[00:00] A lot of people they they have these turning points where they lose a job or they get divorced or maybe they have to go to rehab for 6 months and they feel like they're stuck. What's your message to them based on what you learned about your own journey? Yeah, you're you're actually not stuck. It feels like it, but things really do get better. They really do. You know, let me tell you a story, too. Have you ever heard of the folk singer Pete Seeger? You you have. You have. You just don't
[00:30] know it. All the songs from our our youth that we learned in kindergarten, those were all Pete Seeger songs. Anyway, um Pete told me a story one time about the folk singer Phil Ochs. Phil Ochs was huge in the '60s and '70s. Phil um Phil was on a tour of Africa to sing and put on concerts and he got mugged. And the mugger cut his cut his throat. And he lived, but he was no longer able
[01:01] to sing high notes. And he went into a deep depression. One night Pete was performing at the Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village. And he had to literally run to Grand Central Station to catch the last train to Beacon, New York, which is where he lived. It was the last train of the night. So, just as he's packing up his banjo and he's going to physically run to Grand Central, Phil Ochs calls and one of the waitresses says, "Pete, Phil Ochs is on the phone for you." And he grabs the
[01:33] phone, he said, "Phil, I can't talk. I've got to run and catch the last train to Beacon." And he he said, "Call me tomorrow." And he hung up. And Phil Ochs killed himself. He wanted to be talked out of it. And Pete said, "That selfish prick." He said, "I'll never forgive him. He had no idea how much he was hurting the people who meant the most to him. So, you know, when you're feeling at
[02:04] your lowest, like you're never going to claw your way out of this, first of all, that's just simply not true. It really does get better. But, you have no idea how loved you are and how much you would hurt the people that you care about the most. I had a friend, James. James did some really stupid when he was young, and he ended up he ended up doing a 17 years of a
[02:36] 20-year sentence. And I mean, it's hard enough to get a job when you you've got a a felony conviction. If you have a violent felony conviction, you're never going to work, not in any meaningful way. And so, he went overseas. Uh he was really ripped. He used to he used to lift every day, so he went into porn for a while, and he just he things just weren't working out for him. And he decided that he was going to commit suicide, but he didn't want to
[03:08] make a mess in his mother's house. So, he took a gun, he drove to a Walmart parking lot to kill himself. And just as he puts the gun into his mouth, an off-duty ATF agent pulls into the next space. He just finished his shift, and he's going to go into Walmart to do his grocery shopping. Pulls out his gun. Drop the gun. Drop the gun. James says, "You don't understand. I'm I'm going to kill myself. I'm not going to rob the the Walmart."
[03:39] Anyway, the ATF agent disarmed him. They charged him with felon with a gun. It's a mandatory minimum sentence of 8 years. But, he got out on bail. And he used to call me every single day and say, "I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself. I'm going to kill myself." And I'd say, "James, you say this every day. You're not going to kill yourself. You're going to relax. You're going to do what your attorney tells you to do." I said, "Buddy, take a break. Fly out here. I'm in DC." He was in Montana.
[04:10] "Fly out here for a week or two and just decompress and we can talk about everything. You're going to get past it. You're not going to get fell in with a gun. You know, the the the attorney's is going to argue, you know, mental strain and Well, on July 4th of 2023, his sister was lighting a firecracker and it went off in her hand and it blew two of her fingers off. So, he calls me and he says, "My sister had this accident with a firecracker.
[04:41] She's in surgery now. They're trying to sew her fingers back on." And I said, "Oh my god, that's terrible. I'll send flowers. Tell her, you know, hope everything works out okay." And I said, "But you sound awfully good." And he said, "Yeah, I feel really good. I feel really good about things." I said, "Great. Great." Two days later, his sister calls me and I said, "Oh my god, how are you doing?" She said, "I'm okay. It was a long surgery. They reattached my fingers. That's not why I'm calling." She said, "James killed himself last night."
[05:12] And I was like, "What?" I said, "Why would he do that?" I said, "I just talked to him two days ago. He sounded great." And she said, "He sounded great because he had made up his mind to do it." And he left a note. And he said to his mother, "Call John and tell him I said I was sorry." And I felt just like Pete Seeger felt with Phil Ochs, you selfish bastard. How could you do this? I told you a thousand times, call me.
