Speaker 1: You take somebody my age. Born in December of ninety eight,
Speaker 1: I'm twenty four. I was I think two years old
Speaker 1: when nine to eleven happened. I was going to middle
Speaker 1: school when the Great Recession happened. I was graduated in
Speaker 1: high school when the twenty sixteen presidential election happened. I
Speaker 1: graduated college in twenty twenty when the pandemic hit the
Speaker 1: capitol riots happened, and you had the Trump Byen election,
Speaker 1: and now it's twenty twenty three. Not a great sample
Speaker 1: size of democratic progress and growth.
Speaker 2: Like that's the leg fat That's a really fair comment
Speaker 2: when you look at.
Speaker 1: It from that lens. I don't think it's necessarily meant
Speaker 1: to excuse the skepticism and the critique, but I think
Speaker 1: it's meant to demonstrate that if all you know is
Speaker 1: a house on fire, then there's basically two options. One
Speaker 1: you either try to will up and put out the fire,
Speaker 1: which is what myself and my fellow young we doing,
Speaker 1: or you escape the house, which is frankly a very
Speaker 1: understandable notion.
Speaker 2: Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
Speaker 2: I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, a father, an entrepreneur,
Speaker 2: and I've been a football coach an inner City Memphis,
Speaker 2: and the last part unintentionally led to an oscar for
Speaker 2: the film about our team. It's called Undefeated. I believe
Speaker 2: our country's problems will never be solved by a bunch
Speaker 2: of fancy people in nice suits talking big words that
Speaker 2: nobody understands on CNN and Fox, but rather an army
Speaker 2: of normal folks US, just you and me deciding Hey,
Speaker 2: I can help. That's what Mineu Meal, the voice we
Speaker 2: just heard, has done. Mineu wasn't planning to dedicate his
Speaker 2: life to preserving our democracy, but a riot broke out
Speaker 2: on his college campus and he accidentally became a unifying
Speaker 2: force for all sides. Today, he's trying to unify the
Speaker 2: country as the CEO of Bridge USA, whose chapters at
Speaker 2: fifty colleges and twenty four high schools create spaces for
Speaker 2: students of all stripes to openly and constructively discuss political issues,
Speaker 2: equipping the next generation with the skills to navigate conflict
Speaker 2: and find solutions across differences. Manu brings me hope that
Speaker 2: his generation can do this better than my generation has done.
Speaker 2: And I cannot wait for you to meet him right
Speaker 2: after these brief messages from our generals sponsors. Manu meal, no,
Speaker 2: Manu meal, Manu Manu, yes, sir? Is that right?
Speaker 1: Yes, sir, that's right. The second one my new meal.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Memphis. I hope you enjoyed your sandwich when
Speaker 2: I was starving and you ate it in front of me.
Speaker 1: You know, I had to, I had to buy the
Speaker 1: sandwich specifically to show you off. But Dora is vegetarian
Speaker 1: and only at Alvocado in it, so I don't think
Speaker 1: it would have filled you up.
Speaker 2: Well, not only would you not filled me up. I
Speaker 2: hate avocados, so I would have spit it out.
Speaker 1: Good. Good. That's that's very anti California of you.
Speaker 2: I have nothing to do with California, so this is perfect,
Speaker 2: and it's it's very West Coast of you, sir.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I definitely. I feel like I flew in
Speaker 1: today and you and I were just talking about like
Speaker 1: carbon sequestration and trees, and you gave me a full
Speaker 1: lesson on it, and like I feel like if you
Speaker 1: mapped my carbon footprint, I would look like a freaking
Speaker 1: weird tech guy, you know, but I may For the record,
Speaker 1: I maybe like half the money maybe a.
Speaker 2: Third, maybe a third. Well, nonetheless, welcome to Memphis, Thanks
Speaker 2: for coming to be with us and hang out at
Speaker 2: the FedEx Forum. Yeah, are you going to be a
Speaker 2: Grizzly fan now?
Speaker 1: Definitely? Not?
Speaker 2: Definitely not.
Speaker 1: What are you The elevator is broken in the way up?
Speaker 2: Well it was, but.
Speaker 1: That's a bad sign.
Speaker 2: I have a secret. It wasn't broken. You weren't a
Speaker 2: fan something?
Speaker 1: They were like, I'm not in with John Moran.
Speaker 2: Well, what kind of fan are you? So?
Speaker 1: I'm a Boston Celtics fan. I used to be a
Speaker 1: Leaguers fan.
Speaker 2: Well, then you should be a little bit of a
Speaker 2: Grizzlies fan because Marcus Smart is now a Grizzly and that.
Speaker 1: Makes that makes that makes me less.
Speaker 2: He didn't leave on his own, accord, y'all traded him.
Speaker 1: Which is a bad call. It is a bad call.
Speaker 1: He had the heart, He had the heart and the soul,
Speaker 1: no kidding, he had guts. He felt like a normal
Speaker 1: person on the team.
Speaker 2: It will be lovely having him to beat the Celtics
Speaker 2: next time we play them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, is that true? At least at least, hey, at
Speaker 1: least we've got a championship or two.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you do have those. No, but we're coming.
Speaker 1: I really do appreciate being here, I think Memphis. I mean,
Speaker 1: you give me a history lesson too, on the on
Speaker 1: the zoom call that we had. But I'm somebody that
Speaker 1: loves history, loves places that have a lot of transformation,
Speaker 1: and I don't take the time for granted.
Speaker 2: There's a ton here. I wish you could stay a
Speaker 2: little longer. I love to show you around. Let's talk
Speaker 2: about you, though, because that's what we're here for. First,
Speaker 2: what'd you grow up? Tell me? Tell me about little Manu?
Speaker 1: I'm still little young also, yeah, I'll tell you right.
Speaker 2: How about five to fifteen year old Manu?
Speaker 1: Okay? Cool? Five to fifty. Actually the interesting stuff is
Speaker 1: one to five.
Speaker 2: Five. Yeah, I think it's all interesting, but one to five.
Speaker 1: So my parents moved from India. They were in a
Speaker 1: New Delhi, northern India. They moved to the United States
Speaker 1: in ninety seven. I was born in December of ninety
Speaker 1: eight in Central Archie. Yeah, yeah, December night. My colleague,
Speaker 1: my colleague, I'm very My colleague is a two thousand baby,
Speaker 1: a millennium baby, and so I can only imagine how
Speaker 1: young I must field ninety eight because when she says
Speaker 1: two thousand, I'm like, man, that's young.
Speaker 2: She's only two years.
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, I'm I'm totally young, which is why
Speaker 1: when you were like telling me about Little Minu, I
Speaker 1: was like, that's presumptuous of me to be like, but
Speaker 1: I was. I was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Speaker 1: Then my mom and my dad. My mom especially had
Speaker 1: a really hard time settling in She, you know, her
Speaker 1: entire family was there. She's very extroverted, she really cared
Speaker 1: about family, and she had a hard time stay in
Speaker 1: the United States, and so she actually went back with
Speaker 1: my dad and the thought about, you know, potentially staying
Speaker 1: in India. And I distinctly remember my mom telling me
Speaker 1: the story. It's something I'll always be grateful to her,
Speaker 1: fore Coach Bill, which is that she walked me past
Speaker 1: this like school where I would probably go to school,
Speaker 1: and it was there was like couch on the side,
Speaker 1: and it was in India, in India, in New Delhi.
Speaker 1: It was dirty, the doors were rusted, and she was like,
Speaker 1: there's no way this guy's going to grow up here.
Speaker 1: And so she basically bucked up and she and my
Speaker 1: dad flew back to the United states where my mom
Speaker 1: did all of her stuff to be a doctor. But
Speaker 1: the reason why that went to five years important is
Speaker 1: because I actually then lived with my grandparents in India
Speaker 1: for those five years on and off, and so I
Speaker 1: lived with my dad's side in New Delhi. I lived
Speaker 1: with my mom's side in a village close to a
Speaker 1: state called Haryana. And then I came back to the
Speaker 1: US after those five years and basically moved around every
Speaker 1: two years until what.
Speaker 2: Did your mother and father get their doctorate?
Speaker 1: So my mom became a doctor and my dad was
Speaker 1: a computer scientist. It's a classic Indian.
Speaker 2: I don't computer side to the doctor is the classic
Speaker 2: in family.
Speaker 1: It's a classic in duane family. And then look at me,
Speaker 1: look at what happened.
Speaker 2: To Well, we don't know that yet, so let's not
Speaker 2: go there. But so why were you going back and
Speaker 2: forth then? If because? And why were you moving every
Speaker 2: two years? Because clearly they were earning well, I mean
Speaker 2: they had their degrees in all right.
Speaker 1: So I mean I I certainly did not. We were
Speaker 1: not poor, but my dad's job was unstable for some time,
Speaker 1: so we would move because of that. Then my mom's
Speaker 1: job would change. I lived in New Jersey, lived in
Speaker 1: Staten Island, New York, came back to Jersey, moved around
Speaker 1: there twice, never spent again more than those two years,
Speaker 1: and then basically went to high school in Lexington, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: And so you talk about money, what's interesting is every
Speaker 1: move that we made, we actually my parents started earning
Speaker 1: a little bit more money, a little bit more money.
Speaker 2: And they're chasing the American dream a little bit.
Speaker 1: They're chasing the American dream. They're chasing the American dream,
Speaker 1: and not just the American dream, but they're chasing I
Speaker 1: think just a I think they were just chasing a
Speaker 1: foundation for where their kids could just make the most
Speaker 1: of their sacrifice.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 1: I think that was it.
Speaker 2: That's a beautiful thing, that is the American dream, especially
Speaker 2: for immigrants what your parents are. Yeah, but you're an American,
Speaker 2: you were born here.
Speaker 1: I was born here. But what's fascinating is when I
Speaker 1: came back at the age of five, I like, was
Speaker 1: this like, first of all countries like India. And this
Speaker 1: is me saying it is somebody that's from India smelled different.
Speaker 1: I landed here and I just smelled like India. It's
Speaker 1: a very distinct smell. It's like when you come live
Speaker 1: in New York City or you live in Texas, you
Speaker 1: live you live in a village, you know, or you
Speaker 1: live in a farm you work on a farm as
Speaker 1: opposed to and I had like when when you're oftentimes
Speaker 1: in an area where there's a lot of dust, your
Speaker 1: hair gets all matted and it sticks together, and so
Speaker 1: I like, did not I think my first language was
Speaker 1: Hindi even though I was born here, And yeah, man,
Speaker 1: it was. It was fascinating to try and fit in.
Speaker 1: It was it was hard.
Speaker 2: Let's be real. Yeah, five years old trying to fit
Speaker 2: in is not fascinating. That is not the word a
Speaker 2: five year old would use about trying to fit in.
Speaker 2: And I'm interested in this because I think it's your
Speaker 2: main to what you're doing now. Actually, as I've thought
Speaker 2: a lot about your story, believe it or not, I
Speaker 2: have thought about a lot about a lot about it. Well,
Speaker 2: I mean, you're in this interesting place, that one you've
Speaker 2: grown up basically in India. You're an American, born in America,
Speaker 2: grown up in India. You even said your first language
Speaker 2: is probably actually Hindi. And you move every two years,
Speaker 2: and the moving every two years and your parents trying
Speaker 2: to get you the best opportunity in the world and
Speaker 2: they're chasing the American dream. And I get it, and
Speaker 2: that's beautiful. But I got to believe you had a
Speaker 2: hard time fitting coming up, and that even if you
Speaker 2: started develops some relationships and two years are gone again,
Speaker 2: what was that like?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's where the I hope as a five
Speaker 1: year old, I was using the word fascinating, because then
Speaker 1: I would be actually an odd kid. Then there's no
Speaker 1: chance of me fitting.
