Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Resmaa Menakem, Vincent Ventresca, & Charles Little II on Creating The 'IMen' Series, Racialized Trauma, Henrietta Lacks + More

Transcript

INTERVIEW: Resmaa Menakem, Vincent Ventresca, & Charles Little II on Creating The 'IMen' Series, Racialized Trauma, Henrietta Lacks + More · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We all finished or y'all done?
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Yep, it's the World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne Tha God, Lauren LaRosa is.
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: Here as well.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: And we got some special guests in the building. Resmaa Minicum,
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: you know, always a regular here.
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: Always a pleasure to see you.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: You seem like a good brother.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: And Charles Little II and Vincent Ventresca.
• 0:25
  Speaker 4: That's me.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: Good morning, man.
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: Good morning.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: How are y'all? We doing good, brother. We doing good.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: We happy to be here with you. And anytime I
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: get a chance to be around you, man, it's good
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: for me.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: We talking about a couple of things, right?
• 0:37
  Speaker 4: Talking about the I'm In TV series. Yeah, man.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: We started this. Me, Vince, and Andre Hardy actually started
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: writing this about three years ago. Vince used to be
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: on the original I'm In TV show on the SyFy channel.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: And so we became friends and he said, do you
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: want to write something with me? And I was like, no,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I'm done writing right now. And then we started talking
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: and then I was able to add some of the
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: pieces of our history and our culture into it. And
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: so we started writing it.
• 1:10
  Speaker 5: Man, it was crazy. We were thinking about doing this
• 1:13
  Speaker 5: other thing and we were on our way to talk
• 1:16
  Speaker 5: to somebody about that. And I was like, Hey man,
• 1:18
  Speaker 5: I was on this old show, the invisible man. He goes,
• 1:19
  Speaker 5: I know you were. And then he was.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Like, I love that show.
• 1:22
  Speaker 5: And I said, what if we, what if we took
• 1:24
  Speaker 5: that show and played with Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, like
• 1:27
  Speaker 5: through the lens of that? And then Resmaa was like, okay,
• 1:30
  Speaker 5: go on. And then Resmaa said, well, how about this?
• 1:32
  Speaker 5: Tell them what you said.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: So then I said, you know, what if we didn't
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: use the old techniques? What if we actually used the
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: cells that actually transformed.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: Him of Henrietta Lacks?
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: And then use that. And then part of the whole
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: thing is that black people reclaiming those pieces and it
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: shouldn't have been in his body in the first damn
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: place so you know so we wrote a whole so
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: we've actually written a whole the whole first season and
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: what you guys saw was the pilot and and the
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: trailer right and so what we're doing now is so
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I've mortgaged my house to do.
• 2:09
  Speaker 5: It I didn't know that that was new information.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah and but but and then we had my boy
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Charles come in who's an Emmy Award winning editor, and
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: he saved our bacon.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: I want to ask you something, right? The Henrietta lacks
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: part of it.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Her story is one of the most disturbing examples of
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: medical exploitation in.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: American history, right?
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Why was it important to connect that history to this
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: fictional world?
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: So I believe that fiction and sci-fi and stuff like
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: that offers more room for us than just doing something
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: like a documentary or something like that. We can do
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: more with it, and it goes into people without us finger-waving, right?
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Before they know it, they're getting something, right, that kind
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: of disturbs them, and that's what we want to do.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: That's what all of our writing was, right? All of
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: our writing for all of these three years was not
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: about storytelling, but story withholding. What do I mean by that?
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: We withhold pieces, and with the mind normally, you know,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: I'm a social worker, What the mind normally does is
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: fills in the gaps. And then you start to want
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: more to it. And so it was important for me.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: It's important for me in any of our writing. You
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: know me, man.
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: In any of our.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Writing, if I'm talking about, if we're talking about black people,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: it is important that we hold fidelity to that. It
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: is not a throwaway thing. So when you're talking about
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: black people's history, culture, what's happening to black people, you
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: have to hold it in a way that allows for
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: even the next generation to feel like it's important, right?
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: So that's why it was important to... So there's three
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: main things that contributed to this. So it was the
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: idea of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. It was the idea
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: of Henrietta Lacks. And then also the movie, and you
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: guys know this, The Spook Who Sat By The Door.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: That's right. It was just right in there. Yeah. About
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: the guy in the room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Charles, like,
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: we filmed it. We filmed what you guys saw in
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: terms of the trailer. We filmed that, or in terms
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: of the pilot, we filmed that in three days, right?
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Because we had to, right? And so Charles was the
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: one that actually helped us begin to kind of, like,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: craft the story we already had the story but Charles
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: was able to take the visual elements that we have
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: and blend it together so to tell us.
• 4:36
  Speaker 6: Yeah sharpen it all and the Henrietta Lacks thing you
• 4:39
  Speaker 6: know it made it it made it physically and tangible
• 4:43
  Speaker 6: you know it made it you know it gave it
• 4:45
  Speaker 6: a real anchor that you could touch that was in
• 4:48
  Speaker 6: real life it wasn't just you know something cerebral it
• 4:51
  Speaker 6: So yeah, I just went in there and it was
• 4:54
  Speaker 6: great because when they first brought me into the project,
• 4:56
  Speaker 6: I didn't really know anything. And one of the most
• 4:59
  Speaker 6: magical moments that happened in our studio when we were
• 5:01
  Speaker 6: cutting this together, I know you remember this, because I'm
• 5:04
  Speaker 6: always drilling as an editor, I'm always asking why.
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: What's the motivation? What reason, why do I care? Is
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: that really compelling?
• 5:09
  Speaker 6: And as I said, why, one of the greatest moments
• 5:12
  Speaker 6: was when they were like, you know, Trust me, we
• 5:14
  Speaker 6: don't actually really know. And so that left room, and
• 5:19
  Speaker 6: Resmaa's a big proponent of the word room, as you
• 5:21
  Speaker 6: well know.
• 5:21
  Speaker 4: He wants room to move and room.
• 5:24
  Speaker 6: For your thoughts to expand and explore. So I had
• 5:27
  Speaker 6: that kind of room, and what you saw came out,
• 5:29
  Speaker 6: came out. How did you guys feel about what you've seen?
