Latest / Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson / The Compton Cowboys: Healing Racial Trauma with Horses | Louis Hook & Kansas Carradine | EAW 58

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The Compton Cowboys: Healing Racial Trauma with Horses | Louis Hook & Kansas Carradine | EAW 58 · Equine Assisted World with Rupert Isaacson

0:00
Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Equine Assisted World.
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I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New York Times best selling
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author of The Horse Boy, The Long Ride Home, and The Healing Land.
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Before I jump in with today's guest, I just want to say a huge
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thank you to you, our audience, for helping to make this happen.
0:15
I have a request.
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If you like what we do, please like, subscribe, tell a friend.
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It really helps us get this work done.
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As you might know from my books, I'm an autism dad.
0:27
And over the last 20 years, we've developed several
0:31
equine assisted, neuroscience backed certification programs.
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If you'd like to find out more about them, go to newtrailslearning.
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com.
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So without further ado, let's meet today's guest.
0:44
Welcome back to Equine Assisted World.
0:47
I have Louis Hook here with h- the Compton Cowboys.
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He's one of the founding members of the Compton Cowboys mission.
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If you don't know what they are I've been aware of them for some time, you need to.
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So he's gonna tell us.
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And I've also got the amazing Kansas Carradine here, who comes
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with her HeartMath background.
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She's been working with the Compton Cowboys for some years.
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I'm delighted that she can co-host this with me.
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And she has, of course, much to share with us on heart-based horsemanship,
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the science behind heart co- coherence, and all of the reasons why this is a
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good thing in the equestrian world, and particularly in our field of people
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who are often poisoned with cortisol and stress and how we can bring them
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back to wellbeing and ourselves.
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So, you know, I'm, I'm honored that both of you are here.
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Louis, do you wanna kick off and just tell us who you are,
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what the Compton Cowboys is-
1:38
Louis Hook: Mm-hmm
1:39
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: and how you got there?
1:40
Yeah.
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Louis Hook: Yeah.
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Yeah, just Compton Cowboys is led by my son, Randy Savvy, who picked up the
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mission about seven, eight years ago.
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It started some 35 years ago with my sister when she st- stumbled on a
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equestrian neighborhood in Compton and saw that she could live and own horses in
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our budget space which was a big thing.
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So she moved to Compton in 1988 to do that with that was in the middle of Compton
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being really the center of, of of gang warfare and gangs gang life at the time.
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And I remember telling her, "She can't move to Compton 'cause
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she can't raise her kids there.
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She's lost her mind."
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And she said "Well, you know, I've gotta do what God tells me
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to do, so I'm moving to Compton."
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So four years later, when I'm moving to Compton after watching her grow and found
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this thing which was basically we were taught by our mom that as part of growing
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up poor, we grew up in housing projects.
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My mom made sure that our, where we lived was where all our friends w-
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came to c- and that way we stayed safe versus going out adventuring around.
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So my sister Maisha Akbar had that model.
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And so when she had her, she had three kids, and they were bringing
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their kids over, and all of a sudden everybody wanted to ride.
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And she said, "Look, okay, I've gotta do this in a structured way
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because I, I'm getting overwhelmed.
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Also, hey, kids, if you wanna ride, you gotta learn to shovel,
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you know what, and do some work."
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So that's how the Compton Junior Posse, the original organization, got founded.
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Me over four years of watching her, participating kind of help, I grew
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to see the neighborhood and the, and the way it was working, that
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it was, be a place for me as well.
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And I, I couldn't do it until I became a single parent of 18-month-old
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twin boys, 'cause my f- first wife at the time would not move to
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Compton, and I wouldn't force her.
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But once I became single, then off we were going with my friends who are I
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was you know, col- through college, Occidental College, to MIT Economics
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PhD program to Harvard Business School.
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All my peers are telling me, "You can't move to Compton.
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Have you lost your mind?"
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Okay.
4:13
And I came up with the same answer.
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"Hey, I've gotta do what God told me to do."
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And so I moved to Compton and started the mission of working with the youth
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there leveraging horses to help them grow and develop, and that was the start.
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And so we did that for many years, some 30 years, till my sister was ready to retire.
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And I said, "Yeah, I'm gonna retire, too."
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So we were gonna close the program down, and my son, who grew up in
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it- Said can't let it close, Dad.
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It's too important to me, the people that we grew up with, that he grew up
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with, his peers and all of their kids.
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He said, "We can't do it."
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So he, he decided to take it over with the new concept, adding the Compton
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Cowboys as a commercial activity on top of the non-profit activity.
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And spawned the Compton Cowboys as, And that's how we kind of
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got where, where we are today.
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Rupert Isaacson: I've got several questions immediately spring to mind.
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All right?
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They're like one, two, three, four.
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So Okay.
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Let me, let me fire them and then if we get sidetracked, I think we do need to
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come back because first question is, the s- the, the, as you say, the perception
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of Compton, even to you all, is a center of the hood in West Coast USA, even
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though of course there's many actually.
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I've lived in California- Mm-hmm â¦ and there's many, and we're not, you know,
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it's Oakland and there's a b- bazillion.
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But for whatever reason because of the rap culture that came out
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of it, everybody knows Compton.
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So-
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Why did Compton have an equestrian culture as well?
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How was that coexisting with hood culture?
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And because that's a bit of a mind stretch, w- so there must
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be an interesting story there.
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And then the second question is why did Compton, out of all the available
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violent hoods that you could choose from, which are legion, there's many
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of them, why did it become the one that is the sort of household name?
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So first, first why was there a, an equestrian community there,
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and B, why did it become so celebrated as opposed to other ones?
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Louis Hook: Yeah, so first off, one of the things I've learned over the
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years that there are poor people in every major city fighting to
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maintain their equestrian culture.
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Okay.
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All over the world.
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All over the world.
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Rupert Isaacson: Because horses were in all cities.
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Louis Hook: They were in all cities.
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Rupert Isaacson: Right.
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Louis Hook: And so in Compton and around LA there are other little pockets
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where poor people were struggling to keep their horses and do that and-
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Rupert Isaacson: Is it because Compton had a particular stretch of
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old pastures that people who used to, say, run horse transportation
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things used to keep theirâ¦
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Like, what, what-
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Louis Hook: Yeah, there, there was a, a- Why was there an equestrian
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Rupert Isaacson: culture there?
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Louis Hook: A neighborhood that's called Richland Farms, and it was deeded by,
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I forget the gentleman's name, who deeded the land to the City of Compton.
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He deeded it that it has, had to maintain to be farmland.
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Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
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Louis Hook: Okay?
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But that doesn't stop.
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There's all, pockets all over the place where people just squeezed in and said,
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"Hey, I, I, I have horses," and they kind of carved out spaces, slowly getting
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squeezed out by urbanization, right?
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Ours was forced.
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It couldn't get squeezed out, but- Yeah â¦ there's still today pockets
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all over the place of this going on.
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So, so again, I learned we weren't unique that way because we've connected.
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I went to Ghana in January, connected with a woman who's got an equestrian program.
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She's working with my s- myâ¦
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We've been to England to see little, a poor little corner
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where people are trying to work to keep their horses and ride them.
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Bricks in the wall, yeah.
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And they're riding in the streets.
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Yeah.
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They, you know, wherever they can do.
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So this equestrian culture is everywhere.
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For Black people, 'cause they were poor, it's in these kind of what I call
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the, the defined little pockets, right?
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Rupert Isaacson: C- can I ask a sub question then from that question?
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Sure.
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Which is where did this particular Black equestrian culture come from?
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Because having lived in the USA a lot, I've lived in California and
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I've lived in Texas, so I've seen various Black equestrian cultures.
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What is the particular one that's indigenous to LA, and
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why is it there historically?
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This is just always really interesting to get the background picture.
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Louis Hook: Yeah, so that part I can'tâ¦
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I have to tell you that I haven't dissected very much-
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Rupert Isaacson: Okay
8:55
â¦ Louis Hook: where you can help me understand these different tracks.
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My general track is just that Black people were so involved with
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equestrian wherever they peeled out, they try, they tried to maintain it.
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Okay.
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I don't understand the various tracks as you're explaining
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them of where they came from.
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But, like, if I say even in LA, so there's Compton, there's Altadena that were where
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b- a few Buffalo Soldiers settled- Right â¦ which is on the other side of LA, and
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they have their little equestrian space.
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And we, we all learn, hey, we get together, we can have, you know,
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gymkhanas or things like that, that we can do things and help each other out.
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But there are different tracks like that that I see.
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Rupert Isaacson: Right.
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Got it.
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Got
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Louis Hook: it.
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And so ours was as we came to the neighborhood and my sister kind of took
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it over, she just led it down a path which actually she was, when we first
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got here, there was an equestrian model of beat your horse into submission.
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Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
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Louis Hook: And she through her own education, teaching herself, stuff
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like that, getting in touch with horse whisperer more type stuff, kind of
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converted y- almost our whole neighborhood to, "Hey, that's not how we bring these
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horses forward, especially if we are gonna have them helping the kids to grow."
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Okay?
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So she's sort of the person who kind of put all that piece together and grew
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us into a kind of a unique space in the Af- in the, in the LA area of, of of
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horsemanship, of Black horsemanship.
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Kansas Carradine: Louis, do you mind speaking a little bit about
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how Myesha was exposed to horses, how her horsemanship was developed?
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That she even felt like- Yeah â¦ "Hey, I can go do this.
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I can take horses in.
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I can teach other kids about it."
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Louis Hook: Hey so if you start where we grew up in the housing
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projects, it was, we were in aâ¦
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Relative to what you kn- know about housing projects, we were in
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a unique kind of space because if you went west and north, it was the
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hood, gangs, drugs, the whole thing.
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Rupert Isaacson: Are we talking California here or another
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Louis Hook: project?
11:01
Yeah, in California.
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I grew up here in California, not far from Compton, not in Compton.
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Okay.
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A place called Harbor City.
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But
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if you went south and west, there was a swamp.
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And some homeless people would live on the swamp with their
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raggedy trailer or whatever.
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It might have one horse and one pig and things like that.
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So we kind of saw a lot.
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And in Harbor City, because it's outside of, it's on the edge of, of Los Angeles,
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just had, again, more pockets ofâ¦
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And it was generally poor people, white and Black, who kind of tried to
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have their animals and their horses.
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So she got exposure to that.
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She grew to just like horses and want to ride.
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So, but they, but in growing up, we didn't have any horses we couldn't ride.
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So she went to the local place where you rent horses to ride, which was
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Griffith Park here for everybody.
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They had stables there.
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Where the Hollywood
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Rupert Isaacson: sign is.
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Louis Hook: Yeah, no.
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Yeah, the Hollywood sign is, is up there.
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It's not quite in Griffith Park, but you could see Griffith Park.
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Rupert Isaacson: Right.
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Louis Hook: So, so she would ride horses, and her and her best
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friend just grew to enjoy it.
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So they would go ride horses.
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And then she was a realtor.
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She became a realtor, and she stumbled on this Richland Farms neighborhood.
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So that got her in there.
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But I will tell you, all she knew about horses at that time
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was that she could ride them.
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She didn't know anything.
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And, but once she got going, she just took off studying, you know, trying
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to deal with this, especially once she decided she wanted to help the kids.
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She got to understand them, all of that stuff.
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So she self-taught everything.
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And that's how it grew.
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Rupert Isaacson: So is, are, within Compton, are there many Comptons?
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Meaning- No â¦ so are there, like, upper class Compton, less upper, hood Compton,
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violent Compton, peaceful Compton?
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Is it a much more complicated mosaic than it's presented as?
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Louis Hook: Absolutely more complicated.
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You know, Compton became a place for middle class Blacks, and then it became
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a, a gangster place as that whole gangland world grows up because it's
13:23
an outlet for people to make money.
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So these things start impacting it.
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So Compton, in my neighborhood, it's ebbed and flowed between
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being, having gang members who were fighting with other gang members to
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mostly being peaceful and outside of the full range of the full battle.
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B- but the full battle had to go to school near us.
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Compton High was around the corner.
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Mm.
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So we would capture, our kids would capture some of their kids and then-
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Mm â¦ then we would, there, you know, it, it, what I say is it wasn't always for
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the faint of heart when a kid collapses at your doorstep bleeding from a gunshot.
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Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
14:07
Louis Hook: And and then we've had the blessing of our own direct family n- no
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one being killed, but we had some shot.
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And but in our family of the Compton Cowboy youth, we have
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several, several murders and deaths.
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Rupert Isaacson: Why did- So- â¦ Compton, why did Compton become the poster
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child for West Coast hood and not any of the other available West Coast
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hoods that I'm keeping an open view?
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Well, it's like this, Dave- But C- Compton is the one that, like, l-
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has the whole mythological thing.
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Louis Hook: Yeah.
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It's like you said, the the music that really took it to a new height.
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It's world renowned and infamous Compton is because of the music.
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Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
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Louis Hook: And so that gets the name out there.
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Mm.
14:52
So then M- Randall, Randy, my son, he said, "I can leverage that- Mm
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for the good to try to change the image of Compton, of what we know about it,
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but also to carry this broader message."
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So that was the whole point of leveraging that- visibility of Compton
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to say it's broader than that, but the people are broader than that.
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Rupert Isaacson: Sure.
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Louis Hook: And that's where, where he took off.
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Rupert Isaacson: What was your job through all of those early days?
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Or what was your day job while you were, you guys were
15:25
getting this project together?
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Louis Hook: Yeah, I, I, I always had a career.
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You know, I came out of, I first started I thought I wanted to be a
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PhD in economics and go in the, go the teaching and research route.
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But I found myself at MIT, where I said, "What am I doing in
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the middle of all these nerds?"
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So, I said, "Okay, I'm gonna get back to my track," which was before I got there
15:51
I was kind of headed for business school.
15:53
So I went to business school.
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I went to Harvard Business School.
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And then I got my first job was as a banker in Pittsburgh, and I, I've
16:00
always had a career related to that.
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But my, most of my if, if, if I say once my sister got started my
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pastime and passion was with her and that program, and where most
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of my money went as I had a career.
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And you know, I, I, I could live pretty much anywhere in the city-
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Rupert Isaacson: Okay
16:22
â¦ Louis Hook: when I decided to move to, to, to Compton.
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And, I, I
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Rupert Isaacson: can't think of many bankers who went to MIT and Harvard
16:30
Business School who moved to Compton.
16:32
Right.
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Yeah, I think you're the only
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Louis Hook: one.
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Right, right.
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Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
16:34
Louis Hook: Yeah.
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And that, that captures my what I call myself as a, my writing
16:38
moniker is educated hood rat.
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Because I started in the housing projects poor.
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I rose through the heights of academia and all that goes with that, and then
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I went into the workspace where I haven't been massively successful,
16:56
but I'm comfortable you know, in terms of what I was able to accomplish.
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But moving back to the hood as an adult and working there, I find that my
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perspective- Is always different than most people having gone that full cycle
17:14
in my assessment of why, what, and how.
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So, so that's where that comes from.
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Rupert Isaacson: Were you and your family resented for coming in as
17:24
affluent in an area like that?
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Did that cause tensions or was there actually much more solidarity?
17:31
Louis Hook: Well, there's solidarity 'cause we grew up poor.
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We, we, we identify.
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So b- give you an example.
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I never mentioned that I even graduated from college unless
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the opportunity presented itself.
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Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
17:43
Louis Hook: Okay?
17:43
That's what I learned is you're an immediate outsider
17:46
if you come in that way.
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Rupert Isaacson: Right.
17:49
Louis Hook: And so, I, I would say to you that I got â¦ Everybody who grew
17:55
up through the program, even though I wasn't working directly with it,
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most of them call me Pops or Grandpa.
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Yeah.
18:02
Okay?
18:03
'Cause that's what I did, trying to influence them.
18:08
But without trying to come over the top knowing that that's â¦ Having felt that
18:13
through all that academia of coming out of, you know, a poor space and trying to
18:18
grow just an aside, it turns out most of the women I dated, their mothers hated
18:25
me, that I dated in college and through grad school because they didn't send their
18:31
daughters to college to, to connect with a hood rat, even though I was in college.
18:36
Yeah.
18:36
So that, they, somehow I got attracted to those women who were a
18:42
little bit royalty type, you know, kind of- Were these Black women
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Rupert Isaacson: or white women?
18:46
Or both?
18:46
Louis Hook: Black.
18:47
Black.
18:47
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
18:48
Louis Hook: Yeah.