Speaker 2: A seven year old would say it would suck, not
Speaker 2: that it was.
Speaker 1: I'll tell me what the difference, though.
Speaker 2: In hindsight may be fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yes, it definitely sucked. I just my temperament is one
Speaker 1: where I just have a hard time. I just don't
Speaker 1: really try to associate negative emotions a lot of that
Speaker 1: type of stuff, because it really did make me who
Speaker 1: I am today. But that's only looking in hindsight. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you, you know, trying to fit in, trying to
Speaker 1: make friends, I mean, it did suck. I think I
Speaker 1: used to. I had almost a bully in every sort
Speaker 1: of stage. And this is something that I credit my
Speaker 1: parents a lot with. You know, my mom had that
Speaker 1: philosophy of if someone punches, you punch them back twice
Speaker 1: and make sure they'd never get up. And I had
Speaker 1: a real I mean, do I look like somebody that
Speaker 1: can touch back twice? Lets less be real? Do I
Speaker 1: look like a kid that can punch? I can punch
Speaker 1: back my words? But that's only now I was. I
Speaker 1: was like chubby, I was pudgy. I I did not
Speaker 1: have that capacity, and so really it did suck. And
Speaker 1: what sucked most about it, actually, Coach Bill, was that
Speaker 1: I feel like you oftentimes have this feeling of America,
Speaker 1: like in India, especially whenever I would go back after
Speaker 1: coming here. I distinctly remember I was like seven, ten
Speaker 1: thirteen people back home and say like, man, like you're
Speaker 1: in America, Like that's that's the dream, that's the place.
Speaker 2: Now was I think you were like fortunate lucky?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I mean you're you're basically you know, like
Speaker 1: you're the you know. And that did not mirror the
Speaker 1: reality of our life, which was that I lived in
Speaker 1: apartments my entire life until we got to like eighth grade.
Speaker 1: I grew up with my siblings in one apartment. Again,
Speaker 1: fitting in was one where like kids would pick on
Speaker 1: you if you take the this is so funny when
Speaker 1: you asked me how to pronounce my name. Part of
Speaker 1: the reason why I stopped really caring was because it
Speaker 1: became such a subject of like intrigue and making jokes
Speaker 1: that I was like, you know what, we got to
Speaker 1: figure out other ways to keep going. What's interesting now
Speaker 1: that I think about this is that it made me
Speaker 1: somebody that understood how to just create space for people
Speaker 1: to be idiots for a little bit so that you
Speaker 1: can better accept them, they can better accept you, and
Speaker 1: you can actually get somewhere. And the last thing I'll
Speaker 1: just say on this point is you learn how to adapt.
Speaker 1: And I think one of the things that I fear
Speaker 1: a lot about the work I do now, and I
Speaker 1: don't want to skip ahead, but like when people see
Speaker 1: this like young person that can be super charismatic and
Speaker 1: they talk and all of that, I know what that creates.
Speaker 1: I know the vibe that gives off. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: this must be a trust fund baby, or this must
Speaker 1: be whatever whatever. And frankly, my life really helped give
Speaker 1: me the impetus to do the work that I do
Speaker 1: because I think there's a lot of kids out there.
Speaker 1: I mean, you worked with a lot of them in
Speaker 1: your past that are just trying to fit in and
Speaker 1: they're looking for space.
Speaker 3: So yeah, So.
Speaker 2: What you just said is the discovery that I was
Speaker 2: trying to reveal, is that the podcast that came out.
Speaker 2: I'm going to timestamp this, Alex, so no griping. He
Speaker 2: hates when I time stamp stuff, so he's going to
Speaker 2: have to just get that's producer stuff. Alex can just
Speaker 2: relax on this one. So today's podcasts So we Are
Speaker 2: podcast released every Tuesday. And the reason I really even
Speaker 2: started thinking about you again was this podcast. And it's
Speaker 2: about Stacy Horst and very shortly and if you guys
Speaker 2: listening now haven't listened to it, go listen to it.
Speaker 2: It's gripping. Her kid was autistic Asperger's level one and
Speaker 2: this child, at sixteen, because of being bullied and ostracized
Speaker 2: because she didn't fit because of her social limitations, she
Speaker 2: took her own life and at sixteen absolutely floors me
Speaker 2: when I think about what that family has done to
Speaker 2: honor the legacy of their daughter. But as I was
Speaker 2: thinking about you, obviously I'm not saying you were suicidal
Speaker 2: or anything, but what I am saying is for the
Speaker 2: son of an immigrant from India who goes back and
Speaker 2: forth and is living and growing up with basically two
Speaker 2: different cultures and moving every two years. I've got to
Speaker 2: believe that you saw some of the worst in what
Speaker 2: human beings can do and say and act towards one another.
Speaker 2: And I just want to know if that's true, and
Speaker 2: did that in some way compel you to have empathy
Speaker 2: or compel you to have what is that like?
Speaker 1: I think it forced me to find perspective because I think,
Speaker 1: and again this is sort of my mindset and temperament
Speaker 1: is I think oftentimes when you're experiencing hardship, and here's
Speaker 1: the fact, you know your heart, you might be experiencing hardship,
Speaker 1: I might be experiencing hardship. One of ours might be
Speaker 1: relatively more. And yet that doesn't take away from the
Speaker 1: fact that you and I both suffered hardship, right, So
Speaker 1: any hardship that anybody's ever suffering is real, and that's
Speaker 1: your hardship, and that's real trauma. That's real challenge. For me.
Speaker 1: I often feel like the best way for me to
Speaker 1: cope with that is to put my suffering and my
Speaker 1: challenges in context.
Speaker 2: There's put it in context. Put it in context, and
Speaker 2: you're telling me at thirteen you're learning this.
Speaker 1: No, No, this is something I learned after. I'm talking
Speaker 1: in hindsight. No, at thirteen, I was mad, mad, and
Speaker 1: but again my temper was not so much mad. It
Speaker 1: was just more subdued, quiet, with drawn, with drawn, insecure.
Speaker 1: I oftentimes ask, you know, people that knew me then,
Speaker 1: like I was never somebody that you pick out in
Speaker 1: a class and you're like, this kid's gonna do all right,
Speaker 1: or do something. They're average, middle, middle of the pack.
Speaker 2: That's very un Indian.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm very Unindied in many ways, you know. I
Speaker 1: The only the most Indian thing about me is that
Speaker 1: I actually stay very close to my culture. So I
Speaker 1: love you know, my grandparents. They basically raised me for
Speaker 1: those first five six years. And my grandfather he passed,
Speaker 1: the one that really like was somebody that gave me
Speaker 1: a lot of values over time, and he really felt
Speaker 1: like another father figure. He passed away last year and
Speaker 1: I haven't been able to go back to India since.
Speaker 1: But I'm going to go in two to three weeks
Speaker 1: and finally go back to that home. Witnessed the and
Speaker 1: one of the things he would always say is he
Speaker 1: would say two things to me, and this is why
Speaker 1: I'm actually starting to think about this. He'd say two things.
Speaker 1: One is he said, you need to you need to
Speaker 1: think about God. And the second thing he would say
Speaker 1: to me is that you were great. And I say
Speaker 1: that with the context of all of the crappiness that
Speaker 1: we went through as a child, there are very few
Speaker 1: people that I felt like gave me the real motivation
Speaker 1: or sense of self at that point. I needed somebody
Speaker 1: to say that. And I used to make recordings of
Speaker 1: him saying that, because now that I reflect, it really
Speaker 1: gives me that sense of purpose to keep doing. So
Speaker 1: all of that to say that I'm very un Indian
Speaker 1: in some ways. In the Indian immigrant community, there's a
Speaker 1: term called ABCD American born confused. They see and by
Speaker 1: the way, shout out to my friends who gave me that.
Speaker 1: And then right after that, I whip out the Hydian man.
Speaker 1: They can't handle it. They can't handle it, like this
Speaker 1: guy's not that your grandfather.
Speaker 2: You say. Instilled values.
Speaker 1: Instilled values what valus? The first value that he instilled
Speaker 1: than me was be fearless, fearless, fearless, love he was.
Speaker 1: And again it's something that I actually if you ask
Speaker 1: me what is my weakness, my strength is the ability
Speaker 1: to empathize with people and try and care because I
Speaker 1: love people. To me, when you said, like you've seen
Speaker 1: the worst human need know you know? To me, I see,
Speaker 1: it's just ignorance. You know, everybody's got their issues. I've
Speaker 1: been I'm sure I've been an add to some people
Speaker 1: in my life not even knowing it. But the weakness
Speaker 1: for me that is I sometimes don't know when to push.
Speaker 1: I sometimes don't know when to be honest with what
Speaker 1: I think. And he was somebody that served in the military.
Speaker 1: That was his way of climbing the social ladder in India.
Speaker 1: Basically did two things in the sort of the societal
Speaker 1: stratification that my family was in, which is either be
Speaker 1: a farmer or you go in the military. So you
Speaker 1: went into the military. He fought three wars. He I remember.
Speaker 1: There is one story that he always used to tell me,
Speaker 1: which is I used to be scared of ghosts like
Speaker 1: most kids. And he's say, you say not that used
Speaker 1: to be my nickname for me. He say, you know,
Speaker 1: this morning I was in the shower and a ghost
Speaker 1: walked through the door and he he the ghost massaged
Speaker 1: my legs, he washed me. There's another ghost that came out.
Speaker 1: He drove my car with me. He basically said, all
Speaker 1: these ghosters butlers, And I was like, the ghost of
Speaker 1: your butlers. He's like, yeah, don't you know that the
Speaker 1: ghosts are going to mess with you until they realize
Speaker 1: that you can't be messed with and then the ghost
Speaker 1: here before you. And so the first thing he always
Speaker 1: told me was be fearless, and it's something I deeply appreciated.
Speaker 1: And the second thing was faith in God, something that
Speaker 1: he believed a lot in. I'm not that religious right now,
Speaker 1: but I'm back on the hunt. I'm back on the search.
Speaker 1: And the final thing that he would always say is
Speaker 1: work hard, not for anybody else, but just for yourself.
Speaker 1: And it I mean he was He had eight siblings,
Speaker 1: I think seven or eight siblings, and he basically was
Speaker 1: the engine for our family on my mom side to
Speaker 1: move up in society.
Speaker 2: He sounds like a phenomenal guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a good guy, and I.
Speaker 2: Can see the regard. You can see your face changes
Speaker 2: when you talk about him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I haven't actually ever talked about him. Publicly.
Speaker 1: But like, what I appreciate about the space you're doing is,
Speaker 1: you know, just create space for that honest conversation. And
Speaker 1: I know that most people have somebody like that in
Speaker 1: their life hopefully, and it's good. It's important to have
Speaker 1: people like that.
Speaker 3: So yeah, we'll be right back.
Speaker 2: So where do you graduate? High school?
Speaker 1: Twenty sixteenth?
Speaker 2: Sir?
Speaker 1: Where twenty sixteen in Lexington, Massachusetts?
Speaker 2: Lexington, Massachusetts, which.
Speaker 1: Which by the way, is basically it's a public school,
Speaker 1: basically a private school, really comedy school. There's literally a
Speaker 1: hill in Lexington called Nobel Prize Hill where the Nobel Prize.
Speaker 1: There's seven Nobel Prize winners that live in Lexington. Good grief,
Speaker 1: it's freaking insane.