• 5:34
  Speaker 6: It made me think about.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: Henrietta Lacks a lot and how her sales contributed to
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: so much Medical advancement. But how do you reconcile all
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: the good that came from something that began with such
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: a violation?
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: Well, you don't reconcile it. It has to stay with you.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: That knowing that you had when you're... That's what we want.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: We don't want you to be settled with this. Right?
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Because the moment you get settled, you go, it's not important.
• 6:01
  Speaker 6: And that's how we stay here. That's how the system
• 6:03
  Speaker 6: keeps repeating because we accept it.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: And so that uncomfortableness... And think about it, too.
• 6:09
  Speaker 6: If you're going to go back to the source, where
• 6:11
  Speaker 6: do you think you're going to end up? Don't be
• 6:13
  Speaker 6: surprised if you end up in a black woman's cells.
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: Where do you think we started?
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: And it almost seems like a fictional story.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: When you think about it.
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: This is the type of stuff you see in movies already.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: It's like they took somebody's cells and used it for
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: medical advancement, but really it's not fictional.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: That's the part that's moving.
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: I'm moving right out of my chair. I was like, boom,
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: what are you? And that's when Reza was like, My
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: work is done.
• 6:37
  Speaker 7: So you learned while in the editing bay that this
• 6:40
  Speaker 7: wasn't fictional?
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: 100%.
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: I always, I'm specific about being completely blank when I
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: go into projects.
• 6:46
  Speaker 6: I do not like to go on set. I don't
• 6:48
  Speaker 6: want a whole bunch of information. I like to be,
• 6:50
  Speaker 6: I don't know what's happening. That's where I ask questions.
• 6:53
  Speaker 6: And that's where I prove to myself, like I actually
• 6:56
  Speaker 6: can buy into what's going on.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: And once I bought into it, bro, I was like,
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: this is, this is the most.
• 7:02
  Speaker 6: Craziest thing I've ever seen. And then the performances. I mean, look,
• 7:08
  Speaker 6: so I'm just excited.
• 7:09
  Speaker 8: Why is that your, like your method, right? Like you
• 7:12
  Speaker 8: don't like to know too much about it. No information,
• 7:15
  Speaker 8: little to no information. You just want to learn.
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: Because I need to be pure. I can't be influenced.
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: You could fall.
• 7:21
  Speaker 6: If you go out and you shoot a whole bunch
• 7:23
  Speaker 6: of pictures all day, you have intent with those photographs.
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: So you'll put those images in and I'm like, oh,
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: we don't need those. You're like, yeah, but they're so good.
• 7:30
  Speaker 6: But they're not helping the story. So I want to
• 7:33
  Speaker 6: stay blank so that the story is authentic and it works.
• 7:38
  Speaker 6: Anybody who sees it, black, white, brown, green, they should
• 7:42
  Speaker 6: be able to connect to it. And that's my goal
• 7:44
  Speaker 6: with anything I work on, but especially with I-Men.
• 7:47
  Speaker 5: And again, he said this. I didn't understand this metaphor
• 7:50
  Speaker 5: until you said it. We sowed seeds in the script.
• 7:55
  Speaker 5: And then you film stuff. And that's you harvesting... the stuff,
• 8:00
  Speaker 5: and then you give it to him and he cooks it.
• 8:02
  Speaker 5: He's the chef. He's putting it together. And to come
• 8:05
  Speaker 5: in kind of blind to it was very helpful because
• 8:08
  Speaker 5: he's the first audience. He's the one who's gonna help.
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: The last rewrite. That's right. That's exactly what it is.
• 8:13
  Speaker 5: So I'm challenging what they.
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: Put on paper. I'm challenging his performances. I'm asking, but why?
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: I don't, you know. So yeah, that's, that's what that was.
• 8:20
  Speaker 8: And do you feel like you have to, cause I
• 8:22
  Speaker 8: didn't see the original. I mean, do you have to
• 8:25
  Speaker 8: watch that to get this?
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: No. Okay.
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: No, but you can't.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: That's what's interesting.
• 8:29
  Speaker 5: Part of it, part of it starts with my love
• 8:34
  Speaker 5: of this old show. And, um, this is sort of
• 8:37
  Speaker 5: a shameless plug, but as we're doing this, I went
• 8:39
  Speaker 5: back in and, uh, a guy named Ed Pogue, who
• 8:42
  Speaker 5: was a fan of the old show, started an Iman, uh,
• 8:45
  Speaker 5: official rewatch podcast. And I went back and I started
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: watching the old show because, What was really special about
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: the old show was about me and the relationship with
• 8:54
  Speaker 5: this actor named Paul Ben Victor. And Resmaa was like,
• 8:58
  Speaker 5: I really loved watching you two do your thing.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: And I was like, yeah.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, we were good.
• 9:04
  Speaker 5: We had good chemistry. You know, that's not usually unusual.
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: But Resmaa was like, that relationship.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: You need to tend to that relationship.
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: And I was like, okay, is tending to something going
• 9:15
  Speaker 5: to become a script?
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: And then....
• 9:19
  Speaker 5: You know, Resmaa talks about creation and emergence.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: And I was like, what's that?
• 9:27
  Speaker 5: And then I was like, but then we would talk.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: And then I'd wake up, I'd be like, hey, I
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: call Res. And I'd be like, hey, man, this kind
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: of popped in my head. He's like, yeah, go, go, go, go.
• 9:38
  Speaker 5: Like he was just.
• 9:40
  Speaker 6: And friction and what's the word I'm looking for? Limitation.
• 9:46
  Speaker 6: One of my sayings is limitations are the, the agents
• 9:51
  Speaker 6: of creativity.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Something like that.
• 9:54
  Speaker 6: But that squeeze, that's what that forced us into asking
• 9:59
  Speaker 6: questions and challenging ourselves and making certain that, you know,
• 10:04
  Speaker 6: the material really stood on its own. I mean, I
• 10:05
  Speaker 6: knew it stood on its own. I just wanted to
• 10:08
  Speaker 6: crack it.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: You know, and he's, he's on big stuff, you know.
• 10:12
  Speaker 6: He's on big stuff and it's stuff that we really
• 10:15
  Speaker 6: need to be cracking into.
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: It's not comfortable.