18:48
Rupert Isaacson: So was there a feeling that if they married somebody
18:51
or went with somebody from the hood, even as educated as you, it
18:54
would stall the upward mobility?
18:57
Louis Hook: Yeah, absolutely.
18:58
They- Yeah.
18:59
They, they, th- the women had, at least those in their, their
19:03
group, is you connect with
19:08
â¦ Excuse me.
19:09
You know, you're trying to lift yourself out through your marriage to
19:13
someone who â¦ And, you know, there's, there's Black royalty out there.
19:16
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
19:16
Louis Hook: People who've, who have some wealth and they're,
19:18
and they're in those schools.
19:20
Rupert Isaacson: Yep.
19:22
Yep.
19:23
No, this is interesting because we, we were just chatting before we hit record.
19:27
As, as you know, my family is from Southern Africa.
19:30
Not all my family is white, and we have all kinds of economic, what would you say?
19:34
Strata within our family, no matter which area of the color thing we're in.
19:42
Right.
19:42
Mm-hmm.
19:42
And we've definitely observed, I've definitely observed that
19:45
at work within my own family.
19:47
People having opposition to marrying somebody because it's perceived as
19:53
stalling the upward mobility, and frequently it's actually not the case.
19:56
But you know, it, it, I think it's good for people to understand this because
20:00
it, it make, it shows the sort of human complexity of these situations and
20:04
allows people to feel more compassion because I think everybody can relate to
20:08
something like that in their own family.
20:11
Okay.
20:11
But so there you are.
20:12
You've, you've gone and gotten all this education, and now you've gone back
20:15
to the hood, admittedly to a part of the hood which you can keep horses in.
20:20
But as you say, Compton High is around the corner, kids are getting shot.
20:24
You are there, and kids are coming to your program.
20:28
So what is your program doing?
20:31
Did you start just thinking, "Well, we're just gonna have kids ride"?
20:34
And then did it become, "Oh, this is a social mission"?
20:37
And then what was the social mission?
20:38
Or was it a social mission from the get-go?
20:41
Louis Hook: And
20:41
Rupert Isaacson: if so- No, it was an evolution â¦ what was,
20:42
what was the mission statement?
20:44
Yeah.
20:44
Louis Hook: It, it was an evolution.
20:46
You know, so my sister, like I started to say, was following my
20:49
mom's model of- My kids' friends come here, they don't go there.
20:56
And so as the kids were kind of like Pied Piper saying, "Hey, we got horses.
21:02
Come hang out with us."
21:03
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
21:04
Louis Hook: And so as that grew, my sister said "You know what?
21:08
I can't support this just the, the volume of stuff going on unless I get organized
21:13
with it," and started requiringâ¦
21:15
M- started itâ¦
21:17
It, it grew into a mission through that, of seeing these
21:20
kids, none of them have dads.
21:23
They're all adrift.
21:25
They're, Now as I, as older, I look at it as not an official diagnosis, but I say
21:31
all these hood kids are dealing with PTSD.
21:34
Rupert Isaacson: Sure.
21:35
Louis Hook: They're, they'reâ¦
21:36
A- a- and separate that out from the PTSD intergenerational
21:41
from slavery and all that.
21:42
Right.
21:42
But just directly walking down the street not knowing if you
21:46
were gonna survive the next day.
21:48
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
21:49
Louis Hook: That's that's pretty stressful.
21:51
So over the years of we look at helping those kids, we've also got
21:57
everybody coming at us for help with horse therapy, things like that,
22:01
and we've tried different things.
22:02
But my sister and I always said, "This is the core group that we wanna help.
22:08
There's nobody really focused on them.
22:10
There's not a lot of money for them in this space."
22:12
Versus, you know, if you need-- if you have a health pro- issue that's
22:16
psychological or whatever, or therapy, there's a lot of money out there for
22:20
that, and there's nothing for these kids.
22:23
So that's how we kind of s- maneuvered our way and she, with her
22:29
leadership, to that, into a program.
22:31
And what we have today, what she grew, we call it a self-development
22:37
program that leverages horses.
22:41
To get the, the youth to grow, to be upstanding young men and women, and
22:47
positive contributions to society.
22:50
That's what we do.
22:52
So our program has- Will you s- Go ahead.
22:54
Kansas Carradine: Will you speak a little bit, Louis, also, because
22:57
when you talk about upstanding men and women, about you know, how many
23:00
kids have you guys served, and the, how, the gender demographics as well.
23:05
Because what it sounds like, and I love this, is each equestrian center
23:09
ends up creating this sanctuary.
23:11
I certainly went to one of those similarly as well.
23:14
Mm-hmm.
23:14
Where after school it was a place, and it's family, and you
23:17
were drawn into really connecting with these kids individually.
23:20
So can you just also give us a picture of, you know, where they came from,
23:24
and about how many kids y- you've served, and what you saw betweenâ¦
23:27
Obviously, the Compton Cowboys.
23:29
I came ag- from a group that was called the Rio Rancho Cowboy Girls.
23:32
We were all girls.
23:33
Right.
23:33
And girls love horses.
23:35
Right.
23:35
But you have the Compton Cowboys, and there's been a lot of, a lot of guys
23:38
and blokes that have gone through.
23:39
Yeah.
23:40
So can you speak a little bit about that, too?
23:42
Louis Hook: Yeah.
23:43
So i- it, it's evolved in a lot of different directions.
23:47
But in fact, you know, kind of when we first started, it was kind of a
23:51
rodeo kind of a model for, on the equestrian that had the young men being
23:57
the most needy of that help, and most interested, 'cause it was a challenge
24:03
to deal with that big horse, right?
24:06
So that was kind of where we started.
24:09
Then as we grew my sister made sure we expose women, and so
24:14
it was rodeo women to start.
24:16
Like, her own daughter was was a barrel racer you know, starting from 10.
24:23
And and then she attracted other women and or girls, and we
24:28
kind of had it going both ways.
24:30
As we kind of evolved and were looking for the money to support the kids,
24:34
we found that the western support f- financially was just very hard to come by.
24:42
That the racism in the, in the, in the Western world, which I didn't even know
24:48
how much money there was i- in it but we couldn't get access to it hardly.
24:53
So as my sister was evolving We s- s- started moving towards
24:59
the English riding side.
25:00
And then as we did that, the, the girls more took the leadership there.
25:06
The guys w- kind of fell off for a while.
25:09
And which is my son it was kind of the last big main
25:13
group of kids coming through.
25:15
So at any point in time, there'd be 15 to 30 kids who are kind of in the
25:21
program and rolling with it along, and then they, the ones that grow up and
25:27
grow out probably if we say we, the, the count that we use is about 30 kids
25:35
a year for 35 years is, is the count.
25:41
You know?
25:43
Rupert Isaacson: Two questions.
25:44
Again, having lived in Texas where there's a really, really strong Black cowboy
25:48
tradition, the cowboys of color, there's a, there's big Black rodeos that happen
25:51
up in Fort Worth, really well-sponsored, you know, sponsorship is there.
25:55
The money's there.
25:56
And I, I agree, racism is absolutely there in the Western world, it's
25:59
there in the English world too, but there is this very, very- Yeah
26:02
established thing.
26:04
Is that not there in California?
26:06
Could you not tap into that?
26:10
Louis Hook: S- explain yeah, clarify your question for me.
26:12
What, what are we
26:14
Rupert Isaacson: looking for?
26:14
Well, the, the, the, the Black rodeo and the cowboys of color sort of national
26:18
organizations that exist within the USA I know have some sort of financial clout.
26:23
Of course probably more now than they did back then.
26:26
But were these not groups that you could reach out to for support?
26:31
Louis Hook: No.
26:32
One is the places where the Black people still own ranches, big ranches, is where
26:40
what you're talking about grew out of.
26:41
Rupert Isaacson: Like Texas and, yeah.
26:43
Louis Hook: Yeah.
26:43
What
26:43
Rupert Isaacson: I learned.
26:43
Louis Hook: Yeah.
26:43
In California there are no Black people who owned ranches.
26:47
Okay.
26:47
So everybody was kind of just struggling to have their little equestrian
26:51
world and, and be able to ride.
26:53
So that's the difference between that.
26:55
Then there's something in the Black community that we deal with, at
26:59
least from my perspective, is that everybody's doing their own thing.
27:03
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
27:04
Louis Hook: Okay?
27:05
And it's hard enough to do your own thing versus trying to help each other.
27:08
So we're always outside of our groups.
27:11
And as a matter of fact, today despite even the wealth that's in those
27:16
African rodeo- communities, they're all struggling to separately do rodeos
27:22
and do different things, and each going up against each other, right?
27:27
'Cause that's what we were curated to do from my perspective.
27:30
And so, that whole alignment ofâ¦
27:33
Like right now my son's been in the middle of the Bill Pickett Rodeo and
27:36
the 8 Second Rodeo, and they've been saying, "Hey, look, if we all come
27:40
together we can do some pretty big rodeos and get some pretty big resources."
27:45
And- Deaf ears so far.
27:50
There's some, a lot of, there's talk but there's deaf ears so far.
27:53
But things to me, this is my own academic side coming in, is that
28:00
integration really blew up the Black communities across the country.
28:06
Because with segregation, the Black communities grew up into very powerful
28:13
and wealthy places like Black Wall Street.
28:16
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
28:16
Louis Hook: yeah.
28:16
Now, they attracted destruction because they were so successful,
28:22
but during segregation, those kinds of cities were everywhere.
28:27
And there's a whole history of why that is true, which is from my study, is that
28:34
the the slaves were masterfully used by the military to help build the country.
28:44
So most of the roads and towns, infrastructure the s- the, the,
28:50
the military was the largest leaser of slaves in the country
28:56
And they played a big part in that.
28:58
So when they got free, they went out and, and went west, especially in the, in the,
29:05
what I, what I call the Indian territory, which was the, became the Badlands,
29:09
'cause they could go do what they did.
29:11
And they, there were cities there just blowing up crazy, and the
29:16
whites didn't quite appreciate that, so they took them down.
29:20
So anyway-
29:21
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
29:21
â¦ Louis Hook: that slight history is rolls forward into, hey, today with, when, with
29:28
integration came up, all the little, the Black people working together, especially
29:32
the middle class, kind of moved forward with the, "Man, we can be successful.
29:38
We're kind of, it's kind of the post-racial world."
29:40
And they went to do their thing.
29:42
And so, it caused a lot of these people not to work together the way we had.
29:48
And so we're, we're now coming full circle with that with, you know, kind of the,
29:52
the need to, the attack on, on a on a, on African Americans here at least, is
30:01
causing some re-thinking of all that.
30:03
So I'm, I apologize for getting down that- No,
30:06
Rupert Isaacson: no.
30:06
It's, it's historic.
30:07
Yeah.
30:07
It helps us understand.
30:08
And these are the natural questions.
30:09
So I've got a second question from that, which is obviously, so
30:12
Compton is famous for rich rappers.
30:15
You know?
30:16
It's famous for people who put Compton in their lyrics or claim to have come from
30:20
Compton, so just off the top of my head, you know, anyone can think of, of West
30:24
Coast rap, so they think of Ice Cube, they think of, of Snoop Dogg, they think of you
30:29
know, the, the, the original rap movement coming out there with Public Enemy.
30:34
They think about oh gosh, help me out.
30:36
There's, there's, there's, there's more and there's more, you know?
30:39
Louis Hook: Oh, there's, there's- And- â¦ d- one of the popular ones there was, is,
30:41
Rupert Isaacson: Death Row Records, and, you know, Su-
30:43
Louis Hook: The guy, can they, what, who was the guy that did the Super Bowl thing
30:46
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
30:47
Louis Hook: More recently
30:48
Rupert Isaacson: Lamar Exactly.
30:49
Louis Hook: Lamar.
30:49
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
30:50
He's from Compton.
30:50
Kendrick Lamar.
30:51
All the, all these people.
30:52
They've got loads of money, and they, many of them use Compton as their marketing.
30:59
Why are these people not, or are they, backing Compton Cowboys, or do
31:03
they even know about Compton Cowboys?
31:05
And if not, why not?
31:07
Louis Hook: It's this thing I'm talking about.
31:09
So we, Dr.
31:10
Dre actually produced one Ra- one of Randall's re- records.
31:14
You know, he's a, he's a singer also.
31:16
And and gave us a few bucks, 10 grand here, 10 grand there,
31:20
but never picked them up.
31:23
But you
31:23
Rupert Isaacson: would expect there to be some big philanthropist
31:25
coming out of the hood going-
31:27
Louis Hook: Yeah, so, so there is-
31:27
"I want to give
31:28
Rupert Isaacson: back.
31:29
I'm ready to give back."
31:30
Not?
31:30
Louis Hook: So- In the, I'd say in the last five years we've seen it growing.
31:37
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
31:39
Louis Hook: So for example, Dr.
31:40
Dre helped build the new Compton High.
31:43
They just rebuilt it.
31:44
There's some other big programs going on with some of the wealthy guys.
31:47
But the general issue in the Black community is that the middle class
31:53
did their thing, and everybody typically started their own nonprofit
31:58
because they needed a tax write-off, and that's where they focused.
32:09
grand two years in a row.
32:14
Yeah,
32:14
Louis Hook: yeah.
32:15
Yeah.
32:15
So you saw the halftime show with
32:17
Kansas Carradine: Bey- Can you give an idea of yourâ¦
32:19
Can you give an idea also of your monthly overhead?
32:23
Yeah.
32:23
Like where does that 25K go?
32:24
In a drop in the bucket.
32:26
Louis Hook: Yeah.
32:26
Our, our, our budget is about, our sort of base budget is about 50 grand a month.
32:32
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
32:33
Louis Hook: But it ebbs down and up- Right â¦ depending on how much
32:36
money we have, how many kids we
32:38
Kansas Carradine: can support.
32:38
But that's important for all of the, the nonprofits who
32:40
are working on equine-assisted services to still create that- Yeah
32:45
which is so needed in the community.
32:47
You're creating that sanctuary.
32:48
And I happened to be there when Beyonce's BeyNice Foundation came,
32:52
you know, last year before we did that event for the the halftime.
32:57
Louis Hook: Right.
32:58
So you know what, what we did with her halftime show, that was Randy
33:02
curated the entire equestrian part.
33:04
I don't know if you saw it, Rupert.
33:06
No, I didn't.
33:06
Yeah.
33:07
So she did a, a NFL halftime show, big production.
33:12
She and my son curate- it was around her new Western work, and she had horses.
33:18
She walked out with a horse.
33:20
Randall curated the entire equestrian side, and our cowboys were on
33:23
horseback in the show, okay?
33:27
So it wasâ¦
33:28
So we have a relationship with Beyonce, Dr.
33:31
Dre, and all these people, but we can't get them to write a check bec- well,
33:37
one is, I'll say Beyonce, she's, in her nonprofit, they now have, are going out.
33:45
They didn't use to.
33:45
They're now going out looking for other nonprofits to support.
33:48
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
33:49
Louis Hook: Because there's so much of it, it's like they gotta
33:52
make their money go somewhere.
33:53
Although when you're a billionaire, it seems to me like money
33:56
could be a little bit, Have
33:57
Rupert Isaacson: youâ¦
33:57
Yeah.
33:58
Sometimes it's a question of directly asking.
34:00
Like, do you ring up Snoop Dogg every month and say,
34:02
"Dude, come on, be reasonable."
34:04
Louis Hook: So that's- Or notâ¦
34:06
Yeah â¦ Rand- Randall, he has done a lot of that.
34:09
That's his job because he's- Mm-hmm
34:11
the one that knows those people.
34:12
He's connected with them.
34:14
And it's resulted in some resources, but not sufficient and stable.
34:18
Like- Yeah â¦ somebody could adopt us.
34:20
We know throughout our whole time, it's like if you get a, the right
34:24
sponsor, they can carry the whole thing.
34:26
Absolutely.
34:27
Rupert Isaacson: If somebody could've given you an endowment of a million
34:28
bucks and put that away to invest in, that would've just done- Of course.
34:32
So- â¦ your monthly budget for 20 years.
34:33
Yeah, sure.
34:34
Louis Hook: Yeah.
34:34
Yeah.
34:34
So one thing over time, we had trouble getting the infrastructure
34:39
together for the big donors, like the Annenberg Foundation.
34:44
Annenberg Foundation got, took us on early, helped us get
34:49
our s- our planning together.
34:51
We even won rewards for planning based on kinda what I was putting forth.
