there's not no kind of depth and real humanizing of any Muslims, truly.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:24

I think that's one of the problems that we have systemically in our media. It's one of the things I try to do when I'm writing and producing things is I'm trying to put things into the world that look like the world we live in and demystify what again, you and I started talking about being different, and I think that's a preconceived notion. I had a very different perspective leading into this period of very strong Islamophobia in the United States because I grew up reading the Quran because of people I worked with. I was exposed to that early. It was very interesting because they weren't trying to convert me, they wanted me to understand, and I was really blessed in so many ways to have been exposed to so many different cultures and different thought processes. But even then, I mean I didn't have a full picture because you can't get a full picture from the outside of what a group or a society lives like, but also there is not one universal version of any one group. No, hate is growing and extremism is is kind of growing around the world. Absolutely each time we're picking different groups in different places, and the caricature of people. Yeah, I mean, the amount right now, if you look, Islamophobia is on the rise again. Yeah, the rise of hatred against people in the LGBTQ plus community, the growing amount of anti-Semitism, the the growing amount of rage against Iran, for example, at the current time, where most people don't know anything about Iran or the people there, the prejudgment on both sides against Palestinians. Yeah, it's a very interesting thing because this is also something is the moment you take a stance on either side, someone wants to label you an extremist.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:22

And the reality is, first of all, questioning a government does not make you anti-someone. It's not a hate thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:31

No.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:31

Everyone should be questioning their governments, everyone should be questioning the actions of leadership because that's how we hold them accountable and make sure that we're not committing atrocity.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:40

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:41

And you know, genocide happens when when people look the other way while governments do things for personal gain.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:51

Yeah. And justify, you know, and and justify in our minds that it's okay to look away now. And and when when when outrage or pain or solidarity or sympathy and empathy becomes conditional on what you look like or what your affiliation, whatever, whether it's religious or you know, any other kind of affiliation, whether when it becomes conditional on that, we know we're on a slippery slope then. You know, either either you stand by and live by the values that you preach and extend that to all human beings, regardless of their affiliations, then if if you're unable to do that, then we are not who we say that we are. Then we have then we are spineless, principleless, baseless, valueless. So it it it's our principles only matter if we're willing to acknowledge this injustice and this injustice and be able to, you said it very early on. It's possible to hold two thoughts in our mind at the same time. You know, life is complicated. Life is not either this or that. It's usually both, a little bit of both and a little bit of something else too. You know, now if you look at all these different groups that are being targeted very actively and specifically in the US, again, whether you're looking at immigrants, or you're looking at Muslims, or you're looking at LGBTQ, or the anti-Semitism that's rising, or the kind of anti-trans the rhetoric that's you know become so incredibly comfortable for everybody now as well. The reality is the majority of people across the US don't get to encounter people from those groups, usually, right? Or not in any meaningful, full way. Like, you know, the one of the neo-Nazi uh leaders that I interviewed, he lives in Detroit. And I was like, how can you not have like, I mean, you live in Detroit. How can you just be in a white thing? And he's like, no, no, no, I I would see people.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:43

Right. But a lot of people have experienced people of these groups, but don't know it because those people don't feel safe to share.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:50

