Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Meg Smaker: Rehabilitating Terrorists

Transcript

Meg Smaker: Rehabilitating Terrorists · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas.
• 0:05
  What does it feel like to be cancelled?
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  What does it feel like to be cancelled by the very opposite group of people who you might
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  intuitively have thought would cancel you?
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  Meg Smaker was a firefighter, a young firefighter in California when 9-11 happened.
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  She empathized with the firefighters who died that day and she decided to figure out why
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  it happened and unlike other peers of her age, the way that she decided to do that was
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  to leave the United States hitchhike by herself through Afghanistan, end up in Yemen and
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  spend five years in Yemen learning Arabic, studying Islam and teaching firefighting.
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  She passed forward to her decision to make a documentary film, a documentary film about
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  the Guantanamo Bay detainees who were sent to a specialized Saudi Arabian rehabilitation
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  center for terrorists and jihadists.
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  She made this incredible humane film about their aspirations and the Saudi government's
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  attempts in collaboration with the United States and other Western powers to reform
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  these people who are otherwise perceived as irredeemable guilty of the worst possible
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  crimes.
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  And she was worried at the time that there might be some pushback from right wing anti-Muslim
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  forces or militaristic pro-US forces saying why are you humanizing these people?
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  That's not where the pushback to her documentary came from.
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  It came from the left.
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  It came from people who hadn't seen the film who thought that it by definition must be
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  a jingoistic pro-Western attempt to conflate jihadism and terrorism with all of Islam.
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  It's an extraordinary compelling whirlwind of a story and when Meg's maker was in Australia
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  promoting this movie in spite of all of the efforts to have her silenced, I was so proud
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  and privileged and honored to have her visit our studio and sit down for a chat.
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  Please enjoy as much as I did the one and only Meg's maker.
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  You said you're leaving San Francisco.
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  I was supposed to move before I went on this whole tour thing but there was a emergency
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  where I have to push it back but basically I can't afford to live there anymore.
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  It's not because the whole place is a steaming wreckage and a pile of human refuse.
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  So I live in Oakland, which is across the bay, which I don't know if you have that here
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  but I feel like Oakland is awesome and San Francisco is alright.
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  And San Francisco is a flaming trash pile and Oakland has escaped that.
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  It has not.
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  I'm not sure if this is true by the way, I'm just regurgitating what people say on the
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  socials.
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  Here's what I'll say.
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  All over the US, I have seen the number of homeless people spiked to a level that I've
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  never seen in my entire life.
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  And in places where there was homeless before, like in San Francisco, there's always homeless.
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  Now it's just gotten to such a ridiculous level.
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  And then on top of that, you have places that really didn't see any homeless before
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  and you want to see it now.
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  So my sister lives in a place where I've, my sister in law lives in a place where I've
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  been visiting for years, I've never seen any of that.
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  Now I go there and this whole kind of street leading to her house, I'll leave tents on
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  it.
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  So it's just a, I think it's a combination of a housing, a house in severe housing shortage,
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  rise in property, values that kind of make it literally just impossible to buy a first
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  time house if you're not like working for a huge tech company.
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  So.
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  I don't want to sound like I'm blaming homeless people for being homeless.
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  Obviously they wouldn't choose to be homeless, they could avoid being homeless, but it seems
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  to be a component, people seem to blame a combination of homelessness, substance abuse
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  that is not getting treated.
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  And also just a tolerance towards criminality that's like there seems to be, I used to live
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  in Venice Beach in Los Angeles and so we, well, I lived there when it was an up and
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  coming place that was rapidly gentrifying in 2010 when, you know, people thought, oh,
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  this is going to turn into Santa Monica and instead Santa Monica turned into Venice and
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  the whole place has just, it's just people just say, like, you know, your car, my car has
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  been stolen eight times in the last three years and that's just normal.
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  My car got like in Oakland, my car literally got stolen out of my driveway, like out of
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  my, I like it.
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  It's all on camera.
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  So what's that about?
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  Because that's not homelessness, right?
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  I mean, it's presumably it's not homeless people just coming on going, I think I'll have
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  an Audi.
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  I remember when the pandemic started, I had a couple of like, you know, packages stolen
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  and my car got broken into and I would call the cops and they just would never come and
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  they just told me to file a report.
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  That could be part of the problem, couldn't it?
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  The authorities know.
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  So I was like, hey guys.
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  Police saying crime.
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  I pay taxes.
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  So it'd be really nice to, you know, just come to my house and, you know, do stuff.
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  So where is the pleasure haven of pleasure and plenty to which you're going to flee
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  where the police do answer the phone?
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  Well, I'm not fleeing for the police thing.
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  I see, I love living in Oakland because it's like, I lived, I would say quite a few different
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  places and it's very unique.
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  It's this kind of amalgamation of different cultures and different, you know, histories
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  and different, just different social, economic kind of standings, but not in a segregated
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  way.
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  Like I think I used to live in DC and there was, it was definitely diverse, but segregated
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  diverse.
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  You know, the rich, like professor of Georgetown, you never heard and you had, you know, different
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  people.
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  We have lots of black people over there.
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  Yeah, exactly.
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  But we go and visit them.
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  Oakland's quite different.
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  It's very, it's very mixed.
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  It's very, everyone's on top of each other and they, there's this like joke that everyone
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  says in Oakland, like Oakland's one quarter white, one quarter black, one quarter Asian
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  and one quarter Hispanic.
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  So if you're not in some kind of inner racial relationship, you might be racist.
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  Right.
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  Okay.
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  So Oakland's great, but it costs $65,000 a month in rent.
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  It's ridiculous.
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  It's, it's gotten astronomically ridiculous, it's expensive.
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  And I would say that like the reason why I like Oakland is, and why I don't live in L.A.
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  Is as a storyteller, is a journalist, you know, you, you, I want to surround myself with
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  different stories and different viewpoints.
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  And even though I think L.A. is great for like Hollywood, like you can't swing a dick
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  in L.A. without hitting someone in the film industry.
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  And if I want different perspectives, different backgrounds to hear different stories, Oakland's
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  a great place for that.
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  I mean in L.A.
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  you can go to Pasadena.
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  You can go to, you can go to Glendale.
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  You can go to Glendale.
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  You can go to Beverly Hills.
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  There's, he supplies you can go to North Hollywood, West Hollywood, you can go to East Hollywood.
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  I, I can't go to a coffee shop though and walk in and not see like 20 people riding their
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  script.
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  Yeah, I know.
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  We're like in Oakland, I go in a coffee shop like some guys painting a picture.
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  Right.
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  You guys are like debating over like some kind of like book that just came out about
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  Lenin and it's just this really cool.
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  Of course it's Lenin, Oakland or those communists, but I mean I felt the same way about New
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  York as well.
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  I mean in a positive way about it being a hodgepodge of different people and a very stimulating
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  place to be because you never knew who you were going to meet.
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  And yes, there may be a kind of ideological conformism in the sense that it's quite a progressive
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  town as is the Bay Area.
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  But nonetheless in Los Angeles, it's funny you mentioned DC as well because DC, I spent
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  a little bit of time in DC and it struck me as having to some extent the same problem
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  as Los Angeles, which is that it's a single industry town.
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  Well, when I was in DC, I was at National Geographic and so I wasn't in politics.
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  So I loved about during the day I'd work at Nat Geo and then my lunch break, I would
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  go to like the Brookings Institute and like listen to like a think tank.
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  Oh, that's cool.
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  I was just how fucking cool it is to get to hear like smartest people in the world talk
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  about random shit and you can ask them questions like, right, I love that.
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  Yeah, it's still mostly lawyers and politicians and lobbyists in a way that I felt was less
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  stimulating personally than New York.
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  I think because of where I was working and where I was located, I was much more exposed
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  to like think tanks and scholars and right, the academic side of Washington DC.
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  So did you always want to be a journalist?
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  Did you always want to be a storyteller?
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  No.
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  What were you after?
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  Uh, I, I, well, when I was younger, I don't know, this might get me canceled again.
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  I had this, I asked this my friend this question the other day, like what she wanted to be
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  when she grew up and she like, I think she said she wanted to be a doctor.
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  So like, what was the first thing you wanted to be?
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  This is like a really embarrassing to say, but we'll just, we'll be truthful.
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  The first thing I wanted to be was a taxi driver because I thought it was so, I, I just
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  wanted thought driving was so cool.
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  So at age four, I was like, you could pay to drive at a awesome job and you could just
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  go everywhere.
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  So that was the first thing I wanted to be in the second thing I wanted to be in this
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  is really embarrassing is a prostitute.
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  I had just seen pretty woman and I just thought being a prostitute meant you can be in
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  bubble baths all day long.
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  Yeah.
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  People buy expensive stuff.
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  Sure.
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  And that's just great.
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  Wow.
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  So those dreams?
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  I did not.
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  That's we can still work on it.
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  We can still work on it.
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  I can probably help with the taxi driver a bit less so with the prostitution angle.
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  Yeah.
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  Thanks for sharing that.
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  So and well, then how did you get from wanting to be a taxi driver prostitute to living
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  in Yemen?
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  So as a firefighter, so I wound up when I was 18, so as 1998 to 2003, four of the firefighter
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  in California and I loved it.
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  That's a great job.
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  Every day is different.
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  You get to work in a team.
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  I don't know how you're wired, but I really thrive in fast pace, high stakes problem solving.
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  It's kind of like my jam.
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  And that's kind of all firefighting is.
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  You arrive on scene.
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  You have a couple of seconds to like take all the information and make decisions and come
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  up with a plan of attack and go to it.
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  So whether it's arriving on scene of a gunshot victim or a structure fire or a plane crash
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  or a chemical spill, it's great because you're constantly being challenged.