Speaker 2: Insane. Okay, So you say you're an average student, but
Speaker 2: you went to cal Berkeley, so you're full of crop
Speaker 2: because average students don't go to Berkeley. Yeah, so how
Speaker 2: does that work?
Speaker 1: Average is relative? I see?
Speaker 2: Now this is very Indian, but I have an Indian
Speaker 2: friend who would get a's and a's and a's and
Speaker 2: they'd have one a minus and their parents would ground
Speaker 2: them for an A. This is where the the the
Speaker 2: the world and the expectations are stressful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is something I benefit a lot from, which
Speaker 1: is that I had very little expectations for my parents.
Speaker 1: They did not imposed much on me. I didn't do
Speaker 1: all no and actually, if you pull up my transcripts,
Speaker 1: I had mostly bees throughout high school. Actually I was
Speaker 1: never that type of kid. When I say average, it's
Speaker 1: because and this is again a personal story, and this
Speaker 1: oftentimes sounds out of touch, but it depends on where
Speaker 1: you grow up and what you're doing, what community you're in.
Speaker 1: Lexington was basically a feeder school for Harvard and MIT.
Speaker 1: That's where everybody lives.
Speaker 2: And it's that type of everybody, you mean, like most
Speaker 2: of the kids, not.
Speaker 1: Most, but sixteen kids in every class wow, which which
Speaker 1: tells you the environment that it was. It's a pressure cooker.
Speaker 1: But for me, again, it's about perspective and context. I
Speaker 1: love competition. I love to compete. I love to be pushed,
Speaker 1: and so for me, it was it didn't feel like pressure.
Speaker 1: It just felt like you're not as good as you
Speaker 1: think you are, and so pick yourself up and start
Speaker 1: working hard. And here's the thing though, is I was
Speaker 1: I was so bad in the classroom, Like you say
Speaker 1: so bad, how bad, can you be? You went to
Speaker 1: cal First of all, I got waitlessed. I barely got in.
Speaker 1: I barely got out too, by the way, and so
Speaker 1: I barely got I barely got out. I barely made
Speaker 1: it in. They tried to keep me there then, But
Speaker 1: for me and my brain never worked in the class.
Speaker 1: It was just I was never I have to work
Speaker 1: three times as hard as you to get it. Get
Speaker 1: like a B plus I get it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: all right, but I do.
Speaker 2: It's effort and all that. So I got to interject
Speaker 2: this quick story for you. It's hilous. Let me here.
Speaker 2: So when I was coaching a Manassas, this dude came up.
Speaker 2: Well nobody. My first games that Manassas had three people
Speaker 2: at them. Yeah, I mean we were four winds years
Speaker 2: wait years, oh man, dude. Two thousand and two is
Speaker 2: about the first year, and literally three people in the stand.
Speaker 2: It'd be two thousand on the other side. And we
Speaker 2: had the bus driver, I bet, principal, and a lady
Speaker 2: named this guy who was like eighty year old graduate
Speaker 2: of Manassa who never missed a game. That was it.
Speaker 2: As we started winning and kids started coming and getting better, yeah,
Speaker 2: more fans more people and people from the neighborhood would
Speaker 2: want to help out, and most of them were well intentioned,
Speaker 2: and some of them were like dudes that wanted to
Speaker 2: relive the glory days that I didn't have any time for.
Speaker 2: One of the well, those dudes showed up and said, hey,
Speaker 2: you know you didn't need help coaching. I'm good on
Speaker 2: the d line. And I said, well, let's talk about that.
Speaker 2: And I said, you know, what did you play ball?
Speaker 2: He said, yeah, I played a Cow. Now, now this
Speaker 2: is a guy who's from North Memphis who didn't have
Speaker 2: a job, and said he went to cal Well Carol.
Speaker 2: And I said really, And I said you played football
Speaker 2: Cow and he said yeah. And I said, wow, that's interesting.
Speaker 2: And I said, so you graduated from Cow. He's like,
Speaker 2: oh no, no, no, I left early. Hold it, I left early.
Speaker 2: I went overseas to chase that big money and played
Speaker 2: in Canada football. Hold it. Listen to what I just said.
Speaker 2: I went overseas to chase the big money and went
Speaker 2: to Canada.
Speaker 1: Hey, there's a great lake.
Speaker 2: Last time. Look there wasn't an ocean between col and Canada.
Speaker 2: At which point I said, thanks, man, we'll give you
Speaker 2: a call if we could use you. But that was
Speaker 2: pretty much my full exposure to Cal from Memphis.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been to Berkeley?
Speaker 2: What's up?
Speaker 1: Have you ever been to Berkeley?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Once, It's a crazy place when you go, you're.
Speaker 2: Five six years ago, just passing through. Lisa and I
Speaker 2: drove up the coast and did the one. Well, yeah,
Speaker 2: we went to Pepperdine, saw that campus, went to Cal.
Speaker 1: How do you think? Do you see how freaking beautiful
Speaker 1: that campus was?
Speaker 2: Pepperdine?
Speaker 1: How do you get any work done on the camp?
Speaker 2: How do you how do you ever leave when you're
Speaker 2: on when you're midway of campus? Yeah, and there's deer
Speaker 2: or walking across the campus and the campus is blow
Speaker 2: you and then there's the Pacific Ocean. But worst go
Speaker 2: to a baseball game. I wouldn't ever watch a ball
Speaker 2: get pitched because you got the it's gorgeous, it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: I give a speech. I gave a speech up there,
Speaker 1: and midway through I forgot my words because the sun
Speaker 1: was set over the beauty. Let me just say like,
Speaker 1: there's look, you could hear me talk. That's much more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's absolutely you went up and you went so
Speaker 2: But that's my question. You show up to Cow, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: first blush feel how'd you feel when you got that
Speaker 2: the campus? And you know, how did how did this
Speaker 2: eighteen year old kid who's moved all over the place
Speaker 2: went to this crazy competitive high school against Cow? What
Speaker 2: were your first impressions of it as a kid as
Speaker 2: a freshman? I mean, what was that long?
Speaker 1: And the context here, by the way, is like I
Speaker 1: grew up in a village in India interspersed.
Speaker 2: Yea, and you showed up to America with Maddie up
Speaker 2: stay here.
Speaker 1: And Staten Island. We lived in an apartment where like
Speaker 1: we would play a game of what cockroach is the
Speaker 1: fattest that you've seen today? Like, so I'm giving you
Speaker 1: context because it's fascinating to see. And this is again
Speaker 1: credit to my parents. You know, we have complicated family dynamics.
Speaker 1: But putting all that aside, that's something that you know,
Speaker 1: nobody can ever take away from them and their hard work.
Speaker 1: But given all that context, I get come to Berkeley
Speaker 1: and what's interesting is, first of all, Berkeley's like the
Speaker 1: size of a small country. Like there's like sixty thousand
Speaker 1: kids there. It's it's like ut it's huge, It's massive,
Speaker 1: and the second thing is that I came as a
Speaker 1: somebody that's probably going to be a pre med student, right,
Speaker 1: And you and I talked about this, and I had
Speaker 1: done debate in high school, and I really got this
Speaker 1: bug of like I kind of liked this idea of
Speaker 1: beating up people with my words, you know. And I
Speaker 1: was like, I kind of liked this idea. And I
Speaker 1: wasn't that great. I was average. Again, I was average.
Speaker 1: I had never found my thing, and so I had
Speaker 1: this debate thing. I'd come in as kind of a
Speaker 1: pre med person. I took my bioclass. And the crazy
Speaker 1: thing about cal was that, again, it puts you in
Speaker 1: your place. What I love about public schools in this
Speaker 1: country as opposed to private like Ivy schools and which
Speaker 1: just came from the University of Notre Dame, which is
Speaker 1: a beautiful private school, is that how do you win
Speaker 1: in an environment where there's no advisors and no coddling
Speaker 1: sixty thousand people? You have to fight for it. And
Speaker 1: that was essentially that first semester. It's crazy, though, is
Speaker 1: second semester. I had this inkling President Trump had just
Speaker 1: been elected. I had that political bug, like I was
Speaker 1: interested in politics, because of debate, but I was still
Speaker 1: interested in sort of trying to do the med thing
Speaker 1: because of my parents and also because I felt like
Speaker 1: that was something that I wanted to do as well
Speaker 1: at that time. And then we had so Trump. We
Speaker 1: had at this pre met thing and campus is crazy.
Speaker 1: Berkeley is oftentimes known as the Republic of Berkeley. You know,
Speaker 1: it's politics are off the charts, and it started becoming
Speaker 1: a centerpiece for a lot of tumult and a lot
Speaker 1: of those things that you today Sarah culture war issues.
Speaker 1: At that point, we're at the forefront of campus, but
Speaker 1: not mainstream. February second, twenty seventeen, the College Republicans invite
Speaker 1: the speaker to campus by the name of Milo Annapolis.
Speaker 4: All right, hang on, yeah, you're getting there. Yeah, but
Speaker 4: first yeah, and we're going to this next You're competing,
Speaker 4: you're trying to find your place, you're fitting in. Your
Speaker 4: mother wants you to be a doctor, and you're being
Speaker 4: pre mad and you're doing that. But you love debate,
Speaker 4: and clearly you have an inkling toward an interest in
Speaker 4: the public debate. Maybe not politics, but not the politics,
Speaker 4: but the public debate. Yeah, well, you're in the right
Speaker 4: place because it's Berkeley. Yeah, because they will protest protesting.
Speaker 1: They protest everything.
Speaker 2: They will protest, protesting.
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: If they're protesting, let's protest their protest.
Speaker 1: That's my joke about Berkeley.
Speaker 2: Well, it's true, right.
Speaker 1: And sometimes the things that they protest are it'll make
Speaker 1: you pause. She I mean a great example.
Speaker 2: Give us a ridiculous protest.
Speaker 1: Well, in this case, they weren't. Actually they were just
Speaker 1: made up in issues so they didn't have to go
Speaker 1: to class. And again, this is like tall my, this
Speaker 1: is not me throwing shade at cow. Like. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of people that protest legitimate things. We have a
Speaker 1: lot of union stuff there. All the employees are unionized.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of action.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying.
Speaker 1: Coach Bill. Let's just say that Berkeley holds the record
Speaker 1: for how many publicly nude people I've seen absolutely, it's
Speaker 1: a fact. Being a protest or are you protesting protesters?
Speaker 1: I know I've seen protesters be nude. I've seen protesters
Speaker 1: protesting nudity. I've seen people, animal rights folks doused in
Speaker 1: fake blood on campus, you know, sitting in a cage,
Speaker 1: a fake cage. I've seen uh, Christian preachers stand there
Speaker 1: talking about the fact that, like the heavens are going
Speaker 1: to break tomorrow. You know, Berkeley is a place that
Speaker 1: tracts interesting people that like have deep convictions, crazy people,
Speaker 1: and normal people that are just trying to get a job.
Speaker 1: And and I fit that ladder most ladder category, I.
Speaker 2: Think I would protest naked people protesting?
Speaker 1: Would you be naked doing it?
Speaker 2: Have you seen me? No?
Speaker 1: Fly?
Speaker 2: No, not this guy. Suffice it to say, though, if
Speaker 2: you're a freshman and you're rolling up to this atmosphere, man,
Speaker 2: it's it's twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: Just happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's got to be a little bit of culture shot.
Speaker 2: But the other thing I would think is that after
Speaker 2: a while, you get a little numb to the protest.
Speaker 2: It's almost like, hold it, Why did anybody protested today? Yeah?