Exactly. And he was like, well, but no, but I've never, he's like, yeah, I'll go to the post office and I'll do this and I'll do that. So you've never had any real, real proper interaction other than, hey man, how you do it, like just that kind of stuff. So there's no meaningful connection there, no meaningful time and exposure to each other. So then the only way that we get to know each other is through the lens of the media, the kind of films or you know, series or other media that's created or social media. So that's that's an incomplete experience of the other, right? And so for me, going back to what we were talking about really at the towards the beginning of our conversation, to me, that experience of being different and being very alert to the consequences of us being unable to deal with our differences is something that's been a through line in my life, my personal life, but also in all the work that I've done is I want to demystify the difference. And I and I want to I want us to be able to create moments or to create work where we can see ourselves in each other. And I try to put it in very extreme context because then it becomes really obvious and easier to see in many ways. Um, the reality that, you know, we all have so much more in common than than we don't. And it's uh, you know, with every group of people that I've I've spent time with who at the beginning have either been you know outright hostile to me or very suspicious and going, well, I know your politics is this. And I'm very open and honest. I put everything on the table. I'm not trying to trick you, I'm not trying to, I'm gonna be your friend and then I'm actually this, this is who I am, this is what I believe, this is this is this. And I know you don't, and that's okay. But I I'm here because I want to for us to be able to talk and for us to be able to understand each other a little bit better. Don't have to become friends, don't have to like each other, don't have to agree. That's okay. But we also don't have to hate each other, right? So we can start there. Inevitably, once you spend a bit of time with each other, things do change and something else opens up because we do meet on that human level. And all the differences, you know, because people always ask me, well, how do you how do you kind of engage with people that are so profoundly not just different, but that wish you dead? And what I try to say is that I don't start there. I mean, I let them kind of do that thing because some people they need to beat their chest and do those kind of slogans, and that's fine. So once they're done with that, I try not to start at where I know we are very different. Yeah, I know I'm not gonna out-argue some racist or some jihadi, I'm not gonna outverse some Muslim extremist either, necessarily. My verse is not better than his verse, and vice versa, right? So that's a losing, that's a lose-lose. So what I have to do is I have to find where is it? So where is it where I can hit something that where we can actually connect and where we can find some kind of common ground. And what I find always comes at the heart or at the bottom of it is it is the very human stuff. You know, it's the fact that we're both insecure, that we both fall short, that we're both afraid, that we both want this for our kids or hope this for ourselves, and that we get scared and we get nervous and all of that stuff, and the pain and the brokenness, that that's what we have in common. And that's when we're able to get to that part of ourselves and each other, something else happens, and then there's something that builds from that where you can start then approaching the differences and the harder and harder and tougher and tougher differences, and then it becomes bearable, and then you can actually have that conversation, even though you're not agreeing, but you can have it, you can bear it, you can hang in there with each other, and that's so important. So it's connecting on a very, very human level first, uh, or as early as possible is what I always try to go. Otherwise, it's just noise. Otherwise, I don't need to, I'm not sitting with a neo-Nazi because I want to hear what a neo-Nazi thinks. I know what he thinks. Or jihadi, I'm or or a misogynist or whatever. I already know, so that's boring. I want to hear what else. So, but what else? What's behind it? I'm looking for the light. Where is it? And maybe it's not there. But then, like you said, then you still come from that place yourself, so that maybe he'll be reminded of something. Maybe he can encounter himself, and that's what truly ended up happening in a lot of the films that I've made. People think it's me, it's not really me, it's I don't bring contempt to the table, even though I really want to sometimes. So I try not to come from a place of contempt, and when the contempt is absent, and when my desire to want to change their mind or to out-argue them isn't there, when they're saying things out loud to my face, they're also have they're they're and they're getting to finish. Some of them are having to kind of encounter themselves for the first time without contempt. Because they know what to do with the contempt. They know what to do with my disgust towards them. They're used to that, so they know how to handle it, but they don't know how to handle me being calm and me going, okay, so you know what else?

SPEAKER_00 1:22:25

Yeah, compassion is a is a different thing, right? To be met with the compassion leaves the space almost for a mirror, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:32

It does. And they don't they not only they don't that they don't expect it, they're not used to it. And that is quite sad in and of itself, right? That they've never been treated like that. That they've never been tre I mean, one of the guys who's so obnoxious in so many different ways, but he's like, Yeah, you've been, you know, you've been nothing but you know, nice and you know, you kind of annoyed me on a lot of stuff because you keep pushing me and keep going, why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? But he's like, you know, I'd I consider you to be a friend. And I remember just trying not to just have my jaw drop on the floor going, what? How am I your friend? But he's like, you know, it's nice to have friends. You know, everybody needs friends. It's really, really if if we can bear it, there's usually something else there. Um but I'm not saying that people should make themselves unsafe or put themselves in, you know, situations like that. I'm just my point of always trying to talk about some of this is to just share that there's more to people than than we think. And many people, you know, so we give up on people really, really easily. And very often people have given up on themselves too. So they kind of expect it from us. Uh and I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:53