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  And is there enough of that actually going on that that's how you spend your days because
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  I just assume that you spend 99% of the time sitting around playing cards and then one
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  percent of the time terrified?
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  It depends on the time of year and the station that you're station that like there's some
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  stations that just roll all the fucking time and there's some stations that will maybe
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  go on a call every couple days or week to get a cat from a train.
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  I've never had to get a cat from a train, but I did have to get a peacock from an attic
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  one.
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  Is that true?
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  Yes, really.
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  They're really violent.
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  They're really violent.
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  Yeah.
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  They strike me as an ordinary kind of.
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  Yeah, they're not.
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  They're kind of like, I think when you're not pretty, you can be a dick and get away with
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  it.
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  Right.
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  So they're like the pretty dicks of the animal world.
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  You know?
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  Also, they don't belong in an attic.
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  So he's probably already, you know, I don't know how it got up there.
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  I just know that that was the call and I just remember I take a cat and a tree over a
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  peacock in an attic.
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  That's very nice.
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  Yeah.
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  But so in terms of planes crashing relatively infrequent planes crashing, I only went on one
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  one.
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  Lessively infrequent.
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  I only went on one plane crash as a firefighter, but we were not where I was stationed.
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  We had a two two calls that were quite like almost every day was vehicle accidents because
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  I was stationed on one of the bullies highways in the US.
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  So we went on a lot of vehicle multi car pilot ups and stuff.
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  And then in California, we used to have a fire season, but now it's year round.
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  But on fire season, we'd just be rolling all the time and we go on strike teams, which
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  are when they have huge fires in California, you need to reallocate your resources.
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  And so places that aren't burning as much, they would send these things called strike
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  teams out, which is five engines and you go to a different unit to kind of attack that
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  like thousand acre fire and go to town.
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  It's crazy.
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  And the same firefighters do urban fires as do bushfires.
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  So in California is really unique because I was stationed at a metropolitan, like a more
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  urban area, but it butts up against more rural area.
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  So like for example, if you are San Francisco, if you live in San Francisco, San Francisco
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  Fire Department is your fire department.
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  But outside of major cities, all the rest of that is covered by cal fire.
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  And so a lot of the times during fire season, you'll work with big fire departments that
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  are more municipal fire departments, but then you need their resources.
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  So you train together a lot.
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  But yeah, I think not all, I would say like I was in a very unique situation in terms of
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  my battalion because we had a major metropolitan area, but we also had a lot of computations
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  as well.
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  It's kind of interesting.
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, we have huge bushfires here in Australia as you know, but we got the, you know,
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  the same people who put out your house fire and all the people who are going to fight
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  the bush fire.
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  There are two separate entities.
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  Well, I mean, we have different engines for that, but I think that like the thing about
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  California is when you call 911, whether you've just been shot or you have difficulty breathing
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  or your house is on fire or your meth lap has exploded or whatever, you get the fire department.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  I noticed that in New York as well.
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  The fire department goes everywhere.
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  They're all purpose.
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  They're not just for fires.
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  Yeah.
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  So you'll have on your fire department or on your engine, depending on what you have, you'll
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  definitely have it.
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  Everyone won't be an EMT.
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  You'll probably have one medic.
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  Right.
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  Right.
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  So like if you have a gunshot wound, we need to be able to take care of you.
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  Right.
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  But it doesn't the ambulance.
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  Why don't the fire, why don't you give yourself a day off?
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  Let the paramedics take care of the gunshot wound unless it's a flaming gunshot.
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  Well, the way that it, well, I would say that like the fire departments, when you do a city
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  planning, they're equal distance apart, right?
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  So like if this is a table is your city, you won't have all your engines here.
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  You'll have one here, one here, one there.
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  Right.
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  So they might be closer than an ambulance.
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  Yeah.
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  We all, we almost all, because usually you have your, your ambulance says we'll be in an engine
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  bay if they're a private company, sometimes you have ambulances as part of a fire department.
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  So it kind of depends on the city and the county and what you guys have worked out.
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  But it's, it's, it, it differs per county.
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  But in the county that I was, and we did it all.
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  Right.
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  So the fire engine is usually the first vehicle on the scene, if you call 911, that's why
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  it gets, that's why it shows up.
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  Now you've just answered a question for me.
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  I never knew.
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  I was like, why are they, why are they doing so much stuff?
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  I mean, I can lie and say because we're faster at getting in there.
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  Well, you've got the pole to swing to swirl down as well to get into it.
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  Yeah.
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  My station didn't have a pole, but I don't, I don't run, don't run Christmas for me,
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  but sorry.
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  Sorry.
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  Um, so there's, there's Saudi Arabia, just jumping all over the place.
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  Here we go.
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  They call me, don't call me Segway Josh for nothing.
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  Uh, Saudi Arabia launches this scheme, um, because the United States has a bazillion
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  people in Guantanamo.
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  No.
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  For, they already had this game.
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  No.
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  Okay.
• 15:16
  Um, so we should probably tell them what, who I am.
• 15:17
  I don't know how this works.
• 15:18
  Well, I'll introduce you and I'll tell you, I'll tell them that you're a filmmaker
• 15:21
  and that I've seen the film and they should see the film.
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  Okay.
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  There you go.
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  What's the film, what's the film about?
• 15:26
  Josh.
• 15:27
  Well, it's interesting because the film ends up being about something a little bit different
• 15:31
  than I thought it was going to be about initially, but I mean, I would describe the
• 15:34
  film.
• 15:35
  What did you think it was going to be about initially?
• 15:36
  I'm not, I don't want to spoil it.
• 15:38
  So I'll only talk about what I, what it is.
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  And then we can talk about what I think it actually also ends up being about later.
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  But what I thought it was about and what it, it spends most of its time on is this collection
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  of people who are being, quote unquote, de-radicalized by, um, a center in Saudi Arabia, which is
• 15:56
  seeking to de-radicalize Yemeni terrorists and jihadists who've been, um, not Yemeni.
• 16:02
  Not Yemeni.
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  I mean, there's lots of people that go there.
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  There aren't the two main ones, Yemeni.
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  I mean, the, the, the, there's forming characters and three of them.
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  They have, um, or before the main character of Yemeni, there's one Saudi in there, but
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  the center itself, um, up until the, those guys only, it was only for Saudi nationals.
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  Right.
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  And then this deal, what, this Gitmo deal ends up sending these Yemeni, yeah, so basically,
• 16:26
  um, I heard about this center back in like, when I was living Yemen, so I lived in Yemen
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  for almost five years.
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  And I was there teaching and running a firefighting academy.
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  And, um, I first heard about it because there was a terrorist attack, I think in like 2007
• 16:43
  or so in Saudi Arabia, and I overheard a conversation, and according to my cadets at the time,
• 16:49
  the perpetrators of the attack had been caught half of a Yemeni and the other half were Saudi.
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  And according to them, this, the Yemenis were tortured and killed, and the Saudis were
• 16:59
  sent to something that they referred to as jihad rehab.
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  I didn't know the word for rehabilitation in Arabic, so I had asked them when they said
• 17:05
  it's jihad rehab, and I was like, oh, that makes sense.
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  But it was weird because, uh, at the time, I was like, why is the most conservative country
• 17:16
  in the world running some progressive rehab program for terrorist?
• 17:20
  And it just always kind of struck me as kind of weird.
• 17:25
  Years, years later, when I started working on this project and I learned the origin story
• 17:29
  of the center and how it came to be, then it made more sense.
• 17:32
  How much do you know about Saudi Arabia?
• 17:34
  I'm trying to.
• 17:34
  Um, how much do you know about the year 1979 in Saudi Arabia?
• 17:40
  Uh, is that the revolution you, well, there was an Iranian revolution in 79?
• 17:45
  There was an Iranian revolution in 79, and there was three things that happened that
• 17:48
  year that kind of changed the trajectory of Saudi Arabia.
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  So you had the Itolla coming to power, and that was a direct threat to the Saudi
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  royal family and them stayed in power because he kind of painted them as, you know, puppets
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  of the Satan American government.
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  And what you have to understand about the Saudi royal family is they care about one thing
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  and one thing above all else, and that's the power.
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  And so when that threat happened, kind of right after that, there was a siege on Mecca.
• 18:23
  So as the leader of Saudi Arabia, you're also responsible for some of the two holiocytes
• 18:28
  in Islam, which is Mecca and Medina, and a group of men took that over, took Mecca over
• 18:35
  and occupied it and killed a bunch of people, which also threatened legitimacy of the leadership
• 18:41
  at the time.
• 18:43
  And on that, on top of that, that same year, the Russians invaded Afghanistan.
• 18:48
  And the royal family was kind of called out as not being legitimate because they couldn't,
• 18:53
  you know, protect the mosque and Iran was kind of calling out the same thing as well.
• 18:58
  And so to bolster their, I would say Islamic credentials, they started to kind of get
• 19:09
  more restrictive in terms of that home.
• 19:11
  So where before 1979, you would see women on TV and giving interviews and not cover it
• 19:18
  up after that changed.
• 19:20
  And then they also encouraged their young men to go out and fight the Russians as we did
• 19:26
  as well.
• 19:28
  And so that kind of bolstered their credentials as Islamic leaders because they were fighting
• 19:33
  in this country that had invaded this Islamic country.
• 19:37
  And that, I would say, encouragement continued.
• 19:42
  So you had young Saudi men going to places like Afghanistan to fight the Russians and Chechnya
• 19:49
  and Bosnia, and for decades, this was an export-only business.
• 19:54
  And then, 2001 happened in 9-11.
• 19:59
  And you had these men who had been fighting in these conflicts all over the globe.
• 20:03
  And then when America invaded Afghanistan, a sambalada went to his men and he said, return
• 20:10
  to your home countries and your group.