Speaker 2: When they, I mean, is so common that they almost
Speaker 2: lose their bite because everybody's always protested, like whatever. But
Speaker 2: that changed on the day you're about to tell us about,
Speaker 2: because this became more than a protest.
Speaker 1: Yes, so tell us about.
Speaker 2: This day that ultimately changed the direction of your life.
Speaker 2: But first, a few messages from our sponsors.
Speaker 1: If you were telling me this is what I would
Speaker 1: be doing what days it till you know, October third,
Speaker 1: time stamp.
Speaker 2: There you go, Alex, I know what the guests did.
Speaker 1: I can't see the day guy.
Speaker 2: Sorry, you know what. That's too bad. He can get
Speaker 2: over it. Yeah, we're on October third today, so of
Speaker 2: normal folks at a full fledged timestam. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 1: Alex is like the time portal guy. Yeah, but essentially. Yeah,
Speaker 1: February second, twenty seventeen, I was walking back from the seminar.
Speaker 1: One other thing I didn't tell you was because I
Speaker 1: was waitlisted to college. Berkeley has sixty thousand kids. Now
Speaker 1: it's even more. I'm pretty sure they don't have enough
Speaker 1: housing for students, so they have a homeless student population,
Speaker 1: believe it or not. No, I'm being serious.
Speaker 2: Somebody I should protest that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: See that's what I'm saying. If you protest everything, you
Speaker 1: lose the bite on the issues that actually matter.
Speaker 2: Like that's it.
Speaker 1: So that's the problem. You've solved Berkeley's issues in like
Speaker 1: ten minutes, and so essentially I would be So. I
Speaker 1: was a part of this program that they've now shut
Speaker 1: down called the Fall Program for freshmen San Francisco now Berkeley.
Speaker 1: If you know anything about the geography. Berkeley's on this
Speaker 1: side of the bay and San Francisco's on this side
Speaker 1: of the bay. Nobody told me that for the entirety
Speaker 1: of first semester, every morning at seven am, they would
Speaker 1: bust me on the F bus all the way to
Speaker 1: San Francisco to take class. I was so average that
Speaker 1: when I got there, I wasn't good enough to take
Speaker 1: class in Berkeley. And so I would take a bus
Speaker 1: every morning with some of my friends that are now
Speaker 1: still my friends. The F bus, show up to FPF
Speaker 1: Berkeley or fps San Francisco, take class there, and then
Speaker 1: bust back. You know what's really ironic. By the way,
Speaker 1: now I live two blocks from FPF at San Francisco now,
Speaker 1: but that's a whole nother thing. So I'm doing this
Speaker 1: bussing thing. Second semester. They're like, okay, now you can.
Speaker 1: You've earned your spot, we've enrolled some new kids. You
Speaker 1: can take classes on campus. So they starting classes on campus.
Speaker 1: Now I'm walking back from this math seminar, right, and
Speaker 1: so it's February second, twenty seventeen, so we're about three
Speaker 1: weeks into this semester. I'm walking back and that day
Speaker 1: that day specifically, I remember I wanted to walk. I
Speaker 1: love sunsets and nature's a big thing for me. And
Speaker 1: so the way that the sunsets in Berkeley, the way
Speaker 1: that the main street telegraph intersects on campus, you can
Speaker 1: see the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean right above
Speaker 1: the Golden Ape Bridge. It's beautiful. Wow, it's amazing. And
Speaker 1: the bridge is very far away, which is it's a
Speaker 1: much better view, but because Berkeley's all the way across
Speaker 1: the bay, but you can see it in the distance.
Speaker 1: And then suddenly I hear like helicopters flying overhead and
Speaker 1: shouting in the distance, and I have the exact same
Speaker 1: reaction you just did, which is like, it's Berkeley. You know,
Speaker 1: we protest everything. You know, somebody's getting protested. Hopefully it's
Speaker 1: a real issue. And then this cafe window is broken
Speaker 1: in an inside where it was a cow dining hall
Speaker 1: where the food, where the food is surface students, and
Speaker 1: inside it said CNN you see Berkeley students protest free speech.
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, this is actually something different. What
Speaker 1: was crazy was that the film crew that was filming
Speaker 1: that was standing right next to me, and you're seeing it,
Speaker 1: and I'm seeing it, and that was like the breaking
Speaker 1: the fourth wall, where you know, like most of us
Speaker 1: are usually the normal people are just observers of politics,
Speaker 1: you know, of media, all these things. Suddenly I actually
Speaker 1: felt like a participant. I went from me an observer
Speaker 1: to a participant. And so then the question became what
Speaker 1: do I want to do next? Well, as the curious, angsty,
Speaker 1: pre med interested political Berkeley student I was, I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go into the middle of it. And
Speaker 1: so I heard the shouting. We went into Sprouplaza and
Speaker 1: I have these pictures on my phone still, and went
Speaker 1: into sporal Plaza and there you had hundreds of students
Speaker 1: protesting this guy's speech. Now you're like, who's this guy?
Speaker 1: What's a speech? The speaker came to campus a Miley
Speaker 1: Annopolis at the College Republicans invited. Now, for anybody that's listening, Milo,
Speaker 1: is this like random kind of provocateur guy. He's not
Speaker 1: interested in good faith conversations. He's basically been sidelined now
Speaker 1: at that time.
Speaker 2: But he was heavy, right.
Speaker 1: He was heavy at that time. He was very big
Speaker 1: at that time, and he would do this college chour
Speaker 1: thing where he would basically show up and like provoke
Speaker 1: angry college liberals and like say stupid things about them
Speaker 1: and get them really angry and frustrated in some ways
Speaker 1: actually like attack them. Basically, he made a living out
Speaker 1: of bullying people.
Speaker 2: That was his thing, and which, let's be honest, there's
Speaker 2: nothing good about.
Speaker 1: That, nothing good about it. Well, he did nothing for
Speaker 1: his cause, but it's his right, which is right exactly.
Speaker 1: So what happened you go to it's right. What's fascinating
Speaker 1: about Berkeley's Now this is twenty seventeen, right, these protests
Speaker 1: are happening. Students are protesting in defense of my fellow students.
Speaker 1: What we found out was also that outside groups came
Speaker 1: in because the other thing about Berkeley is it attracts
Speaker 1: a bunch of people. So a lot of far right
Speaker 1: people show up, a lot of far left people show up.
Speaker 1: It's basically a way for people to get a platform,
Speaker 1: and so all these people start showing up. The history
Speaker 1: now of this place is in the sixties, Sprout Plaza
Speaker 1: was where doctor King spoke, It's where Mario Savio started
Speaker 1: the free speech movement. At that time, the liberals were
Speaker 1: on the side of you know, at least the very
Speaker 1: extreme ones are on the side of free speech, and
Speaker 1: so it was such a fascinating cultural ship. You could
Speaker 1: see it happening in front of you. It's almost like
Speaker 1: Memphis in some ways. You know, you go to certain
Speaker 1: places and they've changed completely. And I saw in those
Speaker 1: protests violence. I saw students crying. I saw a journalists
Speaker 1: whose face was punched, his nose were broken in the
Speaker 1: stores are shattered. There was hundreds of police officers, they
Speaker 1: brought in California State Police CPD.
Speaker 2: And let's let's be candidate. This is all because people
Speaker 2: who didn't agree with what this far right guy had
Speaker 2: to say. Yeah, we're doing everything they could to keep
Speaker 2: him from saying whatever it was he wanted to say,
Speaker 2: which is the irony of the opposite of free speech.
Speaker 1: So there's two things I'll say to this, because this
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a copy. And this is
Speaker 1: where actually people get hold up because they're like, all right, so,
Speaker 1: Coach Bill Manu, are not talking about this far right
Speaker 1: person being protested. They must be a bunch of conservatives
Speaker 1: that care about free speech. And that's not the message,
Speaker 1: because first of all, free speech should not be a
Speaker 1: liberal or conservative values and American values a human value
Speaker 1: more and Secondarily is that free speech is throughout history.
Speaker 1: It's the value that people use that feel like they're
Speaker 1: under attack because it's your weapon, it's your access card
Speaker 1: to society. Sixties, it was those anti war protesters and
Speaker 1: liberals and civil rights activists, so for them, free speech
Speaker 1: was a thing. Now a lot of conservatives on campuses
Speaker 1: feel under attack and so it's their thing. What we
Speaker 1: have to recognize is that free speech is a value
Speaker 1: that moves the society forward. And it's very shortsighted to say, well,
Speaker 1: Manu and Coach Bill are talking about this farraka and
Speaker 1: kicked off. This is where I signed off on this podcast,
Speaker 1: because it must mean that there are a bunch of
Speaker 1: conservatives that want, you know, liberal kids see it hurt.
Speaker 1: So here's the two things I'll say now about that moment.
Speaker 1: First is you and I the intent of those protests
Speaker 1: was to shut down my Low. We're now six years later,
Speaker 1: we're still talking about him. That protest single handily raised
Speaker 1: this guy's profile to the stratosphere.
Speaker 2: That is interesting and true his name.
Speaker 1: You and I are only talking about him because he
Speaker 1: got protests that day. That day, if nothing had happened,
Speaker 1: I probably would not be doing what I'm doing, and
Speaker 1: you and I probably would have never met.
Speaker 2: And we sure would be talking about this guy.
Speaker 1: And this Greek British dude would have no relevance. So
Speaker 1: that's first thing is let's try to understand and let's
Speaker 1: not let this moment convolute our tactics. And the second
Speaker 1: thing is the question of like, well, who's allowed to
Speaker 1: speak and who's not. This is where I think it's
Speaker 1: a little bit of an onus on the people that
Speaker 1: are inviting these speakers and bringing on these people. It's
Speaker 1: you know, what's your goal, what's your intention? I do
Speaker 1: think that a part of it is to stir the
Speaker 1: pot a little bit. You're trying to provoke a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, if you actually want real conservative thought on
Speaker 1: that campus at that time, bring somebody semi serious, you know.
Speaker 1: And simultaneously, for my liberal friends and folks, recognize that
Speaker 1: protest is very important, but at that moment us protesting
Speaker 1: him only led to not only more violence, but the
Speaker 1: campus can be shaken. I think it cost the university
Speaker 1: a million dollars in damages million and a half and
Speaker 1: forget the UC systemic.
Speaker 2: Well, in my understanding is a lot of that was
Speaker 2: caused about people that weren't even Berkeley students, and they
Speaker 2: were masked.
Speaker 1: It was outside And was I not masked, Yes, a
Speaker 1: lot of them were masked. It was outside groups. And
Speaker 1: what that also did, by the way, was it set
Speaker 1: a precedent for an how over the next three four
Speaker 1: years you would see rallies on campus and in communities
Speaker 1: that had nothing to do with the students, but people
Speaker 1: knew that if they went to Berkeley, it's just a cultural,
Speaker 1: iconic place, and so they're going to get attention.
Speaker 2: I want to tell you a story about my alma mater. Yeah,
Speaker 2: James Meredith was the first black man admitted to the
Speaker 2: University of Mississippi, and Kennedy was the president then, and
Speaker 2: there were three days of riots and people died. What
Speaker 2: they found out that BI found out after they did
Speaker 2: the investigation, is that the student body was there doing
Speaker 2: what student body does, but the gunfire and the true
Speaker 2: violence were from people from four different states, not from
Speaker 2: the University of Mississippi. So while there was protest and
Speaker 2: there it was the heart of the civil rights question,
Speaker 2: and there was all kinds of things that went on
Speaker 2: that were wrong that hopefully history will show that we
Speaker 2: continue to try to do well with and continue to
Speaker 2: prove on the point is the vast majority of the violence,
Speaker 2: everything came from outside the city, outside the state, and
Speaker 2: the outside the campus. But what happens is situations like
Speaker 2: that give a theater and a platform to the crazies. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it sounds to me like that's what happened to
Speaker 2: cal that day.