Some of that is it. I think they've I think some of that is exactly it, is that they've given up on themselves, so the hate and the fight and being angry at other people is much easier.

unknown 1:24:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:05

And then when you fight them, it's like, oh, see, that's exactly what I expected.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:11

Yeah, exactly. And it gives them it actually gives them more strength. It gives them it gives them something to push against. Because that's what they want. And that they're so practiced, they know how to deal with that. But they don't know how to deal with somebody not um yelling back. Even though I want to.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:35

Listen, it I I I know. I this is one of those things. I I joke with people that I'm kind of a kindness assassin. It's like I I will meet you with kindness, but I like I I'm not here to be a pushover. And yeah, there are times where you're like, man, I would love to I'd love to hit you between the eyes for this.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:53

I mean, I haven't gotten really close. I'm not even gonna lie, but but then I have to get myself together and go, no, I have to go back in and have to, you know. Because that's what they also want. You know, so I also don't want to give them the satisfaction of pushing me off, you know, balance basically. Because then they don't have to be themselves, then they don't have to drop the guard, then the shield doesn't come down, right? Then it's a constant fight, and I need the shield to drop because I want to see who the person really is and how they became who they've become.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:25

Let me ask you, because we talked about extremism largely where people feel that someone is the other or different, feel like someone is taking from them, right? But I want to ask you about the misogyny and the anti-women sentiment that it that that like is settling in and re-establishing itself at the current time.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:48

Because like to quote Tupac, like, we all got our name from a woman and our game from a woman and came from a woman. Like, how the how in the world people who are all connected to women one way or another feel the justification to abuse women and the rise in that?

unknown 1:26:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:05

For you, you've sat and you've studied this area. How do you explain that? And what do you wish people knew, or what is the way to connect with people to stem that tide?