• 20:12
  And so you had hordes of battle-hearted Saudi extremists coming back to Saudi Arabia and
• 20:19
  with them they brought the fight.
• 20:20
  And so for the first time in Saudi's history, they had this huge spike of domestic terrorism,
• 20:24
  the likes of which they'd never seen before.
• 20:28
  And initially, the Saudis used the same tactics as the Americans in prison and torture
• 20:32
  kill.
• 20:33
  The problem is, if I imprison you and torture you and kill you, what that happens to your
• 20:39
  seven brothers, they then become radicalized.
• 20:42
  So it just exacerbated the problem.
• 20:45
  So the Saudis did different experiments and one of them was in Saudi Arabia, the terrorist
• 20:52
  and prisons are separate from the normal criminal prisons for obvious reasons.
• 20:57
  You don't want someone who has a skill set of hacking and stealing cars so they become
• 21:01
  radicalized.
• 21:02
  So in the terrorist prison, they started this program of religious study, counseling, art
• 21:09
  therapy, and they tracked these guys and they actually had good progress with it.
• 21:13
  And so from that, they made the center.
• 21:15
  And so it wasn't like a case of Saudis trying to take people back from Guantanamo.
• 21:20
  It was more of the chickens had come home to roost and they needed to deal with it.
• 21:25
  Because again, like I said, if there was instability in the kingdom, that threat and the legitimacy
• 21:30
  of the royal family.
• 21:31
  Right.
• 21:32
  But your film begins with the repatriation of the Guantanamo detainees to this center in
• 21:37
  Saudi Arabia.
• 21:38
  That's where this story begins and the people who you've chosen to focus on are these largely
• 21:44
  Yemenis coming from from Guantanamo and presumably, I mean, this was at a stage when the
• 21:49
  United States was trying to get rid of it for the Guantanamo detainees and knew that this
• 21:53
  was unsustainable right.
• 21:54
  And so a lot of countries took them and did whatever with them, these particular individuals.
• 22:00
  I mean, why is it that the Yemenis were sent there?
• 22:03
  I mean, I obviously don't want to send them back to Yemen because there's a war there
• 22:06
  and you're afraid that they're going to turn into terrorists, but why do Saudi Arabia
• 22:10
  willing to take them in the first place?
• 22:11
  Well, they sent a bunch of them to different places, but the problem with the Yemeni
• 22:15
  population, why there were so many left in Guantanamo, is unlike other countries.
• 22:21
  I would say if you look at who got released from Guantanamo win, it had less to do about
• 22:27
  what the people did and more to do about the United States government relationship with
• 22:31
  that country.
• 22:32
  So for example, we have a closer relationship with the Saudi government and the Saudis
• 22:37
  were sent home way before a lot of the Yemenis were.
• 22:40
  So if you see in the movie, the guy who opens the movie, Khaled, he was one of the lead bomb
• 22:44
  makers and bomb instructor Shrelqaeda.
• 22:47
  He only spent like five years in Gitmo and then he got set back where someone like Ali
• 22:52
  who was Yemeni, all he did was go to a training camp and he spent 16 years, almost 15, almost
• 22:57
  16 years in Guantanamo.
• 22:59
  I think a part of that had to do with his country not having that kind of close relationship
• 23:04
  with the United States and being able to go Shrely and also Yemen was just not stable enough
• 23:08
  to send these guys back in a way that they could be tracked and kind of re-eventing society.
• 23:13
  Yeah.
• 23:14
  And if anyone's good at tracking and making sure that people aren't going to do the wrong
• 23:16
  thing, it's the Saudis.
• 23:17
  It's not like they have such a high respect for human rights that they're not going to
• 23:22
  be able to look after people and make sure they don't do the wrong thing and then make
• 23:25
  them go away if they do.
• 23:26
  Yeah.
• 23:27
  They know where all these guys are at.
• 23:28
  Yeah.
• 23:29
  So I guess this is part of what is this a favor that the Saudis are doing to the US?
• 23:33
  Is this a face-saving thing where, okay, we'll let you get these people off your hands
• 23:36
  because we know they can't spend the rest of their lives in Gitmo?
• 23:39
  No.
• 23:40
  So again, if you look back, thanks to WikiLeaks, we know that the US government approached
• 23:48
  Saudi Arabia to take these men back in 2009 and they refused and they said that this
• 23:53
  program is only for Saudi nationals.
• 23:55
  It's specifically based on our culture data like we can't take them through this program.
• 24:01
  But my understanding is that fast forward to 2016 when the US government was in negotiations
• 24:07
  with Iran to kind of have that peace deal going on or the nuclear weapons thing.
• 24:13
  Yeah.
• 24:14
  Sorry.
• 24:15
  I need to have a second coffee with it.
• 24:16
  Yeah.
• 24:17
  It's called the nuclear weapons thing.
• 24:19
  Oh my god.
• 24:20
  I'm going to get canceled again.
• 24:23
  All right.
• 24:24
  So, yeah.
• 24:25
  So, basically, we were in a negotiation with that and then Saudi Arabia wanted more weapons
• 24:28
  because of that from the United States and so part of that of deal was, you know, you
• 24:32
  have to take some of these guys from Gitmo.
• 24:33
  Oh, that's interesting.
• 24:34
  Yeah.
• 24:35
  Okay.
• 24:36
  And so what's interesting about that was if, you know, in the movie, you're only allowed
• 24:40
  to go through this program if you have someone that's going to agree to be your sponsor
• 24:44
  when you're released and that sponsor is liable for anything that you do once you're released
• 24:49
  in the program, i.e. if I'm your dad and I'm your sponsor and I sign on that dotted line
• 24:54
  and you decide to graduate from the program then up sconson join al-Qaeda in the Arabian
• 24:59
  Peninsula, I then take your place in prison.
• 25:02
  So there's a big, there's a big motivation not to do that.
• 25:05
  So all the men that they took from Guentanamo to Saudi Arabia had to have at least one
• 25:10
  family member in Saudi willing to be their sponsor.
• 25:14
  So there was more Yemenis and there still is more Yemenis in Guentanamo, but they just
• 25:18
  didn't have a family members.
• 25:19
  And a lot of these guys, I mean, it's kind of weirdly heartbreaking in a way that they
• 25:24
  were, you know, 16 when they got picked up in Afghanistan, I mean, what do you know when
• 25:28
  you're 16?
• 25:29
  What do you even know about your life or what you believe in or what you're doing?
• 25:31
  I'm just so glad they didn't have cell phones with cameras when I was saying that exactly.
• 25:36
  Then you spend the next 16 years in Guentanamo Bay, you find yourself back at this center
• 25:40
  in Saudi Arabia.
• 25:43
  And I mean, one of the characters says something interesting says you can't defend
• 25:48
  feet an idea with force.
• 25:50
  Yeah.
• 25:51
  That was one of the instructors at the center.
• 25:52
  Yeah.
• 25:53
  So what do they defeat the ideas with and how successful are they?
• 25:57
  That's a good question.
• 25:59
  I think that I think initially when I started working on this project, I didn't realize
• 26:04
  how complex and nuanced and varied the motivations are for why people join these groups.
• 26:12
  And during the course of the project, I interviewed over 150 of these guys.
• 26:18
  And of that 150, about 30 were interested in the project, and of the 30, only 12 were
• 26:23
  interested in doing the project without like their faces being blurred and stuff.
• 26:27
  So I concentrated on those guys.
• 26:29
  But after interviewing 150 of them, not all, but most of them would fall into one of four
• 26:35
  categories in terms of their motivation about why they join these groups.
• 26:39
  And I think for me, different things that you see in the movie kind of address those
• 26:46
  different motivations.
• 26:47
  So really quickly, the motivations are the cause, which is like people who believe it's
• 26:52
  there, religious duty to go and do this.
• 26:55
  And so for example, that's Aboghanum.
• 26:57
  He saw what was happening in Bosnia, Muslims being slaughtered.
• 27:00
  And he thought of his religious duty to go there and defend them.
• 27:04
  And I think that's the one that most Americans are familiar with.
• 27:07
  But the other three have absolutely nothing to do with religion.
• 27:11
  And they are economic necessity.
• 27:13
  That's not her.
• 27:14
  I'm a career for him, a job.
• 27:15
  It's how he made a living.
• 27:17
  The third one is pure pressure.
• 27:20
  That's Ali.
• 27:21
  His brother was an al-Qaeda instructor in the Al-Qaeda training camp.
• 27:25
  And the last one, which is more age-dependent than the younger guys, it's sense of adventure.
• 27:29
  And that's Muhammad, where he says, you know, I was bored.
• 27:32
  I was 19.
• 27:33
  I didn't want to go to school.
• 27:34
  I didn't want to go to work.
• 27:35
  This guy offered me a free ticket to Afghanistan, and I thought, why not?
• 27:39
  So I think in terms of when you're watching the movie and you see a class on, you know,
• 27:46
  the rules of jihad according to the Quran, that's for those guys who were motivated by
• 27:51
  religious reasons.
• 27:53
  But then you watch a class about how to make a budget and how to like write a resume.
• 27:59
  And you're like, what does this have to do with it?
• 28:01
  But those are for those guys who this became a job for them, this became a career.
• 28:05
  And so that addresses that kind of need.
• 28:09
  And so there's loads of different classes and courses they do there to kind of address
• 28:13
  those different things.
• 28:16
  And some of it works with some of them.
• 28:18
  And some of them doesn't like, some guys really love the art therapy.
• 28:21
  Other guys think it's stupid.
• 28:23
  Yeah, right.
• 28:24
  So it's kind of like, we're all these individual like snowflakes that, you know, all unique.
• 28:29
  Not like the new snowflake.
• 28:30
  The natural snowflake.