Speaker 1: Have you heard the term conflict entrepreneurs?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, so sure.
Speaker 1: One of our good friend's name is Monica Guzman and
Speaker 1: her friend Amana Ripley Amanda wrote this book, I think
Speaker 1: it was last year or two years ago, called Healthy Conflict.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that comes up in that
Speaker 1: book is that right now, the people that divide us,
Speaker 1: And this is something I say a lot. Is my
Speaker 1: assumption and belief is that I think, Coach Bill, the
Speaker 1: people that divide us understand human nature better than the
Speaker 1: people trying to bring us together.
Speaker 2: Oh. I think I think you could. I think you
Speaker 2: could fill gymnasiums full of those people who currently work
Speaker 2: in our in our national media and with that one skill, yep.
Speaker 1: And I call it the outrage industrial complex. And the
Speaker 1: idea behind that is that people understand that you and
Speaker 1: I have a much stronger propensity to hate each other
Speaker 1: than love each other. I think hate is like gasoline.
Speaker 1: It burns really quickly, but it disappears also pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: but it's very quick. It's high propensity. I think love
Speaker 1: is like rocket fuel. It takes a wild ignite, but
Speaker 1: once it ignites and sustains, it's very strong. And I
Speaker 1: think the problem right now is because our attention spans
Speaker 1: are so minuscule, because you know, you and I have
Speaker 1: to go after this podcast and produce all these short clips.
Speaker 1: People can't watch things more than ten seconds because we
Speaker 1: barely ever now interact with people that are different than us,
Speaker 1: because you know, somebody who lives in Washington, DC and
Speaker 1: somebody that lives in Richmond only probably drive between those
Speaker 1: cities and have never interacted with anybody between those two cities.
Speaker 1: For all of those reasons, and the siloing and the
Speaker 1: fact that are politicians are capturing and capitalizing on that.
Speaker 1: You've got people that are turning us into tools for
Speaker 1: their money, and then you and I are giving up
Speaker 1: on each other because we're buying to their bullshit. And
Speaker 1: that's basically the moment. So and that's what those people,
Speaker 1: those people that show up the campus. That's what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Before you were in school. One of the things that
Speaker 2: I learned when I was a young man was this
Speaker 2: price I may vehemently disagree with everything that comes out
Speaker 2: of your mouth, that I will fight to my death
Speaker 2: for your right to say it. That was a very
Speaker 2: strong American ideal for many, many, many, many many years.
Speaker 2: And I think we've lost it. And I think that's
Speaker 2: what was lost in Berkeley that day.
Speaker 1: Why do you think we've lost it? Because you've seen
Speaker 1: America much more than I have. You've lived here longer,
Speaker 1: You know things. What's your assessment?
Speaker 2: Money and power? Money and power? I think there's I
Speaker 2: think there's an enormous amount of power and wealth that
Speaker 2: has been generated in places like New York and our
Speaker 2: media centers, and an enormous amount, far too much money
Speaker 2: and power generated in the halls of Congress, and that,
Speaker 2: like you say, people have developed a unique skill and
Speaker 2: a keen understanding that I can generate more money and
Speaker 2: power if I can divide. Because if I can scare
Speaker 2: the hell out of people and divide them and get
Speaker 2: them into my camp, I can use that fear to
Speaker 2: generate more power from myself and therefore more money. And
Speaker 2: I believe narratives and politics are crafted in order to
Speaker 2: sustain and grow that money and power. And I think
Speaker 2: we got to fix that, which is why your story
Speaker 2: is so important, because after all, this happened in col
Speaker 2: something happened inside of you, and it leads to what
Speaker 2: you're doing today. So tell me about I think it
Speaker 2: was twelve of you, right, tell me about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know. By the way, I have to say
Speaker 1: one thing, the fact that you just recalled it was twelve.
Speaker 1: Just for anybody that's listening. Coach Bill is a busy,
Speaker 1: busy man. The fact that you remembered that means a
Speaker 1: lot to me. It means that that's a tough thing
Speaker 1: to do. And somebody that also does this and learning
Speaker 1: from you and hearing from you. I think one of
Speaker 1: the things that you're doing powerfully, especially in this conversation
Speaker 1: but in general, and what I think is part of
Speaker 1: what we need to try and flip this problem in
Speaker 1: the set is you're making somebody feel like the story matters.
Speaker 1: Your story does matter, okay, But the point is that
Speaker 1: right now, I think a lot of people just feel purposeless.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people feel lost.
Speaker 2: I agree I don't know that. I don't know that
Speaker 2: I'll agree with you a lot of people feel purposeless,
Speaker 2: but I absolutely agree with you that a lot of
Speaker 2: people feel lost. And I don't mean lost inside their
Speaker 2: own homes, but I mean lost in our culture. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, that's our freaking culture. It is not DC's culture,
Speaker 2: it is not New York's culture. It's our culture. And
Speaker 2: until an army of normal folks take that culture back,
Speaker 2: we're going to continue to feel lost in it. And
Speaker 2: I think that's a shame. And I think that's that's
Speaker 2: why you're here, is because I think the work you're
Speaker 2: doing is one of the things that helps fix that.
Speaker 2: But I got to have our listeners here. Why the
Speaker 2: twelve and what you did? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So those twelve people were essentially not an army
Speaker 1: but a squad.
Speaker 2: You were a beat up two. We were smaller than
Speaker 2: we Yeah.
Speaker 1: We were a squad.
Speaker 2: Squad.
Speaker 1: We were a squad with a squat of Berkeley people,
Speaker 1: of Berkeley people, which is very not formidable and so
Speaker 1: so essentially what happened was that next day, right after
Speaker 1: after after the protests, after.
Speaker 2: The were mace noses were broken, a hundred some thousand
Speaker 2: the police jumped in, they shut down campus helicopters, and
Speaker 2: ultimately the campus decided, well, this guy can't speak, it's
Speaker 2: too dangerous, and they pulled them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they pulled them.
Speaker 2: So for the day, the protesters won. But as you
Speaker 2: so well put it, we're talking about them six years later.
Speaker 2: So ultimately they lost. They won, they won the battle,
Speaker 2: and they really lost them.
Speaker 1: They lost the war. They lost.
Speaker 2: The next day, you and the twelve.
Speaker 1: So me and the twelve uh Sholes, we should there
Speaker 1: were those, there were, there were. It's funny. So I
Speaker 1: did not know any of these people. And the next
Speaker 1: day what happened was that all these students suddenly were rattled.
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine your campus just goes upside down overnight.
Speaker 1: You have like every television crew there every.
Speaker 2: Day, and even in a place where protest on protests big,
Speaker 2: even in this was like kind of like out.
Speaker 1: I don't know the exact fact here, but I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure it was one of, if not the largest protests
Speaker 1: since the sixties anti war protests. Wow, So in terms
Speaker 1: of damage, in terms of impact, in terms of narrative,
Speaker 1: and the next day essentially it was a very human emotion.
Speaker 1: It was I mean I just felt bad for campus.
Speaker 1: That was it, and I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: felt bad. And so we started doing was a lot
Speaker 1: of kids started showing up to Sprout Plaza and we
Speaker 1: essentially started just picking up the trash, picking up the
Speaker 1: broken bottles. These kids, I thought, I was so proud
Speaker 1: of that community at that time, and showed me the
Speaker 1: best of humanity. It was like, you know, forget all
Speaker 1: of this for a second, like let's just let's just
Speaker 1: help out our community.
Speaker 2: That's you know. Now, that reminds me of the of
Speaker 2: the of the the the citizens in Ferguson afterwards that
Speaker 2: were out in the streets cleaning up the pres and
Speaker 2: it didn't matter which side of that you are on.
Speaker 2: They were just trying to clean up.
Speaker 1: Our community was hurting.
Speaker 2: That was it.
Speaker 1: And and that's where the human of our democracy comes in.
Speaker 1: And so there then after people started picking up stuff,
Speaker 1: these like mini groups of people started forming just naturally.
Speaker 1: And each of these groups people were like saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I can do this to help or what
Speaker 1: just happened? And I, because it's Berkeley, called them therapy circles.
Speaker 1: And so these kids are all like, you know, commiserating
Speaker 1: and all of us are commissering together and suddenly randomly
Speaker 1: go into this one circle and there's a couple of
Speaker 1: people there and they're like, hey, you know, we were
Speaker 1: thinking about creating this organization that was focused on bridging
Speaker 1: political differences, and this just happened. Talk about political differences,
Speaker 1: this is a tsunami. And I was like, well, what
Speaker 1: if we And we were like, what if we created
Speaker 1: a like literally in this group, It's like maybe our
Speaker 1: first event could be let's just talk about this. And
Speaker 1: essentially what we did was a couple of days later
Speaker 1: and between this interim, I essentially circulated this petition on
Speaker 1: campus because there's this bad rap going around that UC
Speaker 1: Berkeley students were violent, and it wasn't enough students, it
Speaker 1: was just the random people from the outside. We circulated
Speaker 1: this peedition, published it on the news that said UC
Speaker 1: Berkeley students condemned violence. I had circulated across campus, and
Speaker 1: again it was just like my tiny attempt to like
Speaker 1: try and do my part. It wasn't anything substantial. Then
Speaker 1: we held that discussion and man.
Speaker 2: How many people show up?
Speaker 1: So this is crazy. So mind you, I have like
Speaker 1: no background in organizing or anything like this. Like the
Speaker 1: closest I've been organizing is you know, like dissecting a
Speaker 1: frog in biology class. Like there's there's literally no intuition here.
Speaker 1: All we did was we started flying on our dorms
Speaker 1: and we like through flyers all our friends. We say, hey,
Speaker 1: like we're gonna host this ussion. And a bunch of
Speaker 1: people are like, is this a civic architecture frat? Because
Speaker 1: it was called Bridge Berkeley, It's like, which bridge are
Speaker 1: you going to build it? I was like, do I
Speaker 1: look like I can build a bridge? And so we
Speaker 1: like we we held this discussion and I think like
Speaker 1: eighty to seventy five to like eighty five people showed
Speaker 1: up in a classroom that was meant for I think
Speaker 1: thirty people. And give me the demographics, yees say, this
Speaker 1: is what's cool about it is the people that came
Speaker 1: were some of the people that invited the speaker. It
Speaker 1: was some of the people that protested the speaker. There
Speaker 1: was some faculty there, there's some administrators there. It was
Speaker 1: a real group of some of the key stakeholders in
Speaker 1: that environment and everybody. What can you imagine, imagine you're
Speaker 1: holding a town hall meeting, You're attending your local pt
Speaker 1: or school board meeting and something very controversial happened. What happens,
Speaker 1: everybody shows up with their guards up. It's like, we're
Speaker 1: ready to fight or I'm ready to like not say anything.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what happened. And this is where the group
Speaker 1: of us that helped organize this, who're now some of
Speaker 1: my best friends and still work on this organization bridge
Speaker 1: USA with me. What we did was we just relied
Speaker 1: on our instinct. It's like, Okay, imagine you have a
Speaker 1: room of a bunch of stodgy people that hate each
Speaker 1: other and probably misperceive each other's intentions. How do you
Speaker 1: help them break through? Well, let's start just talking about
Speaker 1: our vulnerabilities in story.