34:55
But when it came time to implement, they said, "You guys have to do this
34:59
to get the big money," which is get our metrics together and get all that, and
35:04
we never could quite get it all together.
35:06
And one part is I wasn't full-time in it, and I used to fight with
35:11
my sister a little bit over kind of what that meant, and-
35:14
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
35:14
Louis Hook: it ended up me saying, "All right, look, I'm gonna write
35:17
checks and be from a distance.
35:19
This is your thing.
35:20
You do it."
35:20
Mm.
35:20
So over the years we, we had trouble getting to the big giant donors.
35:26
Right.
35:26
But in the middle, these, the African American communities from the athletes to
35:31
the singers to the entertainers, always we, we never could make that connection.
35:37
I mean, we know Oprah Winfrey has a big ranch up in the mi- right north
35:42
of, of of the LA area, LA County.
35:45
She has aâ¦
35:45
We, we've reached out to her even we can't make the connection.
35:50
Rupert Isaacson: I wonder if the difficulty is that because you were
35:53
a family foundation effectively, and a family project, and had the sort of
35:58
bootstrap idea, "Look, we can do this.
36:00
We'll do this ourselves," and of course then you get caught in a vicious cycle
36:04
of, "I gotta keep doing it because the bills are not gonna go away."
36:08
And I've been in this position, so Horse Boy Foundation, which is my thing, was
36:11
entirely me for years and years and years, and still to a large degree often is.
36:16
It was a long time before we attracted philanthropy, and we actually didn'tâ¦
36:21
We never went out to get it because we just simply didn't have time.
36:25
The moment we opened our doors we were just overwhelmed.
36:28
And as you say, we also couldn't do the stuff of, like, putting together those
36:32
fancy packages to go to big foundations because there's just another kid and
36:37
another family coming through the door.
36:38
So what actually happened was a certain amount of philanthropy
36:41
came our way because people just found out about what we were doing.
36:45
And it wasn't usually, it wasn't from within state.
36:48
We were in Texas.
36:49
It wasâ¦
36:50
But we were always working internationally.
36:52
We were always working globally 'cause we trained other people to do what we do.
36:56
And it sort of came that way.
36:57
But I wonder if now it's prophetic.
36:59
I want it to be prophetic, so I'm reaching out to the universe.
37:02
I want to be impressed by one of you rappers.
37:08
If you're gonna talk about Compton and lay claim to it like this- Please
37:16
do something for this organization.
37:19
That's entirely reasonable.
37:21
They are-
37:22
Louis Hook: Yeah, I think, I think that message is out there now
37:25
Yeah And my son is- We're putting
37:26
Rupert Isaacson: it out there â¦ is
37:27
Louis Hook: pushing it.
37:28
Yeah, I, I appreciate that, 'cause if we believe it, it can happen.
37:31
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
37:32
Louis Hook: But-
37:32
Rupert Isaacson: And it shouldn't happen because you have to make some fancy
37:35
package and take all this time that you could be spent serving a family to g-
37:40
You know, it should just be, "I'm from that hood.
37:43
I see what you're doing.
37:44
Here's a check."
37:46
Louis Hook: Yeah.
37:46
So, it hasn't happened and, and- Mm â¦ and this is true not
37:50
just for the Compton Cowboys.
37:52
Every equestrian organization Black is struggling.
37:55
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
37:56
Louis Hook: Okay?
37:57
They j- j- just are.
37:58
And you have the wealthy Blacks who have ranches and horses and all kinds of stuff,
38:03
but w- we can't get the flow into these programs that are helping these youth
38:09
ex- u- leverage that horse experience.
38:12
So-
38:12
Rupert Isaacson: Okay
38:12
â¦ Louis Hook: it's it's in transition, but I, I look at it as the curation
38:17
of Black people of not working with each other and doing their own thing
38:22
is something that i- is a big issue for us, and now we're starting to,
38:27
to, to deal with that, you know?
38:30
Yeah.
38:30
It's starting, it's starting to, to take shape where I see an investment
38:36
fund started that we're gonna invest in Black businesses, right?
38:40
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
38:41
Louis Hook: And the entrepreneurial model of the world is just taking
38:45
shape in the Black community like
38:47
Rupert Isaacson: that.
38:47
Okay.
38:48
Louis Hook: Matter of fact, the general- Well, I wanna- â¦ knowledge
38:50
in the Black community- â¦ about financials is, "Go get a bank loan."
38:54
And I'm sitting there going, "Banking isn't how you fundâ¦
38:58
Bank loan is not how you fund a business.
39:00
It's just not."
39:02
So anyway, yeah.
39:03
Kansas Carradine: I w- I'm, I would love Louis also just in spite of all that,
39:07
in spite of the challenges, in spite of the obstacles, still maintaining
39:12
this for over 30 years and over 1,000 different individuals who walk in there.
39:17
And again, I've seen it.
39:18
It is a sanctuary, and it's notâ¦
39:21
The horses are kind of the, the honey in the pot.
39:23
That's just what draws everybody to the farm.
39:26
Mm-hmm.
39:26
But what else is there, and what else do you guys provide?
39:30
Yeah, I was gonna actually ask you- 'Cause
39:32
Rupert Isaacson: it's, it is a family.
39:32
There's so much more â¦ could, could you outline what are the
39:34
structures that have evolved over the years, like how you actually
39:39
work with the youth that comes in?
39:41
There's intake- Yeah, so- â¦ there's the middle, then when they're coming through.
39:44
Yeah.
39:44
Yeah.
39:45
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39:48
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39:52
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40:59
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41:04
So, this means we need to train a horse in collection, but this
41:07
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41:11
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41:16
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41:19
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41:27
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41:29
Louis Hook: So something my sister really honed in on was
41:34
the, the self-development part.
41:36
We're a development self-development program for the kids.
41:40
So she's always done things to kind of support that.
41:43
I've evolved it since I after my son took it over and then I was retiring,
41:50
he said, "Come work with me, Dad," which, you know, has its own challenges
41:54
that we're wrestling with now.
41:55
But as I took it over, I, we really formalized that structure.
41:59
So we have now what we call f- four tracks.
42:03
We have the horsemanship track, which is getting out there and w- and riding
42:08
the horses, getting taught that.
42:10
We have the equine science track, which is studying the horses, the the books, the
42:17
learning about heart math and different things like that, about the relationships.
42:22
Then we have a farming track, farming and ranching track, where we have a
42:27
farm to table gardening activity, and we expose the kids to nature that way
42:34
and growing which includes a, it's farming and, and gardening is what it is.
42:38
So we have a petting zoo things like that, so the kids get exposed
42:43
more generally to a farm, right?
42:45
A ranching thing.
42:46
And that, in that track, there's a person who leads that that the, the
42:50
kids now get to the overall structure.
42:52
Then there's the self-development track itself, where we put the kids through
42:57
you know, things about themselves, learning about themselves, identify kids
43:02
that ha- need help that we can maybe go help them get referred for help.
43:07
So those four tracks we do, and whatâ¦
43:09
the way we work it is when theâ¦
43:12
We're in summer camp right now, which is 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM daily,
43:18
Mon- Monday through Thursday camp.
43:20
So the kids are broken up into four groups, and they rotate
43:24
through each of these tracks.
43:27
So, that's how we make sure weâ¦
43:31
And we have a leader of each track.
43:33
When they're in the gardening track, there, there's a gardening program.
43:37
We've connected to some org- some gardening and organizations who've
43:42
given us a lesson plan and kind of the, the stuff that we should be doing.
43:47
And that leader is the, is responsible for owning that lesson plan and driving
43:52
the kids when they're in that session.
43:54
So if there's, what's that?
43:56
Six hours, 9 to 3.
43:58
So they get an hour and a half each track With lunch breaks and
44:05
whatever, whatever in the middle.
44:06
So that's kind of how we formalized it now.
44:09
And so all this is documented, written.
44:12
We test the kids on the in, on the, when they come in and start to see where
44:15
they are and on, on all these tracks.
44:18
And then at the end of the session, we test them to see
44:21
where they, how they grew.
44:23
And then we're now trying to ca- we capture that, those metrics.
44:26
So that's how we moved to formalize it from my sisters kind of putting
44:31
together this overall self-development thing that leveraged the horses to
44:37
to, to do it in a more formal way.
44:41
Kansas Carradine: And you guys have been doing equine therapy
44:43
before it was a buzzword.
44:44
You know, you've identified already that a lot of these kids were coming in with
44:48
what would now be diagnosed as, like, PTSD, and I think now we're also seeing
44:52
a lot of neurodivergent personalities.
44:54
And the just the animal husban- husbandry aspect of it, that already
44:59
has such a, a, an impactful component.
45:02
And then what it sounds like is you just have widened it out so
45:05
that it's not just the horsemanship aspect, but it's all of the rhythm
45:10
of the activities that are around.
45:11
So even if you don't get a chance to ride, you still have meaningful
45:15
engagement and meaningful interaction.
45:17
Louis Hook: Yeah.
45:17
A- and that's something my sister
45:18
Kansas Carradine: started early on.
45:19
And most of the r- and most of the teachers have all
45:21
been through the program.
45:23
Let's just-
45:24
Louis Hook: Yeah.
45:24
So most of our-
45:25
â¦ Kansas Carradine: speak to
45:25
Louis Hook: that as well â¦ teachers now are kids who grew up in the program who
45:28
saw it benefit them, and they committed to give back and, and they work for us.
45:34
And, you know, we payâ¦
45:35
I don't think, I don't think only one of them has a full-time salary, but
45:39
we're, you know, we're, we're doing the best we can to keep them together.
45:42
But my sister all along had all these different tracks.
45:46
I'll give you an example.
45:47
She would have the kids say, "Hey, we're gonna go out and you gotta learn
45:52
how to make your pitch to, re- when we're at a rodeo, go through the stands
45:57
and make your pitch for what you want.
46:00
And so sh- we would have-- she'd give them lessons.
46:02
She'd teach them practice.
46:04
So when they went in, they could say, "Hey, we're with Compton Junior Equest-
46:07
Compton Junior Posse at the time.
46:09
This is what we do.
46:10
You know, we're looking for resources," da, da, da, da, da,
46:13
you know, that kind of thing.
46:14
She also had a thing where she w- the kids would build sh- figure
46:19
out something to sell at the rodeo.
46:20
So one thing we did, she would get old photos, equestrian photos, and we
46:26
would f- frame them and then go up and sell them at the at the, at the rodeo.
46:30
So she was always doing something saying, "This has to be more than just horses."
46:35
So now we've formalized it so that that is kind of how we roll.
46:40
And from the beginning, though, she did always say-
46:47
There's something about a horse.
46:49
This is before, again, she's learning, right?
46:52
So we don't know anything about horses, but she's learn- she says these ki-
46:56
these young men come in very aggressive.
46:59
In the hood, this is a thing.
47:02
You do not res- disrespect me.
47:04
That's how you survive.
47:06
So you're very aggressive, and anything that looks like a
47:10
slight, you're gonna lash out at.
47:13
I even still have some of that.
47:14
So, she said these kids who come in aggressive and they le- learn fairly
47:20
quickly that that's not gonna work with the horse, and they have to
47:25
learn if they really wanna deal with the horse, they better they better
47:30
take a different approach, okay?
47:32
And so she says they learn that aggression to put it in check when they, as they're
47:39
dealing with these horses and learning.
47:40
Now, now that we know more about the horses and their, their aura and their
47:48
heart space and how they communicate, and we're learning more a- about
47:54
that as the world is I say, you know, horses aren't for everybody, but if
48:00
they're for you, you can't disconnect.
48:04
It- it's just a natural, and it's because of that communication that the horses
48:09
do with the kids that we're now learning is even beyond just the kids' you
48:15
know, li- wanting to be with the horse.
48:17
It's a, there's a connection that builds and is healthy all the way around.
48:22
So it's been a pretty powerful growth path for us to see that and get exposed
48:27
to heart math and those things, where we got now Mark is, is going through
48:32
your program trying to learn that and, and we'll be introducing those
48:36
things more and more as we, as we get-
48:40
Rupert Isaacson: Kansas, could you tell us a bit more about HeartMath?
48:43
I know we've had you talk about this on the show before, but not everyone hits
48:46
every episode, and so don't worry that you're gonna be repeating yourself at all.
48:50
It's, it's,
48:51
Kansas Carradine: it's-
48:51
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: necessary information.
48:52
And then could you guys talk a little bit- Sure â¦ about how it's
48:54
been implemented there in Compton?
48:56
Kansas Carradine: Mm.
48:57
Sure, yeah.
48:58
So when we speak about HeartMath, I would say it's actually two things.
49:01
It's an entity that is a research organization that's been studying
49:05
basically the electromagnetic field of the heart and its impact on our
49:10
physiology, how our emotions basically affect your body, which is well known
49:15
now, but they basically pioneered a lot of biofeedback technology to prove that
49:20
through measuring something called HRV, which a lot of people talk right now
49:23
as a marker for health and vitality.
49:26
Which means?
49:26
But that heart rate variability.
49:29
Heart rate variability.
49:29
The heart rate variability is actually the beat-to-beat changes.
49:33
So most people think that, you know, your heart rate is just kind ofâ¦
49:36
I s- I thought, very erroneously, that it was just steady, like a metronome.
49:41
But actually, your heart rate will increase and decrease, and
49:45
what we're picking up as your heart rate is an average in a
49:48
given allotted amount of time.
49:50
And so the pace at which, the even tempo, like I say, a conductor in
49:55
an orchestra can get the entire 72 musicians to all increase their tempo
50:01
in a coherent way, and then slow down and create a legato or slower movement,
50:07
slower tempo, all in a coherent way, because the conductor is maintaining that
50:12
speeding up and slowing down process.
50:14
Our heart is doing the same thing, and with some simple breath practices,
50:18
as well as connecting to things like gratitude or those feelings of renewal,
50:23
those renewing feelings bring us into the heart and impact our heart
50:27
rate variability so that we have an inner synchronization that occurs.
50:32
And most people who are in the space of horses will naturally find
50:35
themselves in awe or gratitude, or they'll even say that they, when
50:41
the, in the presence of a regulated horse, feel a sense of peace or ease.
50:45
And certainly when you're creating a sanctuary and a lot of people are around,
50:49
like the students and the mentors and the instructors who have all been through the
50:54
program that the Compton Cowboys or the Compton Junior Equestrians, the Compton
50:58
Junior Posse, whatever name it is, kids and horses, there's a lot of- Mm-hmm
51:02
um, authentic feelings of happiness, and that creates a regulated experience.
51:08
So if you're coming out of a chaotic environment and you step into this field
51:13
where there's more ease, there's more peace, there's more gratitude taking
51:18
place, there's more sincerity taking place, that's actually a felt resonance.
51:22
Our animal body can sense that, and you wanna keep coming back to it.
51:26
It's magnetic.
51:28
And so the Institute of HeartMath has researched all of this tech
51:31
so that we can give grounding, 'cause evidence-based research has
51:35
a lot of value in today's world.
51:37
And then there's specific techniques that we can apply.
51:40
And Mark Carlos, who Lewis just referenced, is also a, a student, a
51:45
graduate you could say, of the Compton Cowboys program, and he's not only
51:49
studying to be a licensed social worker, but also is a HeartMath certified trainer.
51:54
And so he's sharing these emotional self-regulation tools
51:57
and techniques with the kids.
51:58
And what I notice is when we teach the humans HeartMath specifically, that
52:04
we become more intentional about the space that we are with the horses.
52:07
So any time the student might be feeling a little bit nervous or feeling
52:12
some anxiety, you know, horses are intimidating, some of those practice
52:15
right away can help bring into a more centered, grounded experience.
52:20
And then the horses are lap up biofeedback.
52:23
So we'll notice them, you know, drop their head, their highs might soften.
52:26
They might have a lick and chew with their mouths.
52:28
All of those are big visual cues that create that instantaneous feedback of,
52:36
oh, wow, when I'm slowing my breath down, when I'm connecting in my heart
52:41
space, I'm noticing that that has an impact on the horses as well, and that
52:46
is such a strong educational tool really.
52:50
And it, it's having that facilitation, which you know, Lewis and Randy and
52:55
everybody who's there is realizing, like, this is just something that we
52:58
can add on in teaching those life skills and teaching that self-development.
53:02
Because whether or not every, every s- person who walks through
53:05
the door is gonna be a horseman, they're gonna use those life skills
53:09
in whatever domain and whatever industry they end up embar- Mm-hmm
53:13
their journey, wherever they embark upon.