• 28:31
  Actually being a fingerprint.
• 28:32
  Yeah.
• 28:33
  I mean, it's interesting that one commonality between all of them does seem to be an appreciation.
• 28:37
  First they receive an appreciation that the fight was counterproductive in some way.
• 28:45
  It strikes me that they all have some sort of epiphany around, you know, one more
• 28:49
  one of them says like, I didn't realize 911 was going to be such a big thing.
• 28:52
  Like a building fell down.
• 28:53
  Build another building.
• 28:54
  Like it's not that building fell down all the time.
• 28:55
  You know, people die, you know, you, you lost two buildings.
• 28:59
  We lost two countries when you invaded the countries, those may be two different people
• 29:02
  who I'm channeling there.
• 29:03
  But that kind of attitude of like, yeah, what goes around comes around like deal with
• 29:07
  that America.
• 29:08
  And then they've, but they've realized that the way that they responded, you know, is
• 29:12
  counterproductive.
• 29:13
  It only brings more hardship than achieving it.
• 29:16
  What was interesting talking to Collard, the bomb maker, is we talked about that specifically
• 29:19
  and he said, I asked him, I'm like, would you ever kind of go back to that life?
• 29:24
  And he just threw up his hands.
• 29:25
  He's like, look what we accomplished.
• 29:27
  The world is worse off today than it was when we started this and he's like, no, he's
• 29:33
  like, I see where, at that time, ISIS was more of an issue, and I was talking to him.
• 29:38
  He's like, look at what, you know, I'll kind of like kind of morphed into this and then
• 29:45
  that morphed into that and that gave us ISIS and look where we're at right now.
• 29:47
  And it just was this kind of deterioration of what his view of was the goals that they
• 29:53
  were going after versus the actual results of what happened.
• 29:56
  And so I think that with him, because he was definitely more ideologically motivated
• 30:02
  that he felt like he had been not just led astray, because he had a lot of animosity
• 30:08
  towards the San Ben Laden, because he knew him and he'd moved to Afghanistan because of
• 30:14
  him.
• 30:15
  And then when, according to him, a San Ben Laden kind of cut and run when things went
• 30:19
  bad and like left all these men behind, it left quite a sour taste in his mouth.
• 30:22
  So yeah, it was interesting to see the different men having kind of different motivations, but
• 30:29
  all coming to the same conclusion of like, this is probably not the best way forward.
• 30:34
  Yeah.
• 30:35
  And when you say that some of them were just doing it out of economic necessity, because
• 30:39
  like, you know, I'll pay to pay the bills or the Taliban, you know, give you a house
• 30:43
  and we give you a house and treat you well and what else are you going to do with your
• 30:47
  life in a state of economic scarcity?
• 30:50
  When I said earlier that the film ends up being about something a little bit different
• 30:53
  than it seems to be, I was pointing to the fact that these guys' lives all change when
• 30:59
  MBS comes on the scene, the current ruler of Saudi Arabia, and so the world was fascinating
• 31:04
  about the final quarter of the film is that it's about how, you know, people might have
• 31:10
  seen the sort of glossy image that Saudi Arabia is currently presenting to the world.
• 31:14
  You've got the live golf tournament and you've got Greg Norman and you've got Justin
• 31:19
  Bieber performing in Riyadh and, you know, they're presenting this kind of where we're
• 31:23
  now open to the world and we're modernizing it aggressively, because we want to become
• 31:27
  Dubai essentially.
• 31:28
  Yeah, that is a really good statement because I actually, this is years ago, I think
• 31:32
  this is 2018-19, I was talking to someone in the government and he used those exact words.
• 31:38
  He's like, we're going to be the new Dubai.
• 31:39
  That was the goal.
• 31:40
  We're bigger, we're richer, we can do it better.
• 31:44
  But as part of that, there's this crackdown on terrorism and there's this radical, you
• 31:51
  know, authoritarianism that comes in, we heard about the death of Jamal Khashoggi and
• 31:56
  the, you know, the journalists who've been killed in Saudi Arabia and so on.
• 32:01
  And as a result, these guys who are about to be released from the center at the end of
• 32:06
  your film find that they're not going to be released, not on anything like the timeline
• 32:12
  that they thought.
• 32:13
  And when they are released, they're not going to be able to get jobs, because they're
• 32:17
  not Saudis.
• 32:18
  So Saudis, if you're a Saudi in Saudi Arabia, you get all kinds of welfare benefits from
• 32:23
  oil revenue.
• 32:24
  But if you're a non-Saudi, they're not allowed to leave the country, obviously the US would
• 32:28
  never have released them from Guantanamo Bay if there hadn't been a guarantee that they
• 32:31
  are going to be allowed to leave Saudi Arabia.
• 32:33
  So they're stuck there and they can't work and what's next?
• 32:40
  Well, it's interesting because I think what I like about that part of the film is a
• 32:43
  lot of times we see headlines, you know, about things that are happening.
• 32:47
  Like, I remember when Obama signed the Paris Accord and then Trump overturned it, that was
• 32:53
  a headline.
• 32:54
  And it was one administration went out and then knew the administration was like, all right,
• 32:58
  we're not doing that anymore.
• 32:59
  But very rarely do we get to see those macro decisions and they affect on a micro level
• 33:04
  on individuals, right?
• 33:05
  So MBS, Mohammed bin Naif, the crown prince before, Mohammed bin Salman, this center was
• 33:13
  his pet project and he was very heavily involved in it.
• 33:16
  And when he went out and MBS came in, this was no longer a priority because he had, MBS
• 33:23
  had the war in Yemen, he had all the other stuff trying to diversify the economy.
• 33:27
  And so this center was no longer a priority.
• 33:30
  So these guys kind of just fell through the cracks.
• 33:33
  I think it's really interesting to see those macro decisions and how they affect individuals
• 33:39
  and individual human beings on a micro level.
• 33:42
  Because I think sometimes we forget about that when we see these like big headlines about
• 33:46
  big ideas and big tree design, but the actual knock on effect of human beings can be quite
• 33:51
  catastrophic.
• 33:52
  Hmm.
• 33:53
  Did you feel sorry for the terrorists?
• 33:57
  I would say that when you spend three years with someone, unless you're a complete psychopath,
• 34:06
  and you're going to have some kind of emotional investment in that fellow human being,
• 34:11
  and I, it was funny when their release was delayed indefinitely because they weren't sure
• 34:16
  where they, when they were getting out, Mohammed and Ali were really upset.
• 34:21
  Naughty was stoked, though.
• 34:23
  He was like really stoked on stage, and he loved the center.
• 34:27
  That one scene where he's like, I don't know, maybe I'll ask for more time.
• 34:29
  And I got like a live experience, I was like, pull and a sauna and just great.
• 34:34
  But when they got out and they were struggling, I remember one time,
• 34:38
  I was with Ali, and he was clear that he was depressed and really lonely.
• 34:42
  And of course, I've felt bad for him.
• 34:44
  I remember that one time I just put on the camera,
• 34:47
  I was like, let's just go get some fossa, which is like that's Yemeni dish and just
• 34:50
  hiding out and like human beings and talk to one another, because he was really, really,
• 34:55
  really having a hard time struggling, actually making friends, because he was living in a
• 35:00
  pretty small town compared to Jeddah, and everyone knew who he was.
• 35:04
  And because of that, no one was talking to him and everyone was avoiding him,
• 35:07
  because they didn't want that kind of negative stigma to kind of rub off
• 35:11
  from their family's reputation.
• 35:12
  So yeah, it was really hard for him to be odd.
• 35:15
  To be ostracized from your community is difficult, but it's doubly difficult,
• 35:19
  in that part of the world, because unlike the United States is a very individualistic society,
• 35:25
  where the Middle East is way more community driven and way more family driven.
• 35:28
  And so when you are ostracized in a very community oriented in culture,
• 35:33
  it's really, really, really painful.
• 35:36
  When was the last time you were in touch with him?
• 35:39
  Last time I heard from Nader a couple days ago.
• 35:41
  So yeah, I mean, Ali, it's been a little bit.
• 35:45
  But yeah, it heard from Nader a couple days ago.
• 35:47
  Yeah.
• 35:48
  Yes, he don't.
• 35:51
  Do you want to update on the guys?
• 35:52
  Yeah.
• 35:52
  Okay, so since the movie, Ali's had a second to child, a girl,
• 35:58
  and he's really coming to his own as a father.
• 36:01
  And I really think he kind of found his purpose in life.
• 36:04
  Muhammad, unfortunately, his dad died of COVID-19.
• 36:07
  And since then, he's been having quite a rough go of it.
• 36:11
  Nader, still not married, still no job.
• 36:15
  And he always wants to be asked.
• 36:16
  So if any ladies out there.
• 36:19
  If you have had your eye on an ex-terrorist, then he's your man.
• 36:24
  He's a good guy.
• 36:25
  He's a good guy.
• 36:27
  But yeah, I think that I guess when my phone was like blowing up during the World Cup,
• 36:33
  and it was Nader and I was like, well, what's happening?
• 36:35
  I was really worried and I didn't realize that I guess Saudi Arabia had beat Argentina.
• 36:39
  All right.
• 36:39
  And Nader's a huge soccer fanatic.
• 36:42
  And he was going nuts.
• 36:43
  He was just yelling in the phone.
• 36:44
  He's like, Saudi Arabia.
• 36:45
  And then they got knocked out.
• 36:47
  But then Morocco was doing really good.
• 36:48
  So there was a source of pride there.
• 36:51
  And I was just, I was getting, I didn't need to watch the World Cup.
• 36:53
  So I didn't update it from Nader.
• 36:56
  I love it.