SPEAKER_01 1:26:15

It's very, very hard. I find it really hard. I have filmed lots of very violent people. Uh but but like you're saying, with most of those individuals, the person that they had dehumanized was somebody that they had no meaningful connection to, knew very little about. So it was very easy to demonize and dehumanize and kind of push them at a distance where it was possible to both hate but also commit violence, for example. Um, but with when I was doing this film about guys who were committing violence against their own partners, I just remember going, this is a different category of guy. Like this is this is something else. I mean, this is not somebody that they've never met or never talked to. This is somebody that they share a bed with and often share kids with. So what is it in him that makes him do that? How is that even possible? When we're talking about the humiliation uh earlier on, humiliation sits at one of the roots of this as well. But then it's also power and control and dominance, right? So whatever humiliation that person might have felt in their earlier life or in other parts of their life, people often need to kind of what's it called, um, compensate for what they feel like they've lost. So if it's position or privilege or power or control, whatever, you know, so if it's somebody who has this type of job or that type of job or gets treated this way or that way, for example, in other parts of their lives, some of them feel the need to equalize or to or to exert dominance in their realm at home. So to so so to make up for whatever it is that they feel like they're losing elsewhere. So at least. Here, I can this domain I can control, I can control it by force, I can be violent towards her, I can get whatever I want. So you know, it's how do we reach people like that? I found that film really, really hard to make. Um I think we have to start earlier in life. I think we have to have conversations with our boys about what it means to be someone safe to be with. You know, I think our young people, especially our boys, have a lot of questions about life, about how to be, how to take up space, or how to look, or how to be with girls, or just how to be in life. And I think there there isn't a lot of conversation around that that's being had with boys. So I think they take their questions elsewhere. I think they take them in real life to people that might not be particularly healthy, and now they've got access to all these other figures online that are definitely not very healthy that are providing them with answers to the questions that they have, or the insecurities, or the I'm unsure about this, you know, how how how does this work or what is that? And they have very clear answers. And these people online, uh, these kind of you know misogynist influencers, I mean, they're just cashing in, just like the jihadi recruiter, just like the neo-Nazi recruiter. They're just there to to prey on your unsure feeling, of your confusion, of your questions of what it is that you're trying to figure out. They're taking that, though, because I used to think, oh, it's completely different, but it's actually the same type of radicalization, if we want to call it that, and the same points that they're exploiting in young people, which is that more tender, sore, vulnerable parts of human beings that they see and they target and they speak to, and they give you very, very clear answers that you know, because they're weaponizing it and profiting also from it. So I think we have to have conversations with our young uh men and boys, but most of all, those conversations cannot be about telling them you have to respect women and that that you know women's rights are great and feminism is great. It cannot start there. We have to instead support them in how to think, not just what to think, because as soon as somebody I have friends of mine who have sons who are who who say, Oh, you know, he's got some really problematic views, and I try to talk to him, and then he says something really obnoxious back, and it just kind of collapses. And I think the way in with our young people is that we have to be willing to listen to them first and see what it is that they're actually wondering and what it is that they're actually going through. And then slowly, slowly, slowly we can start getting to the other parts. But first, I think they've lost trust in us. I think a lot of our young men have lost trust in all of us in in institutions, in the media, in in you know, certain types of politics. And they have nowhere to go with it. They have nowhere to go with it. It's easier to go for the quick fix answers, especially when nobody's engaging with you at the other end. And the only way that people engage with you is tell you how what a what a shitbag you are and what a misogynist you are, and and instantly with the labels, even if they are, that's not the way to get through, right? So, so like in the UK, you know, after you know, adolescence, did you see adolescence? The whole Netflix. Yeah, yeah. So after that, like the British government is now going to teach boys how to respect girls because oh, there's huge issues, or we didn't know. And they're just reinforcing what the boys already think. The boys already feel like victims, they already feel like they're looked down on, they already feel like they're being treated like a problem child, so they resist any kind of help or any kind of incoming because they feel like it's it doesn't truly understand them. Yeah? So just telling them what they it is, and just telling them what to think isn't going to work. So we have to work with them on everything else that's also going on in their lives. I mean, in some ways, if we want to think about this, the jihadi recruiters and the neo-Nazis, in some ways, they have it right. They meet our young people where they are, and they try to see what the actual wounds or the actual questions are, and then they try to provide answers that are that are incredibly destructive answers, but they provide answers. And I feel like we as a society and even as parents don't necessarily have the same patience often because we just go, What's wrong with you? Like, you know, you're supposed to think this is good, and that's I mean, that's just ridiculous what you think, and that's not gonna get us anywhere. So I think we have to take more time to really, really speak with them, and we have to help humanize women and girls to them slowly, slowly, slowly, because they have dehumanized them. They really have.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:00

As a dad, I will say good men need to do a better job of holding boundaries with other men.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:07

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:08

Far too long, men have allowed other men to get away with bad behavior. Absolutely. I think so. And then what ends up happening is young men are hearing these like outlandish but seemingly beneficial arguments, and they're following this online person who tells you that they're dating all these people and they're doing all these things. That doesn't mean they have a good life or that they're having actual healthy relationships. Healthy relationships are hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:36

They are.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:37

There's no quick fix to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:39

No, but the quick fixes, you know, sound very appealing. They are very appealing, you know, that's the whole point. You know, rather than all these guys that are out there giving advice to young boys about how to get girls or how to deal with that entire dynamic, there should be women giving that advice, right? What do women actually like? What do women actually look for? Well, you know, how do you how do you be safe? How do you be someone that a girl actually wants to be around so that she feels comfortable and all the sex like, but the girls are also finding themselves in a lot of the same or in their own kind of uh confusion? I had a young woman who was asking me, she was like, Oh, look, the the I just have a you know started seeing this guy, he wants to have sex and this and that, and and you know, and he wants to choke me. And you know, is that normal? Is that is that you know a normal part of sex? Because he says that it is. And my first reaction was, what did I do to deserve this question? Like, why are you asking me?