Speaker 2: Here's an idea. Let's have a conversation.
Speaker 1: Have a conversation.
Speaker 2: Let's have a civil, non threatening chat about importing stuff
Speaker 2: and see what we think of one Now.
Speaker 1: You sound like an alien? No, I sound like what
Speaker 1: an alien?
Speaker 2: Well, what I'm saying to you I have said in
Speaker 2: keynote speeches, I've said in stages. It's in my book.
Speaker 2: It's it's the fundamental tenet of my book, Against the grain.
Speaker 2: We got to go against the grain of societal preconceived
Speaker 2: notion that if you don't think like me, you must
Speaker 2: be my enemy. And we got to get out of
Speaker 2: our vacuums and our comfort zones and talk.
Speaker 1: So I agree with all of that. And as a
Speaker 1: young person, when somebody says, so, what's your innovative product,
Speaker 1: I'm like nothing, I like, what are we innovating? And
Speaker 1: so like when you say that, like I have to ask,
Speaker 1: like I always ask people that have much more life experiences. Mean,
Speaker 1: I'm like, to me, it just sounds like family dynamics.
Speaker 1: I'm like, let's talk to each other. To me, it
Speaker 1: sounds like two parents, you know, navigating a divorce. You know,
Speaker 1: this stuff is not complicated, And I think, like in
Speaker 1: this hyper technical environment, and that's what happened. Actually, I
Speaker 1: think our naivy tae in that moment organizing that actually
Speaker 1: helped us. It sounds like it, yeah, because we were naive,
Speaker 1: We're like, well and.
Speaker 2: It was it was it was legitimately a heartfelt outreach. Yes,
Speaker 2: And nobody convinced you yet that that was stupid.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep. And we had no idea the challenge we
Speaker 1: were embarking on. But that's the best part is when
Speaker 1: you start a journey I mean, when you were coaching
Speaker 1: that football team, I bet one of the tenants of
Speaker 1: it is, don't look how far away that championship is.
Speaker 1: Stay by day.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back. When you get these people together
Speaker 2: and they start talking about their realities, and I can
Speaker 2: imagine you've got a college Republican and you've got somebody
Speaker 2: who'd formerly been naked protesting about some animals or something
Speaker 2: in the same room. My belief set is, and I'm
Speaker 2: testing this with you, my belief set is that we
Speaker 2: all want safety, we all want health, we all want
Speaker 2: our families to do well. We all want our children
Speaker 2: to be better than we were now. We all may
Speaker 2: think there's fifteen different ways to go about that, but
Speaker 2: we all ultimately kind of want the same maslov hierarchy
Speaker 2: it needs to be filled. Does hearing that people want
Speaker 2: the same thing although they want to go about getting
Speaker 2: it differently, Does at least hearing that people want the
Speaker 2: same thing have any kind of calming effect on the room?
Speaker 1: It does, But I think what helps even more is
Speaker 1: to share each other's suffering.
Speaker 2: Learn all that's interesting.
Speaker 1: I actually think that the most powerful tool, the knife
Speaker 1: that cuts through hot butter, is vulnerability. I think when
Speaker 1: you and I actually can see each other's vulnerability and
Speaker 1: have a no bs honest understanding that this was your
Speaker 1: hardship and this is why you are what you are,
Speaker 1: and here's an example of my vulnerability. I think suddenly,
Speaker 1: what it does is it makes us fundamentally human.
Speaker 2: Which means that empathy leads to understanding exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's when you can start talking about common values,
Speaker 1: because I think it's the difference between showing and telling.
Speaker 1: And you know, when I talk about my childhood growing up,
Speaker 1: imagine if the only thing you talked and said to
Speaker 1: the amazing people that are listening to this right now
Speaker 1: is when you went to a competitive public high school
Speaker 1: next to Harvard Mit, then went to cal Berkeley, now
Speaker 1: leads a nonprofit organization, and he flew in from Chicago today.
Speaker 1: The thing, this guy's probably an asshole, you know. So
Speaker 1: what you did was You're like, all right, let's like
Speaker 1: actually go through your life. Let's have a conversation about
Speaker 1: who you are, why you do what you do. Tell
Speaker 1: me about your grandfather. I'm sure not all that was
Speaker 1: relatable to everybody, but pieces were. And I think vulnerability
Speaker 1: devastates and creates the pathway for love, it is so strived.
Speaker 2: So in this room or people vulnerable? But why why
Speaker 2: do people come to you know what? I think? I
Speaker 2: know why. I'm gonna answer my own question. No not,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna let you answer, but I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 2: what I think. I think heios maybe the shock of
Speaker 2: what happened on campus allowed people to maybe be vulnerable
Speaker 2: in that moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that's I would say seventy five percent of it,
Speaker 1: which is it got so bad that people for a
Speaker 1: second orre like, let's just exit this game and like
Speaker 1: understand that real people were hurt. You know, this is
Speaker 1: not funny games anymore. This is real. This is what
Speaker 1: happens when you invite somebody protests and it all becomes
Speaker 1: a cocktail. So that's a piece of it, is that
Speaker 1: when things get so bad, I think people come back
Speaker 1: to it. But the other piece of this was that
Speaker 1: they actually did not show up ready to be vulnerable.
Speaker 1: As I said, most people showed up with their guards up.
Speaker 1: It's very natural. So that's where I think leadership comes
Speaker 1: into play. That's where the people that are in that
Speaker 1: room of the model what you're looking for. And the
Speaker 1: first thing that we did the twelve of us that
Speaker 1: were helping to organize this, where like we shared our
Speaker 1: story forget all this, like we talked about this is
Speaker 1: where I come from, this is who I am, this
Speaker 1: is what I believe, this is why I believe what
Speaker 1: I believe, and you suddenly create a norm of honesty.
Speaker 1: It's as simple as if everybody in this room wasn't
Speaker 1: wearing shoes and I walked in, I'd probably take off
Speaker 1: my shoes. Okay, everybody's not wearing shoes. That's the norm.
Speaker 1: It's a best setting a norm. You set a norm
Speaker 1: and then you enforce that norm, and you enforce it
Speaker 1: and you say, hey, look, if you don't want to
Speaker 1: follow this norm, I'm sorry, this isn't the space for you.
Speaker 1: No problem. We don't have to do that to anybody.
Speaker 1: Because when people started seeing each other share, then you
Speaker 1: kind of feel I can't be left out of this.
Speaker 1: It creates social pressure and it also says, well, hey,
Speaker 1: I want you to hear my story. I want you
Speaker 1: to hear my story. And that's essentially what a bridge
Speaker 1: discussion does is it creates a space that is safe
Speaker 1: for liberals and structured for conservatives. Say that again, safe
Speaker 1: for liberals, and structured for conservatives.
Speaker 2: Why do liberals need safety and conservatives need structure?
Speaker 1: I'm not smart enough to answer that question, but I
Speaker 1: know that's what they want.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So that's just I gept conjectures. But you don't even
Speaker 1: like to create those divides. But the reason I'm saying
Speaker 1: very openly is because again, it's about meeting people where
Speaker 1: they are, right, So we've created the space. The second
Speaker 1: part about the space is that it's peer led. So
Speaker 1: there isn't some faculty facilitating this. There is some it's
Speaker 1: the members of your own community. Right. It's like if
Speaker 1: you have something that happened in your school board meeting,
Speaker 1: you want the teachers there and the teachers talking to teachers. Right.
Speaker 1: It's peer lead, no power dynamics. The third thing that's
Speaker 1: really powerful about this is you're setting these norms. Each
Speaker 1: Bridge discussion is four norms. You listen to listen, not
Speaker 1: to respond. You don't interrupt our outside conversations. Each of
Speaker 1: us represents ourselves, not larger social groups. So you don't
Speaker 1: represent all white Americans. I don't represent all the confused
Speaker 1: dacs out there.
Speaker 2: And and you know, do you realize there's plenty of
Speaker 2: confused white people, Well, please, that's for you to decay and.
Speaker 1: Confused America, you should change the name of that. But
Speaker 1: but in case anybody's wondering whether they see is a
Speaker 1: word for Indian people that Indians use in Hindi. And
Speaker 1: then the fourth norm is that you respond to the argument,
Speaker 1: not the person. So like let's say you said that,
Speaker 1: so you said.
Speaker 2: Something, is the definition of civility.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But Hare's where I'll push back really quickly is
Speaker 1: we never use word civiility. And the reason we don't
Speaker 1: use the word civility is because I think that we
Speaker 1: live at this moment where a lot of people are
Speaker 1: hurting and they want change. Left or right doesn't matter
Speaker 1: a lot of people. There's a reason why the conflict
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs can make money off of that. And so what
Speaker 1: we found is we initially used to call it civility
Speaker 1: because that's what makes sense to me as well. But
Speaker 1: what we found was is people started hearing the word civility,
Speaker 1: they thought, oh, this is some kombaya, let's hold hands.
Speaker 1: Civility does not invoke that feeling of healthy conflict. Because
Speaker 1: what we're doing these discussions is oftentimes the objective is
Speaker 1: not for you and I to arrive at a common understanding.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes it's for you and I to understand why you
Speaker 1: and I disagree with each other, because that gets us
Speaker 1: somewhere right. And importantly, we can't lose the fact that
Speaker 1: if we want more and more people to have these dialogues,
Speaker 1: these conversations, they have to feel like they're entering the space,
Speaker 1: not having to feel like that they're grind down their edges.
Speaker 1: Show up with your edges, show up with your fight.
Speaker 1: The problem is not whether we're fighting. The problem is
Speaker 1: how we're fighting.
Speaker 2: Of course, in other words, it's okay, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: not what you say, but how you say it.
Speaker 1: It's not what you say, it's how you say it,
Speaker 1: but also how you engage. So all of those four
Speaker 1: norms right, listen, to listen rather than to respond is
Speaker 1: not telling you to suddenly disband your ideas. Saying listen
Speaker 1: to your ideas for a second. Right, when I say
Speaker 1: respond to the argument, not the person, show up with
Speaker 1: your argument. But just because if Coach Bill says something
Speaker 1: that you disagree with, that does not make Coach Build
Speaker 1: an evil person. You might think the argument's dumb, and
Speaker 1: that's fine. Let's have that conversation. But right now we're
Speaker 1: not even having a conversation, right.
Speaker 2: I love this. You are putting into practice stuff that
Speaker 2: I've talked about for years. I mean, I absolutely love this.
Speaker 2: So we got we gotta tie it together. Though. Sure
Speaker 2: you have this first meeting. What happens after that, we.
Speaker 1: Have a second meeting where five people show up. Nobody
Speaker 1: showed up. I'm honest, So nobody showed up. And this
Speaker 1: is part of again, normal people doing stuff like you know,
Speaker 1: this is when you're building something. It's really hard to
Speaker 1: build anything or do anything. Nobody showed up. And the
Speaker 1: reason why nobody showed up is because a lot of
Speaker 1: rumors started flying about what happened in this space, and
Speaker 1: a lot of people people didn't want to believe what happened,
Speaker 1: and also probably couldn't couldn't believe what happens, especially at
Speaker 1: at Berkeley at Berkeley. And then what we did was
Speaker 1: we said, well, let's actually intentionally pursue this because I
Speaker 1: don't know what it is. But I love. What I
Speaker 1: love about my work the most is I love the
Speaker 1: idea of somebody walking into a room, sitting down, and
Speaker 1: leaving ten twenty thirty minutes later, completely changed about their
Speaker 1: expectations of somebody that's different than them. It is like
Speaker 1: one of the coolest experiences.
Speaker 2: That is one of the coolest things.