• 10:17
  Speaker 6: It makes you uncomfortable and, if I'm working on something
• 10:20
  Speaker 6: and it hasn't left some sort of uncomfortability or something
• 10:23
  Speaker 6: that you're talking about later, then I haven't done my job.
• 10:25
  Speaker 5: Well, and, and also this goes back to my grandma,
• 10:27
  Speaker 5: my grandmother's hands. When I first met Resmaa, I was like, um,
• 10:33
  Speaker 5: That's how I'm going to speak. A really great teacher
• 10:35
  Speaker 5: of mine who has a lot of similarities to Resmaa
• 10:38
  Speaker 5: named Kim Gilliam. She's kind of a creative genius.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: That's Resmaa's book, too, by the way. For anybody who thinks,
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: why is he talking about his grandmother's hand?
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: Sorry, sorry.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: My grandmother's hand.
• 10:49
  Speaker 5: And she was like, you should go. I don't know
• 10:51
  Speaker 5: why she said it. Man, not to get too weird,
• 10:54
  Speaker 5: but like stuff just like the next thing is happening.
• 10:57
  Speaker 5: This lady said, go see this guy. Resmaa's talking. everybody's there,
• 11:01
  Speaker 5: mostly white audience. This is after COVID. So people are
• 11:04
  Speaker 5: kind of milling around, like, can we do this again?
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: And then Resmaa gets up on stage and says, Hey y'all,
• 11:11
  Speaker 5: you might want to find the nearest exit near you
• 11:15
  Speaker 5: because you might want to leave when I begin. And
• 11:19
  Speaker 5: everybody was like, and then nobody looked around and Resmaa
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: was like, no.
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: I'm serious.
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: Look around.
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: So, so we are like, Oh, okay. And so we're
• 11:26
  Speaker 5: looking around and then Resmaa started with, For 450 years,
• 11:31
  Speaker 5: my people have been raped, brutalized, murdered, and tortured.
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: Damn. And for 250 of those years, it was legal. Silence.
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: No one said nothing. And Resmaa just let it stay there.
• 11:43
  Speaker 5: This man is the king of the pause. And it's
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: so powerful to just sit in that.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: Resmaa wants you to feel it. He wants you to
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: feel it in your body.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: Go ahead. I'll show you. Do you know about three
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: black men? Do they know about three black men?
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: The documentary. No, I don't think they know about it.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: We can talk about that at.
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: Some other time. That's how I even met him. It
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: goes deep.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 12:08
  Speaker 7: It's crazy listening to them talk about just meeting you
• 12:12
  Speaker 7: because watching the pilot, you get the like, oh, hold on.
• 12:17
  Speaker 7: Like you get the power of the pause in all
• 12:19
  Speaker 7: of it.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: Oh, that's good to hear.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: That's really good to hear.
• 12:24
  Speaker 5: And then one other thing that I got from my
• 12:26
  Speaker 5: grandmother Sands was, um, that white bodies and black bodies
• 12:31
  Speaker 5: were supposed to do this separately. And my white body
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: was like, oh, that doesn't seem very Brian Song. I
• 12:40
  Speaker 5: talk about Brian Song all the time. You guys don't
• 12:41
  Speaker 5: even know what Brian Song is, right? Well, we're both
• 12:44
  Speaker 5: 60-year-old men.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: You know the old show where it was a black
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: football player and a white football player?
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: Gale Sales and Brian Piccolo. It was Billy Dee Williams
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: and James Connery. It was a movie of the week
• 13:00
  Speaker 5: for like this white guy in Indiana watching it. And
• 13:03
  Speaker 5: so it was a black dude and a white dude
• 13:04
  Speaker 5: and they were on the Chicago Bears.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: And it's a true story.
• 13:08
  Speaker 5: And one of them gets cancer and then they start
• 13:11
  Speaker 5: becoming best friends and like You know, for.
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: A white person, it was very like, oh, this is great.
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: White people and black people can get along. And the
• 13:18
  Speaker 5: black dude's like holding up the white dude. And then
• 13:21
  Speaker 5: I always say this to Resmaa, and Resmaa.
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: Will have none of it.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: None of it.
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: None of the holding up. None of the holding up.
• 13:28
  Speaker 5: But what I did say to Resmaa when we first met,
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: I was like, hey, this idea that white bodies and
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: black bodies... should do stuff separately. I think I get
• 13:38
  Speaker 5: that now and it makes sense to me. And I've
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: worked through that uncomfortableness, but I said, you know, you know,
• 13:42
  Speaker 5: what's a great idea. You know what white bodies and
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: black bodies can do separately and have a communal experience,
• 13:47
  Speaker 5: but also a separate experience is a TV show. And
• 13:51
  Speaker 5: I was like, I think you need to start making
• 13:53
  Speaker 5: these stories that, that, that you uniquely are qualified 40
• 13:58
  Speaker 5: years of this work. You guys know about him in
• 14:00
  Speaker 5: Afghanistan and right stuff. Like, Like, that was the first
• 14:03
  Speaker 5: show we wanted to talk about, like what he did
• 14:05
  Speaker 5: in Afghanistan.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Resmaa, you must have hated Ebony and Ivory by Paul
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: McCartney on.
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: TV.
• 14:13
  Speaker 9: Dude, dude.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: See, see, see, see, the structure is built around soothing
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: white people, right? And so, oh, I'm sorry. The structure
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: is built around soothing white people. And... We have been
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: in this structure with white people, so we end up
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: thinking it's our job to soothe them.
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: We don't even think it.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: It's just part of it.
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: We're like, you know, mouse up there crazy.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Come on, we don't want no problems. We're trying to
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: do what we're trying to do. And so with my work,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: because I've been doing this stuff for 40 years, there
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: is a cost to that. Now, you may not think
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: it's a cost because you're still able to drive your car,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: you're still able to do this stuff. But when you
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: get the headaches that you don't know why you're getting,
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: when your blood pressure is doing something you don't know
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: why you're having the blood pressure, when you and your
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: partner can't get along and there's something in between you
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: that's gnawing, You never attribute it back to the fact
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: that you come from people that have had to navigate
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: this craziness for the last 400 years.