53:16
Louis Hook: Yeah, I, I wanna add one thing here that Rupert, you
53:19
as you refer to kinda knowing your ancestry extensively, okay?
53:26
And with the science that that is, is out here growing daily, including
53:32
the HeartMath and the, and the, the horse's connection to the people
53:37
we also have learned that our DNA has 14 generations of memory in it.
53:44
Kansas Carradine: Mm.
53:44
Louis Hook: And with that knowledge of your ancestry, f- there's a certain
53:50
kind of flow, I believe, that goes with continuity of kind of who you are.
53:55
And with slaves having been erased and broke- broken, we, the, the w-
54:02
the families who happen to stay in horsemanship, it's kind of a natural
54:07
flow for ours, where it was broken.
54:10
We stumbled on it, and I believe that in our ancestry we were
54:16
equestrians, and that's why it's connected so hard with with my family.
54:23
And that, just to mention that that disconnect creates a, a different
54:29
kind of develop- across the board.
54:33
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
54:33
I think this is something which might come as a surprise to some listeners,
54:38
because equestrian culture is pr- currently predominantly perceived
54:45
as either white or Asian, because you go across Northern Asia as well-
54:49
Louis Hook: Mm-hmm
54:50
Rupert Isaacson: or sort of South American, that sort of th- th- these are
54:53
the places where it's most dominant today.
54:56
But it's not really well known that actually there's big horse
55:00
cultures in Africa, and have been for thousands of years.
55:03
So, it's not well known, for example, that there were large African horse
55:09
cultures in the Sahel areas, and the Sahel goes from west- Yeah
55:13
to east, about- â¦ three and a half thousand miles from
55:15
Senegal- Yeah â¦ to Ethiopia.
55:18
Louis Hook: Yeah,
55:18
Rupert Isaacson: and I, I learned- And my, my own ancestors encountered
55:20
and fought these equestrian warriors.
55:23
Yeah.
55:23
Louis Hook: What's interesting is that I love to hear that, as I s- am learning
55:28
my, my own ancestry, that we come from the West African region of the Sahel.
55:34
And then I go and I, I'll tell you how I, my, my, my discovery of my
55:39
research into this started when I, I saw a movie called The, The Woman King.
55:46
And I'm watching the movie and two things popped out.
55:50
First one got me paying attention, which was the, the woman king, who wasâ¦
55:56
I thought I was gonna go watch some African warrior, female
55:59
warriors kick ass, right?
56:01
Mm-hmm.
56:01
And her, her main battle was against trying to stop Africans from
56:07
selling themselves into slavery.
56:09
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
56:09
Louis Hook: That was her main battle.
56:11
Rupert Isaacson: Where
56:11
Louis Hook: was she, where
56:11
Rupert Isaacson: was she, by the way?
56:12
Where was this set?
56:14
Louis Hook: She's Dahomey.
56:15
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, which is current Nigeria, Sierra Leone- Yeah.
56:19
Louis Hook: Right
56:19
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: Gold Coast, Ivory Coast.
56:22
Louis Hook: Gold- Ivory Coast.
56:22
There, yeah.
56:23
Gold Coast.
56:23
Okay.
56:24
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
56:24
Louis Hook: So, so that wa- so that got me, like, and knowing that that's
56:28
a sensitive subject, I'm listening.
56:31
And then her main enemy that she had to convert, which was the
56:36
tribe that was working with the Westerners to get slaves, right?
56:42
And taking their own, own other tribes people into slavery
56:44
and selling them to the West.
56:47
It was an equestrian cavalry based tribe.
56:51
Rupert Isaacson: Sure.
56:52
Louis Hook: I never, in 30 years of being in this equestrian world, I
56:57
never saw any African cavalry warriors.
57:03
I just, when I, when I, once I started looking into it, I
57:05
see other people knew of it.
57:07
I didn't.
57:08
So I asked-
57:09
Rupert Isaacson: Except of course, Buffalo Soldiers in, in
57:10
the USA, which is well known.
57:11
Yeah.
57:12
Louis Hook: Right.
57:13
But before the Buf- I'm talking now back- Yeah â¦ in in Mali, 1300s.
57:17
Rupert Isaacson: Yep.
57:18
Louis Hook: Okay?
57:19
So, I see these tribes on cavalry, and I, I basically in my mind,
57:23
I said, "That's not even true."
57:26
So it caused me to go research.
57:28
So then I find out as I'm researching that the reason, one of the reasons
57:35
Mansa Musa became the richest man in the history of the world, only
57:39
recently surpassed by Musk- Was because of, partly because of his cavalries.
57:47
Because he controlled the trade routes to protect his gold when he was supplying
57:52
50% of the gold in the world, and he, his trade routes were corrected,
57:58
were, were protected by his cavalries.
58:01
Including, you're probably familiar with the pilgrimage he did to Mecca from Mali,
58:06
3,000 miles where he was giving away so much gold he was destroying economies
58:12
on the way to Mecca and then back.
58:16
They couldn't, they, they, no one could take his gold.
58:20
No one could get it because his cavalries were so powerful and strong
58:24
that they were able to protect- Some
58:25
Rupert Isaacson: of the listeners may have missed the name.
58:27
Tell us the name of this man.
58:29
Louis Hook: Mansa Musa.
58:30
He was the King of Mali in the early 1300s.
58:36
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
58:36
Louis Hook: He, for me, as I'm reading it, he's probably one of
58:41
the top five most important people in the history of the world.
58:44
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
58:45
Louis Hook: But like you said, you don't know who he is, but he's, once
58:49
you start studying, you'll find in mainstream and in African Afrocentric
58:54
studies, he's labeled as the richest man in the history of the world.
58:58
On the mainstream side- Yeah â¦ it's because he happened to be sitting
59:03
on a bunch of gold- Mm â¦ and he was, and he made that money.
59:07
So in fact, on most of the maps of the colonizers heading to go to to Africa,
59:15
they have a image of Mansa Musa holding up a gigantic gold nugget on the map, okay?
59:23
So he's known, okay?
59:25
But what they don't tell you is that he's the reason Timbuktu became
59:30
a, probably the second or third center of education in the world.
59:35
Yeah.
59:36
Everybody was going there to study.
59:37
Mm.
59:37
It's 'cause of him.
59:38
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, particularly for Islamic studies.
59:40
Mo- Yeah.
59:41
Louis Hook: Yeah.
59:41
Mo- most n- most of hisâ¦
59:45
The reason he was so successful in gold is he figured out how to mine it, pr-
59:52
package it, ship it and protect it.
59:56
That was an indus- industrial approach.
59:59
Well, it turns out he industrialized at that kind of a level,
1:00:04
cotton, rice, everything he did.
1:00:10
So a lot of the slaves that were, were first gone after wereâ¦
1:00:17
That knowledge was what they were after, of how did he do this?
1:00:21
And a lot of what we, to me, and again, I could be wrong, I'm researching it.
1:00:26
And a lot of what became the US was out of what he had done in, in Mali
1:00:33
and what, you know, ca- became the Son- Po- Son- Songhai Empire, you
1:00:38
know, kinda as it, as it evolved since.
1:00:40
Songhai.
1:00:42
That, those empires and where a lot of they, they, theyâ¦
1:00:46
A lot of what we became in the US, especially the equestrians, 'cause if you
1:00:51
figure At that time, horses were to the world what cars and trucks became, right?
1:00:59
So if you didn't have a strong cavalry in the end, you
1:01:04
couldn't have a strong military.
1:01:06
So a lot of that cavalry that came out of, that grew out of the Berbers and, and and
1:01:14
and the Moors and it s- filtered its way through into the Sahel region and Mali.
1:01:21
A lot of those, that, those equestrians, you don't even know they
1:01:24
had horses in, in the history books.
1:01:27
We don't even know that.
1:01:27
Rupert Isaacson: What's interesting, too, is they're still there.
1:01:29
They're actually still there, and they're still riding, and they're still doing it.
1:01:32
Louis Hook: Right
1:01:32
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: but it, and like Senegal has even a, quite an evolved
1:01:36
racing industry that's homegrown as well as their own, you know, old
1:01:40
equestrian traditions and so on.
1:01:42
But if you think about it from a historical point of view, it
1:01:44
makes complete sense because those, those gold and slave routes
1:01:48
didn't come out of a vacuum.
1:01:50
There were civilizations before civilizations before civilizations.
1:01:53
That's right.
1:01:53
That's exactly right.
1:01:53
So, but certainly the Romans profited from a slave route and a gold route
1:01:59
that was exploited by the Carthaginians- Exactly â¦ and the Romans and the Car-
1:02:04
who were in North Africa, and the Ro- had, had actually come from what's now
1:02:08
Lebanon, and had migrated across to the western Mediterranean, founded the, their
1:02:13
thing in Morocco and Tunisia and so on, and harnessed the Berber cavalry, as you
1:02:18
say, from those mountains of Morocco.
1:02:20
Very strong equestrian tradition there with Barb horses.
1:02:23
And then, of course, the Romans show up and have a showdown with Hannibal.
1:02:26
We know about Hannibal elephants coming over the-
1:02:29
Louis Hook: Yeah, right
1:02:29
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: but this is, like, 200 years before Christ, right?
1:02:32
They have a big old showdown.
1:02:34
Who's gonna control the western Mediterranean?
1:02:35
Of course, the Romans win, and so they then control that trade route.
1:02:39
But before that, of course, who were the Carthaginians
1:02:43
nicking that trade route from?
1:02:44
They nicked it from the Egyptians.
1:02:46
That's right.
1:02:46
Because the Egyptians were the only were the only big slave-owning
1:02:50
empire African that survived what's called the Bronze Age collapse.
1:02:55
So that we, we know about, say, Rome and Greece.
1:02:57
Those are Iron Age pre-medieval ancient world, large slave-owning,
1:03:03
big corporate things.
1:03:05
But before them, in the Bronze Age, there were a whole group of others, and mostly
1:03:09
up in what's called Mesopotamia now.
1:03:11
But also Myc- Mycenae and Greece, to some degree Carthage, the Phoenicians.
1:03:15
But Egypt kind of- survived.
1:03:18
There was a collapse, and there are various reasons
1:03:21
for that, but it collapsed.
1:03:22
I mean- And only, only Egypt prevailed.
1:03:24
So those routes that you were talking about there in Mali, and those horses, and
1:03:27
those horsemen, and the slaves, and the gold, and all of that had been going on
1:03:30
for thousands of years- Thousands of years
1:03:32
before any Europeans showed up-
1:03:35
Louis Hook: I mean, I mean- â¦ and went, "Oh, gosh, let's exploit
1:03:36
Rupert Isaacson: this."
1:03:36
Yeah
1:03:37
â¦ Louis Hook: the Romans, so but, but the, like the way the Romans took over, there
1:03:39
were major emperors who were African.
1:03:43
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
1:03:44
Louis Hook: Okay?
1:03:44
So there was a different, again, it wasn't a race model.
1:03:47
That, when you hear about Cleopatra and Caesar marrying, that, that,
1:03:51
that, that wasn't a racial model.
1:03:53
You see what I'm saying?
1:03:54
That's myâ¦
1:03:54
So all the things were all going on.
1:03:57
Absolutely.
1:03:57
It was an interracial kind of world.
1:03:58
Basically, whoever had the biggest you-know-what kicked
1:04:01
ass, and killed everybody else, and enslaved them, whatever.
1:04:05
So, so anyway, all of that history is there, and to me it was culminating
1:04:12
in that what produ- what made Mansa Musa the richest man in the
1:04:15
world at the time, that for- that caused them to be the focus- Mm-hmm
1:04:22
as the Europeans rose up between two things, m- weaponizing gunpowder, okay?
1:04:29
Causing them to take the lead.
1:04:31
And then between weaponizing gunpowder and their immunity from diseases from being
1:04:38
in the Dark Ages, those things have- Well,
1:04:40
Rupert Isaacson: and, and finding, discovering, the Portuguese discovering
1:04:43
the way to round to the Cap- Cape of Good Hope, that y- before that,
1:04:49
people couldn't sail north to south in Africa because where that big bulge
1:04:53
sticks out to the west, it creates something called the doldrums, where
1:04:55
the wind dies, and ships- Mm-hmm
1:04:57
get becalmed.
1:04:58
So for a long, long time you couldn't get your ships further down, and then
1:05:02
the Portuguese in the f- mid late Middle Ages realized, oh, if you went
1:05:06
really far west, you could, of course, dodge that, and of course, that led
1:05:10
them to discover the New World as well.
1:05:12
So i- it was, it was those three things, yeah.
1:05:14
So
1:05:14
Louis Hook: that what, that what you just said?
1:05:16
Rupert Isaacson: Say that again?
1:05:17
Louis Hook: Well, I'd love to, in a separate conversation, to take that
1:05:19
on, because some of the findings now are saying that, like Mansa
1:05:23
Musa's brother, or took 200 ships
1:05:29
To, and went to the Americas in the early 1300s.
1:05:33
So- I
1:05:34
Rupert Isaacson: don't have any doubt believing that, actually.
1:05:36
No,
1:05:36
Louis Hook: yeah, it's true
1:05:36
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: I think that there were definitely other people, the Chinese too.
1:05:39
I mean, there were lots of other people who were out there-
1:05:41
Louis Hook: Right â¦ discovering and trading.
1:05:42
But the point is, is that-
1:05:42
Rupert Isaacson: Yes
1:05:43
â¦ Louis Hook: that maritime ex- activity-
1:05:46
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
1:05:46
â¦ Louis Hook: there's no way I believe that based on what I'm seeing, but
1:05:49
I could be wrong, that the Portugal discovered that route, okay?
1:05:53
Rupert Isaacson: Well, let's say- According to me â¦ let's say if the
1:05:55
Portuguese discovered it, they probably were getting some local knowledge.
1:05:58
But there was, but there was hundreds of years where it, it lay dormant,
1:06:02
and the, certainly the Romans didn't have it or they would've used it.
1:06:05
But for whatever reason, the Portuguese managed to kind of put a patent on it and
1:06:13
exploit it, and then of course that opened the gateway for the rest of Europe to try.
1:06:17
But I don't have any trouble believing that West Africans, why wouldn't they?
1:06:22
'Cause they're seafaring nations.
1:06:23
Why wouldn't they have gone and explored to the West?
1:06:26
I mean, y- y- you just-
1:06:27
Louis Hook: Right.
1:06:27
And,
1:06:28
Rupert Isaacson: and- You know, just fisherman getting blown off course.
1:06:29
Y- you know, it sh- it must have happened.
1:06:32
Yeah, it's absolutely-
1:06:33
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:06:33
The only thing I would add is the Portuguese, if you, what
1:06:38
I say, call, follow the money-
1:06:40
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm
1:06:40
â¦ Louis Hook: and the power line.
1:06:41
When they monetized gunpowder and put it on ships, it created a whole
1:06:46
different maritime world, okay?
1:06:49
That may have been influenced of where they were able to, to- Mm â¦ bring it
1:06:54
back to life from its dormancy of that.
1:06:57
But anyway, let's set that aside.
1:06:58
Yeah, but the- We'll get back to what we're talking about.
1:07:00
Sorry.
1:07:01
Rupert Isaacson: Well, but I think it's relevant.
1:07:02
The reason why I think it's relevant is the perception of, within the question
1:07:07
world particularly, a- hood-based Black equestrian endeavor, Compton
1:07:17
Cowboys, would be non-educated people.
1:07:23
And what I think the conversation is showing is that may or may not be true.
1:07:28
That in fact, here's this bloke that we're talking to right now who's gone
1:07:32
to MIT, he's gone to Harvard, decided to go back to the hood and start this.
1:07:35
And then of course, you're serving kids, some of whom would've come
1:07:38
from very uneducated backgrounds, and some of whom would've come
1:07:41
from very educated backgrounds.
1:07:43
And interestingly, when I was working in rural Texas, predominantly of
1:07:47
course with White and Hispanic families, but some African American
1:07:50
families too, it was exactly the same.
1:07:53
We had some very uneducated families, and we had some very educated families.
1:07:58
Because for us particularly you know, working with autism so
1:08:01
much, you know, that goes across all economic, you know, barriers.
1:08:05
It's just autism's gonna hit you no matter whether you've got money or not money, no
1:08:08
matter whether you went to college or not.
1:08:10
But I think that it is im- important that you bring all this history up
1:08:14
Lewis, because it does to s- a, a large degree shatter the mythology
1:08:18
that if you're looking at something coming out of urban Black America,
1:08:23
it must therefore automatically mean lack of education lack of access to
1:08:28
information "Oh, look at them down there."
