Latest / Books4Guys / Bill Day - 2.5 Million YouTube Subscribers And Now a Published Author

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Bill Day - 2.5 Million YouTube Subscribers And Now a Published Author · Books4Guys

• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know you've done so much documentary work and and videos, and I didn't even realize you've done camera work with the New York Times and 60 Minutes.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I learned about that when I was looking through everything you've done.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: But it's crazy that you finally have you have a book out now.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I got a book, and I kind of switched over, I guess, to, you know, do something that was a little more relaxing.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, the book fits so much in my world because, you know, my background in documentary and filmmaking and news and all that kind of stuff.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's storytelling in a in a different format.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I really enjoyed it and I want to do more.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, well, we'll get into it.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'll hold it up just for people watching.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get to it.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: But Great Again is your book novel that you put out there.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I, well, I think it's a perfect fiction book for the times that we are in as a society.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I love the story of it.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: I love the comedy to it as well.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so many different aspects to it.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I just think you did such a great job of putting this together because I think it is something that most everybody can enjoy and and know what you're saying with what's going on.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you did a fantastic job writing this, Bill.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Well, great, great.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was I knew when I started writing it, you know, I was like really going out on a limb.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote this, I started writing this book in 2021.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: So it was pretty far ahead of our contemporary situation.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, vis-a-vis the whole immigration issue.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and and then, you know, when that came around in the book, I was like, wow, okay.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: So the so the timing actually worked out pretty good for the subject matter.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think so.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: You you projected well.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but no, let's let's go back a little bit, Bill.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I was we were talking as we were before I pushed record here.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you've got a YouTube channel that has 2.5 million subscribers.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And you've, I mean, that's incredible.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: You have a lot of people following your content, and it's awesome.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: You are some of the content you have on there is the real or fake series, which I've watched a lot of and didn't even realize that was you until I pulled it up and I was like, oh, this is Bill's Bill's thing.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, there you go.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then obviously I've got the others pulled up here too.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: You've got the um the Amazon River Monster series, fake Anaconda Fights Soldier.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's all kinds of stuff.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I've watched a lot of this and my friends have too.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I didn't realize this was this was your channel.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: So another reason it's so cool to meet you finally.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: The you know, the channel's been around for a while, and you know, so a lot of people were younger, as you probably were, when you first ran across the real or fake videos or even some of the you know Amazon stuff that's in there, and then kind of grew up, right?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: And you kind of for a lot of people that it kind of went away because you get older and your faculties are better for discerning what's real or fake.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but every once in a while they come back around because I'll put a video out and they'll get a notice I go.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man, dude, I I I forgot.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're my childhood, man, you know, kind of thing.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: So so I I get a lot of pleasure out of that.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's awesome.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, talk about Bill.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: I know again, you you're born in the Midwest, you moved to South America for a while, you went to school at UCLA, right?
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And and how did just talk a little bit about all of that transition and then what got you into filmmaking and creating content, editing this, and really building out your world for for so many years and doing these these awesome videos and this content.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: How'd you get started in it?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and where did that come from?
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the filmmaking thing came very early.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: I had to be like 15 years old, somewhere around there.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a long, but it's a funny story to make a funny story very short.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was living in Miami, and so let's say 14, 15 years old with my friends, and we would get our father's camera gear, and then we would go over to Miami Beach and we would run around the pool areas just like snapping pictures of people, even though we had no film.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: It would just hold the camera up and we would do this.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: And always it just freaked everybody out because, you know, back in that day, you know, the mobs still had a foothold in Miami Beach.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so they'd come running after us screaming, you know, who are you working for?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: What are you doing?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, kind of thing.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it was part of that that kind of stumbled into me coming across a Super 8 camera.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Man, that was it.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: I looked through that lens and I was like, wow, okay, I love this.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: And as I had no training, I had no idea to do anything, but I was figuring it out.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: I would shoot it, I would get it developed, and then I would cut it and I would scotch tape it together and try to, you know, do so it was in my blood very, very early, right?