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: And so this is why I've started... So what you
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: don't know, and I think Angela might have said something
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: to you. I'm not sure if she did. But I got...
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: A couple years ago, I got really sick. My blood
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: pressure was like 256. Wow. And I got put in
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: the hospital and all that different type of stuff. And
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: the doctor came and told me... My wife is sitting
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: in the thing. My doctor... The doctor came in and
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: he goes, all of the tests came back negative. We
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: don't know what's going on. And then he asked me
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: what I did. And I told him all the things
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: that I'm doing and the George Floyd stuff and all
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: this different type of stuff. And he looked at me
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: and he goes, you are going to die.
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: Right. Stress.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: You are going to die. And he said, and he
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: turned to my wife and he said, and you're going
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: to be a widow. I can't give you no tips.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: I'm not telling you what to do. What I'm telling you,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: whatever it is that's going on, you're going to have
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: to change what it is that you're doing. And that's
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: when I started beginning to write. That's when I started
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: to begin to take seriously. I have to bring more room,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: more space into my life. Otherwise, I'm not going to
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: be here for my grandbabies.
• 16:24
  Speaker 6: And this phenomenon that he's talking about, I heard an actor.
• 16:28
  Speaker 6: I heard an actor, Sarah Paulson, describe it in a
• 16:31
  Speaker 6: way where she said she was working for Ryan Murphy
• 16:33
  Speaker 6: on one of his shows.
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: He could be a very demanding director.
• 16:36
  Speaker 6: And she said, I did take after take after take.
• 16:39
  Speaker 6: And the way she said it, which really encapsulates what
• 16:42
  Speaker 6: you're talking about for me, she said, my mind knew
• 16:45
  Speaker 6: that I was acting, but my body did not.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yes.
• 16:49
  Speaker 6: So what we're dealing with, even subconsciously, The code switching,
• 16:53
  Speaker 6: the double consciousness, all of the things that were, this
• 16:57
  Speaker 6: transcends just the black relationship, even of interracial relationship. But
• 17:01
  Speaker 6: when you're with black people, at least in this country,
• 17:04
  Speaker 6: we are multiple identities.
• 17:06
  Speaker 4: We're dealing with all this subconsciously and it can eat away.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: Sarah Paulson is a beast. Yes, she's a beast. And
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: so if she broke her, it's going down. Yeah.
• 17:16
  Speaker 9: Y'all ever heard of the withering of black women?
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: That's right. I talk about that all through my book, Weathering.
• 17:21
  Speaker 7: I learned about that when my mom was going through
• 17:24
  Speaker 7: her own medical stuff because it was the same thing.
• 17:25
  Speaker 7: We were trying to teach her that what she was
• 17:27
  Speaker 7: digesting and how she was internalizing it and how she
• 17:30
  Speaker 7: was choosing to fight about it was literally killing her.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: The cortisol, the adrenaline, all of those pieces, they attack
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: because they're not supposed to be in your bloodstream. For
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: that amount of time, you're supposed to have something and
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: then you pee it out, right? But because we've been
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: dealing and continue to deal with all of this white
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: body supremacy, there's too much cortisol in our nervous system,
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: too much adrenaline in our epinephrine, all of those pieces.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: And so when something else spikes, it's like another hit, right?
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: And so in I, Man... We're in the first season.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: We've already written the first season. Right now, we're raising
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: the money to actually do the first season. So business-wise,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: one of the things that we're doing is we're not
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: taking this to a streaming service. We're not going to
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: show this on YouTube. We're not doing any of that.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: I'm raising the money, and then I'm going to shoot
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: all April. eight episodes and then we'll license it. I'm
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: not doing this dumb stuff no more because if we
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: don't do that and we say, well, we got this
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: script and we got this pilot and then some streaming
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: service says, yes, we want to do it. The moment
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: we start talking about white people stuff, the moment we
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: start talking about how the black body has been harvested
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: by this structure, that's all coming out. And I'm not
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: taking my baby to something and watch them eat it.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: So we're raising the money now, and it's coming together,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna film and shoot and do all of
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: this stuff ourselves. You can see the quality. We know
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: what we're doing.
• 19:09
  Speaker 9: What conversations, if.
• 19:10
  Speaker 7: Any, did you have with Henrietta Lacks' family in her state?
• 19:13
  Speaker 9: Because I know they're very protective of her.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: They are. So what I did was, one of the
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: first things I did is I had my lawyer send
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: them a letter saying, this is how we're using it,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: this is what we're doing. Um, and we just, because, because,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: because this stuff, uh, is, um, has, is in the
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: public domain, we can use pieces of it. We keep, but,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: but that's why I wanted to protect it. Right. That's
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: why I didn't want it to be something where we
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: were using it as like a kitschy little thing. All
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: of the pieces, like the, the gut stuff that, that
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: you experienced when you, when you, uh, heard about and
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: started hearing what we were doing, that stuff we want
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: to keep in the show, right? We want people to
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: know that somebody took this woman's cells and harvested for
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: their own benefit and there's a cost to be paid
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: for that.
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: And it's been ongoing.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: The usage has been ongoing. Yeah, and it's just recently
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: that that family got any compensation for that.
• 20:14
  Speaker 9: 2023 to, like, 2026, they started getting compensation.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Exactly right. So I had my lawyer, and then we
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: were just in Baltimore, and we invited the family. They
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: didn't come, but we were to see the pilot. So
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: all of the moves that I've been trying to make
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: is just to say, look, I am not going to
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: make this... I'm not going to make this, I understand
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: that I have a responsibility here.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: Everything you do, Resmaa, everything you create explains how trauma
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: lives in the body in some way, shape, or form.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: And in I'm In, the body is something that people
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: are literally fighting to control. So what are you trying
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: to communicate about the relationship between our bodies, our identities,
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: and our freedom?
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So I want to change the word freedom to liberation. Mm-hmm.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: liberation is a function of creation itself. It is not
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: just fighting for liberation. We are, as a human species,
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: black people, are liberatory in our essence. It's something that
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: we move towards. And so one of the things that
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about is in the show, or one of
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the things we're talking about in the show, is how
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: do we begin to make the implicit explicit? How do
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: we make what's implied between us as liberation, as liberatory,
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: and make it explicit? That it is our natural state
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: to have liberation and be liberatory, not only in terms
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: of how we move, but with each other, right? And so...