SPEAKER_00 1:34:37

Listen, I was a high school coach for over a decade. There's nothing worse than when a kid comes and asks me one of these questions because I'm like, oh, I have a position of trust and and kind of authority in your life, and at the same time, I don't want to answer this question. I don't want to have this conversation, but at the same time, I don't want to abandon you.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:58

No, exactly. But it's that thing of hanging in there with them and not being scared of it, not being put off or scared of it or pushed away by it. But I I think you have absolutely hit the nail on the head. I think this is a men's issue, and the incredible guys like you know, Jackson Katz and others, you know, say that very clearly that this is not a women's issue. You know, male violence is not a women's issue, it's a men's issue. And men have to step up and have to mentor and support and guide and be there for our young men and teach them how to be safe and and and have the conversations that are uncomfortable but absolutely necessary. Why are they going online to find these answers? Why why aren't there men stepping up? It doesn't have to be a father, even, but other just safe male figures in their lives. Why aren't they stepping in to have those conversations? I mean, they desperately need to have these, they they want to engage. I was speaking with some high school boys a couple of weeks ago, and they were saying the same thing. They were like, you know, nobody's willing to really listen. Nobody's willing to really properly sit. Everybody wants to tell us what we should think, and everybody wants to tell us what's wrong with us and what we're doing so badly, but nobody wants to really listen, you know, and that's not to say we should excuse any of their behaviors or their views or anything like that, but we have to start somewhere that can lead us to somewhere better. And if that's the goal, if the goal isn't just to scold somebody and again for me to be right and for him to be wrong, then we have to meet them where they are. And we have to listen and we have to have the patience to sit through whatever it is that they need to share or work through with you. And again, so sitting in that space without contempt so that they can also hear themselves and process all of this. But men have to step up. Absolutely, I agree. I mean, I have a younger brother, and I keep saying to him too, like, you know, you have to, you guys have to talk about mental health, you have to talk about loneliness, you have to talk about all the insecurities and confusion and all the stuff that you feel and your emotions. I mean, we don't allow men to be full human beings who can feel the entire spectrum of what it means to be a human. They're allowed anger and aggression. That's it. You know, you're not allowed to feel anything else or to express it.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:20

Or toughness. We just endure.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:23

Just put on that, yeah, just I'll suffer through this. It's just it's I got this. I got and you know, you don't got this. We have to acknowledge though the emotional part of human beings.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:35

I I 100% agree. I have a couple more questions I want to ask you real quick. First one is kind of a short one. I've been thinking about this, and I like to ask people this, and I'm gonna be fascinated by your answer, which is what are three words that describe you? What are the three words? If somebody wanted to know who Diacon is, what are the three words for you? What are yours?

SPEAKER_01 1:37:57

Uh loving, uh patient, low blood pressure, wow. No, that's it's why I can, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:08

That was brilliant, yeah. I love that. And unexpected.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:13

Yeah. Curious, obsessively curious, too, actually.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:17

Me too, me too.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:18

Okay, now to that end, we've talked about all these big subjects. You literally walk into the lion's den and have sat across from some of the most extreme groups. What is it that you want to tell your children that you want your children to take from your work?