1:08:31
And so I think it's actually important that you bring this up, because
1:08:36
a lot of us would have taken in those mythologies almost passively,
1:08:41
Louis Hook: because that's- Passively.
1:08:42
That's what my point of view â¦ just what the media presents,
1:08:43
Rupert Isaacson: right?
1:08:44
Louis Hook: So it, yeah, it just consistent with across media, across
1:08:47
what you're learning in school.
1:08:49
All of those things are all consistently saying, "Eh, you know,
1:08:52
this is kind of the way it is."
1:08:54
There are some exceptions, but this is kind of-
1:08:55
Rupert Isaacson: And to be honest, I mean, that's what Black culture does too,
1:08:57
because, you know, ev- any rap song that comes out of Compton doesn't talk about
1:09:00
the, the maths professor that lived up the road who taught me about physics.
1:09:05
They talk about, you know, killing people and doing horrible things to each other,
1:09:10
and making money by doing horrible things to each other, because that sounds sexy.
1:09:13
So no one who was going to come along and make a rap song about meeting you
1:09:18
was gonna get a record deal from Suge Knight, because it wasn't gangster enough.
1:09:24
So-
1:09:25
Louis Hook: Right.
1:09:25
But Suge, Suge Knight didn't get a gangster, didn't get a deal until he
1:09:29
brought gangsterism to the people who financed it, which were the white people.
1:09:32
Rupert Isaacson: There
1:09:33
Louis Hook: you go.
1:09:33
That what would they, what would they pay for?
1:09:35
So it's all curated at some level-
1:09:38
Rupert Isaacson: Got it.
1:09:38
Right
1:09:38
â¦ Louis Hook: all the way from the top to the bottom.
1:09:40
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
1:09:41
Louis Hook: That it's you know, so - It's so true â¦ so, so what I see today as
1:09:45
I'm out here dealing with these kids-
1:09:47
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
1:09:48
â¦ Louis Hook: who again, they have no idea who they are.
1:09:51
They are just dealing out here on a day-to-day, and when I deal with
1:09:55
my middle class friends, they say, "Yeah, you know, I went over there
1:09:59
and tried to help some of them.
1:10:00
They didn't understand it, so I pulled out, you know?"
1:10:03
And Like I say, the, the psychological subconscious impacts that we ha-
1:10:09
are enduring are working on all sides, reinforcing what we see.
1:10:17
Rupert Isaacson: Do you, do you teach a course in, or do you teach to the kids
1:10:21
that come through Black American, as, or, or actually, African equine history?
1:10:28
And,
1:10:28
Louis Hook: and the- I'm starting with my first book, 'cause I didn't know it.
1:10:32
I didn't know it before five years ago.
1:10:33
Because you,
1:10:34
Rupert Isaacson: you, you've gotta teach this stuff.
1:10:36
Louis Hook: Yes.
1:10:36
So my mission right now is, again, 'cause I, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a academic
1:10:44
thinker, and if you don't know this I didn't get the PhD in economics.
1:10:48
I left be- I took all the coursework, but I didn't take it.
1:10:50
But the high-end economics economists, the high-end economists, they look at
1:10:56
themselves as modern-day philosophers because they integrate physical
1:11:02
hard sciences with social sciences to try to understand the world.
1:11:06
And so I kinda come out of that space where I'm thinking of
1:11:12
myself as a philosopher of, of, of the universe, so to speak.
1:11:16
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:11:17
Louis Hook: And in that space, I've concluded that it's education
1:11:22
that's the foundation that's broken.
1:11:25
And what are some of the models?
1:11:27
And I believe that the fundamental model for education was the churches And
1:11:33
there's nothing to stop the churches, as I teach it to my local kids whenever,
1:11:38
that's just a, what I call we're, we're, we're in a war and w- I win
1:11:43
some battles, but we're losing the war.
1:11:46
So what's broader gonna happen is what stops the church from just
1:11:51
teaching accurate history of religion and the role of Black people?
1:11:56
What, what, what, what, whatâ¦
1:11:57
You know, that'sâ¦
1:11:58
So I am- I've seen it in churches now where a guy is saying he follows
1:12:02
the scripture that proves that this whole thing that Black people are are
1:12:08
descendants of Ham who got cursed, where Ham wasn't even the guy that got cursed.
1:12:13
Okay?
1:12:13
Not even in, in the Bible.
1:12:14
If you just follow it.
1:12:16
So he- I've seen that sermon going, "That's what needs to be taught," but-
1:12:21
Rupert Isaacson: Totally.
1:12:21
I, I mean, that, that-
1:12:22
Louis Hook: Anyway, teaching- â¦ that,
1:12:24
Rupert Isaacson: that myth there, absolutely.
1:12:25
It's,
1:12:25
Louis Hook: it's- Yes.
1:12:26
Teaching is the number one thing.
1:12:28
How do we broadly start moving on it?
1:12:31
And that's in my headset of what we're doing.
1:12:34
Rupert Isaacson: But I,
1:12:35
Louis Hook: I do, I think that teaching- In my next book, in my next book-
1:12:37
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, go
1:12:37
Louis Hook: ahead.
1:12:38
Sorry â¦ the next book, which is The New World Order: DEI Style.
1:12:41
That's my next book.
1:12:43
Okay?
1:12:44
Rupert Isaacson: What style?
1:12:44
Louis Hook: DEI style.
1:12:46
Rupert Isaacson: What's DEI?
1:12:48
Louis Hook: Diversity, equity, and inclusion.
1:12:50
That's what Trump is attacking, right?
1:12:54
Okay.
1:12:54
So my book is named The New World Order: DEI Style.
1:12:59
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
1:13:00
Louis Hook: Okay?
1:13:00
Which basically says w- we need toâ¦
1:13:04
I, I paint the picture of how we became race-based.
1:13:07
The world accepts that.
1:13:09
The world's karma's out of balance because it's based on a lie that
1:13:13
everybody knew, and how do we move to the new world, which is the education
1:13:18
of the people of accurate history.
1:13:21
That's kind of the model I'm putting forth.
1:13:24
Rupert Isaacson: No, I, I, I think it's- Of immense use, I know it has been for me,
1:13:31
for people to know where they come from.
1:13:33
And one of the difficulties I think for America in general, doesn't matter
1:13:38
actually what race you are, unless you're Native American and you know exactly
1:13:42
where you come from is that there were an overwhelming number of millions and
1:13:50
tens of millions of people, whether they came on slave ships or whether
1:13:54
they came on as indentured laborers from Ireland or Scotland, or whether
1:13:58
they came escaping a pogrom from Jews from Eastern Europe, or whether they
1:14:03
were just trying their luck or whatever, you had tens of millions of people.
1:14:09
So what happened was, people's personal and family histories often
1:14:13
got lost unless they came from very aristocratic or very specific en- you
1:14:19
know, enclaves within the Old World.
1:14:21
Whereas down in Africa where my family's from, the immigration
1:14:25
was always actually very small.
1:14:26
So if you, if you had people 100 years ago or 200 years ago in a particular
1:14:31
area, you know exactly who they were and exactly what they did, and chances
1:14:35
are they're probably still there.
1:14:37
Because it was all very localized and, and quite small populations.
1:14:41
So because of that, the sense of place is quite strong, and the
1:14:45
sense of culture is quite strong.
1:14:47
And I think it's one of the reasons why South Africa's been able to
1:14:49
weather the extreme difficulties of its history and not go to hell
1:14:56
in the way that it might have- Yeah
1:14:58
Particularly post-apartheid.
1:14:59
But I think that within, within the USA, it's, it's often a real
1:15:03
problem for people this feeling of disconnection from culture.
1:15:05
And I think as you say, it's particularly a problem in Black culture
1:15:08
because with history there was era- with, with slavery, sorry, there was
1:15:11
erasure from the get-go, you know?
1:15:13
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:15:13
It was, it was formally a part of how do you help sl- slavery survive, was you
1:15:19
disconnect people from their history.
1:15:22
Yeah.
1:15:22
They can't know there was a Mansa Musa who was the m- richest man
1:15:26
in the history of the world.
1:15:27
They can't know that.
1:15:27
Right.
1:15:28
Rupert Isaacson: And don't, and you can't speak your language, and
1:15:29
you can't practice your religion.
1:15:31
Right.
1:15:31
And yeah, sure.
1:15:33
So I think if you can teach thoseâ¦
1:15:37
Because the, the, the equestrian side of what you're teaching is simply the
1:15:40
economic history really of what- Yeah.
1:15:43
Louis Hook: That's it.
1:15:43
That's it.
1:15:43
Yeah
1:15:43
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: I think that's of immense value, I think, to anybody,
1:15:48
but I think particularly- Yeah
1:15:48
â¦ Louis Hook: for people who are looking back If you think of these-
1:15:49
things to Black- Think of the track this way, think of this track.
1:15:53
Today's science can connect people to their roots
1:16:00
Right now it's very expensive-
1:16:02
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
1:16:02
â¦ Louis Hook: to go get Mr.
1:16:03
Gates to go find the pope's history of his whole, of where
1:16:07
he's, of his people, right?
1:16:10
To show that the pope is African, okay, in his ancestry, which I
1:16:17
think is just the most amazing thing, like two polar pieces for me.
1:16:23
Black president of the United States and a multiethnic pope
1:16:26
who apologizes for slavery.
1:16:27
So, but if we have a program and pay for connecting the dots of African, of
1:16:35
African Americans, people who don't have, know their ancestry, and connecting them
1:16:39
to it I think it will go a long ways for the world to understand these things.
1:16:45
So again, this is theâ¦
1:16:46
I think globally this way for whatever reason, so I'm thinking in my book
1:16:52
I'm gonna say things like, "Hey, the church can do this, the government can
1:16:58
do that," all these different channels to start addressing the major ills
1:17:04
that I think need to be addressed so that the world of civilization rises.
1:17:10
Rupert Isaacson: Can we talk a little bit about inherited trauma?
1:17:14
I think we all have it, so obviously, Louis, you don't, it
1:17:20
goes without saying, slavery.
1:17:22
My people on my Jewish side, coming out of massive pogroms and mass
1:17:27
killings in in Eastern Europe.
1:17:30
And you know, Kansas, you will have had your own family histories with
1:17:34
this and so on a- and, and so on.
1:17:38
Let's just start with you, Candice.
1:17:39
HeartMath.
1:17:41
From, from that perspective, whatâ¦
1:17:43
Does, does HeartMath have anything to say about inherited trauma,
1:17:47
g- intergenerational trauma?
1:17:49
And if so, yeah, couldâ¦
1:17:51
Let's just talk about this.
1:17:54
Kansas Carradine: Well, it's not specifically a topic I would say that
1:17:56
they put under the umbrella of their literature and scope, but certainly
1:18:00
there's trauma-informed approaches for as caregivers that we're helping to
1:18:04
navigate the emotions that the body stores, and then over time as we a-
1:18:09
mature, it starts to kind of unwind these undigested emotional imprints.
1:18:16
And the fact that we came back to the discussion about your DNA, Lewis, I really
1:18:19
love that because basically what you're doing in this program is reconnecting
1:18:24
individuals to the truth of their history.
1:18:28
You know, we are a product of the mythology of the stories that we
1:18:30
tell ourselves, but it's in the DNA.
1:18:32
That doesn't lie.
1:18:33
So reeco- reconnecting to the equestrian that's in your DNA seems to create a
1:18:39
sense of dignity, a sense of wellbeing-
1:18:42
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
1:18:42
â¦ Kansas Carradine: a sense of purpose, reconnecting people to all those feelings,
1:18:46
and then we have those feelings that realign us into a, a more coherent space.
1:18:53
Because when we are trauma affected, when we're in complex or subtle aspects
1:18:58
of survival mode, fight or flight tendencies, there's a dysregulation
1:19:02
that occurs, and that dysregulation gets passed down generation to generation,
1:19:06
which is what we call that historical trauma or that epigenetic trauma.
1:19:10
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
1:19:11
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:19:11
J- just to Iâ¦
1:19:13
Again, as an academic, I follow a lot of tracks.
1:19:16
I get lost in them sometimes.
1:19:18
But one of the tracks is that the whole study of, of PTSD is has, has
1:19:25
progressed quite a bit over the last five years showing that it's even
1:19:28
the militaries has to take it on, on a different spa- way because they're
1:19:33
finding out how hardcore it is.
1:19:35
And what they find is that clearly it is passed.
1:19:40
If you're suffering from PTSD, you're gonna pass it on to your kids to
1:19:45
some degree just by how you raise them, by how you deal with them.
1:19:49
But over intergenerationally, it becomes passed genetically somehow.
1:19:54
They don't exactly understand the mechanism, but it becomes genetic
1:20:00
rel- distress, and I believe it's through these DNA connections that
1:20:04
we have 14 generations of DNA.
1:20:07
So when you, whether it's what you like- Or how you react to something,
1:20:12
you don't even know why because you're not connected to what's in there.
1:20:16
And so all these things-- And as we know, if you just say slavery, you
1:20:22
know, that's there's a woman who studies post-traumatic slave disorder, right?
1:20:28
Which is basically capturing the concept for slavery.
1:20:30
If you, if you have pe-- Everybody has some level of, of stress in
1:20:35
their whole thing, but if you lived through slavery, you have a certain
1:20:38
kind of s- of of of traumatic stress that you experience that's living
1:20:44
in your genes, it's living in you.
1:20:47
And typically, if you are that, your kids are gonna have it, okay?
1:20:52
At some level.
1:20:53
So when I look at the, the study that I'm want to do in the future is the
1:20:58
Black families who had more direct fa-familial tracking and management of
1:21:06
themselves versus the ones that were completely thrown to the wind, my guess
1:21:11
is you got a different kind of, of, of of, of mental s-stability in that, in
1:21:18
those two different populations in terms of who they are and who they became.
1:21:22
So as I look anecdotally at around my own growing up, anecdotally of my own
1:21:28
experience with these kids out here today, and I, I, I'm, I'm getting a sense
1:21:34
of how that flows and what are our-- what are the things that can address it.
1:21:40
Horses themselves, heart math kinds of things and these other kind of
1:21:46
things that I'm starting to raise in my mind of thinking globally from a
1:21:51
large perspective, what do we have to do to, to get traction in this space
1:21:56
and pull it, pull it to the right way?
1:21:59
So again, PTSD
1:22:03
in history is not only because you went through slavery.
1:22:06
Everybody has something, like you, you say.
1:22:09
So, but in this Black community where I say that you've got a r- a race based
1:22:15
world order, and you've got legitimately saying those people over there in the
1:22:22
hood, the way they behave, what they do something's wrong with them, right?
1:22:28
That thing is what I need to address 'cause that is real, okay?
1:22:33
So, so anyway, that's kinda how I think about it.
1:22:38
Rupert Isaacson: Is it getting better?
1:22:40
In your years in the hood, particularly, you know, you started Compton Cowboys
1:22:44
at the sort of beginnings really of the rise of at least the public
1:22:50
perception of gangster culture.
1:22:52
So you've watched the glamorization of that, and presumably a couple of
1:22:58
generations of young kids wanting to connect with that because perhaps
1:23:03
that was what there was to connect to.
1:23:04
Is it getting better?
1:23:05
Is it getting worse?
1:23:08
Louis Hook: So the way I looked at it is that we're in a war, and we win
1:23:13
battles, but we're losing the war.
1:23:15
Rupert Isaacson: if you're a horse nerd, and if you're on this podcast,
1:23:18
I'm guessing you are, then you've probably also always wondered a little
1:23:23
bit about the old master system.
1:23:26
of dressage training.
1:23:27
If you go and check out our Helios Harmony program, we outline there step by step
1:23:36
exactly how to train your horse from the ground to become the dressage horse
1:23:42
of your dreams in a way that absolutely serves the physical, mental and emotional
1:23:49
well being of the horse and the rider.
1:23:52
Intrigued?
1:23:53
Like to know more?
1:23:54
Go to our website, Helios Harmony.
1:23:59
Check out the free introduction course.
1:24:01
Take it from there.
1:24:02
We're losing the war?
1:24:03
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:24:04
So the battles being won, to me, the high point of it is a Black man getting elected
1:24:10
to the most powerful country in the world.
1:24:14
At the same time, if you're a racist, what does that do to you?
1:24:20
What do you think ofâ¦
1:24:21
You know.
1:24:21
So in the Black community, there's all kinds of things.
1:24:24
"Oh, Obama's the greatest."