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: what we're exploring and I meant is how the body,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: how the black body in particular has been captured and
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: how the squeeze of that is actually inviting us to
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: something else. That white body supremacy, that thing that you're
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: experiencing in your body, that gnawing, that pressure, that sensation
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: that you're not crazy. It's actually happening. And so what
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: we're trying to do or what I'm doing, what I'm
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: in or what we're doing, what I'm in is really
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: trying to say, look here, when you watch this show
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: and you watch, you watch what's happening to Jamie, this black,
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: this young black man, that, that the experiences that you're
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: experiencing as you're watching him, you're actually experiencing it because
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: it's familiar to you. There are pieces that you need
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: to tend to, and that all we're doing is helping
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: you explore it. Right?
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: And it transcends all the characters, correct?
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: They do.
• 22:53
  Speaker 6: I mean, Paulie and Dean, they're dealing with what they're
• 22:58
  Speaker 6: dealing with.
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: I mean, I felt that when I was cutting it.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: Yes, right.
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: This is still, I thought I knew the material.
• 23:04
  Speaker 6: They're just cracking me open even more.
• 23:07
  Speaker 4: Even more.
• 23:08
  Speaker 6: So I feel like this series, when it does finally
• 23:11
  Speaker 6: make it to people's television screens, it's not going to
• 23:13
  Speaker 6: be just for black people. This is communicating to everybody.
• 23:17
  Speaker 6: Because we've always said racism is racism. I just call
• 23:21
  Speaker 6: it anti-black. It's not a black problem. We've just been
• 23:26
  Speaker 6: doing our thing. It's just y'all made it up. Y'all
• 23:29
  Speaker 6: the ones keeping it alive. So it's for everybody, I feel.
• 23:32
  Speaker 7: You know, I think it'll teach other people outside of
• 23:34
  Speaker 7: black people as well, the language that is used, that
• 23:37
  Speaker 7: you're taught in these books, like you say.
• 23:39
  Speaker 9: The word procedure or whatever, right?
• 23:41
  Speaker 7: But to a person that may not be educated about
• 23:43
  Speaker 7: certain things, they understand procedure one way and you're influencing
• 23:46
  Speaker 7: them one way, but you could be ruining their lives
• 23:48
  Speaker 7: because it shouldn't, like medically, like we're learning everything in
• 23:51
  Speaker 7: real time, what that should look like and how we
• 23:53
  Speaker 7: should be treated. But because they're overeducated sometimes, they speak
• 23:58
  Speaker 7: above the people they're treating.
• 23:59
  Speaker 9: And that's a part of the problem as well.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Facts.
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: Facts.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: What you just said, sibling, is one of the things
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: that we really worked with as writers, me, Vincent, and Dre.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: One of the things we work with is this thing
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: around language. That we get to make the language and
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: we get to craft the language in a way so...
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: normal people can follow along. Now they may have some like, oh,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: something's missing, I'm not quite sure what that is. But
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: we didn't want to make the language so heady that
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: people could not experience. And that's why it took us
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: like three years, because we fought. I mean, there was
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: some battles, because, you know, it's white stuff and black stuff,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: and he'll bring up some stuff, and me and Dre
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: will be like, man, like, I can't say the word.
• 24:47
  Speaker 8: And he'll probably be like, man, but you can't tell
• 24:50
  Speaker 8: me how to be white.
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: I can't tell you how to be black.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: But we do. But remember, our job, you know this
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: as writers, right? Our job is to stay true to
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: the moorings. Now, you may be writing something, but your
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: job is to stay true to what is the moorings
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: and the feel and the experience that I want to communicate. Now,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: I may not have the words for that yet, but
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: my job is to hold true to this.
• 25:17
  Speaker 5: I think this was in Quaking, the Reverend Angel.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Rev Angel.
• 25:23
  Speaker 5: When I first met Resmaa, I brought my books with
• 25:25
  Speaker 5: him and had shit underlined. So he knew I read it.
• 25:28
  Speaker 5: And there's a quote in there that said, like, if
• 25:30
  Speaker 5: we want to really talk about this stuff, we need
• 25:32
  Speaker 5: to create an environment where it can get messy and
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: nasty and say stupid shit. And I started my relationship
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: with Resmaa. Like, I want to be able to say
• 25:41
  Speaker 5: stupid shit to you because if I start, like, trying
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: to say what I think or what, because I have
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: stupid shit in my head, especially when it comes to race.
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: And Resmaa, I don't know, like, I guess he was, like,
• 25:56
  Speaker 5: available i don't know why you were interested i think
• 25:59
  Speaker 5: he just was like.
• 26:00
  Speaker 10: Give me some stupid shit right now on his note
• 26:09
  Speaker 10: it's been some of the greatest conversations i've ever had
• 26:12
  Speaker 10: were with deep were with how it's called your dean.
• 26:15
  Speaker 6: Yeah we're with vincent when we were in the cut
• 26:17
  Speaker 6: you know and he was on the couch in my
• 26:18
  Speaker 6: studio and we were just I wish I had more
• 26:22
  Speaker 6: conversations like that with white people.
• 26:25
  Speaker 5: And hopefully this show will be able to navigate some
• 26:28
  Speaker 5: of that stuff. I mean, in my mind, this Paul
• 26:30
  Speaker 5: Ben Victor, Pauly's character, and Jamie Dante Brown, those characters,
• 26:35
  Speaker 5: they're going to have conversations that I think will be
• 26:38
  Speaker 5: able to fit into this narrative. It's a sci-fi show
• 26:41
  Speaker 5: that has historical base, so it has this sort of
• 26:44
  Speaker 5: science fiction, science fact. And then Amy Brenneman is playing
• 26:47
  Speaker 5: this character.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Did you see Amy Brenneman in it? So we got
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: Amy Brenneman in here. We got Nathan Fillion in here.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: He's a sci-fi.
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: People love Nathan. Remember Firefly?
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: You ever see Firefly? Nathan Fillion was in that.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: He was also just in Superman. He was the Green
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Lantern in Superman.
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: Oh, what, recently?
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: Okay. And Paul Ben Victor's in it.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Paul Ben Victor's in it. Green Lantern's on HBO right now.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Paul Ben Victor is, yeah.