[05:44] Call me if you're thinking of doing something like that. And he didn't. He walked down to a neighbor's house, strung up a noose in an oak tree, and he hung himself. And just like Pete said, I'll never forgive him for doing that. But anyway, things really do get better. There are a thousand people out there who want the best for you, and who are willing to take a phone call and be a a friendly ear.
[06:15] Rely on the people around you. Rely on your friends and family. That's what I would say. Was there ever a moment for you where you felt hopeless and down in the dumps like that? Yeah, the night that I got arrested. And my And my wife talked me out of it. I had five kids at home, too. What was that moment like where you just where just at that that moment your world was coming crashing down on you? She [snorts] um we were watching TV the night of my arrest and uh she said she said let's let's go to bed. This has been a terrible day. Let's just go to bed. And
[06:47] I said, "No, you go to bed. I'm going to watch some more TV." And I wasn't going to watch TV. I was going to go down into the garage and start the car and just lay across the back seat. And I think she suspected it. And she said, "No, let's go to bed." And she stood there until I finally shut off the TV and got up and and we went to bed. And then you got arrested that night? No, no, I got arrested that morning. That's why I was so upset. Like looking back knowing what you know now, what would you have told your self that day knowing what you know now?
[07:18] You can tough this out. This is not going to be as bad as you think it is. In fact, my brother said something to me the day of my arrest. He said, "I know you can't see it, but this is going to turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to you." And he was right. As crazy as it sounds, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. You know, I think that people they have this internal voice that's telling them to do something. Whether it's to start a company, whether it's to
[07:48] you know, break up with somebody, whether it's to, you know, ask somebody to marry them, whatever. And they don't do it, and they don't do it. Like, what do you think can happen to the person that ignores their internal voice? Yeah. And you know, listen to that internal voice. Certainly seek counsel from people you trust. But listen to that internal voice. It's important, right? It is. What do you think? What is your overall perspective of the world right now? And what we're going through. I think
[08:19] the world's in a very dangerous place right now. Very dangerous. You know, we've we've got the Russia-Ukraine war still, you know, in a stalemate. Well, not really, the Russians are winning, but I mean, you'll they'll they'll fight for weeks over 15 ft of territory. Um we've got, you know, the US-Israeli war against Iran, the opening and closing and then reopening of the of the Strait of Hormuz. Europe, yesterday I saw breaking news, Europe has 6 weeks of
[08:50] jet fuel left. It'll be an economic calamity around the world if Europe runs out of jet fuel. Um in the meantime, the Chinese are expanding by leaps and bounds. Here in the United States, we're we're split right down the center politically, ideologically. I mean, I I've not seen anything like this, certainly in my adult lifetime, but I'm I'm just old enough to remember 1968, 1969. I was a kid.
[09:21] Um and things were as terrible then as they are now. You know, Martin Luther King's assassinated, then Bobby Kennedy's assassinated, then Kent State, and then the summer of love, and everybody's in the street, and the cops are shooting unarmed people, and yeah. I think we're just as split now as we were in '68 and '69. Do you think that we're going to Do you think that there's a bigger threat now for like local acts of terrorism? Not necessarily. I think what we have to be
[09:52] worried about are acts of lone wolf terrorism. You know, somebody walking into a church or a synagogue or a mosque and just opening fire. You know, we've got What is it? Like a mass shooting a day according to the FBI's definition of a mass shooting where three or more people are injured. Every day. I was I was giving an interview to a to a Hungarian psychiatrist today. He's doing a a study on um on trauma.
[10:23] And um he told me that um he's interviewed several FBI profilers who told him that in the 1970s and the 1980s, so the so-called golden age of serial killers, there was a point where there were 150 serial killers loose killing. Now, on any given day, there are 30 serial killers loose in America that we just haven't caught yet.
[10:55] And he And he said, "You know, in Hungary, we can't even fathom something like this because we've never had a serial killer. Not a single one." And here in the United States, the first documented serial killer began killing in 1792. That's crazy. I didn't know that. It's a part of our culture. So, do you think the What do you think the average person can do? Cuz I think you're see some people like, "Oh, you should just move out of the country." Like, what can just stay here and stay informed? For better or for worse, we have to live and work
[11:25] within the system that we've created for ourselves. And so, yeah, be as well informed as you possibly can be, vote your conscience, and then demand change from your elected officials. They work for us. And by God, if they don't do what we tell them to do, then we've got to throw them out and elect somebody else. We have to take the system seriously because it's the only system that we have.