1:24:26
Others, "He never did anything for Black people," all that stuff.
1:24:28
And I would just say, "Hey, that symbolically is gonna have the
1:24:33
intergenerational impact," but it also has a world impact of what's
1:24:38
going on now of the backlash to that.
1:24:41
That backlash is gonna change the dynamics of the war back towards when
1:24:47
d- during segregation, Black people were moving forward pretty dramatically.
1:24:53
You know, places that have started the first schools.
1:24:56
I just read this thing where in South Carolina, public school system was
1:25:01
put in place by the first majority African American state state election
1:25:10
environment, what do you call them?
1:25:11
Whatever they, whoever the, the, the politicians.
1:25:15
They were majority Black for the first time in South Carolina after slavery.
1:25:19
They put in place public education in first place across the country, and
1:25:23
that grew to what it is today, but it, it, it morphed over time, right?
1:25:29
So but my, my, my point is, so these large dynamics are f-
1:25:35
affecting us, so I believe weâ¦
1:25:37
I've been, in my timeframe, winning battles, losing the war.
1:25:42
But I believe the dynamics are changing such that the war- is s- is gonna,
1:25:49
the, the, the, the, the fight in the war who's winning is redirecting,
1:25:54
is, is, is, it's changing through.
1:25:56
Again, looking at, again, I look at these as 100-year cycles, right?
1:26:01
100-year things.
1:26:02
It took 100 years to end slavery.
1:26:04
It took 100 years to end Jim Crow formal, I call it.
1:26:08
We're in informal Jim Crow where all the racists went underground.
1:26:12
So those people are able, because we can't count them, who's, who's a racist and
1:26:18
who's not, and they influence the world.
1:26:21
And so those people are the core of the re-rise of, of a guy who's trying
1:26:27
to take the entire world back to the colonial period of the way it was.
1:26:31
That's the way I look at it.
1:26:32
Gunboat diplomacy, all of that, and that's not gonna win because there
1:26:37
aren't enough people to support that.
1:26:40
The, you and I in Kansas are not gonna support that, and
1:26:45
so it's gonna lose in the end.
1:26:46
But in the meantime, we got a massive battle going on.
1:26:51
But I think the direction is in the right direction, and it's
1:26:54
because from personally, God is moving us in the right direction.
1:26:58
And this thing is, again, gonna play itself out over 100 years.
1:27:02
Well, well, I won't be there to see it, but I'm confident that
1:27:06
it's moving in the right direction.
1:27:08
Rupert Isaacson: What can we do ourselves now?
1:27:11
So for example I'm sitting here in Europe.
1:27:13
Kansas is also sitting in a different area of California to you.
1:27:17
I know from having lived in the USA, it's still very segregated
1:27:20
for a bazillion reasons, but it is.
1:27:23
And so if I was to be living in the US now, I probably wouldn't
1:27:30
be coming to Compton Cowboys because I wouldn't be living there.
1:27:34
And even if I did go there, I might or might not be made
1:27:38
welcome in that neighborhood.
1:27:40
Sure â¦ it would depend on certain factors.
1:27:42
The only place I ever lived actually in the USA where I'd said I experienced sort
1:27:46
of really easy, interplay between the races, oddly enough, was Denver, Colorado.
1:27:51
I lived in Denver, Colorado for about two years, and I had all these Black
1:27:56
friends, and then I lived in all these other places and I kind of didn't.
1:28:00
And this was really noticeable to me.
1:28:02
There was an ease there for some reason.
1:28:05
Louis Hook: One of my best friends, who happened to go to
1:28:07
school with me at Occidental, and he's one of Obama's best friends-
1:28:12
Rupert Isaacson: Uh-huh
1:28:12
â¦ Louis Hook: he grew up in Denver, and so I know a little bit
1:28:15
about what happened in Denver.
1:28:17
Rupert Isaacson: So what
1:28:17
Louis Hook: happened there?
1:28:17
And his, his dad was one of the founders of Howard and his mother wasâ¦
1:28:26
They worked hard on those school things, and they moved to
1:28:29
Denver because of what theyâ¦
1:28:32
Who the, the, the, the, the cities that were there, they were related to them,
1:28:37
and they saw what, There was a woman, and I can't recall her name, who founded
1:28:41
one of the major cities outside of Denver that was kind of a Black town.
1:28:47
And so they moved there, and they evolved in that space that I haven't looked into
1:28:52
it really hardcore, but his sense is that they influenced that Denver environment.
1:28:59
And I was shocked to, to, to learn of it, right?
1:29:02
So when he came out, in fact, my sense of him was that he wasâ¦
1:29:07
I- in, in my young years, I was, I had animosity for Blacks who were more
1:29:15
integrated and he was one of those guys that we were friends, but at part
1:29:22
I was like, "How did you do that?"
1:29:23
Same thing for Obama.
1:29:25
Obama was a surfer, and in my neighborhood, surfers were the, the poor
1:29:29
white kids who we used to fight, okay?
1:29:33
Obama came from Hawaii.
1:29:34
He was a surfer when I met him at the Oxon.
1:29:37
So, but I learned that that integration model is, is the mob, right?
1:29:44
For everybody to come together.
1:29:45
Rupert Isaacson: We are all
1:29:46
Louis Hook: humans.
1:29:46
Rupert Isaacson: And- Yeah.
1:29:47
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:29:48
So, yeah, so I don't know a lot of the detail, but I have a sense of it from the
1:29:52
players that came out of it, and who Iâ¦
1:29:54
What I do know about it, why it wouldâ¦
1:29:57
This is the first time I heard an external person say it like you're
1:30:00
saying it, but it makes all the sense in the world to me that it would be that
1:30:06
Kansas Carradine: way.
1:30:06
So was it- Talking about integration and, and- Go ahead, yeah â¦ so growing up
1:30:08
in public school system in Los Angeles, which I went to as well you know, the
1:30:13
integration was very much a part of it.
1:30:14
So as you guys were talking, I was thinking of, I've always tried
1:30:17
to find, like, my best friend in fifth grade, Kamiko Brown, who
1:30:20
was part of the busing programs.
1:30:22
And so I was going to school, like, right kind of there at Hollywood and
1:30:25
Highland in the heart of LA, and just grew up with always having friends.
1:30:30
It didn't matter.
1:30:31
Everybody was different colors, different backgrounds, and we were just all in
1:30:34
fifth grade, you know, trying to survive
1:30:36
Louis Hook: in LA.
1:30:37
That's what got Obama elected.
1:30:37
That is what got Obama elected, is that.
1:30:42
The basketball, the guys playing basketball, multiracial basketball
1:30:45
game after, after school.
1:30:47
Mm.
1:30:48
Kansas Carradine: Okay?
1:30:49
Yeah.
1:30:51
And yet, at the same time, there's complexity to it because you're
1:30:53
also saying that during the time of segregation, there was thriving of
1:30:57
these independent Black communities.
1:31:00
So there, but there was, I think, really- But not in, not integration
1:31:03
â¦ intentional disruption of that, right?
1:31:05
And so w- the integration was creating a s- a, a change in kind of normalizing that
1:31:11
we can see beyond color and demographics.
1:31:13
Mm-hmm.
1:31:13
Yeah.
1:31:14
And we can be friendly, and we can get along together, just
1:31:16
human to human, heart to heart.
1:31:18
And at the same time, there's this insidious work that's done by certain
1:31:22
opposing power forces that were trying to deconstruct the thriving populations
1:31:27
of those specific separate ethnic groups.
1:31:30
Right.
1:31:30
And that, I think, is interesting, those two aspects.
1:31:31
But if I, if I tell you aboutâ¦
1:31:32
Louis Hook: Yeah, I tell, me personally, I had animosity towards those people.
1:31:36
Yeah.
1:31:37
Because of how I grew up poor, and those were the haves and we're the have-nots.
1:31:42
And part of it was- Mm â¦ on both sides, my feelings and their feelings of the
1:31:48
middle-class Blacks moving in a certain kind of way, what I call the post- Mm
1:31:54
â¦ racial society is how they were moving.
1:31:56
And, "Oh, you guys over there, hey, we're gonna try to help you as best we can."
1:32:00
But what I see is the middle-class Blacks worked very hard to raise the,
1:32:07
the, the s- the lifestyles, I mean, the, the, the life outcomes of all Black
1:32:11
people, and effectively they failed.
1:32:15
We, I failed.
1:32:16
Because Black people are still at the bottom, poor, distributed, and the like.
1:32:23
And all the things that we did as middle-class people, we
1:32:26
ran- we were the politicians, the judges, the this, the that
1:32:29
Yeah.
1:32:30
That'sâ¦
1:32:32
Rupert Isaacson: I would take, I
1:32:32
Kansas Carradine: take issue with that, though Sorry about that break
1:32:33
up, but I would say the horses-
1:32:35
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:32:35
Kansas Carradine: I- But the horses end up being like this baskick- basketball court,
1:32:39
though, because once you get on a horse, male or female, where the, where you come
1:32:43
from, all of a sudden it's, it's- King
1:32:45
Rupert Isaacson: or commoner-
1:32:45
Kansas Carradine: There's otherâ¦
1:32:46
Rupert Isaacson: Exactly â¦ the
1:32:49
horse treats you the same.
1:32:50
Yeah.
1:32:50
Also, Louis, you cannot say that Compton Cowboys is a failure.
1:32:53
Louis Hook: No, that's not what I'm saying.
1:32:55
Rupert Isaacson: Well, but it is worth drawing that analogy.
1:32:58
I, I do know that that's not what you're saying.
1:33:00
Yeah.
1:33:00
But however, you, a middle class Black man who came out of the hood and went to
1:33:04
the white institutions, you went to MIT, you went to Harvard, so you did integrate,
1:33:08
you know, to, to, even if you didn't think you were at the time, you were.
1:33:11
Louis Hook: No, no, I knew.
1:33:12
I, I, I knew
1:33:12
Rupert Isaacson: that.
1:33:12
Right.
1:33:13
Yeah.
1:33:13
But, but good because then you, you achieved a, an economic status where
1:33:18
you could bring that back, and you could uplift the hood, and Compton
1:33:21
Cowboys is a thing, and it exists.
1:33:23
So I, I doubt that Compton Cowboys would have existed but for the
1:33:30
historical process that you've just outlined, the recent one.
1:33:33
So I, I'm, I'm, I'm the eternal optimist, but I, I sort of feel that
1:33:38
you, that Compton Cowboys is an act- is, is a, an allegory of your success,
1:33:43
and of a certain success- Yeah â¦ for personal endeavors within this space.
1:33:48
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:33:49
Rupert Isaacson: Actually- Because it's always small groups of people
1:33:50
that make things better, right?
1:33:52
Louis Hook: Right.
1:33:52
Right.
1:33:52
But that's my position of we're winning wars.
1:33:56
Compton Cowboys is winning battles.
1:33:58
I mean- Yeah â¦ we, we, we just win battles, but when looking at the
1:34:02
global picture, we're losing the war.
1:34:03
But the war dynamics are changing now-
1:34:06
Rupert Isaacson: Okay
1:34:06
â¦ Louis Hook: as they did before, so I'm confident that it'll
1:34:10
move in the right direction.
1:34:11
But no question, Compton Cowboys and all the organizations like that so when I
1:34:16
look at my peers who, when I first moved here, said, "Don't go there," and my
1:34:21
friends who now understand what we have are like, "Man, how did you see that?"
1:34:26
Okay?
1:34:27
So we're, weâ¦
1:34:28
The, these dynamics, they're changing, and they change over time.
1:34:32
But like I said, my own perspective is I live in, I have a foot in both worlds,
1:34:37
the Black middle class and at the hood.
1:34:41
Okay?
1:34:42
And I had a, some perspective of it when I was a kid, and I have this
1:34:45
perspective of it as, as an adult with all kinds of analytical analysis
1:34:50
capability behind me as I look at it.
1:34:53
So I'm looking at that That Black middle class, having been deadly focused on
1:35:00
raising the, the lives of Black people.
1:35:06
That is all that I'm saying is the methodology was failed, but now the
1:35:10
strategy and tactics are changing to more what they needed to be.
1:35:17
So I'll give you an example.
1:35:18
The Nation of Islam had a model that basically builds on the Jewish
1:35:24
model, the Judaism model, which is self-reliance, own your own history
1:35:33
Promote entrepreneurialism all of those things that include who you
1:35:39
are by the traditions, how you live.
1:35:44
That model has held the Jews together to be able to s- survive the
1:35:50
oppression that they have been just totally b- attempted to be decimated.
1:35:56
On the other local little extreme, in the Black community, the Nation
1:35:59
of Islam has that same kind of model.
1:36:03
The problem that they encountered was they became cultish in saying
1:36:09
the white man is the devil incarnate.
1:36:12
Black people, we just don't think that way.
1:36:15
We wanna be open to everybody.
1:36:17
So again, if you look at interracial couples that I've seen and I've
1:36:22
studied, they're more accepted in the Black community than, than
1:36:26
they are in the white community.
1:36:27
Rupert Isaacson: Interesting.
1:36:28
Louis Hook: Okay.
1:36:29
So because we're just back from, when we said hunter gatherers, when
1:36:34
you can walk out there and grab a, a apple off the tree and reach in the
1:36:40
water and get a fish, life is to be integrated with nature, not fight it.
1:36:46
So that part is, to me, a foundation of who we are.
1:36:50
So when the racists think of, "Man, if these Black people get in control,
1:36:55
they may do to us what we did to them," it's nowhere near how do Black
1:37:00
people stay committed to this country, is 'cause who Black people are.
1:37:08
And people in terms of, "Hey, we are all about grabbing what we
1:37:14
can and unifying what we can can."
1:37:17
So anyway, I'm diverse, going in a different direction.
1:37:21
But I wanna say we are as a Black community, kind of rethinking how
1:37:29
we define ourselves so we can help lift ourselves as well as integrate
1:37:35
with the general population.
1:37:36
Hmm.
1:37:38
Rupert Isaacson: What can Ka- so I work globally, right?
1:37:40
40 countries, whatever.
1:37:42
Wow.
1:37:42
Kansas works all over the place, right?
1:37:44
Mm-hmm.
1:37:44
And you're, you're sitting here on a platform that will be listened to
1:37:47
across the English-speaking world.
1:37:50
Mm-hmm.
1:37:50
So people in Australia are gonna be listening to this, you know, people
1:37:53
wherever are gonna be listening.
1:37:54
Certainly people in South Africa will be listening to this, but also a
1:37:57
lot of people in the USA and Europe.
1:38:00
So- This is your, one of your moments, I hope not the only one.
1:38:06
I hope that we have you on the show a lot.
1:38:09
But you are now, you, you're gonna speak directly now to the people
1:38:14
running equine-assisted programs.
1:38:17
Most of them are white.
1:38:19
Most of them are in white areas.
1:38:22
Not all, but most.
1:38:23
Louis Hook: Mm-hmm.
1:38:25
Rupert Isaacson: Tell us what you want us to do.
1:38:28
What next steps over, say, the next five years or so.
1:38:33
If you said, "Listen, lads, I want you to do this, I want you to do this, I want you
1:38:36
to do this, and I want you to do this."
1:38:38
Yeah.
1:38:39
'Cause we're the kind of people who will listen.
1:38:40
Tell us, what do you want us to do?
1:38:43
Louis Hook: Yeah, so I'll give you an example.
1:38:45
Just like we say, there are Compton Cowboys type programs which is, our
1:38:51
nonprofit is called Compton Genuine Equestrians, which is for these kids.
1:38:56
And funding is the number one thing, along with the expertise
1:39:01
of how to really execute it.
1:39:03
So when you, the equine sci- therapy part for medical issues, whether it's
1:39:10
autism or therapy, whatever, I, I'm not sure how much of the focus of the
1:39:17
groups you're talking to is on this Shadow PTSD that these that African
1:39:24
Americans are facing in the hood.
1:39:26
There's no, there's no designation of that as a illness, okay?
1:39:31
Okay.
1:39:31
So somehow help us identify that-
1:39:34
Rupert Isaacson: Okay
1:39:34
â¦ Louis Hook: and garner resources towards that, because that's
1:39:38
the broader population of Black people who can get there.
1:39:42
Now, I also do believe horses can help anybody, but horses isn't for everybody.
1:39:49
So y- you haveâ¦
1:39:52
The, the, the way I, I understand that is we have field trips that we bring
1:39:56
in people from schools, you know, 30 to 50 kids with their supervision,
1:40:02
and they come in and they always have a great experience with the
1:40:05
horses and the ranch and everything.