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: Let me ask you a question, Vincent.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: What's the difference between telling a science fiction story that
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: entertains people and telling one that actually challenges the way
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: they see the world?
• 27:24
  Speaker 5: I don't know.
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: But that's what this is.
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: That's that moment that I'm talking about.
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: But part of it starts with having collaborators that you
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: can get messy and make mistakes in front of. And
• 27:38
  Speaker 5: as long as, you know, Resmaa had to tell me
• 27:40
  Speaker 5: what a mooring was. How many times did I ask you?
• 27:42
  Speaker 5: Like 50,000. He's a very patient man. I don't know
• 27:46
  Speaker 5: if you guys know. And it was just, it made
• 27:48
  Speaker 5: sense that that we would find a way.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: It's happening in real time.
• 27:53
  Speaker 5: Like, this is really, like, we're in the midst of it. Yes,
• 27:56
  Speaker 5: we have the first season planned out, but that's the
• 28:00
  Speaker 5: challenge of what we're trying to do.
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: When it comes to the billionaires, right? Like, you know,
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: in this series, it's a billionaire obsessed with control.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Why does it seem like the people who already got
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: the money and already got the power, they just want
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: even more control?
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that's what we're... That's what we're exploring in
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: the thing. And my take on it, and this is
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: my take, my take is that when you're a greedy SOB,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: you don't know nothing else. And you think it is
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: your birthright to continue to be greedy, even though people
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: are starving, even though we're genociding people, even though all
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: of those pieces, we think that it is our birthright.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: And part of trying, and these two know this about me,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: Part of trying to get people who have been conditioned
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: to think that everything belongs to them, trying to appeal
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: to their better angels, one of the things that they've
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: heard me say a lot is, what if there are
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: no better angels? What if the thing that you're reaching
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: for doesn't exist because of the conditioning? You've been conditioned
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: around scarcity and all of these different types. They have
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: been conditioned around a certain type of abundance. What if
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: there are no better angels? What if there is no
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: better self? What if what you have to do is
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: actually be invited in to create something and let them.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: Burn?
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: You keep using your life force energy to try and
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: reach into people and reach into something that doesn't... exist.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: And then you burn out and then you can't have
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: no time with your babies. And then when you are
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: with your babies, you got an attitude and you or
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: you always thinking, I got to make some more money.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: I got to make some more money. I got to
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: make some more money. And your babies are crawling all
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: over you and you're dissociated. Do you guys understand what
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: I'm saying?
• 29:57
  Speaker 9: It's a mental thing.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: People come to you and they can't feel you. All
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: of us, all of us have had situations in the
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: people that we love where they say to us, I
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: can't feel you. I love you. But I don't know
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: who you are. Right? That is because people, there are
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: people for hundreds, for at least four or five hundred
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: years have been given something not that they earned, but
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: that they took, right? Whether it's land, whether it's labor,
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: this structure has been conditioned around the idea that the
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: white body has had dominion over the black body, has
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: had full and unfettered access to every orifice of your body.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: That's the structure, right? And we have to begin to
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: actually acknowledge that with each other, that we have had
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: our bodies, just your body, your body, your body, has
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: been used as a buffet, right?
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: Oh, my God. I know that's right. You know what
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: I mean?
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: For this whole... Well, not like that.
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: Not a good one.
• 31:10
  Speaker 5: All right, no.
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: I mean, okay.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I'm just saying.
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: I'm all right. The last night was great.
• 31:15
  Speaker 10: You know what I'm saying?
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, bubba.
• 31:17
  Speaker 10: All right, but no.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: But you should be like the labor of that. So
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: in Iron Man, what we're doing is we're going to
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: be exploring those pieces. We're going to be exploring all
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: of the things around how the HeLa cells right now,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: they're called the HeLa cells, right? How... how the billionaire
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: actually takes it and markets it as the He-Lex sells.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: So he makes it a marketing thing. And how the
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: black body and particular pieces of the black body are commoditized.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: Can you jump good? Can you tell a good joke?
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: Can you do this? Can you do that? That's the
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: value to the structure. The moment you stop having that
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: value is at the moment they will come do the
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: three E's to you. Extraction. extermination and extinction. That's the
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: only way that destruction knows how to contend with us, right?
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: Once they stop extracting, then it moves to extermination. Extermination
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: is wiping the planet of you. Extinction is wiping the
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: planet of the idea of you, right? And so that's
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: what we're playing with in I-Man.
• 32:20
  Speaker 6: We've seen evidence of it already. It's already happened here,
• 32:24
  Speaker 6: you know, in North America, right?
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: Damn, I can't wait now. It's crazy.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: And to go back and watch the original series.
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: That'd be cool. Yeah.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: I want to ask Vincent, if science did allow, well,
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: it's going to happen.
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: Will they allow us.
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: To transfer consciousness or extend human life indefinitely? Who should
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: have the authority to decide how that technology gets used?
• 32:46
  Speaker 5: Why'd I get the hard question?
• 32:50
  Speaker 7: Let's cut you to minority.
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: Is that what it is?
• 32:55
  Speaker 10: Don't leave with.
• 32:56
  Speaker 5: The stupid shit. So the question is, if we can
• 33:01
  Speaker 5: do this, if we can upload our consciousness into some
• 33:04
  Speaker 5: kind of a.
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: Who should have the authority?
• 33:07
  Speaker 5: Not the government.
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: I mean, who?
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: I mean, it should be a personal... It should be
• 33:12
  Speaker 5: each individual that is... is responsible for whether they want
• 33:16
  Speaker 5: that or not, who would oversee it help. Like I, I, I,
• 33:21
  Speaker 5: that's scary to me. Like here's, I mean, it sucks
• 33:24
  Speaker 5: being a 60 year old man, but I got two babies,
• 33:27
  Speaker 5: 26 and 23. And, and I think, you know, I'm
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: probably out of here in a little bit, you know,
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: 20 years, 30 years, if I'm lucky. So I don't,
• 33:36
  Speaker 5: I don't know, man, that's what, that is a scary,
• 33:38
  Speaker 5: scary question.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: What do you think?
• 33:40
  Speaker 5: What do you think?