Speaker 1: It's transformative, and it doesn't happen everything sometimes at backfires. No,
Speaker 1: it died, but that's the arduous process of building. And
Speaker 1: so what we did was we held the next discussion.
Speaker 1: Five people showed up. Were like, damn, we didn't market that.
Speaker 1: We didn't do anything. We just assume people are going
Speaker 1: to show up again. Now it's like two weeks out
Speaker 1: of this event, right, and so classic marketing, you gotta
Speaker 1: step in, you gotta start building. And so we were like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's actually build an infrastructure here. So we got a
Speaker 1: team those twelve people, we all took our roles. We
Speaker 1: started doing our thing. Each of us was doing something.
Speaker 1: And then what happened was we had one faculty member
Speaker 1: sitting in that discussion named Bill Shireman same for her
Speaker 1: name as you. And Bill Shyrman, who's now the chair
Speaker 1: of our board, was sitting in the back of the
Speaker 1: classroom and he knew these two people at Notre Dame
Speaker 1: and at Colorado Boulder Notre Dame. This guy named Roj
Speaker 1: Karma and Colorado Boulder, this woman named Courtland Carpenter, and
Speaker 1: believe it or not, they had built something called Bridge
Speaker 1: CU and Bridge n D because the idea of bridging
Speaker 1: seems like a very normal metaphor. And they connected and
Speaker 1: they started creating this thing. They were like, what if
Speaker 1: we built this on different campuses. And Bill came up
Speaker 1: to us and said, well, let's make this full on
Speaker 1: Bridge Berkeley and let's combine everything. And so we're like okay,
Speaker 1: And so we started doing this stuff. But we weren't
Speaker 1: thinking about a national organization, no vision, nothing, But we
Speaker 1: just kept holding those discussions. People started showing up. It
Speaker 1: became a name on CAM.
Speaker 2: And the people that are showing up Yes, there's some
Speaker 2: faculty and all that there, but.
Speaker 1: We're talking about college case college kids. And here's the
Speaker 1: other thing. Just to quickly fast forward, just so people understand.
Speaker 1: Now they're thinking, well, this must be probably for just
Speaker 1: elite college kids at Berkeley and Harvard and Stanford. No,
Speaker 1: we have yet to have a single IVY League school chapter.
Speaker 1: We now have high school chapters. We have sixty college chapters,
Speaker 1: twenty high school chapters. We're growing almost five six chapters
Speaker 1: a month right now on the goal is to scale
Speaker 1: that up because the demand is really high. But the
Speaker 1: other thing I'll say is on the college side, the
Speaker 1: goal is, let's go to our community colleges, Let's go
Speaker 1: to our vocational schools. One of our best chapters, one
Speaker 1: of the top the first seven chapters, is a college
Speaker 1: nam Lynn Benton Community College up in northern Oregon the
Speaker 1: border of Lynn County in Benton County. And the point
Speaker 1: of all of that is for me to say that
Speaker 1: this work is highly not only accessible, but normal people
Speaker 1: are doing it, not just elite college kids. And that's powerful,
Speaker 1: because that's powerful.
Speaker 2: But doing it is getting a grouped together of people
Speaker 2: from all different walks of life, religious, political, social, and
Speaker 2: cultural belief sets and talking.
Speaker 1: It's just doing the American experiment. That's it. There's literally again,
Speaker 1: there's nothing profound about what I'm doing. I am so
Speaker 1: looking forward to the day when somebody's like, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to steal this IP, because the moment they
Speaker 1: steal that IP, the country's can be back on track.
Speaker 1: Because our IP is just human nature. It's like, let's
Speaker 1: have a conversation, talk to each other. And then I
Speaker 1: look forward to the day of like retreating to the
Speaker 1: medical books.
Speaker 2: Give me one of your greatest stories of a meeting
Speaker 2: that you've experienced and watched two people from alternate realities,
Speaker 2: fine commonness.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to give you another Berkeley story because
Speaker 1: it connects actually a couple of things to talk about.
Speaker 1: Connects to the student homelessness question, it connects protesters, and
Speaker 1: it connects the power of a group discussion.
Speaker 2: Was anybody naked?
Speaker 1: Nobody was naked? Nobody nobody was though the well, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you a context. So a couple of quick context facts.
Speaker 1: Berkeley is this place called People's Park. Now, People's Park
Speaker 1: has a lot of interesting people in it, to say
Speaker 1: the least, and it was basically a place created in
Speaker 1: about the fifties sixties that now has become this massive
Speaker 1: ground for you know, everybody from like drug addicts to hippies,
Speaker 1: to people that want to live in Berkeley to homeless people.
Speaker 1: It's just a thing now. As I said, Berkeley is
Speaker 1: also a massive college and there's a homelessness problem with
Speaker 1: students because there's not enough space for university to build housing.
Speaker 1: And so twenty nineteen, which was our junior year, so
Speaker 1: this is a fall of twenty nineteen. I might be
Speaker 1: wrong on the month, but fall of twenty nineteen, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure this crisis speaking, the university proposes let's build
Speaker 1: a building on People's Park, and man, it started a
Speaker 1: whole nother shin dig right. They're like People's Park, this
Speaker 1: is the people's place it's been around. And oddly enough,
Speaker 1: in this case, the students are actually protesting the very core,
Speaker 1: you know, interesting People's Park because they're like, Yo, we
Speaker 1: need housing.
Speaker 2: Yeah we need housing, but not here and so and so.
Speaker 1: But a lot of kids also wanted that housing because
Speaker 1: they were like, we just we need a place to live.
Speaker 1: And Berkeley rent. Just to give you context, by the way,
Speaker 1: I lived in one of the cheapest and most crime
Speaker 1: written parts of the city where like the next year,
Speaker 1: tragically a student loss his life, like down the street
Speaker 1: eight hundred dollars a month rent, Wow, eight fifty that's
Speaker 1: the cheapest. So it's just giving context for how crazy
Speaker 1: the housing is there for student for student, and there's
Speaker 1: no dorms beyond freshman year, so you got to live
Speaker 1: in that rent or you're you got to figure something out.
Speaker 1: Point of all this is, we said, hey, let's let's
Speaker 1: host a discussion. Now there's a wonderful part in organization
Speaker 1: that your your audience might be interested knowing because you're like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're adults. We don't we're not on college camps. What
Speaker 1: do we do. It's a great part an organization called
Speaker 1: Braver Angels that has these associations across the country, and
Speaker 1: so we called them up because we're like, this could
Speaker 1: be a really big discussion, and so they have this
Speaker 1: thing called the Brave Angels Debate, where it's very similar
Speaker 1: to Bridge discussion with some sort of caveat. So putting
Speaker 1: that aside for a second, we're like, let's hold a discussion,
Speaker 1: and let's hold this debate. Let's bring everybody in. So
Speaker 1: we invite the homeless students, they show up. We invite
Speaker 1: the protesters in People's Park. We extended an invitation of
Speaker 1: the administration, but I don't think they showed up. We
Speaker 1: invited some Berkeley city officials and we had a room
Speaker 1: of I would say seventy five eighty people that were
Speaker 1: all sort of key people that were affected, so not
Speaker 1: like randoms that have no personal stake in the issue,
Speaker 1: like actual people out of opinions. And it started off
Speaker 1: just like the Milo thing. And this is a common
Speaker 1: pattern when you put humans together in a room that
Speaker 1: fundamentally mistrust each other and have the guards up. How
Speaker 1: are they going to show up not ready to communicate
Speaker 1: by the end. So this initial person was like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to protest this. He showed up, sat down, and
Speaker 1: then stood up and said I'm going to protest this.
Speaker 1: I was like, ed, give it a moment, just give
Speaker 1: it a chance. He's like, no, no, no, I'm going to
Speaker 1: protest this right now. You know what's hilarious is by
Speaker 1: the end of this conversation, Coach Bill, that guy was
Speaker 1: participating the most in conversation. He was one of the
Speaker 1: homeless people that came and he brought his posse of
Speaker 1: people and they were jumping in. You got homeless students,
Speaker 1: you got cow students, yet homeless people, you got end
Speaker 1: by the end of it, we actually broke some common ground.
Speaker 1: And what came out of that discussion was a real
Speaker 1: proposal around what could be done. And I don't remember
Speaker 1: the specifics, but the process of it was like I
Speaker 1: was like, this is again, time and time again. We
Speaker 1: underestimate how common we are, and we overestimate how different
Speaker 1: we are, and we've completely given up on the process
Speaker 1: of this to the conversation. And so now we'll tell
Speaker 1: you what my challenge is. My challenge is what we
Speaker 1: experienced after that mile event where only five people showed up,
Speaker 1: which is, you work in the lumber business. If a
Speaker 1: tree falls down in force, nobody saw that tree fell,
Speaker 1: it never fell. Nobody sees his work happening, and they
Speaker 1: only see the crazy people in the news. They're never
Speaker 1: going to believe it. And so we have to do
Speaker 1: and what you're doing with this podcast is build a
Speaker 1: cultural movement and a change where you're empowering everyday people
Speaker 1: to say that that's not okay and this is possible.
Speaker 1: So sorry, that was another tiree, But like that was
Speaker 1: one more example that often sticks in my mind that
Speaker 1: I think brings up a lot of different parts of
Speaker 1: the story.
Speaker 2: And from all of this is born Bridge USA.
Speaker 1: Bridge USA.
Speaker 2: We'll be right back tell us what Bridge USA is today.
Speaker 1: So Bridge USA is an amazing group of young people.
Speaker 1: Our entire team is under the age of twenty six,
Speaker 1: recent college grads. I graduated in twenty twenty and each
Speaker 1: of us had many different things that we could have
Speaker 1: done with our line. And I had some good mentors
Speaker 1: and people that were like, you know, take the risk,
Speaker 1: and I love this work, and so we jump right
Speaker 1: into it twenty twenty one full time from Berkeley, and
Speaker 1: since then we're now a team of about fifteen people.
Speaker 1: We have about sixty college twenty high school chapters. Last
Speaker 1: semester we engage about three thousand, five hundred students across
Speaker 1: our semesters and campuses. And I think that's nothing. It's
Speaker 1: a great data point. But our goal is to reach
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty chapters.
Speaker 2: And the which would be then ten thousand students.
Speaker 1: It would be it would be around twelve thousand students
Speaker 1: a semester.
Speaker 2: Wow, And all with the goal all of getting young
Speaker 2: people who have been infiltrated with social media and parents
Speaker 2: and whatever goes on in the schools and professors and
Speaker 2: teachers and the national media and all of which have
Speaker 2: shaped these very impressible minds to come together and talk
Speaker 2: and talk.
Speaker 1: But I'll say two other quick things. One is it's
Speaker 1: not just young people talking. This is about creating norms
Speaker 1: change in this country. What I mean by norms change
Speaker 1: is this is about what I call the hopeful majority,
Speaker 1: which you call the army of normal people to essentially
Speaker 1: be heard. That's it. It's what Ronald Reagan did, so
Speaker 1: Newke Gingersh did with the moral majority. It's what Nixon
Speaker 1: did with the solent majority. It's what Barack Obama did
Speaker 1: with change Yes we can, It's what Trump did with
Speaker 1: the populist right. Is our fundamental task, and I think
Speaker 1: challenge is to give power and voice to the sense
Speaker 1: of fear, the eggshells that everybody's walking on, the desire
Speaker 1: to have human connection and yet that does not exist.