• 36:57
  So I mean, if you have empathy for these people,
• 36:59
  then one would expect that the flank that you would get,
• 37:03
  the backlash that you would get if any, for this kind of journalism,
• 37:07
  is that you're an apologist for terrorists and that you're anti-American and that you're pro
• 37:14
  jihadist in some way.
• 37:16
  Well, that would be way over line.
• 37:19
  But I can see that.
• 37:20
  That would be the, at least a comprehensible straw man.
• 37:24
  Yeah.
• 37:25
  Straw manning of your position, right?
• 37:26
  I mean, it's straw womaning.
• 37:27
  Straw womaning.
• 37:28
  So it's a straw personning.
• 37:31
  But what ended up happening was that, well, what did end up happening?
• 37:36
  Yeah.
• 37:36
  So made this film and in the independent space.
• 37:41
  So I didn't make this film for a broadcaster or a studio.
• 37:44
  So in the independent space, how you get your film out in the world is you
• 37:47
  submit it to some film festivals.
• 37:49
  And if you're lucky enough, you get into a big one.
• 37:51
  And I was extremely lucky because I got now all the big ones.
• 37:54
  I submitted the film and it got into Sundance and South by Southwest and Toronto and
• 37:58
  San Francisco and kind of everyone wanted this film.
• 38:01
  And I just felt really lucky and just humbled because I thought
• 38:05
  we're going to premiere this film at the biggest film festival in the world, which is Sundance.
• 38:09
  And what generally happens then is that a studio will buy the film and we'll just get it up.
• 38:14
  You someone will pick it up like Netflix or Pulu or A24 and then and then usually it's Sundance.
• 38:21
  In my category, there was 10 films and usually five of those films winds up being nominated for
• 38:26
  an Oscar. They become the it films of the year.
• 38:28
  Exactly. And if you're lucky, there's a bidding war for it and you know, you can pay back your
• 38:32
  investors. Exactly. And then hopefully your student loans. Hopefully making even more money and
• 38:36
  getting a piece of the action on whatever ticket sales. Sundance is supposed to not just
• 38:42
  launch the films like trajectory, but also it changes your life and it launches your career in a way.
• 38:48
  That is, it's kind of, I've seen filmmakers go there with films and they went from making
• 38:54
  in new films to then, you know, directing Jurassic Park World. It's a game changer.
• 39:01
  So yeah, I like that you don't know the name of Jurassic World. That's a feather in your cap
• 39:07
  really. I love the first one, but everything after that is just a little lackluster.
• 39:13
  Don't worry, I haven't seen Jurassic World either. So you get accepted into Sundance and South
• 39:17
  by all these festivals and then what? And then I was elated and they tell you're not allowed
• 39:25
  telling you one. So the only people I told were my team and my grandma, she's really old.
• 39:29
  And my grandma had, when I started working on this project like seven years ago,
• 39:34
  I told her about it. That the next day she went out and she bought a gown because she was like,
• 39:39
  I'm going to go to the Oscars, I'm going to be your date. I was like, oh, grandma, I didn't say
• 39:45
  you're going to be my date, but I guess you do now. But she was getting older and so I wanted to
• 39:52
  tell her about it and fortunately she died right before Sundance. But yeah, she was like my biggest,
• 39:58
  cheerleader and supporter. So I told her, but everyone else had to be involved in the film. And
• 40:02
  honestly, she doesn't really know anyone in the film industry. So I figured it's not a big deal.
• 40:07
  She says people that are ever telling me home, they're probably thinking she's just like, you know,
• 40:09
  being like, like all like dementia stuff. Just as long as she just sees she's not over her,
• 40:14
  talking about the Beverly Hilton. So yeah, so we didn't really tell anyone outside the team and then
• 40:22
  Sundance made the announcement. And then the day after Sundance made the announcement,
• 40:27
  which is almost about two months before the film premiered, so about two months before anyone had
• 40:32
  actually seen the film. Yeah, the day after the announcement, the attacks started and they just
• 40:37
  continued and escalated and haven't stopped. Attacks meaning what?
• 40:44
  What the time, I didn't really know what was going on because I didn't, wasn't privy to other
• 40:48
  things that were happening behind the scenes because of my journalist. I did a deep dive into this
• 40:54
  to try to figure it out later. But basically, there were six filmmakers who kind of organized
• 41:02
  attacks against the film in a letter writing campaign and they wrote Sundance letters. And
• 41:08
  anonymously, we didn't know who these people were, but Sundance did and Sundance met with them
• 41:12
  and they heard their demands. Again, having not seen the film and they would take those demands to
• 41:16
  me and demand that I did these things. And then that one... Things like what?
• 41:23
  So one of them was they wanted me to, and this has never been done before, in the history of
• 41:31
  film festivals. And they didn't ask any other film that year to do this. But they wanted me to have
• 41:36
  the film reviewed by an ethics review board. And this would mean that there was a third party
• 41:43
  who wasn't involved in the film, who would review the film and interview me and interview my producer
• 41:48
  and look at all of our paperwork and make sure everything was on the up and up.
• 41:52
  Now, we already have lawyers that do that. So, and already for my film to go on HBO or Netflix,
• 41:58
  you have to have a lawyer vet your film and make sure you have all the right permissions and
• 42:03
  personal releases and everything's been licensed and stuff like that. And that's something we
• 42:08
  normally do. But this ethics review board was weird to me because you're basically asking someone
• 42:15
  who's never stepped foot in Saudi Arabia, who's never spent any time with these men,
• 42:19
  who knows zero about the region to basically say if your film's on the up and up or not.
• 42:25
  And I think for me, Sundance gave us six demands that was one of them to do in 48 hours,
• 42:32
  which is ridiculous. And I took that as a way of they were looking for an excuse to pull the film.
• 42:38
  They gave you 48 hours to agree to the demands or 48 hours to complete the demands.
• 42:43
  Complete the demands. And this was so that the
• 42:49
  and just to clarify, the people who were writing in saying that there's a problem with the film,
• 42:56
  they claimed that there was a problem with the film was based on what what was their problem?
• 43:00
  What did they think the ethics board needed to sign off on?
• 43:04
  So I can tell you some of the stuff that they were accusing of. And having seen the film,
• 43:06
  you're going to laugh at this. So the first thing they accused us of is making a film that was
• 43:12
  Saudi propaganda funded by the Saudis. Yeah, I can see your face. Okay. It's
• 43:18
  having seen the film. You're like, right. Okay. And then it was that the film was made by an
• 43:24
  all white film team who knew nothing about the Middle East and completely done by white supremacists
• 43:32
  and who was homophobic. Now they didn't know at the time that my executive producer is Muslim,
• 43:38
  my co-producer was Muslim, our assistant editor was Muslim, and we worked with two Islamic scholars
• 43:42
  and a mom. And then it was the men didn't give consent. They were forced to do this. They didn't
• 43:50
  know that I interviewed over 150 of these guys and only, you know, 12 of them were interested
• 43:55
  in doing the project. And if you'd watched the film, you see one person leave halfway through.
• 43:59
  So clearly they were free to leave anytime. And then another one was that the film put the
• 44:05
  men's life in danger and they're going to be killed if this film was ever seized the white
• 44:08
  today. And it was a safety issue. Again, they don't know how Saudi Arabia works and never been there
• 44:15
  and never contacted these men. And so it was basically throwing just everything at the wall
• 44:20
  and accusing the film of everything just to try to get it, you know, blacklisted. And they were
• 44:25
  successful. And were these fellow filmmakers or well-meaning activists? Well,
• 44:32
  they were, at the time I didn't know who they were, but later on they are, they are all,
• 44:36
  there was six documentary filmmakers who were Muslim and they started this whole campaign
• 44:42
  and they applied to Sundance and not gotten in. And that was also an issue that they took up
• 44:47
  with Sundance. How come your program in her film? She's not Muslim. She's not Arab. She shouldn't
• 44:52
  be telling the stories. You should be programming our films, which I understand that. But again,
• 44:55
  I'm not Sundance and I didn't choose these films. And so I think that there, I am very for
• 45:03
  inclusivity and different representations being platformed. However, I am staunchly against
• 45:11
  like exclusion, meaning only I as a woman can tell stories about women. You as a man,
• 45:18
  should I even be allowed to interview women? Because what do you know about being a woman?
• 45:22
  Like I completely disagree with that kind of stance. I know that there are people in the
• 45:25
  documentary world who subscribe to that. I do not. Because I think that would negate all of
• 45:30
  journalism, basically. That means that if you're someone who isn't Jewish, you can't really
• 45:35
  understand the Holocaust. I think we're all human beings. And the shared life experiences that we
• 45:43
  have goes far beyond the boxes that you might check on some census, like your race, your ethnicity,
• 45:50
  your sex. And what I mean by that is I interviewed a lot of these guys. And on paper, we had
• 45:56
  absolutely nothing in common. You know, so one of the guys I clicked with right away, not her.
• 46:03
  I remember one of the first times I interviewed him. He was telling me stories of things that he did
• 46:10
  and things that were done to him. And these were pretty horrific things.
• 46:14
  But he was doing this kind of through all of like bouts of uncontrolled laughter and through
• 46:19
  off-color jokes. Now, what you have to understand is in your firefighter, you see a lot of horrific
• 46:25
  shit. And you kind of have to find a way to process it and to decompress and to move on to go
• 46:32
  the next call. And how firefighters or at least the ones that I worked with chose to do that
• 46:38
  was through humor. And like really dark, very politically, I'm correct humor that if I think
• 46:44
  if anyone heard it, we'd probably get fired. But it helped you get through the day. And I hadn't
• 46:51
  really ever seen that kind of humor outside of firefighters and then military folks who'd seen
• 46:57
  combat. But other than that, I really hadn't ever witnessed that kind of really dark sense of
• 47:03
  humor until I met Nauter. And I remember being the room and hearing these jokes that he would tell.