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Let me ask, let me just ask one question. So
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: we're actually playing with that in the show, the kind
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: of downloaded intelligence into a thing that we call the
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: meat jackets.
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: Oh, I thought that's why he asked me the question.
• 33:54
  Speaker 5: You know, this is in the show.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: I think that we should have the authority, and I
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: think that we will, but it will be a false
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: illusion of authority.
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: Come on.
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: It'll be the technocrats.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Convincing us that we're making a choice but they've already
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: extracted everything from us 100%.
• 34:12
  Speaker 6: Because who else could do that except for those who
• 34:15
  Speaker 6: have the capability to but that's how social.
• 34:19
  Speaker 9: Media and stuff works right now that's what you do brain.
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: Cooking so last week AI got out of some of
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: its containments and is now entering into people's bank accounts
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: and wiping people. I saw that. When they started to— here' s
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: the thing about what I call the Anglosphere, these white
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: folks creating all of this stuff without wisdom. When they
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: did the nuclear tests, one of the things that happened
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: was they got all of these calculations— that if you
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: do this, because we live in a domed environment, because
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: the Earth is a dome, right? It is a sphere.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: What they said was that that amount of power, if
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: you release that amount of power, it will go straight up, right? Well,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: when it goes straight up, it hit a dome, and
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: there's a likelihood or there's a possibility that it will
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: then engulf the whole planet. And they did it anyway.
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: That's the consciousness we're dealing with. So what you just
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: said is absolutely true. I don't trust... Anything that is
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: created that has that in which the thing that is
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: created within has never been. You have never been. They
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: have never been able to deal with things like the
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: brutality or white body supremacy or land theft or all those.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to give my faith in. I'm going
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: to put my faith into you. And you've already proven
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: that you will exterminate everybody. You've already proven that the
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: thing like AI that you say, oh, there's no problem here,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: don't even look at it, that you don't know what
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: you're doing, that it's actually doing things on its own.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: But yet I'm supposed to believe that you're going to
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: take my consciousness and put it into something and it's
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: going to be all right? No, we will just then be...
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: meat jackets that they will not pay anyway. This is
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: all about creating a labor force that they can control
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: and not have to pay.
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: Techno-neutralism.
• 36:34
  Speaker 4: But this isn't new, though. It sounds like you're talking
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: about HAL.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: Are we familiar with HAL, yeah?
• 36:40
  Speaker 8: No, but I was saying Skeleton Key and Get Out.
• 36:43
  Speaker 6: This is from 2001's Space Odyssey, which is basically late 60s?
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 36:48
  Speaker 6: That long ago, where they make a computer that becomes
• 36:51
  Speaker 6: its own intelligence. And next thing you know, he goes
• 36:54
  Speaker 6: rogue and takes over the ship and won't let them
• 36:58
  Speaker 6: control him anymore.
• 36:58
  Speaker 8: I've actually seen, it was an episode of X-Files that
• 37:01
  Speaker 8: kind of sort of did that. That's right, they played
• 37:03
  Speaker 8: with that. Yeah, season one, I did see it. They
• 37:05
  Speaker 8: had an episode like that. Yeah, so they've been exploring this.
• 37:07
  Speaker 4: It's kind of a new.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: Concept, you know? But I don't trust them to do
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: anything wrong. with my consciousness, with my body, with my
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: baby's body.
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: I think what Charlamagne said is such a great idea,
• 37:22
  Speaker 5: maybe for the show, is that this good organization, the billionaires,
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: they seemingly have good intention. The road to hell is
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: paved with good's intention, is what I always say. But
• 37:34
  Speaker 5: then you just sort of realize some don't smell right.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: You see it now when you got guys saying things like.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: They're acting like they're the only ones who can control
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: what's going to happen with AI. So in my mind,
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: I'm like, do they really want regulations or they want
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: all that competition to be regulated?
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: Exactly right. But that's what I'm saying.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: For sure.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: That's why your question is so important is because we,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: especially as black folks, we can get lulled into sleeping
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: thinking that, because a lot of times what they're doing
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: is just getting their marketing plan together. How are we
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: gonna market this so people want it? How are we
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: gonna market this so before they know it, they just,
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: they can't live without it, right? And then before you
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: know it, we got pieces of ourselves that is a
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: labor force. Y'all about to cook season two, okay? Listen, listen.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: And we're getting, the resources are coming. When we first
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: started doing this, everybody was telling us, you can't do this,
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: you're not going to be able to do it. And
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: here's what we're finding. That was me, actually.
• 38:46
  Speaker 7: That's okay, because I watched it and I was like,
• 38:48
  Speaker 7: this feels like something that I've watched y'all just go
• 38:50
  Speaker 7: way deeper and y'all way more direct about what.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: You're talking about. That's it, that's it. But what we're
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: doing is, We're really, so people have been coming, you know,
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: talking to us about the money thing and waterfalls and
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: all this stuff. But one of the things that we're
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: very clear on is that this is a relationship. This
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: is not just you chip off something. I mean, I
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: got a little money, right? But this ain't you just
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: going to chip off something and then you're going to
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: tell me what we're doing. I want to have, if
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: you got money, I want to have a relationship with
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: you so that as we're moving further along, the relationship
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: can deepen and we can become better people with each other.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: If you think that you're going to give me some
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: money and I'm working for you, we're not going to
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: have a relationship. I'm not going to accept the money.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: But if you want to be involved with something that's cool,
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: if you want to be involved with something that has
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: the potential to to maybe bring something, he's a white
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: liberal dude, so he's always talking about hope and stuff.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: So I always talk about, I have no use for hope.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: I have responsibility regardless of hope. I want to focus
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: on responsibility to my grandchildren's children's children. Hope I can't
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: use right now. And so I'm trying to really get
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: us to say that this is a relationship. Like Amy Brenneman,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: Paul Ben Victor, Nathan, all of these people came and
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: did this stuff with us because of relationships. We don't
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: have enough money to pay them, right? And they did
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: it because of our relationships. That's what we want to further.
• 40:36
  Speaker 8: So how can people invest or, you know?