Speaker 1: That's our objective and the reason why I think young
Speaker 1: people are so crucial to the effort is take any
Speaker 1: social movement. I'll give you three. Civil Rights movement. One
Speaker 1: of the key things that kicked it off were four
Speaker 1: students that walked into their local F. W. Woolworth outside
Speaker 1: of North Carolina and set it in the lunch counters.
Speaker 1: It was like a Mendela the nineties South Africa. It
Speaker 1: was a contingent of young people that allowed him to
Speaker 1: achieve tremendous cultural power. The fact is that I think
Speaker 1: young people have a lot of cultural power, and I
Speaker 1: think old people have a lot of material power. And
Speaker 1: if you combine the cultural narrative power and a material
Speaker 1: power into one. It's really powerful. The only other thing
Speaker 1: I'll say with respect to our broader objective, and this
Speaker 1: is where I'll defend my generation a little bit. And
Speaker 1: then every generation's got their tests. Just for some contexts,
Speaker 1: I was born in ninety eight, and people will often say, like,
Speaker 1: why does a lot of gen Z either seem highly
Speaker 1: skeptical of politics or does not care or is so
Speaker 1: buried in their phone, or does not believe in the
Speaker 1: possibility of democracy. In fact, there's a poll created by
Speaker 1: the Harvard instut of Politics two years ago that said,
Speaker 1: I think it was like forty seven percent of young
Speaker 1: people are like fifty one or something. It was pretty sicizable.
Speaker 1: It was like, they don't believe in the power of
Speaker 1: democracy as a system for creaty change that was born
Speaker 1: in ninety eight, which.
Speaker 2: By the way, I've read and I god do that
Speaker 2: that is heartbreaking to me.
Speaker 1: So again this is a simple marketing challenge. It's like,
Speaker 1: all right, that's the problem set Why so we can
Speaker 1: meet them where they are. You take somebody my age
Speaker 1: born in December of ninety eight. I'm twenty four. It's
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three right now. I was I think two
Speaker 1: years old when nine to eleven happened. I was going
Speaker 1: to middle school when the Great Recession happened. I was
Speaker 1: graduated in high school when the twenty sixteen presidential election happened.
Speaker 1: I graduated college in twenty twenty when the pandemic hit
Speaker 1: the capitol riots happened, and you had the Trump byden election.
Speaker 1: And now it's twenty twenty three. Not a great sample
Speaker 1: size of democratic progress and growth.
Speaker 2: Like that's the lett That's a really fair comment.
Speaker 1: So I say that now many people, So I talk
Speaker 1: to a lot of people in the sixties that were
Speaker 1: in Berkeley at that time, which was also very tumultuous time.
Speaker 1: That was probably the most comparable decade in some ways
Speaker 1: to what we're going through right now. And when you
Speaker 1: look at it from that lens, I don't think it's
Speaker 1: necessarily meant to excuse the skepticism and the critique, but
Speaker 1: I think it's meant to demonstrate that if all you
Speaker 1: know is a house on fire, then there's basically two options.
Speaker 1: One you either try to will up and put out
Speaker 1: the fire, which is what myself and my fellow young
Speaker 1: leaders doing, or you escape the house, which is frankly
Speaker 1: a very understandable notion, and so how do we challenge it.
Speaker 1: That's our objective.
Speaker 2: I think that's I think it's really well stated. A
Speaker 2: lot of wisdom from a twenty four year old kid
Speaker 2: who you know from India.
Speaker 1: Hey, we're not that bad, you know, Hey India, there's
Speaker 1: a hot take. And so India's world's largest democracy. It's
Speaker 1: also it's got a lot of corruptions.
Speaker 2: It's the world's largest country. I think just this year
Speaker 2: it took over China and population right, yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 2: a democracy makes it. It's the world's largest anything.
Speaker 1: Yes, that it is. But part of the reason why
Speaker 1: again I became very invested in Bridge is because we
Speaker 1: saw how dysfunctional the democracies too. But the other thing
Speaker 1: about India is I think this is something that I've
Speaker 1: been seeing over the past couple of years because when
Speaker 1: I started twenty seventeen, when we started doing this, my
Speaker 1: mom would be like, She'd be like, not, there's there's
Speaker 1: no Indian people out in politics. And weirdly, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you've been seeing this, but there's a lot
Speaker 1: oddly's leave well Hale, Nikki Haley, Kamala Harris Ramaswami. We
Speaker 1: had on the podcast, Bobby Jindle, you speak the guy
Speaker 1: in the Louisiana Bobby, You've got the vake Morphew's.
Speaker 2: Nobody sleep at on these Indians.
Speaker 1: I know, Hey, hey, this is a hotter draft pick
Speaker 1: than the Memphis Grists.
Speaker 2: So here's the deal, dude, I mean, grow up born American,
Speaker 2: grow up half Indian, half American.
Speaker 1: Be The.
Speaker 2: Revelation about your grandfather's impact on you, I think is
Speaker 2: significant because you talk about a normal guy that your granddad,
Speaker 2: and to have him be such a significant imprint on you,
Speaker 2: I think is telling. And to go to Berkeley and
Speaker 2: having grown up apartments in your immigrant family chasing the
Speaker 2: American dream, and here you are, at twenty four, having
Speaker 2: lived that reality and then gone through probably the biggest
Speaker 2: protest thing to happen at Berkeley in forty years, and
Speaker 2: to now be heading up and organizations specifically meant to
Speaker 2: fix our American democracy. I think it's a beautiful, ironic
Speaker 2: tale and speaks to the power of an army of
Speaker 2: normal people and what it can do if someone wants
Speaker 2: to get involved or hear more about it, how they
Speaker 2: contact you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that you think this is going to be
Speaker 1: a cop out but if you go to contact at
Speaker 1: BRIDGEUICAD dot org, that email goes straight to my inbox perfect.
Speaker 1: And when I'm late, it's like eleven pm in some
Speaker 1: hotel room far away in like Kansas or something, and
Speaker 1: I'm sitting there and I'm lonely. That's what I do.
Speaker 1: I read that in box.
Speaker 2: That's good and really contacts easier than MANU.
Speaker 1: So exactly, just just call me contact. I'll say one
Speaker 1: last very quick thing, which is as you were telling me,
Speaker 1: like you're repeating the twenty four year old thing and
Speaker 1: us doing all the stuff and all that. The reason
Speaker 1: why it gives me bumps is like and I don't
Speaker 1: know where this comes from for me, Like I genuinely
Speaker 1: have no idea, but I love this place. This you know,
Speaker 1: when we used to when we were growing up in
Speaker 1: in India and then we would move back and forth,
Speaker 1: and then I would travel back and forth. It was
Speaker 1: really interested to being an army medic for a very
Speaker 1: long time and it was a thing in my family
Speaker 1: a lot. Like I used to ask my grandfather like
Speaker 1: should I join the Indian military? Should I join the
Speaker 1: American military? What do you think should happen? And he
Speaker 1: was like which house feeds you? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, what do you mean? He's like, which soil
Speaker 1: do you live on? What soil cares for you? You
Speaker 1: know who showed up at our doorstep when nine to
Speaker 1: eleven happened in India to check on you? Can you
Speaker 1: believe that State Department sent somebody to a state in
Speaker 1: India out of the consult because they were doing checks
Speaker 1: on foreign citizens. And you know, I love history, and
Speaker 1: all of us play an extraordinarily insignificant part in history.
Speaker 1: You take your footnote of who your favorite leader is
Speaker 1: in American history or whatever. They maybe get a sentence
Speaker 1: in the Book of Human History. We all have a
Speaker 1: small part. But what's so amazing about this place is
Speaker 1: we're trying to imagine. I told you there's a society
Speaker 1: of three hundred and thirty million people that are all
Speaker 1: different from each other. And you're now a thousand years
Speaker 1: in the future, and you've studied the species called humans
Speaker 1: that have exists for one hundred thousand years. And in
Speaker 1: those ninety nine thousand years, they were violent, and they fought,
Speaker 1: and they lived in tribes, and they were essentially not
Speaker 1: what you see today in society. And that's their history.
Speaker 1: And now you're saying, these three hundred thirty million people
Speaker 1: are trying to live together, heavily armed and giving each
Speaker 1: other a voice, and living a system of governance where
Speaker 1: you and I are valued. That is the most ambitious
Speaker 1: experiment in the history of humanity. And just the last day,
Speaker 1: our team had just hired a few new people and
Speaker 1: we were having all hands meeting. Now'll end with this.
Speaker 1: We're like, you know, why do you do what you do?
Speaker 1: And I said, like, look, you know one of our
Speaker 1: mentors that passed away last year, name was Rob Stein.
Speaker 1: He talked about his legacy when he was dying, and
Speaker 1: he was somebody that gave us a lot of knowledge.
Speaker 1: And he said, you know what I most care about
Speaker 1: as I pass away now is not the things that
Speaker 1: I did, but the things that I think people like
Speaker 1: you will do. And that really changed my perspectives. I said,
Speaker 1: you know, our team, I said, imagine now you're eighty
Speaker 1: years old, You've thankfully got get grand kids. And they
Speaker 1: asked you, what were you doing in the twenties, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the most divided times in American history, And
Speaker 1: you said, I tried my best to try to solve
Speaker 1: one of the most pernicious problems the country's faced, and
Speaker 1: maybe you failed, but that's a proud answer. And so
Speaker 1: I love this place. I don't know where it comes from.
Speaker 1: I wish I was faking it because it would make
Speaker 1: it so much easier for me to walk away from it.
Speaker 1: But this is humanity's best shot.
Speaker 2: And that, my friend, is why you are absolutely a
Speaker 2: member of the army of normal folks.
Speaker 1: You're a build the army.
Speaker 2: You're a guy who sees a need and fills it.
Speaker 2: And it's an amazing story. And I got to tell you,
Speaker 2: it gives us fifty five year old goosebumps to look
Speaker 2: at a twenty four year old kid say I love
Speaker 2: my country and I want to make it better. We
Speaker 2: just need a whole bunch more of you, bro, And
Speaker 2: the work you're doing is phenomenal, and I hope people
Speaker 2: will start chapters, support you, financially, check you out, and
Speaker 2: let more people know about the fact that all these
Speaker 2: twenty year olds run around here are not anti democratic
Speaker 2: change the world in the worst way possible. People. There's
Speaker 2: a whole host of guys like you that love this country,
Speaker 2: that want to make it better and are not trying
Speaker 2: to do it in a vacuum, but rather in a
Speaker 2: very inclusive way. I've always said we can be a
Speaker 2: forward thinking, evolving society without abandoning the core principles that
Speaker 2: got us here in the first place. And I really,
Speaker 2: genuinely I think you aren't embodying me of that. And
Speaker 2: congratulations to what you've done so far. I can't wait
Speaker 2: to see where you go. And I really appreciate you
Speaker 2: joining me today.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: We've got a country to build, and thank you for
Speaker 2: joining us this week. If Manu or another guest has
Speaker 2: inspired you in general, or better yet, to take action
Speaker 2: by starting a Bridge USA chapter, by donating to them,
Speaker 2: or something else entirely, please let me know. I'd love
Speaker 2: to hear about it. You can write me anytime at
Speaker 2: Bill at normalfolks dot us, or call or text us
Speaker 2: at nine oh one three five two one three sixty six.
Speaker 2: And if you enjoyed this episode, share with friends and
Speaker 2: on social, subscribe to the podcast, rate and review it,
Speaker 2: become a premium member at normalfolks dot us. All these
Speaker 2: things that will help us grow an army of normal folks.
Speaker 2: Thanks to our producer, Iron Light Labs, I'm Bill Courtney
Speaker 2: and i'll see you next week.