• 47:11
  And this is like, I remember when the first things he said to me is like, Meg, you should go on
• 47:15
  the Guantanamo diet. You learned 40, you lose 40 pound in one month. Be good for you. And I'm like,
• 47:20
  he's talking about going on a Congress strike. Yeah. No, I mean, like, I am like the most out of shape
• 47:25
  I've ever been. They have like the, they have like the the the freshman 15. This is like the
• 47:30
  canceled 35. It's just like, it's not a good, it's not being canceled sucks for your body.
• 47:35
  But yeah. So, so we're in this room. And at the time, there was other men in the room.
• 47:40
  There was other Arabs and Muslims in the room. And I remember talking afterwards. And they all
• 47:45
  believed that Nauter was some kind of psychopath because he was laughing at this stuff. And I,
• 47:52
  I knew better. I knew that that wasn't true because I saw that that kind of humor came from a
• 47:58
  place of kind of processing, like really going through the shit, going through really intense stuff.
• 48:04
  Yeah. And so there was that connection that we had. And like, I would tell joke. And then he
• 48:08
  would tell them back. And then we just like made each other laugh over our shared love of an
• 48:12
  appropriate humor. And you know, found this connection, this human connection that they don't have.
• 48:18
  It's not you can't check this on some box of like a survey of like, I Muslim, I'm Arab, I'm a woman.
• 48:23
  Like on paper, he was a 44 year old Muslim Arab man and an ex al-Qaeda member. I was a 36 year
• 48:31
  old American ex firefighter and a woman. And again, on paper, nothing in common. But human beings
• 48:39
  are so much more than what you'd see on like some boxes and some senses.
• 48:44
  Also, I mean, yeah, as you say, like what would it do to the creative arts and to journalism if
• 48:49
  we took the narrowest possible interpretation of who can explore what story. So I mean,
• 48:54
  I encountered this, of course, all the time being a radio host where we try to be as diverse as
• 48:59
  possible in the people we speak to. But yeah. And of course, if you were talking about if I wanted to
• 49:05
  do a story in which I wanted to understand what it's like to be a firefighter, then I need to talk
• 49:11
  to a firefighter, right? You know, and if I want to do a story about what it's like to be a female
• 49:15
  firefighter, then I need to speak to a female firefighter. But if I want to do a story about the
• 49:20
  appropriate number of firefighters that they're ought to be in Australia or how we're going to fund
• 49:26
  firefighting or so on, then you don't actually have to necessarily speak to a firefighter. And if I
• 49:30
  want to do a story about the history of Belgium, I don't necessarily need to speak to a Belgian person.
• 49:35
  And increasingly, there is an assumption that you actually do need to speak to a Belgian person.
• 49:39
  If you're talking about Belgium, you know, this happens all the time also. And like, you know,
• 49:44
  you're about to get cancelled in Belgium. Oh, yeah. Exactly. That's right. The Belgians will hate me.
• 49:49
  You know, this happens all the time in novels as well. People will say, you know, why you publishing
• 49:54
  this novel that is supposed to be from a migrant experience or a transgender experience or
• 49:59
  a gay experience. Did you read that article in the New York Times about American dirt and what
• 50:04
  happened to that? Yeah. American dirt's a good example, right? I mean, this is a, which I still
• 50:09
  want to read because my mom tells me it's a fantastic book. And she thought, I told her, you know,
• 50:13
  you're not supposed to read that, mom. That's been cancelled because it was what wasn't written by
• 50:16
  it. And she was like, oh, fuck that. What a load of bullshit. It's a great book.
• 50:22
  Nonetheless, you know, when people say, well, why was that book published instead of
• 50:28
  the, all of these other books that were written by people who come from that community?
• 50:33
  I mean, the only legit answer is the people from that community should have written that book.
• 50:37
  They didn't write that book. And the other Muslim filmmakers didn't make your film.
• 50:42
  If they wanted to get accepted to Sundance, they should have made your film.
• 50:45
  Because on its merits, that's the one that was regarded as being the best one for Sundance in the
• 50:51
  opinion of the people who judge such things, namely the judges at Sundance. I mean, it is a bit
• 50:57
  and I can understand like we are Muslim filmmakers and we don't get our stories told. And here's
• 51:03
  this woman who's not a Muslim who's focusing on jihad and terrorism. And she does get amplified.
• 51:10
  Why don't we get amplified? Maybe the films weren't as good.
• 51:15
  Well, I think that, so I always like to be fair with people and give people a benefit of the doubt.
• 51:21
  And I think that there are some really great films out there that are made by Arabs and
• 51:28
  and and different people and different ethnicities and different religions. And I will say
• 51:34
  that there is a propensity on certain subject matters to kind of cover a subject over and over
• 51:41
  and over again. For example, they are correct when they say there is a disproportionate number
• 51:47
  of films made about Muslims that are only about terrorism. That's true. And I think that if there
• 51:53
  was a more diverse catalog that was available to a broader populace and not just like these niche
• 52:00
  film festivals that have these stories at, then I think that I wouldn't have had to go to
• 52:05
  Afghanistan after 9-11 to try to find some answers. I mean, I would push back on that a bit.
• 52:10
  I think if you're if you're including in the in the cohort of films, fictional movies,
• 52:15
  then that's absolutely true. Yeah. But if you're talking about long form journalism, then I think
• 52:20
  there is actually the reverse bias. I think there's an overwhelming desire at least among
• 52:26
  my colleagues in the media to make sure that any stories that you do about Muslims are that
• 52:32
  you're bending over backwards to make it clear that Muslim that Islam is a peace loving religion
• 52:37
  that it is a, you know, that has nothing to do with jihad. That is fundamental to almost every
• 52:42
  long form news piece that's been done about Islam in the past 10 years. I'm not I'm specifically
• 52:47
  referring to like fiction films because that's no offense. And this is to put myself in this category
• 52:53
  but most people don't. Unfortunately, in America, a lot of people get their facts and stuff
• 52:58
  from Hollywood movies. Of course, but Sundance was judging a documentary category. That's true.
• 53:02
  I think that like I think that the the mom that has been helping us on the film, he came to one
• 53:10
  of the screenings and this is how he met. So when you're when you're editing a documentary film,
• 53:14
  you do screenings along the way to make sure that what you're kind of editing and your the story
• 53:20
  structures making sense and what you want to come through is coming through and so you do kind
• 53:23
  of like these test screenings and get people's feedbacks and he came to one and he told me afterwards
• 53:28
  he said, you know, when I heard there was going to be a film about your film, I thought not another
• 53:34
  film about terrorism and jihadism like you don't need any more of these. He's like, but then I saw
• 53:39
  your film and I thought, if you're going to watch one film about terrorism, this is all my
• 53:44
  everyone to watch. Incredibly humanizing. So at the risk of, you know, drawing this out too long,
• 53:51
  I know you've rehashed this a million times and you probably don't really live it endlessly,
• 53:55
  but suffice it to say one of the things that sticks in once-craw the most about all this is that
• 54:00
  not only was there a campaign from outside the film to cancel the film and for it to be pulled
• 54:05
  from Sundance and not only was Sundance cowardly enough to capitulate to that campaign seemingly,
• 54:10
  but then people who'd worked with you on the film started distancing themselves from it and
• 54:15
  saying that that was the hardest part. That was the hardest part because like, so one of our executive
• 54:23
  producers on the film was this woman named Abigail Disney who like for the first, what you have to
• 54:28
  understand is it's really hard to raise funding for an independent documentary in general,
• 54:34
  but if you're a woman trying to raise money for a film that you're doing where you're going to
• 54:38
  go to Saudi Arabia to like try to understand terrorists on a human level, it's near fucking
• 54:43
  impossible. No one wants to give you money. No one wants to give you money. So you're able to get
• 54:47
  little like two thousand, three thousand, five thousand here and there and then the first big
• 54:52
  investor we had was Abigail Disney and she was great. She came in at just such a quintessential
• 54:57
  time and allowed me to go over and film for a long period of time and she was such a huge support
• 55:05
  of the film and she would reach out to other people that she knew that how we're high-worth
• 55:09
  individuals and connecting with me and it was she was such a strong support of the film and she'd
• 55:14
  seen multiple cuts and she was super like like really enthusiastic and gave just really great
• 55:20
  notes and it was really really supportive of both me and the film and over those four years we kind
• 55:25
  of developed a friendship and yeah when the tax first happened she was you know pretty supportive
• 55:37
  but then when they kind of reached their apex and what I mean by that is when the film premiered
• 55:43
  at Sundance it just escalated the attacks because what happened was they took screenshots of our
• 55:49
  credits and then reached out to people in our credits who were in the film industry and kind of
• 55:54
  threatened them and said if you don't take your name off the film we're going to call you out
• 55:58
  as an Islamophobe or white supremacist and we went from having 400 people in our credits to 400
• 56:04
  or 400 people in our credits to 40 and so that was hard I had people call me up saying like I love
• 56:12
  you I love the film but I'm scared I'm going to lose my job so please take my name off the film
• 56:16
  and those people I totally respect it I'm like okay I don't want you to lose your job over having
• 56:20
  your name in our credits but then there was people and that was all done privately but then there
• 56:25
  was someone like Abigail Disney who not only did they like you know call people in our credits but
• 56:32
  they also like started dragging the more well-known people on Twitter and so that was Abigail Disney
• 56:38
  and then once that start that started happening things deteriorated quite quickly and a person
• 56:43
  that I'd had like I would call her and just talk to her right away and email her she'd email her
• 56:49
  email right back and a person I'd had their relationship with for four years all of a sudden
• 56:55
  I had her assistants send me an email saying take Abigail's name off the film we no longer want to be
• 56:59
  associated with this in a way shape or form and then I reached out to Abigail Disney and she didn't