SPEAKER_01 1:38:44

I think to not be afraid to be who they really are To not hide their heart because when they do, there's so many ways that that can go wrong or be very, very unhealthy. Um because that that's what's happened to most of the people that I've spoken with. Yeah, I think the most important thing is to somehow guard who they are and and try to be that as much as possible, despite all the stuff that will kind of come and all the expectations that will come, but to hold on to that and to know that that's okay and that that's enough.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:37

But from the work itself, I mean, because I do sometimes think, because they they're too small to know what I I mean, they know I make films and they know they're not allowed to watch them.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:47

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:48

Uh yet. Um but yeah, but I do think sometimes, you know, what would what would they think?

SPEAKER_00 1:39:53

What would they um I can tell you one thing, they're gonna think their mom is a badass. Like they're gonna be. You think so? They're not gonna think I think mom is brave. Um listen, every kid thinks what's wrong with my parents. So if the expectation is it comes with the territory and usually means you're probably doing something right because that's usually when they look at you crazy. I can tell you I have grown kids, so I, you know, I would I would tell you the the way I look at that is if they don't look at you like you're crazy every once in a while, you're probably not speaking the truth.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:28

Exactly. Yeah, but I I I don't know. I mean, I just I just from everything that I've done, I just want them to know that you have to hold on to yourself and you have to be willing to hold on to what is good in other people, but not if it becomes destructive for you, you know. So I'm I'm not in favor of because people sometimes misunderstand the w when when I say that we have to be patient and we have to meet people who do these things and engage with people who who use violence, but you know, I not for one second think that it's the responsibility of people who have been exposed to violence to have to reform their their abuser or the perpetrator or anything like that. I think absolutely that line cannot be crossed. I think women and girls should be m made safe and and their rights and their safety has to be absolutely the top priority. And similarly, people that are on the on the receiving end of hatred and violence of other forms, it's also not their job to reform neo-Nazis or racists or anti-Semites or bigots of other kinds. But I do think that as a general rule you know, people often ask me if I do the work that I do because I'm trying to they they say, you know, are you trying to save them and are you trying to rescue their humanity? And my answer is always that that's the wrong way around of looking at it. I do what I do and I try to meet people in the way that I do because I'm trying to hold on to my humanity.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:20

So I'm trying to s I'm trying to hold on to myself, I'm trying not to lose myself, is the important part. And so that's what I would want my kids to learn is to hold on to their own heart, try to refuse dehumanizing anybody else, try to refuse all of that that diminishes other people. And try to like, you know, like what you're doing and what you said at the beginning is you know, try to see if you can find the light in people. But you don't do that at the expense of your own safety. You don't do that if somebody's gonna harm you or physically hurt you or anything like that. But choose that as a way to show up to life. Choose that as a way of meeting life for your own sake. It's it's less about actually them, it's more about what I want my kids to to hold on to of themselves. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:17

It's beautiful. It's beautiful. I actually think it's the best way to kind of end our interviews because I I think that's the message for everyone is hatred and bigotry is as much a problem for the people who are doing it as it is for those who are receiving it, whether they realize it or not, because they are limiting not only the lives of other people, but they are destroying the very community and the very idea of what they want. And they have to understand that that's part of the problem. But for people to realize and hold on to you and I both started talking about this at the beginning, is your story, my story, our story, is one of seeing people and facing their rage and deciding to choose to be kind from it and do something beautiful with it because we didn't lose our hope and our faith in humanity.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:16

Yeah, it's incredible. I yeah, it's beautifully, beautifully put. I want to ask you a lot of things, yeah, actually. But it will will go on for a long time, and I feel like your your colleagues are gonna go, oh my goodness. Um well, can I just ask you though, just just before you go?