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: So let's say I played around with it there, and then there's this transition to Central America, where I lived as a teen.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I didn't I didn't have much focus on any filmmaking then because I mean, culturally I was just being bombarded by this new culture.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Ended up graduating high school there.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And after high school, returned to the United States and then eventually ended up at UCLA because after I graduated, this whole filmmaking thing came back to me again, you know, this need to go out and make something, you know.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so UCLA was one of the best film schools to go to.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I really targeted that.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I wasn't able to get into the actual film school for, I don't know, three or four years.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I just sat in English, audited classes over in the film department, got to know the professors and all that kind of stuff.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I finally applied after getting a BA in English, that they accepted me in the graduate school at UCLA in the film school.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a huge, you know, story right there, you know, going through the school and then kind of, you know, working in fiction, but also kind of working in documentary.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I was always just flipping back and forth.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: And gradually I kind of ended up in documentary after doing a lot of work in fiction, a lot of writing classes and so forth.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where my writing background comes from.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: That I, you know, I have that training.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so the documentary part took over, the news part took over, ended up making all these independent documentaries.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like you mentioned, I worked for the New York Times, I've worked for Discovery, National Geographic, uh, just working on different projects, and was also doing my own independent documentaries.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: So independent feature documentaries really are a story, right?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're starting at some point and and hopefully by the end people get to know whatever the subject matter is.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And you you have character arcs, you have everything just like you do in writing.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: So that was also kind of, you know, fertile ground for me uh in that area, uh was also kind of focusing on South America a lot, right?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, I had that background of Central America, so I'm really at ease with the culture and kind of feel at home there.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it was just a natural gravitational pull to do that.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I was actually working on a documentary in Vietnam, North Vietnam, I mean, way out in the boonies, and had this interesting little thing happen to me when I was trying to check out of a very tiny hotel.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Mother and father had gone off to, I don't know, go to the grocery store or whatever, go to the market, and left their daughter behind the desk.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was trying to check out, all you could see was her head because the counter was up to here, right?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I finally got pissed off and I looked around and said, What are you doing there?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And she was watching YouTube.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: And she was watching these little videos, and it kind of dawned on me, wow, that whoa, right?
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what a platform.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's, you know, this this platform is being watched in North Vietnam by this little girl, right?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And anybody who produces anything has a worldwide audience.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I immediately fell in love with YouTube and started putting things on there.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I was doing a lot of work in the natural world, you know, doing nature photography.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so it just lent itself to a lot of the stuff I was doing.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I just started throwing it on there and like, oh wow, I got a hundred views.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's pretty cool.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: I loved it.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I mean, it wasn't just a money thing.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was, it was, I really appreciated it as an artist that I could produce something and it could get this worldwide audience, even if I was only a hundred, you know.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's pretty cool because yeah, you can you can spend a lot of time and effort going to a film festival with your stuff and you get a hundred people, right?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: This was just like instantaneous type of thing.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it just started building, you know, as the more and more videos that I produced, the bigger the audience got.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty soon it was in thousands, and then it got to the tens of thousands.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then YouTube called me and said, you know, we've noticed your channel and you're producing your own stuff, right?
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's you, that's your stuff that you're yeah, it's nice enough.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I do.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we're starting the partnership program, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And we'd like to put ads on top of your stuff, and then we'll give you some money.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And you go, Yeah, yeah, right, you and everybody else.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah, whatever.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just counting in.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh they sent me a check for some money, and I was like, wow, okay, so this is real.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, just started focusing more and more on the YouTube thing.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I was doing mostly wildlife type stuff, you know, where I, you know, like you said, Amazon River Monsters.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: I would go to South America, you know, my comfort zone.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it was very easy for me to just hook up with some fishermen and say, let's go fishing for a big piranha, you know, because people are fascinated by piranhas, you know.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that that took off.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: I did another series called Animal Soldiers that was based in the Amazon, also, which was soldiers who are there to protect animals who get in the city from the countryside or from the jungle.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: So the cities are expanding into the jungle and they're they're they're expanding into the habitat of these animals.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: The animals come in the city.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: So they just decided to take this battalion of soldiers and say, your job is to collect these animals and return them to the wild.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, wow, that's perfect.