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: So one of the things that we want people to
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: do right now is we want people to go to
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: imanuniverse.com slash BC. And they can actually watch the trailer
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: and share the trailer. That's one of the first things
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: that we want people to do. And this next thing
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: we want people to do is go to jointventures.com. jointventuresmedia.com.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: And if they want, if they want to get down
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: or they want to, they want to, I'm not asking
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: for money right now, but if they know people with money,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: I'm willing to talk, but it's, but it's basically going
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: to be an interview because like I said, if I
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: don't want to, right, I want to. And so, So
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: people can reach out like that. People can reach out
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: through fugitive states, media.com. And yeah, that's, that's, that's how,
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: you know, let's, let's start having dialogue. Let's see, let's
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: see what we can do. But the first thing is
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: I'm in universe.com slash BC to watch the trailer. Okay.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: My last question is if the end of the world is,
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: At some point in that. That's right. I don't know
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: if it's going to be some catastrophic event.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: I think that it might just be generations of people
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: who just have refused to heal.
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:02
  Speaker 4: You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: What do you think about that?
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: I think, here's what I know. What I know is
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: that this planet has restarted itself five other times. That's
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: what I know. I know that this planet and we
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: are the result. The human, the Homo sapien is the
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: result of the last time it restarted itself, where there
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: was a mass extinction, where there was 80 to 90 percent. Right.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: I read where the seventh version.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Of that's exactly what there were. There were other species. Right.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: But we are the we are the Homo sapien. Like
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: they were. And here's the thing. There there was a
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: point in time. where the Homo sapien was on this
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: planet with other versions of Homo erectus, you know, there
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: were other types of hominids, right? But we're the ones
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: that survived, right? All of those extinctions that took place,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: all those mass extinctions that took place, took place over
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: natural occurrences. Something happened, you know what I mean? You know,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: too much something, too much water, not enough, right? This
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: extinction is happening because of all of those combined. The pollution,
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: the wet, you know, all of these are happening. So
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: I think there will be a mass extinction. I think
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: there's going to be something that happens to flip it over, right?
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: I also think with the technology pieces, I think that's contributing.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: That's going to contribute to that. And I think it's
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: because white people who are in charge the last 500
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: years don't know anything about stewardship. They only know ownership.
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: They don't understand stewardship. Our peoples, indigenous peoples, black peoples,
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: we have been impacted by this piece, but we understand
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: in our bones, we understand what it's like to tend
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: to each other. The hug that you gave me, we
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: hadn't seen each other for a while, but the hug
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: that you gave me, a pelvic hug, right? It wasn't
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: just the apron. You hadn't seen me for a while.
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: That's so crazy.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: That was so crazy.
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: Hey, don't make this weird, man. So here's what I mean.
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: This is what... This is what I mean. There ain't
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: nothing wrong with me and you pelvic hugging, man. Right, man.
• 44:39
  Speaker 9: I've been trying to tell, man.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: I'm sure Diddy feel the same way. Listen, y'all, listen, listen, listen.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: I love this dude. I know. And we have been
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: so captured by, by this structure that for me to
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: actually feel him when he hugs me is something wrong.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: That's problematic. Like when you text me or I email
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: you and stuff like that and we chop it up
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: for a little bit. That matters to me. When I
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: came in and we hugged, that matters to me. That's
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: not a throwaway. And so it is our job to
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: reclaim those pieces. What I've been seeing, I've been seeing
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: this more and more, and people haven't been picking up
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: on this. I've actually been seeing black men say to
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: each other, I love you. Have you noticed that? It's
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: been happening more and more. Not I love you, dog,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: or I love you, man. I love you. I've been
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: seeing black men actually hug, like what I said. Intentional.
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: That's how we make our way out of this muck.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: It's not unpermissioned. Part of the reason why they get
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: to keep doing this stuff is that we're too governable.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: We're too governable. We ask for permission even though we...
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: We ask for permission and the fugitive pieces in us
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: is withering. The more we just do our own thing,
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: the more we don't ask for permission, the more things
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: will blossom.
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: The more I hug you....
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: The more we do the pelvic stuff, man.
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes.
• 46:34
  Speaker 9: He's going to grow into it.
• 46:37
  Speaker 7: I just love doing pelvic stuff with you, man.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: Doing pelvic stuff with you, it makes me feel good.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: Shout out to whoever did your website, Fugitive States Media.
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: Thank you, that's Wendy's. That's crazy. Listen, Wendy, Wendy is
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: a genius. It's a black woman. It's a black woman.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: She is, ain't she bad? Yes. Ain't she bad?
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: Very direct.
• 47:05
  Speaker 8: You feel, you feel like, this website just makes you feel.
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: Even before you read a word of it.
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: That's right.
• 47:12
  Speaker 10: She was very intentional with it, like you just said.
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: That's it. That's it.
• 47:16
  Speaker 9: That's how the color and all the visuals in the
• 47:19
  Speaker 9: show is as well.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: And here's the thing. The reason why we call it
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: I Am In Universe is that The show is just
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: one piece. You know, I have my own publishing company.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this, but I got
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: all my publishing rights back. Congratulations.
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: Even to my grandmother's hands?
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: To all of it. That's amazing. They went bankrupt.
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: Congratulations.
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: So I got all my publishing rights. So I-Man's going
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: to have graphic novels. It's going to have, you see
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: on this, we're already working with animation. We're starting to begin.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: So what you see, the world of it is going
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: to be much bigger. Yeah.
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah. This is crazy.
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: There's room for a game there and everything. And games, yeah. Yeah, man.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: Well, listen, go out there and support I-Man. What's the
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: website again?
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: So imanuniverse.com slash bc.
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: All right, support Resmaa Minicum. Vincent Ventresca.
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: Perfect.
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: And Charles Little II, man. Appreciate y'all. I want to
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: challenge you guys. Yeah, yeah.
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: This is my dude. This is one of my co-writers
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: and our co-creators. His name is Andre Hardy. He's got
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: a new book out. It is a thriller. It is
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: called Tear This City Down. It's killing the charts. And
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: right now he is, today he's with the great writer
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Walter Mosley, and they're doing the talk and everything. So
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: it's great, man. Thank you.
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: That's right. It's the Breakfast Club.
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: Hold up.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Every day I wake up.
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: Wake your ass up. The Breakfast Club.
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: Y'all finished or y'all done?