SPEAKER_00 1:44:35

You can ask me anything at any time, not just now.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:38

Why? Thank you. Uh but but why are you doing this kind of work? What do you think this moment is asking of you? This moment in the US, this moment in the world right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:50

I think the world feels dark for a lot of people. Yeah, and I think when it feels dark is the time when you have to be the light. I think a big part of this is I've decided to do this at this time and seek out people that I think carry a message that the world needs to hear, but also I want people to realize that we are so much more alike than we are different.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:15

And that at this particular time I'm uniquely slated in a place in American culture from the standpoint of I came as an immigrant. This is the first country that most of you know, my dad's whole side of the family is the first time they ever had a country that really felt like home for them. And the principles that this country were founded on are very important for them and became very important for me. And to see them backsliding or to see people losing rights is unacceptable for me. And, you know, there's the Mr. Rogers' quote of like, be the helper, right? Like wanting to be a helper, look for the helper when things are are struggling and when things are hard. If I have a voice and I have a place in this society, and I was blessed to have an elevated voice from my work early in my career, none of that has value unless I give it back and use it to empower other people. Because I'm not here to preach at anybody, I'm here to open the door to various forms of wisdom and to really hope that someone will hear it and that one heart will open and that one light will light another light, and that people will light each other up.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:35

How did you come to this? How did you did you go through a lot of turmoil to arrive at this? Or did you get here? Was it a kind of a short distance for you to to come to this uh and realize that this is how you want to respond to life? Or or did you take a lot of detours?

SPEAKER_00 1:46:53

Well, we all take a lot of detours. And have you found peace? I think you make peace. I I think so many people are trying to find peace. It's a choice. It's a choice, but also this is where I think we've perverted the concept of what a soldier or a warrior is. My dad raised me to be a soldier and a warrior in many ways.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:14

But a good warrior trains to maintain the peace, not to fight or to win. The goal is to be a warrior so that you can maintain peace when it is just, and to know when and where to use force and how much, and to be conscious of how sacred life is. And I think all of the conflict in my life, living through all the controversies, living through all the wars over press and free speech, and I think I became uniquely aware of the impact that we have, but also I've watched hate ripple through and destroy groups and communities.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:55

And I don't know how to be silent in that process. I only know how to stand. Um they say fight, flight, freeze, fawn. Yes. Um, freeze and fawn only made me an easier target.

unknown 1:48:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:13

And I tell people all the time flight was not an option because there was nowhere to run when you're a public person. And in some ways that gave me an incredible blessing because it meant I had to plant my feet, stand my ground, whether I wanted to or not. And I often ended up standing in front and fighting, even if it wasn't a fight I picked. And what I would say in that is if you realize the power in that is so I'm very conscious of the fights I choose, and I try to be very conscious of how I fight and in what way I try to minimize any collateral damage. And that's something I think we underestimate in all conf conflict of any kind. Things are never the same once you have the fight. So repair is incredibly important, and I I think we've become a world that's very limited on our concept of repair because we want repair for ourselves instead of for others.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:07

I agree. That's amazing, yeah. Yeah, it's it's how to bring all of that into our society now, formalizing all of all of the all of that, all of those incredible human qualities that allow us to move on and that allows us to to hold on to ourselves and each other, I think. It's all the stuff we teach our kids.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:31

All of it. It is. And yet we don't practice it. Yeah, well, we get, I think we get out of practice. I think you said something earlier that I think was really wise, which is people just self-justify and want to be the hero in their story. And what I would say to people is be the hero in your story, but make sure your actions don't diminish someone else or deny them the ability to be the hero in their story. There are times I'm gonna be the villain in someone else's story, even if I stand for the right thing, depending on who it is. But understanding that you come and and to have the consideration and awareness to look across the aisle and look at the other person and think to yourself, what is the impact I'm gonna have here? And and can I live with that impact or why is that impact? Because every action I have, even if I have good intentions, yeah, there is a consequence.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:23

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:24

Keep up the good work.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:26

Oh, likewise.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:28

And keep raising those children, they're in good hands.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:31

Thank you. I hope so. I hope so. Thank you. It means a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:35

I'm so thankful for you making this time, Dia.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:38

I'm so grateful to you. I just think it's incredible what you're doing. Well, and that you're shining lights.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:45

I want to help as you build your your framework for people.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:49

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:49

So you let me know.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:51

I will, actually, thank you.