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: So that's why we got soldiers fighting anacondas, yeah, all this kind of stuff.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: And along the way, a lot of the kids were going, you know, they'd see the snake and they'd go, Oh, that's that's not real.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's fake.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Or somebody said, No, it's not fake, it's real, you know.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I eventually said, look, if that's what you guys are into, we're just gonna do a series called Real or Fake.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: And wow.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: When I did that, the channel just took off and suddenly I had two million subscribers.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, uh, it was it, it was it was a great period.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was a very intense period, you know, because uh you had to like constantly come up with this material they're demanding more, you know.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: If you do one video every two weeks, they want it once a week, and then you do it once a week, and then they want it every three days.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a lot of work, uh, type of thing.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think, you know, from there I just kind of gradually started thinking about writing.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And when this story kind of popped up in my head, you know, I said, you know what?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if I could actually do that.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if I could actually sit down and, you know, concentrate and actually get a entire book and you know, kind of figured out a little routine to do it and uh and actually pulled it off.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, I'm not saying it's great or it's good or anything like that.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying I actually got it done.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and and written and, you know, got it out there.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, so I'm hoping the world reads it.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's still I love I love your story because I I just find it fascinating when people do incredible things, just how most of the time, just how organic it happens.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: You see someone watching YouTube, okay, I'll make some videos, and then that takes off, and then you just kind of organically let people's interests kind of guide you on what you wanted to do.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it was your it was your genuine interest already.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: You were just kind of tailoring it to what people were feeding off of.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I can only imagine the experiences you've been able to have and the people you've been able to meet, and just all of the cool things you've been able to do.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that's such a rewarding part of it all.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: But so just to back up a little bit more, because I was curious, how did you end up in Central America?
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like how do you go from the Midwest to Central America?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Did your parents have work there or how did you, why did you transition there?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's that's kind of a funny story.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I go from Missouri to Miami.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: That was that was my my first move because my my grandparents actually lived in Miami.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it was my mother's parents, and they were getting older.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: She wanted to be closer to them, so we had to move to Miami, which was, I don't know, I don't I don't even think I was nine years old, you know, when I moved there.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then on my father's side, uh, he was actually from New Orleans, and he spent a lot of time as a teenager, uh young man on these banana boats going back and forth to Central America.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: And he fell in love with Central America, right?
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: So as he got older and started thinking about retiring, he goes, you know what?
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: I want to move to Central America, right?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I came along late in his life.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: So he was retiring when I was a teenager, and uh he just came to me one day and said, you know, how would you feel about moving to Central America?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: I go, I don't know, sounds good to me.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, so so that was it.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: We just, you know, it was a crazy hop, you know, over to Central America.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: If you wouldn't have done that, just how different maybe your whole life could have been, because you wouldn't have had that comfortability and not comfortability and knowledge of being there and then being able to incorporate all this.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, your book, your videos, I mean, that one decision had a massive ripple effect.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it did, because I was at an age where I could pick up the language fairly quickly and had the friends and so forth to just become, you know, my in my own way part of that culture.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, so I had a Spanish speaking Costa Rican girlfriend, you know, you know, fairly quickly and you know, introduced to her family and you know, I got to know a lot of people.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so by the time I left, you know, I think that the imprint on me was very strong, right?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because I had a it it just became part of me.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: It was part of who I was now, you know, because I think at that age that influence on you is, you know, profound.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: It you know, it gets into you.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's a I think that's a really big part of my identity.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's kind of split because I don't have like an American father and a Latino mother.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they they were both Anglos, but I ended up in this culture where everybody around me was Latino, right?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had to become Latino in my own way in order to kind of fit in and you know succeed there, kind of thing.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that really impacted me.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then coming back to the United States was to to the United States, it was it was kind of a culture shock in its own way, because I was I was very used to this small country and you know and the socioeconomic level was a lot further, where it was a lot lower.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: And when we came back to the United States, we drove.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: So we drove up all through Latin America, up through Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, and then hit Texas.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: And as soon as I hit Texas, it was like these huge cars and trucks, and I was like, whoa, kind of thing, you know, and and and and so I had that sort of cultural impact that I think a lot of immigrants have, you know, as they come up.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that sort of led me to I think the sensitivity that I have towards these immigrants, which you know play into the book, right?