• 57:04
  call my emails or my calls or my text or anything and she pretty much ghosted me and in the beginning
• 57:11
  and this is before the apology and the beginning I was really upset with with her because I thought
• 57:15
  men we've been working together on this film for four years and like what a way to treat someone
• 57:22
  that you get gotten to know on a human level just to completely ghost them when they're going
• 57:26
  through this shit storm and not to like stick by them and then I went to my best friend who was
• 57:32
  the best sounding board kind of I think it's really important to have people in your life that
• 57:37
  call you on your shit and she's one of them and she said it's not fair for you to say that
• 57:41
  I was like what are you talking about she completely abandoned me in the film and then she said
• 57:45
  this to me she said not everyone is wired like you you are extremely good when it comes to
• 57:52
  like high stakes high like chaotic situations that's where you thrive that's why you were a good
• 57:58
  firefighter that's why you're really good at places like small and Afghanistan that's what you do
• 58:04
  you cannot expect other people to respond the same way as you do like not everyone's going to
• 58:09
  keep cool when shit hits the fan she said just give her some time and some space and let cooler
• 58:16
  heads prevail and eventually she'll see a lot of day and she'll come back to the film because
• 58:20
  this was all private at this point I was like shit you're you're right I think it's sometimes
• 58:26
  you know you expect other people to behave in a certain way and then you forget that not everyone's
• 58:31
  wired in that same way and so I kind of gave her some space and I stopped emailing her and stopped
• 58:36
  trying to reach out to her and then I think a couple weeks a couple of months later she issued
• 58:43
  a statement she put out in public that completely denounced me in the film and when you have
• 58:50
  somewhere like Sundance program a film and play it and then right after apologize for the film not
• 58:57
  once but twice and then you have the executive producer of that film that's what Sundance did play
• 59:02
  the film they they played the film they they wavered quite a bit and then they eventually they
• 59:07
  played it and then as soon as they played it they apologized for doing so and when some when
• 59:11
  when an entity is well respected as Sundance apologizes for your film that's like that's like the
• 59:16
  death blow and then Abigail Disney who was an executive producer on the film when she denounces it
• 59:20
  publicly that's the nail in the coffin and it pretty much killed the film in any chance it had
• 59:25
  a distribution or playing at any festivals or just ever seen the light of day and it pretty much
• 59:30
  just it killed the film and it killed my career in all one go and yeah it was hard it was really
• 59:38
  really hard to to know Sundance was one thing but I Abigail Disney knew how hard it was to make this
• 59:44
  film because we had talked for years over it and so that was really really hard pill to swallow
• 59:52
  wanted her let it announcing the film say about the film um that the film landed like a
• 1:00:00
  truckload of hate and that she was sorry that it perpetuated negative stereotypes and she pretty
• 1:00:07
  much apologized for the film and denounced it as this this piece of work that just perpetuated
• 1:00:14
  hate on the Muslim community which if you see the film it's like the opposite I mean it's such an
• 1:00:21
  interesting you it's so interesting it for you it's a it's unfortunate that this has happened to
• 1:00:25
  you but it's also very interesting as someone who is a reporter and a storyteller from your
• 1:00:31
  perspective to be at the eye of a phenomenon that's so widespread at the moment I mean we hear
• 1:00:37
  punchline arguments in the culture wars about cancel culture and about mob behavior and the
• 1:00:45
  your most people are tangentially aware of the the capacity that we have at the moment to all
• 1:00:51
  pile on yeah and to publicly shame people and to get you know get the pitch forks out and the
• 1:00:57
  flaming tortures and go running through the streets like that's a phenomenon that we're aware of
• 1:01:02
  and you've actually seen the mob form yeah and you've seen people who had the opportunity to stand
• 1:01:08
  up to it not not and fail and I wonder whether that's giving you any more insights and is this
• 1:01:13
  fodder for another film you just saw me there'll be there's some other maybe look maybe and
• 1:01:19
  are there any I mean are there similarities between the you know the unthinking mob group dynamic
• 1:01:24
  of the jihadists and you know the they are also people who got swept up I'm glad
• 1:01:30
  in a movement right I'm glad you asked me that so a couple things well two things I'm gonna
• 1:01:35
  I'm gonna forget the second one so just ask me about Monica Winsky and Tuesday after I finish
• 1:01:40
  the story but basically you know I spent so much time with men who over like over five years
• 1:01:49
  of men who ascribed to a certain ideology right so you're either this type of salafi Muslim
• 1:01:55
  you either believe these specific things and if you deviate from that just a little bit
• 1:02:01
  then you're not a real Muslim and you're an infidel and you can be targeted and then I come back
• 1:02:07
  to my home country and I experience something that is very a different iteration but a similar kind
• 1:02:12
  of an ideology in terms of its extremism to where it's like you're either this type of liberal
• 1:02:19
  you believe these specific things and if you deviate just a little bit from that then you're not a
• 1:02:25
  real liberal then you're sexist or you're homophobic or you're racist and you can be targeted
• 1:02:30
  and it's really as someone who has spent a lot of time with men and has seen what an ideology can
• 1:02:39
  do if you let it just go to its natural fruition to see that in my home country is really alarming
• 1:02:46
  and I think that to be completely honest and I think I try to be anyway I was completely naive
• 1:02:56
  about how bad things had gotten and even after it happened to me I didn't realize how widespread it
• 1:03:01
  was because up until this happened the only things that I ever heard about was like the controversy
• 1:03:10
  over Dave Chappelle and Netflix or Joe Rogan or Louis CK and even though getting having the mob
• 1:03:19
  come after you and having friends turning you is like emotionally and just intellectually just
• 1:03:26
  wreaks habit on you habit on you those guys are not going to be homeless because of this they're
• 1:03:31
  still going to have a career they're still going to be able to pay the bills and I just thought
• 1:03:37
  at that point that getting canceled only happened to super famous people and when it happened to me
• 1:03:47
  I didn't I still didn't think that this was something that was really right but I just thought I
• 1:03:51
  was pretty unlucky to have been the eye of this storm and it happened because you know famous
• 1:03:57
  Sundance is a famous film festival and so I just kind of got the the iron but then
• 1:04:03
  after the New York so there was a New York time space yeah written about it and after the New York
• 1:04:08
  time space came out I was contacted by a lot of people animators journalists filmmakers
• 1:04:16
  documentarians illustrators that said the same thing they also the same thing they said oh my god
• 1:04:22
  the exact same thing happened to me but these are all people that I had never heard about before
• 1:04:27
  because they weren't at that Dave Chappelle level so their work and their career just evaporated
• 1:04:31
  into the ether and I had never heard about it of course and I mean you're also the 1% on the
• 1:04:38
  tip of the iceberg on the 99% of people who shy away from making that movie in the first place
• 1:04:43
  because they've seen the lesson that needs to be taken away from touching subjects like this I mean
• 1:04:47
  this is something I'm always you know walking along a tightrope of as well working for a public
• 1:04:52
  broadcaster and having to you know maintain I mean always being susceptible every single day to
• 1:04:58
  accusation to cancellation and to accusations of some form of white supremacy or mansplaining or
• 1:05:04
  whatever it might it might be and the you know if we were in a different era if it was the 1950s in
• 1:05:09
  America it would be communism and it would be McCarthy it just so happens that at the moment there's
• 1:05:13
  a particular cohort which has the certainty the moral certainty and that and wields it quite viciously
• 1:05:19
  but you don't even have to get to the point at which you've gotten to nonetheless be impacted by this
• 1:05:23
  because there's a whole ocean of other people who see your story and go fuck I'm not gonna
• 1:05:27
  take on an issue that is really that's the thing that I think that a lot of people don't realize
• 1:05:33
  because it's not just and this is why I think Sundance didn't realize and still hasn't realized
• 1:05:38
  is when they apologize for my film and when Abigail Disney to announce my film and when
• 1:05:44
  son and when and when South by and all the other film festivals pulled it right after the apology
• 1:05:50
  you're rewarding bad behavior and what I mean by that is so once you are able to establish a
• 1:05:58
  precedent that if you make enough noise you can silence films you can silence books you can
• 1:06:03
  silence people then that gets more of that behavior and also it spreads fear and what I mean by
• 1:06:10
  that is I had a friend of mine who was working on a documentary in the deep south about a funeral
• 1:06:17
  home who there was a local hospital where there was a lot of bodies of young black men who were gay
• 1:06:22
  who died of AIDS in their family to sell them and the hospital would dispose of the bodies like
• 1:06:27
  medical waste but this funeral home decided to take it upon itself and give all these men a
• 1:06:31
  proper burial and so they had a headstone in a place that eventually their families did want to
• 1:06:37
  come visit it was there and he was working on this film for about six months and he was gay but he
• 1:06:43
  was white and then he saw what happened to me and he stopped filming the film and that's a story
• 1:06:50
  that will never be told because he was scared because he was not black and he was telling a story
• 1:06:56
  of a population that he wasn't on part of that he would be targeted and he basically was just like
• 1:07:02
  I don't want to lose my career over this and so it's not the stories that you hear that get cancelled
• 1:07:06
  it's the ones that never get told because of the fear yeah it's the hecklers veto basically
• 1:07:12
  right I mean whoever shouts loudest gets to dictate what the contours of our conversation are
• 1:07:17
  with the funny funny odd thing about that is that the other area in which there's a hecklers
• 1:07:21
  veto is jihadism in the sense that the Charlie Hebdo cartoons for example you know the when they
• 1:07:27
  shot up the Danish newspaper the reason why you don't see images of the prophet I mean the someone
• 1:07:35