1:40:08
Often, oh, that was their greatest field trip for the
1:40:11
year when they do the surveys.
1:40:15
But you can always tell who horses are for because those three kids
1:40:21
out of those 30 or more are s- are the entire time wandering around
1:40:28
in awe with their mouths wide open.
1:40:31
And we would use that to say, "Those three kids, horses is for them.
1:40:36
Let's figure out how to work together with the school or whomever to get
1:40:40
them into this equestrian space."
1:40:44
So that's as I say it, it's that identification as an additional track for
1:40:52
problem-solving of these equine-assisted therapy, is identifying this
1:41:01
Again, it's not diagnosed PTSD, I've been told by the scientists,
1:41:04
don't even, don't say it.
1:41:06
But whatever we wanna call it That is a area of, that needs
1:41:14
equine assistance therapy.
1:41:17
And that's what we do, and if you get it added to that group, then that's
1:41:22
what they'll start picking up as well.
1:41:25
Which
1:41:25
Rupert Isaacson: through our- Yeah, I'm thinking about, like- Through
1:41:26
organizations like us- â¦ Horses and Humans Research Foundation,
1:41:28
and people like that, or o- our friends c- like Kes Sullivan, and Dr.
1:41:33
Anne Hathaway at University of Bournemouth.
1:41:35
I mean, they're the people who would want to look into this kind of thing.
1:41:37
Right â¦ and I think, so I think we should go and have a
1:41:39
conversation with them and say, "What about- I would love it.
1:41:42
Yeah â¦ trying to get some studies going on this," Right â¦ sort of
1:41:45
post-colonial, post-slavery PTSD.
1:41:47
How does it manifest particularly in young people, and what do we as the e-
1:41:53
equine assisted world want to offer?
1:41:56
I think that's- Mm-hmm â¦ exactly, you know, what we should do.
1:42:00
And if you're- I, I agree â¦ y- y- you, you should be that voice, you know?
1:42:05
And it's platforms like this conversation right now that hopefully
1:42:08
get these conversations going.
1:42:10
Louis Hook: I, I
1:42:11
Kansas Carradine: look forward- And what
1:42:12
Louis Hook: you offer â¦ Oh, go ahead.
1:42:12
No, I was just saying I look forward to that, to the degree we can.
1:42:15
Again, I'm in my five-year path of figuring out my retirement
1:42:19
path, and it's this stuff.
1:42:21
Rupert Isaacson: Good luck.
1:42:22
Louis Hook: Okay.
1:42:24
Rupert Isaacson: You're not gonna retire.
1:42:24
You're gonna die in harness, yeah.
1:42:25
Kansas Carradine: Well, and if you were to come to Compton Cowboys,
1:42:28
you would also see that they do not, they serve the entire community, and
1:42:31
Los Angeles is pretty b- diverse.
1:42:33
It's a melting pot.
1:42:34
They don't turn people away just because they're not African American.
1:42:37
You know, you'll see every member of the community that is there and all
1:42:41
united, again, in this equalizing field of seeking to be an equestrian.
1:42:48
And it's interesting because now they're starting to actively look
1:42:50
at a genetic marker that shows the proclivity toward kind of agrarian
1:42:55
culture or farm life or being- Wow.
1:42:56
Wow â¦ someone who's good at m- animal husbandry.
1:42:59
And I have no doubt that very soon they will be atten- to be able to
1:43:03
identify the equestrian gene trait.
1:43:06
Or those who had developed their horsemanship enough to survive,
1:43:11
because honestly, those were the ones who would continue to breed.
1:43:14
And similarly, we have horses who were bred to partner well with humans.
1:43:19
So there's this type of co-evolution-
1:43:21
Louis Hook: Mm
1:43:22
â¦ Kansas Carradine: that's taken place between horse and human
1:43:23
for many, many, many years.
1:43:25
And you're reconnecting- Wow â¦ people to that, to their, their history,
1:43:30
what's really- Mm â¦ in the DNA.
1:43:32
And it's n- not surprising that- Mm â¦ the universe would create this
1:43:35
unique constellation so that the horses are actually part of what becomes the
1:43:40
healing from the epigenetic trauma.
1:43:43
Mm-hmm.
1:43:43
And the, the diversity, equity, and inclusion, the DEI model, that's
1:43:48
what the Compton Cowboys is living now, because they're not saying,
1:43:52
"We're only here for Blacks."
1:43:53
We're here for everybody.
1:43:54
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:43:55
What's really funny is when I grew up in the projects, my neighbors were, Latino,
1:44:00
Mexican, Samoan, Filipino, whites in the housing projects, 'cause it was a military
1:44:09
housing projects, so we got a whole range of diverse kind of people there.
1:44:13
But it was the people who didn't have jobs and stuff, but they wereâ¦
1:44:16
it was fairly diverse.
1:44:17
So my elementary school was diverse.
1:44:20
And so my, my sister, when she started from the beginning with
1:44:25
Compton Junior Posse, she made sure we included everybody in the
1:44:29
neighborhood, you know, whoever's here.
1:44:31
And in Compton now, it's probably about 70% Latino, so we have major bridges.
1:44:37
And my son Randy has continued that as you see it.
1:44:41
We-- this is what we do.
1:44:42
It's it's all about that
1:44:46
Rupert Isaacson: Interestingly, epigenetic trauma with horses, you know,
1:44:49
you're talking about whether it's the West Africans controlling the slave
1:44:51
trade with their-- and the gold trade with their horses or whether it's the
1:44:54
conquest of the American West and the genocides against the Native Americans
1:45:00
or whether it was Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan and Tamerlane and- Right
1:45:04
all those people doing what they did in Eurasia or whether it was
1:45:06
the Crusades or whether it was the Seljuk Turks or whether it wasâ¦
1:45:11
Unfortunately horses have participated in and been used for, hijacked for really
1:45:16
most of the great acts of criminal, criminality large scale criminality.
1:45:21
You couldn't do, you couldn't
1:45:21
Louis Hook: do it without the horses.
1:45:22
You just couldn't do it.
1:45:23
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:45:24
Horses and ships, you needed those two things.
1:45:25
Yeah.
1:45:26
And but it's not the fault of the ocean and it's not the fault of the horse.
1:45:31
And one of the things which I love about this work is the horse
1:45:36
will lend you its power either way as this kind of innocent Being.
1:45:40
The horse will always make you superhuman, right?
1:45:43
So it's how do you wanna use it?
1:45:44
And you can use it to harm your fellow man, or you can
1:45:48
use it to heal your fellow man.
1:45:51
It's entirely up to you.
1:45:53
The horse will lend you his power either way.
1:45:56
But I think we know which one the horse would rather do.
1:45:59
Louis Hook: Right.
1:45:59
Yeah.
1:46:00
No question about it.
1:46:02
And the horse, with the, you know, kind of development of, of, of the auto-
1:46:07
the automobile and the like, horses got pushed to the sideline in the war
1:46:12
effort, so they're, they, they, they're wide open for use for the peace effort.
1:46:19
Mm-hmm.
1:46:19
Okay?
1:46:20
We can really build them out in that space because they're not
1:46:24
needed in the war effort anymore.
1:46:27
But they are needed-
1:46:28
Rupert Isaacson: And you can be sure, you can be sure when the clashes of
1:46:30
cavalry happened, you know, let's say it was the Roman cavalry meeting the
1:46:34
West African cavalry or the Crusaders meeting the Saracens or whoever.
1:46:39
Right.
1:46:39
The horses, if you turn them all loose on the battlefield, would
1:46:44
have just walked up to each other, had a sniff, and formed a herd.
1:46:48
Louis Hook: Exactly.
1:46:50
Right.
1:46:50
No doubt about it, you know.
1:46:52
So now we have the complete wide open space-
1:46:58
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
1:46:58
â¦ Louis Hook: to use them for what they're, what God designed them to do.
1:47:04
Kansas Carradine: Mm.
1:47:04
It's a beautiful contribution.
1:47:06
And another contribution I don't wanna miss is what Compton Cowboys has done
1:47:09
to advocate to maintain the educational opportunities for horse centers to
1:47:16
still and remain open in LA County.
1:47:18
Louis, can you speak about that a little bit?
1:47:20
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:47:21
You know, there's aâ¦
1:47:22
I- in Compton by itself, we've been, we had to fight over the years
1:47:26
to maintain our space, where the commercialization wanted to kind of build
1:47:31
it out to more housing and the like.
1:47:33
And the only thing that saved us was the deed as it was deeded
1:47:37
over, said you can't do it.
1:47:40
So that battle we, that we have, we've taken on where, you know, there are the
1:47:45
animal rights people who are appropriately fighting against the abuse of the animals
1:47:51
and use of them when they hurt them.
1:47:53
But at the same time, there are things that the horses can do
1:47:56
that are really just athletics.
1:47:59
And that we gotta try to support that effort and support the effort
1:48:05
to keep these centers over open so that people have a space to go do
1:48:09
the healthy things with the horses.
1:48:11
So, Randy's been, he's spoken down at city council and different places for, against
1:48:16
initiatives where people are trying to kind of close the loop and close the door.
1:48:21
Kansas Carradine: Now we can't go to Griffith Park, for example,
1:48:23
and, you know, have that first point of access 'cause they've shut
1:48:27
down- Has that been closed down?
1:48:28
Rupert Isaacson: You, you can't take the
1:48:28
Kansas Carradine: ride in Griffith Park anymore?
1:48:29
Some of the, the LA Equestrian Center is still open, but taking,
1:48:32
like, the first contact of a lot of people would've been a pony ride.
1:48:35
And I understand there's different parameters to how to do those ethically
1:48:38
and with the best integrity to care for the horses and the ponies, so, but then
1:48:43
it became this kind of blanket policy that they're gonna shut down riding schools.
1:48:49
And so from what I understand, you guys made sure that that did not happen so
1:48:53
that you could still keep your doors open.
1:48:54
And we
1:48:55
Louis Hook: participated in a group against that, so it was good.
1:48:57
We, we slowed, we, we slowed it down.
1:49:00
Like I say, it's, the corner of it comes from the people who are abusing the
1:49:05
horses and all the horses dying in, in the race- at the racetrack, and all kinds of
1:49:10
legitimate reasons to say we need to have some kind of oversight over what's going
1:49:15
on and kind of refocus what we're doing.
1:49:18
But the core fight is the relationship with the horses is key, and
1:49:24
people need that, that outlet, and the horses need it, and weâ¦
1:49:28
Y- you're gonna shut it all down if you, if you, if we let you.
1:49:35
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:49:36
This is, this is something that's dear to my heart.
1:49:38
So, I grew up in the fox hunting world, and there is no doubt that in live
1:49:45
fox hunting, if you were a fox, you wouldn't want to participate in it.
1:49:49
And however, it is a very, very, very strong countryside culture,
1:49:57
which actually helps protect the countryside because people want the
1:50:00
foxes, so they protect the habitats.
1:50:02
Whether or not you think that's ethical or not, that is the way it is.
1:50:05
Now, I no longer fox hunt.
1:50:07
I gave up because a Navajo medicine man told me I had to give up,
1:50:10
and but it, it was always sitting a little bit uncomfortably with
1:50:13
me, but I still ride to hounds.
1:50:16
We have adapted what we do, and we have a pack of hounds, and we hunt each other.
1:50:22
Oh.
1:50:23
And when the hounds catch us, they lick us to death, and but if I'm the quarry
1:50:27
today and the hounds are hunting me, I can have a bit of fun on my horse.
1:50:31
Yeah, yeah.
1:50:31
And I can lead you across some country that's gonna be a little bit
1:50:34
challenging, and I can- Yeah, yeah
1:50:36
try to lose the scent.
1:50:37
I can behave like a fox.
1:50:38
I can double back on myself.
1:50:40
I can go through the water.
1:50:41
I canâ¦
1:50:42
And see, you know, will the hounds work it out?
1:50:44
You know, and they always do.
1:50:45
Wow.
1:50:46
Yeah â¦ but what we started doing was we, we, we took that model just from a
1:50:50
point of ethics, say, how can we have this thing that we love but not harm?
1:50:56
And we still, we still look after the same habitats we used to look
1:51:00
after, but just we're not, no longer hunting the live animal that's in them.
1:51:03
But with then we thought, "No, let's go a stage further."
1:51:06
So we started creating inclusive hunting days.
1:51:08
So we began to train a group of horses to be able to take special needs riders.
1:51:14
Mm-hmm.
1:51:15
And we had them coming out to hounds, including people with
1:51:18
spina bifida, including people with autism, including people withâ¦
1:51:21
Not all jumping, not all doing that stuff.
1:51:22
Everyone doing it at the level they could.
1:51:24
And then we thought, "This is not enough."
1:51:27
And so then we thought, "Well, that's not enough."
1:51:29
So we started reaching out to some local schools, this is a town in Germany, which
1:51:32
had been overrun with refugee populations from Syria, from the Ukraine, and all
1:51:38
sorts of violence, all sorts of problems.
1:51:39
And we're like, "These kids are not getting exposed to the countryside at all.
1:51:42
Let's invite these guys out for these countryside days that were
1:51:46
built around these artificial hunts that we were doing."
1:51:50
And then we could invite them to the parties, and they could follow some
1:51:52
on horseback, some on foot, and learn about the countryside because it's also
1:51:56
an organic farm that we're going over.
1:51:59
And, and, and, and what we realized was this term inclusion, it's
1:52:03
not really anymore about are you Black, are you white are youâ¦
1:52:08
What it is about is are you urban or are you country?
1:52:11
Are you concerned about nature and involved with nature, or
1:52:15
are you cut off from nature?
1:52:17
Are you with conservation or are you with concrete?
1:52:21
Are you with the relationship with animals or are you
1:52:25
divorced from that relationship?
1:52:27
And we realize, you know, it's organizations like yours, like mine,
1:52:33
like the work you're doing, Ganzs, that are bringing effectively the
1:52:36
urban populations into contact with nature, and nature and the mind.
1:52:41
And ultimately, this is really the thing.
1:52:43
The horse is just one of the many mechanisms for that.
1:52:47
So what can we do to further this type of inclusion?
1:52:55
Because as you say, if people don't get to ride the horse in Griffith Park,
1:53:00
then why do they care about the range?
1:53:02
And if they don't care about the range, then why do they care about plastering
1:53:06
that whole area with industrial stuff?
1:53:08
And why doâ¦
1:53:09
You know, people are not gonna care about the planet unless
1:53:12
they're in contact with it.
1:53:14
And the horse, of course, brings us into contact with it.
1:53:16
So what can we do around this?
1:53:19
You know, and your, your, your, and your nephew's efforts, you know, with
1:53:23
LA County are definitely part of this.
1:53:25
And I know you're sitting- Right
1:53:26
up in the Sierras, you know, which is always under threat from being
1:53:29
suburbanized 'cause lots of people wanna go and build tract houses-
1:53:33
Yeah â¦ up there, Ganzs, you know.
1:53:34
So yeah, what, what can we do?
1:53:37
Louis Hook: For my answer is one, there's California money for
1:53:41
exposure to the outdoors, and our game plan is to go after that.
1:53:49
And what we wanna do is use the field trip model to say every school
1:53:54
should have a field trip to a ranch.
1:53:57
We can be that ranch, bring the field trip.
1:54:00
We can handle probably-
1:54:04
At least five field trips a week, right?
1:54:10
And that gives the kids exposure.
1:54:13
For us, it helps us identify kids who may wanna get in-- sh-
1:54:16
we should be getting involved.
1:54:18
But more importantly, all the kids we have, because we do have the horses, we
1:54:22
have the farming we have the gardening.
1:54:25
Those three things they get to interact with at whatever age.
1:54:28
So we-- when we do field trips, we find that that's a way to get exposure.
1:54:33
So all of us little guys like us, if we are set up so that we can support
1:54:39
a field trip model to say, "Hey, every school, you have to have a field
1:54:43
trip to a ranch or a farm somewhere."
1:54:45
And we're on the list, sign us, sign 'em up.
1:54:48
And then that's fundraising for us also because these-- the schools,
1:54:52
they pay for field trips to go places.
1:54:55
So if we're in that budget cycle, that helps us with funding, helps
1:54:59
expose the kids to the outdoors, and boom, that one worked for us
1:55:07
Rupert Isaacson: Kansas
1:55:08
Kansas Carradine: What I would say to this piece, yeah, you know, where
1:55:10
I'm living, I'm in the High Sierras of northern California, close to
1:55:15
Nevada, and this is Wasi'chu region.