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of see both sides, right?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, because if the immigrants are portrayed, well, I mean, can you know now they're all you know, they're all criminals and rapists and killing all these people.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: But when you have a background of, you know, personally knowing these people and personally knowing a lot of good people, a good Latino people, you feel really divided because you know, one part of your culture is going one way, and then another part of you internally is is going in a different direction.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so that kind of I think all that kind of set me up for the book, right?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that let's have a confrontation between an immigrant and an American super MAGA guy, right?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then see what happens when they're face to face and they see each other more as human beings rather than caricature on the news.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and so that's kind of what I was after with the story, and just you know, started working with it.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: And as you said, you know, it's got a lot of humor because there's a lot of you know, points when when two cultures, you know, slam into each other like that, you're gonna have a lot of these quirky moments, I think, lend itself to some humor.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's how we got there.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Bill, I think it'd make a great movie too, if you ever decide to turn it into a film, because I think you could find some really great characters to do a really good job with this story.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: But I love, and you kind of dove into it, but I know I remember Robin opened your book, I saw the we are more alike my friends than we are different from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I love that quote because I say it all the time.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of a funny story.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: I did a study abroad in Costa Rica to learn Spanish in college, so I got kind of introduced to a lot of that culture too.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I I can't speak a lick of Spanish, but uh I I did enjoy the culture.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I I was I nowhere near spent as much time as you, but I remember in class watching videos specifically about the situations that people deal with down there and their their path to try and get into America and how dangerous it is and and what they go through.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so, similar to you, I've always had that sensitivity to it to where you are torn because you're around so many people that believe one thing, but you've experienced another with really great people.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm I'm right there.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: As you're speaking, I'm sitting there saying, like, yeah, I I feel this.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: I got a little bit of background and understanding what that is.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's why I like your book so much, because it does give people maybe a little more insight to that.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we truly are so much more alike than we are different when you sit down and talk with somebody or have that conversation that's a little bit different than you.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, and and that's really the whole kind of purpose behind books for guys, too, is you know, there's been a lot of books that I've read, whether it's about people or situations, where I went into it thinking one way, and then I came out seeing their side of it, and I'm like, wow, I understand that.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I actually agree with that point of view.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so it just opens up your mind in so many ways, in a good way, I think.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so again, I think the way you wrote this book and just the theme of it all, I think it fits so well, and I hope a lot of people read it because while it it's enjoyable too, there's a message there, and I think people can take away from it like, hey, we can all be a little nicer and we can be together in a way, you know, it doesn't always have to be all this division that we see all the time.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm so glad you put this out there and took the time to sit down and focus and write it.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, it it was uh, you know, I actually tested it out on a few people because you know I had this story in my head and I would kind of pitch it to people and see how they respond.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: And everybody seemed to respond really well, and I think that was kind of the thing.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: But let me let me backtrack.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: I want to tell you a funny little story.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, about this, you know, we're more alike than we are different.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because in my job as a documentary filmmaker, I get assigned to go all these strange places.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I I actually develop techniques for overcoming a lot of these barriers and these prejudices that.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: That we build up, you know, through media, however, you you you know, you get these prejudices.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember one time I had an assignment, I had to go find it, it was a photo of some you know, Hare Krishna type stuff going on in the 70s, and I had to go into a Muslim neighborhood of uh Mumbai.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: I always want to call it Mumbai.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: Mumbai in India.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was a difficult neighborhood to go into, you know, and and and I had a I had a fixer, you know, a guy that helps you out.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, You sure you want to go into this neighborhood?
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: We have to, the guy with the pictures in in the heart of it.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: And when we got into this house, you could just feel this is a Muslim neighborhood, Muslim guy.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: And when we walked into his his house, you could just feel the hostility.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: But there was money to be made, so you know, we were talking kind of thing, and I could feel the hostility, and then I kind of this little thing I do, like I'll sometimes I'll I'll fake like I got a text, right?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'll get really upset by the text.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the guy will be like, Is everything okay?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's okay, it's okay.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's just like do you have a brother?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I got a brother.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: Does your brother piss you off?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my brother pisses me off.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: My brother pisses me off so bad sometimes, you know.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to freaking, you know, strangle him.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how how do you deal with it?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then suddenly the guy's talking about his brother, I'm talking about my brother, right?