  university thing as well I mean I mean that that story make it a no no what's what happened there
• 1:07:40
  there was a university I think it's called a hemline university and there was a professor teaching
• 1:07:46
  art history and religious art history and she had I guess in her syllabus she had a day or
• 1:07:55
  a couple classes that they were going to go over Islamic art and there was a 14th century painting
• 1:08:02
  that was commissioned by Muslim king in celebration of the prophet Muhammad and it was a painting
• 1:08:08
  of the prophet Muhammad and she in the syllabus said you know if anyone and feels uncomfortable you
• 1:08:14
  don't have to come that day she gave all the proper trigger warnings anyway she showed the
• 1:08:19
  painting in her class in all the historical context and then she wind up getting fired because
• 1:08:24
  some students complained right that's a better outcome than the French primary school teacher who
• 1:08:29
  got beheaded for doing a class about blasphemy and free speech in France obviously not beheaded
• 1:08:36
  by the French authorities beheaded by a terrorist but you know that that just to make the
• 1:08:43
  analogy that I'm drawing perfectly explicit and politically incorrect the the behavior of people who
• 1:08:48
  try to punish you for telling the stories of these men is just a peaceful nonviolent way of doing
• 1:08:58
  functionally the same hecklers veto of pulling off the same hecklers veto as the people who blow up
• 1:09:04
  a newspaper for publishing images of the Muhammad or behead somebody for a teaching a class
• 1:09:11
  about blasphemy it's basically saying you don't you don't have the right to have conversations about
• 1:09:16
  this for whatever reason yeah we're gonna make life intolerable for people who do have conversations
• 1:09:22
  about this and when we don't stand up to that we become complicit in enforcing the hecklers veto
• 1:09:30
  I mean one sense that I had after Charlie Hebdo was that every newspaper in the world should have
• 1:09:34
  published the cartoons on the front page of the paper even though I think they were probably
• 1:09:38
  tasteless and probably unwise and they were probably too insulting and you know I understood
• 1:09:43
  the offense court but you have to have a cartel to stay you have to have a sort of cartel of freedom
• 1:09:48
  to stand up in these cases what was interesting is like you know I told you that the film got in
• 1:09:53
  all these film festivals and then once I'm sorry to apologize for it got pulled from all the rest
• 1:09:58
  except for one so there was one film festival that did not pull the film and they were the only
• 1:10:04
  ones to play it and that was a new film festival in New Zealand of all places called Doc Edge
• 1:10:10
  and they played it and it was the first time I got to see on the big screen with a live audience
• 1:10:14
  and I can't tell you how like emotional I got I mean I'd seen the film like a thousand times
• 1:10:18
  but when I saw it from a live audience I heard people laugh and cry it was just it was on my birthday
• 1:10:23
  too so it was really it was really emotional but I remember going up to the director of the
• 1:10:28
  festival afterwards and I asked them I'm like Alex like why didn't you pull the film well all
• 1:10:33
  these like South by Southwest is a huge fucking festival with countless resources and industry
• 1:10:39
  influence and you are this like no offense but you're a small documentary film festival in New
• 1:10:44
  Zealand on the other side of the world like why didn't you pull the film when everyone else did
• 1:10:48
  and he told me this story that really kind of affect like just really touched me and he said you
• 1:10:54
  know because we know it happens when you reward bad behavior and apparently a couple years before
• 1:11:01
  because he said we've been down this road before a couple years before my film played there there
• 1:11:05
  was a film that people assumed they thought they knew it was about and there was a group of people
• 1:11:10
  that started protesting it and they're harassing the staff the festival and they would start this
• 1:11:15
  whole like email campaign where they were telling people to boycott the festival and harassing
• 1:11:20
  volunteers and showing up the office like it got in real life kind of scary and the festival
• 1:11:25
  refused to pull the film and then the day it was supposed to appear at this cinema and I think
• 1:11:31
  Auckland the group that was attacking the film and harassing the film festival built a fake bomb
• 1:11:38
  with a timer and put it in the cinema and then that caused the bomb squad and the special forces
• 1:11:47
  to be called in and all the audience was told that there was a bomb in the building and they were
• 1:11:51
  all terrified and everyone evacuated and they found it with this timer on it and it wound up being
• 1:11:58
  fake but the the festival didn't not play it they just played it a different day and I think that
• 1:12:05
  like Alex said like if we had capitulated to that then it just would have gotten worse and worse
• 1:12:12
  and it would have been any film that someone had a problem with they would we would be handing
• 1:12:18
  them the playbook on what to do if you want to get that film blacklisted and I think kudos to them
• 1:12:24
  and so so one of the reasons I'm back on this southern hemisphere is I was very again one of the
• 1:12:33
  few lucky ones that had the story kind of talked about in huge publication like The New York Times
• 1:12:37
  and right after that I had a lot of people reach out say me like this happened to me too but I
• 1:12:43
  also had a lot of people reach out and say oh my god you know your story is you know really heart
• 1:12:48
  wrenching I want to help you what can I do like do you have a go fund me I'm like I don't but maybe
• 1:12:52
  I should make one and then I did but it was after the it was after The New York Times Peace dropped
• 1:12:57
  and so that kind of the forever had dined down and I made this go fund me and I think we raised like
• 1:13:01
  $3,000 which in the self-distribution world is maybe enough to like get a poster made yeah it's
• 1:13:07
  about it yeah um but then I went on Sam Harris podcast and he was generous enough to put it up
• 1:13:14
  without a paywall and the interview kind of went viral and the go fund may went from 3000 to three
• 1:13:23
  quarters of a million in a couple weeks and from people all over the globe and a disproportionate
• 1:13:29
  number were actually from Australia that that kind of donated and so I wanted to bring the film
• 1:13:34
  over here to say like thanks for doing this this is amazing but I I stopped off on New Zealand because
• 1:13:41
  I I believe in not rewarding bad behavior but I also believe in rewarding good behavior
• 1:13:47
  so I rented out this huge like 700 seat theater in Auckland and played the film there
• 1:13:54
  it was a packed house got a standing ovation but all the 100% of the ticket sales I donated to
• 1:13:59
  Doc Edge Film Festival because I was like you guys did something good and you should be rewarded for
• 1:14:04
  that so here yeah now they're they're awesome fantastic good for them yeah and good for Sam Sam has
• 1:14:09
  lots of fans here and we love him um you but I want to let you go but you said to remind you about
• 1:14:15
  Monica Lewinsky oh yes yeah so the funny thing is is that as I've been going through this whole
• 1:14:22
  process I've I've never thought this much about one person but I've been thinking a lot about
• 1:14:26
  Monica Lewinsky because I remember in 1998 I was a senior in high school and I remember hearing
• 1:14:33
  the story and at the time what was in the news and the narrative that was being kind of
• 1:14:40
  perpet like all over the mainstream media was that this was a dumb bimbo that you know
• 1:14:46
  seduce the president and you know took advantage of this man and you know she's a horrible person
• 1:14:54
  and I believe that and I believed 100% that that's who that person was and that's what it happened
• 1:15:01
  and then fast forward 15 20 years I think I saw her give a TED talk and far from being this like
• 1:15:10
  dumb bimbo this was this very introspective witty self-reflexive articulate woman who was such an
• 1:15:19
  impressive human being and I realized that I had judged this person without ever meeting them
• 1:15:26
  or knowing anything about them I just heard through you know other people's opinions and other
• 1:15:31
  people's filter and what was really interesting about the Sam Harris podcast was it was a first time
• 1:15:37
  I got to tell my side of the story like unfiltered not through a journalist kind of using quotes in
• 1:15:43
  in a in a story and I think that there's a lot of power and be able to speak to people directly
• 1:15:50
  which is what the film is about right you have these men who for 20 years their stories have been
• 1:15:56
  redacted and you've never heard directly from them and this is their chance to talk directly to
• 1:16:02
  and there's power and the having that human connection between people and be able to have
• 1:16:08
  difficult conversations and nuanced conversations but in a humane and complex way and I think that
• 1:16:18
  you know the day before sundance announcement if you googled my name you'd probably get makes maker
• 1:16:26
  firefighter Stanford kidnapped whatever and then the day after you get makes maker white supremacist
• 1:16:34
  Islamaphob and it's a really weird experience to have your complete identity kind of be hijacked and
• 1:16:44
  then be taken over and be projected as kind of the opposite of what you are and having zero control
• 1:16:52
  over that and I just feel like this whole experience has taught me about like you know there's
• 1:17:00
  only there are only two ways to go through life you can go through life in a state of judgment
• 1:17:07
  or a state of curiosity and I can hear a story and just complete judges person and that's easy
• 1:17:13
  to do the harder thing though is to keep an open mind and try to be curious about someone and I think
• 1:17:19
  this is kind of re instilled in me that I need to be better about being curious about the world
• 1:17:26
  and being curious about people rather than you know just judging them off a sound bite or 20-second
• 1:17:31
  clip I see on YouTube or all that kind of stuff. Well fantastic I think you're doing it and hopefully
• 1:17:38
  we're helping by having uncomfortable conversations from time to time it's lovely to have you on
• 1:17:42
  the show thanks to one of many of you. Oh I should say we're I think this is gonna this is gonna air
• 1:17:47
  when it's not what it's online correct. Absolutely. So with a film hopefully the time you hear
• 1:17:51
  this will be online and so you can see it for yourself and make up your own mind and if you
• 1:17:55
  watch it and you hate it that's fine at least you've watched it just watch it first before you hate
• 1:17:59
  it. Absolutely. Yeah but you'll be able to watch it on gheadrehab.com and hopefully it will be
• 1:18:04
  available pretty soon and yeah watch it and let me know what you think and if you if you like it
• 1:18:10
  and you think Sundance did wrong by it you should probably reach out to them and let them know.
• 1:18:14
  How about that? How about that Sundance? I love it. Thank you.