1:55:17
Historically tho- known as the Washoe tribe.
1:55:20
And just about 30 minutes away there is the magnificent Lake Tahoe, which is a
1:55:26
main tourist dest- destination around the world, and many members of the Wasi'chu
1:55:30
community have never taken that 35-mile trip up to see the lake of their ancestry.
1:55:36
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
1:55:37
Kansas Carradine: And so what I would remind is, yes, the field trips.
1:55:41
And if you can mentor, if you can be a volunteer for these programs, if you
1:55:46
happen to be somebody who is stewarding some horses and has a, a, a, a stable
1:55:52
that you can invite other members of your community, find out who they
1:55:55
are, to create that inclusion, that diversity, that equity so that there's,
1:56:01
that we maintain the accessibility.
1:56:04
I think that's really what we're looking at.
1:56:05
And learn the stories so that we can really tell the stories that are
1:56:09
important to continue to reinforce those goals and those ideals.
1:56:14
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, we are the storytelling ape after all.
1:56:16
That is what defines our species.
1:56:18
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:56:18
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:56:19
Louis Hook: So, and one, so if we can get w- from the, from
1:56:22
our side, we're reaching up.
1:56:23
"Hey, you guys wanna take a field trip?"
1:56:25
Right?
1:56:25
We'll, we'll, we'llâ¦
1:56:26
If we get the other, coming from the other side, we gotta find field
1:56:30
trips for these kids to the outdoors.
1:56:32
We have to find it.
1:56:33
Let's get out there and find them and pay for them.
1:56:39
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
1:56:39
I think this is, this is relevant whether you're listening to this from
1:56:43
Yorkshire or London or Johannesburg or Washington DC or wherever, that Berlin,
1:56:50
that yes, these kids need these outlets.
1:56:54
This, the, there is money out there for this.
1:56:56
I think everyone who's listening to this can empathize with what with,
1:57:00
with what Lewis was saying about fundraising and, and, and the search
1:57:04
for philanthropy even when, The Beckhams live in your neighborhood.
1:57:08
You know, I know people who are running programs sort of like literally,
1:57:12
or they're living across the hedge, but they're not yet donating.
1:57:17
But nonetheless, there are these mechanisms there, and I think if
1:57:21
we can think beyond horses, if we can think nature and the mind-
1:57:25
Louis Hook: Yeah
1:57:25
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: sure, let the horses be ambassadors for this.
1:57:28
Mm-hmm.
1:57:28
But a lot of we horse people are a little bit too horse-focused, and we can
1:57:31
get very much going, "No, no, no, it's just about the equine-assisted thing."
1:57:34
It's like, yes, but A, that may not keep you afloat, B, not every kid, as Louis
1:57:40
was saying, is into the horses, and C, the horses create the environment for nature
1:57:46
and the mind, for these other things.
1:57:48
Mm-hmm.
1:57:48
So surely we want to be part of this larger patchwork, no?
1:57:52
Yeah.
1:57:53
Louis Hook: Yes.
1:57:54
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:57:55
Louis Hook: It can be â¦ It's a powerful movement, again, as we connect to the to
1:58:00
â¦ We're in this climate change battle.
1:58:05
But part of it is the people need to know why they're battling, okay?
1:58:11
And if they don't have exposure to it, they're, like, kind of indifferent.
1:58:14
Mm-hmm.
1:58:14
So in my neighborhood and with the kids I work with, "Eh, climate change.
1:58:18
Eh, well, well, whatever."
1:58:20
Right?
1:58:20
But to the degree that they are exposed to it and say, "This is what's going away
1:58:25
if we don't do something about it," they all will ge- be engaged at a higher level.
1:58:30
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
1:58:31
Kansas Carradine: Mm.
1:58:32
Rupert Isaacson: I couldn't agree more.
1:58:35
All right, so that's what we're gonna do.
1:58:37
Nature and the mind.
1:58:38
Expose the kids to nature, make our equine-assisted places
1:58:42
nature and the mind places.
1:58:44
That, I think, also helps break down the racial mythologies and so on, because
1:58:50
then it re- If you're going out for nature and the mind, and the person
1:58:54
showing you this part of nature has this color skin or that color skin, or speaks
1:58:58
this language or that language, orâ¦
1:59:00
Then it's just, then it's just a point of cultural interest, but no longer a
1:59:04
point of ethnic antagonism or warfare.
1:59:09
Absolutely.
1:59:10
Yeah.
1:59:10
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:59:11
Rupert Isaacson: And then maybe that, maybe that war that
1:59:13
you're talking about can be won.
1:59:15
Louis Hook: Yeah.
1:59:16
' Rupert Isaacson: Cause it's
1:59:17
Louis Hook: really- I'm certain, I'm certain it will be, because these
1:59:19
kind of dialogues are pushing us all.
1:59:21
Mm-hmm.
1:59:21
They're happening more and all over the place.
1:59:23
We just gotta keep, as you're trying to do, is say, "Hey, what can we do?"
1:59:28
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
1:59:29
" Louis Hook: What can we do?
1:59:30
How do we get focused on it?
1:59:31
How do we work together to get it done?"
1:59:33
My position on these things is everybody needs to do what,
1:59:38
the way they wanna do it.
1:59:40
You can't say, "Hey, we all ha- should do it this way."
1:59:42
Mm-hmm.
1:59:43
But you put out some ideas, and if you can get momentum around some
1:59:45
of them, then that's how they grow.
1:59:47
Rupert Isaacson: I couldn't agree more.
1:59:49
All right.
1:59:50
Well, I guess we've hit the two-hour mark.
1:59:52
What I'd love to do, Louis, is have you on the other show.
1:59:56
Okay, great â¦ Live Free Ride Free, and, and let's, we can dive in and
1:59:58
become history nerds, 'cause I love that.
2:00:00
Louis Hook: Oh man, I love that.
2:00:01
And we're gonna nerd out.
2:00:01
I,
2:00:01
Rupert Isaacson: I see I would learn so much.
2:00:03
We're gonna nerd.
2:00:05
Down rabbit hole, rabbit hole, rabbit hole, rabbit hole.
2:00:07
Pop up and go down another one.
2:00:08
Yeah.
2:00:08
I look forward to learning â¦ and I hope, I hope Candice will join us
2:00:11
because she's a lover of rabbits-
2:00:14
Kansas Carradine: Yes, I'm also a horse nerd
2:00:15
Rupert Isaacson: and a horse nerd.
2:00:15
There
2:00:15
Kansas Carradine: you go.
2:00:16
And rabbit holes.
2:00:17
Yeah.
2:00:18
Rupert Isaacson: So,
2:00:19
Kansas Carradine: thank you.
2:00:19
And don't forget, you can contact the, look for the Compton C-
2:00:23
Compton Cowboys- Thank you.
2:00:24
Oh, so busy, Maddie â¦ Compton Junior Equestrians.
2:00:25
I think there's a Donate Now button.
2:00:27
Wait, can you tell us a little bit, Louis- Yeah.
2:00:28
How do we support you?
2:00:29
about how to make sure that the resources- Yeah, you go to our
2:00:31
website â¦ continue to flow in that way?
2:00:33
Louis Hook: Yeah, if you go to either Compton Cowboys, you can Google it,
2:00:36
or go to or just comptoncowboys.com
2:00:39
or comptonjuniorequestrians.org.
2:00:42
There's a donate pathway that you can pick up online, and just go for it, okay?
2:00:47
And you have many options.
2:00:48
You can give us a dollar a a month, up to however much you want a month.
2:00:52
You can support a specific horse.
2:00:55
You can support a rider in the s- in the after school and summer camps.
2:01:00
However you wanna do it, we are open to it.
2:01:02
Kansas Carradine: Can you share also how much it costs to participate in
2:01:05
the summer camp in California- Okay.
2:01:08
So, so our- â¦ just to, in 2026?
2:01:10
Yeah,
2:01:10
Louis Hook: our-
2:01:10
Kansas Carradine: Just to get an idea how you make this cost-effective to families.
2:01:11
Our summer camp,
2:01:13
Louis Hook: our summer camp cost is about, the cost is about
2:01:17
400 bucks per per kid per week.
2:01:22
And, We charge 25â¦
2:01:23
$50.
2:01:25
So the difference is however much money we can raise.
2:01:30
Rupert Isaacson: Did you hear that Snoop Dogg?
2:01:32
Did you hear that Ice Cube?
2:01:35
Did
2:01:36
Kansas Carradine: you hear that Kendrick?
2:01:38
So, and just to give relevancy, that's how much it was at my riding school in 1989.
2:01:41
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
2:01:42
Yeah.
2:01:42
Kansas Carradine: So the, the, and the cost of, you know, the liability
2:01:46
insurance, the property taxes, the hay.
2:01:51
I don't care if you're a non-profit or not, all those things are expensive.
2:01:54
Rupert Isaacson: They're expensive.
2:01:54
So- Also- You can see- â¦ Lewis, you say, you say it costs 400 â¦ I
2:01:55
do, I do- It costs way more than 400, 'cause you're not factoring in
2:02:00
the time- Totally â¦ of the people.
2:02:01
Right.
2:02:02
It- Oh, for sure â¦ you know it's, it's more like 2K per kid.
2:02:04
It's m- Volunteer-
2:02:05
Kansas Carradine: Yeah
2:02:06
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
2:02:06
Louis Hook: Yeah, because we got holidays every month and all that.
2:02:09
So thank you for making it accessible.
2:02:09
So, so the issue is, like you said, Iâ¦
2:02:13
There's, there are people who can say, "Look, I'll sponsor
2:02:15
10 kids for the summer."
2:02:19
He, he, he, he just make their w- lives, okay?
2:02:22
Make our lives.
2:02:24
Because then we're getting money at the full rate, which is the
2:02:28
cost, and we're able to do it.
2:02:30
It's as opposed to indirectly raising the money to get it.
2:02:35
But we're, we're moving pretty good.
2:02:36
We got a good investment to help us upgrade the facility.
2:02:39
We had a lot of issues with the facility.
2:02:41
And we just got a $400,000 grant from a local foundation again, because
2:02:47
a guy who grew up in Compton said, "I like what you guys are doing."
2:02:50
Okay?
2:02:51
And he's a white guy and the family, and all, all good.
2:02:55
By the way, I just wanted to tell you, one of my best friends, my
2:02:58
college roommate's a Jewish guy.
2:03:00
We, we, we've been doing Jewish Black studies together for
2:03:04
our whole lives since college.
2:03:07
Rupert Isaacson: That's another, that's another very good rabbit hole, that one.
2:03:09
Yep.
2:03:10
Louis Hook: That one, yes.
2:03:11
Kansas Carradine: The next conversation.
2:03:12
Rupert Isaacson: It, it is.
2:03:13
Oh, yeah.
2:03:13
Yeah.
2:03:13
The, the, the Black Jewish history, that's a whole thing.
2:03:16
Louis Hook: Amazing.
2:03:16
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
2:03:16
Okay.
2:03:17
So, comptoncowboys.com.
2:03:19
Yep.
2:03:20
And donate buttons.
2:03:21
Mm-hmm.
2:03:21
And Snoop Dogg, are you listening?
2:03:23
'Cause they, you could d- 20,000 a week maybe?
2:03:26
Maybe to, you know, something small like that perhaps.
2:03:29
Sure â¦ tax deductible, hey.
2:03:31
But if not, it'll probably be people like me and old grannies living in
2:03:34
Rangitikei, New I- New Zealand listening to this who will send- We're, we're,
2:03:37
Louis Hook: we're not pi- we're not picky.
2:03:40
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
2:03:41
Because we know, we-- yeah, and this is the thing.
2:03:43
The, the good-hearted people always come through.
2:03:45
But yeah, please, listeners, please do support them 'cause it's iconic.
2:03:49
It-- we, you need things like Compton Cowboys almost just because they're
2:03:53
called Compton Cowboys, and they draw attention to the fact that something like
2:03:57
that can exist in a place like Compton.
2:03:59
And this is- Mm â¦ more meaningful, frankly, than sometimes what I'm doing
2:04:04
out in Texas or what I'm doing in, you know, rural Germany or so, just because
2:04:08
the odds against it are, are greater.
2:04:10
And the needs of the kids in that particular setting are more acute perhaps.
2:04:16
So thank you, Louis, for doing the work, and thank you Kansas, for not
2:04:21
just all you do but also specifically the work that I know you've gone and
2:04:23
done with horsemanship and heart math down there at the Compton Cowboys.
2:04:27
Are you going back again anytime soon?
2:04:29
Are you due to go back for-
2:04:30
Kansas Carradine: I will be going back again, yeah.
2:04:32
I was actually gonna talk to you guys, guys about that, especially since you've
2:04:35
got summer camps going on, so we are- Yeah, so summer camp is- â¦ going
2:04:39
to co- continue to collaborating.
2:04:39
We're expecting- When I come down on the weekends, they don't always
2:04:42
have so much going on on the weekends, but summer camp is thriving
2:04:46
Louis Hook: Yes, yes.
2:04:47
And we, we are in our second week of, I think, 10 weeks, so you'll
2:04:51
have some, they'll have some time to put it together with you.
2:04:54
Get, get with Mark.
2:04:55
Let's do it, you know?
2:04:56
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
2:04:57
And, And
2:04:58
Louis Hook: I, I just want to say thank you.
2:05:00
This has been so refreshing, enlightening.
2:05:03
I'm, I'm a s- I'm a forever student, so I'm learning great things, and
2:05:08
then the opportunity to tell our story is always just so appreciated.
2:05:12
It's it's pretty incredible.
2:05:12
Rupert Isaacson: Well, thank you.
2:05:13
No, you, you've, you've, you've come here and told a wonderful story.
2:05:17
And I would like to come with Kansas sometime if you want to
2:05:20
do learn any of our methodologies with neuroscience and horses.
2:05:24
H- it's all based around autism trauma, that sort of thing.
2:05:27
And also for classical dressage and horsemanship, particularly the
2:05:30
ground-based stuff which is always useful for kids to learn for their-
2:05:34
Louis Hook: Yeah
2:05:34
â¦ Rupert Isaacson: their horsemanship.
2:05:35
Yeah, our whole English side- I'm at your service, so I'd love to come and do that.
2:05:38
Louis Hook: Yeah, our entire English side, because of funding, it's more expensive
2:05:42
over there, so we kind of pulled back.
2:05:44
We had, we had a, a, a jumping team- Mm-hmm â¦ and we just
2:05:48
had to pull back from it.
2:05:50
But our, our goal is to get back to it.
2:05:53
It takes funding and-
2:05:53
Rupert Isaacson: Well, the classical stuff is equally applicable to Western.
2:05:56
It's just pan-horseman.
2:05:57
Right.
2:05:58
Doesn't re- doesn't matter the discipline- Yeah â¦ as, as,
2:06:01
Yeah â¦ Kansas well knows.
2:06:03
Louis Hook: Absolutely.
2:06:03
Rupert Isaacson: But I'm at your service, you know, and I'll
2:06:04
happily, gladly come and- Okay.
2:06:05
And,
2:06:06
Louis Hook: and you got to come down and hang with us at the at
2:06:08
the ranch and see what we do.
2:06:10
Rupert Isaacson: I will be there.
2:06:12
Kansas, are we doing it?
2:06:13
Yeah.
2:06:14
Kansas Carradine: Yeah.
2:06:14
Amen.
2:06:15
Yeah.
2:06:15
Okay.
2:06:15
Definitely.
2:06:15
Rupert Isaacson: All right.
2:06:16
All right.
2:06:17
Kansas Carradine: We'll have it happen.
2:06:18
Rupert Isaacson: All
2:06:18
Kansas Carradine: right, Rockets.
2:06:19
Thank you so much, Lewis.
2:06:19
All right.
2:06:20
Thank you.
2:06:20
I'm so glad you guys finally connected.
2:06:22
Rupert Isaacson: Me too.
2:06:22
Thank you so much.
2:06:22
Kansas Carradine: It was just delightful.
2:06:24
Rupert Isaacson: We will see
2:06:25
Kansas Carradine: you next time.
2:06:26
See you all
2:06:26
Louis Hook: soon.
2:06:26
Great.
2:06:26
Bye-bye.
2:06:27
Rupert Isaacson: Bye-bye.
2:06:28
Kansas Carradine: Thanks, Rupert.
2:06:29
Rupert Isaacson: Thank you, Kansas.
2:06:30
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