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then all of a sudden, oh we're not that different, are we?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then the meaning from there usually goes a lot type of thing.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just you see it all this cross-cultural hostilities and everything, but people are so different when they're they just meet face to face.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I I hope that the book gets people to think about that.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: When you're watching or you're reading material that is just on the level of propaganda trying to demonize somebody, right?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: And building up those hostilities in you so that you know, if somebody came to your neighborhood, you know, you think they're the enemy, but they're not, right?
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: You have to kind of calm down and see the the the humanness in this person and find out what their story is.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think in the case of Great Again, that my experience working in Nicaragua and El Salvador during the war there when when the Sandinistas were fighting the Contras and when you had the FMLN in El Salvador, I was working for CBS News covering that, you know, by that time.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: And that also gave me an insight, which a lot of people in this country don't know about.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: They don't know about that history.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: They don't know that our campaign against communism and stamp it out in Central America before it gets a foothold is at the root of a lot of this immigration, you know.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think if you raise your awareness, you're gonna go, oh wow, I didn't, I didn't realize that's what was going on.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I I that's what I hope the book does.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: That was my entire intention for for writing it.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I hate to use the word like everyone talks about being better educated and and knowledge, and it's so true when you take the time to learn things and and read things and not just take a clip or you know, hear someone say something.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: I always love the quote too like believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see, because things can be taken out of context.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: Even even me and you seeing the same thing, we can have a different way of processing it, which I find that extremely unique too.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh actually, my wife and I will watch a show together and we'll take two totally different perspectives from it, which is again it's fascinating.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about it.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'd be like, really, you thought that's what they were meaning there, and you know, why did you think that?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so it there's so much to that.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: Bill, have you done any sort of any sort of book tour to travel the country to talk more about this with people?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or where's been your best, I guess, foothold of influence on being able to share this, your thoughts and vision from your story?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: Have you been able to do that at universities or do you have plans to do that?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a funny thing about me.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Writing the book is a lot easier than getting out there and marketing the book for me.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: When I hit that, it's like hitting the wall because the amount of effort it takes to get out there and talk to the university and hey, we bring me on.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: I just like, I've got other stuff I want to write.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: I I need, you know, I need a publicity agent or I need somebody.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: We can do podcasts.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: We'll we'll get the marketing out there for you.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: I can do podcasts.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's it's not one of my strengths, and I I haven't, I'll be honest, I haven't really done a lot about it.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I just went on and, you know, I've got a new book already, and I just focus my my time on that and struggle with getting the books out there.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: But and that's it's hard work.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: I I talk to people all the time with the the marketing, the social media, which again, it's it's impressive with just how much content you have up because I used to see people making videos and I'd be like, oh, it must be so much fun.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started figuring out the editing process and how to upload.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, this takes so much time.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I realize now like people who can do it and do it really well are a special talent because it does take a lot of time and effort and precision.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I've gained just doing this podcast, I've gained such an appreciation for the amount of work that goes in.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not even really traveling anywhere, I'm just talking, you know, virtually, and it takes a lot of time.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I definitely understand where you're, especially someone like yourself too, who has so many things you want to do and you're working on getting out there and just promoting is probably not at the top of the list.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's it's really it's it's a very tough area.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, my experience with YouTube was that, you know, I started putting videos out there and gradually found one that kind of hit that was number 72 videos, right?
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, but filmmaking was such a big part of my life.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: It it didn't seem like I gotta make one more.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I gotta make, I was just like, eh, wow, put this out, put that out, take this out.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, it finally hit, kind of thing.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: In the back of my head, I'm thinking, you know, with these books, it's probably the same thing.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna have to write 72 books before you know somebody says, Oh, that guy can actually write.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, I didn't realize that, you know, kind of thing.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the creative part for me, if I if I don't stay on it, just stay on the creative side, then I just kind of hollow out and you know, look bored, you know, because uh it's a weakness, it's a weakness.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned you mentioned another book, and uh when that one comes out, we'll have to have you back on the podcast.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: We can talk about that one specifically, but is it another fiction novel or are you working on something that's nonfiction?
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's a fiction novel, and it's uh about I've been doing a lot of work in the fishing area of South America because you know I start doing the animal monsters and all this stuff.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I know that world really well.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a story about a young guy who's on the spectrum who becomes obsessed with catching one of the largest freshwater fish in the world, the Arapaima.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: And through uh kind of a crazy, I don't know, series of events, he ends up actually going to Guyana to catch this fish.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then he he falls into this world of the fishermen and you know, and then goes after this big fish.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of I call it the mopey dick of the Amazon type of thing.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: So so far the uh beta reads and everything are going really well.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I got I got big hopes for it.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: When it's done, if you'll have me back, yeah, we'll be back on to talk about it.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we will.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: We'll have you back on for that one.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: So are you are you kind of transitioning a lot of your work to writing away from content, or are you still planning to kind of balance that out and do both?
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: I I think do both.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm still like, you know, as soon as we get off, I gotta go back to editing a video.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing a a promo video for uh a fishing lodge in Columbia uh with my friend Steve, who was from Amazon River Monsters.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we're we're still doing I'm still doing a lot of that type of stuff.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not doing hard news anymore.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's you know, it's it's just too too much pressure and all that kind of stuff.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, but this world I sort of found myself in.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: I go, yeah, that kind of works.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I like that.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, go go off to Colombia and Brazil for a month and then they come back and I add it, and and then I'll get a routine of you know writing in the morning and editing in the afternoon.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: So they all kind of merge together for me.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's all storytelling.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: Have you thought at all about writing just your personal story in in a nonfiction biography?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Strange that you would bring, yeah, strange you would bring that up because I think my next one I'm I'm working on a memoir.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: I think you should.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: I know uh it's not gonna be an autobiography, it's gonna be a memoir of this specific thing that happened in the Amazon again.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think it's I think it might be good enough to do, but I'm kind of playing around with that right now.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, I think you should, because because Bill, you've done again so many, just for someone like myself, just to follow the timeline of just the things you've done and been a part of, I think it's really fascinating your story.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I think everyone's got a story to tell.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think everybody should write something because everyone's got different experiences and people can take different things away from it.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, you've got lessons you can share, but there's also tons of entertainment in there, too, of things that you've gotten to do, and I think it'd be a really fascinating read.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: I do hope you you do take on that challenge and put that together because I definitely would read it.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: So see, you already got a you already got a customer.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is feedback live.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're getting the first copy.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I I think what you're doing is great because, you know, getting into the world of writing, I've really like, there aren't enough guys, you know, in this world.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, even going through, you know, agents and all this kind of stuff.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, publishing is dominated by women and women readers.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think there's enough guy readers out there.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it's too bad because it would be a great thing for, I don't want to say that.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: It would just be a great thing if we had more presence of guys in this world, you know, reading guy kind of stuff that would be, you know, beneficial for everybody.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: No, and it goes back to Bill, a lot of things that that you talked about.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm promoting this and putting this out there of encouraging more people to read, especially young men, to start that curiosity journey earlier and that personal development journey earlier, because there is so many things that we see and we think we know and we don't.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so deep diving into a long formatted conversation or a book, there's so many things that you can open yourself up to.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you maybe you think differently than you really do, you know, you just haven't experienced it or learned that yet.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, it's very important.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: And hopefully, you know, hopefully our mission will will get that ball rolling a little bit more than than what's currently happening.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: And uh before we get off, I do want to say, you know, on the podcast, thank you for being a supporter of us, Bill, and that mission, because that helps a lot with what we're trying to do.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, yeah, absolutely.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: The more every time you put a new book out there, we'll have you back on and we'll talk about it and we'll just keep this thing going.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_01: And just one last thing.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know, guys, there are audio books out there.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, right?
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I know everybody's busy.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: I it's just like, you know, the more technology we have to take care of everything, seems like we have less time and less time and less time.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, you can, you know, multi-track it.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: And while you're driving from one place to another, you got audio tracks that you can listen to.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just as viable as reading a book.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have to sit there reading, it's not, you know, it's just taking the story in whatever means possible and thinking about it.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's all that's right.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's no excuses.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many ways you can absorb the content now.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so, but Bill, man, thank you so much for for coming on today.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're proud to spotlight your book.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: We're proud to spotlight your work.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: You've got it sounds like you've got so many more projects in the pipeline that you're gonna be working on, so it'll be so cool to see what all you do.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: But we're always here to be a supporter of you.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and thanks again for coming on, man.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: This means a lot.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, sure.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: My pleasure.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me on, Chris.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: And anytime you need anything, got any questions, let me know.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Bill.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: All right.