How to HACK Your HATE with Daryl Davis (The Jazz Musician Who Defeated the KKK) : 1234

I'm the only black participant in this parade. And people are waving and cheering and smiling until we got to a certain point along this parade route when suddenly I'm getting hit. I still didn't realize I was the target. It wasn't until my den mother, my Cubmaster, my troop leader huddled over me and quickly escorted me out of the danger. He held my hand in his hand, shaking it. He says, Mr. Davis, it is in the interest of the black people to be a strong race. And you cannot be a strong race unless you are a pure race. He says, you know, black people are born, you know, with a gene that makes them violent. And I said, we all know that all white people have a gene within them that makes them a serial killer.

The first time you walked in and sat down with someone from the kkk.

What did it feel like?

You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Our guest today repeats some of the things the KKK said to him.

And frankly, they are not very nice.

If this is going to be a problem for you or anyone listening with you, be warned. Sitting here in a studio in Washington, D.C. with Daryl Davis, Daryl is one of the most unusual human beings I've come across. A jazz musician, a black man, who just so happened to convert 200 Klu Klux Klan members to no longer be in the Klan. He's been a guest a couple times on the Joe Rogan show, and I've.

Been on there three times, so we have that in common.

And he's lived a life that is astounding. And I want to share with you how he thinks and just to hear some stories of how he's achieved something that sounds impossible. One of the things I've learned over the years is that if you want to change someone's mind, going in logically doesn't really work because our operating systems are designed for us to not want to change our reality. So these logical arguments end up basically with low carb guys thumping their chests or vegans yelling at each other, or keto people saying, I'm more keto than you. And we get stuck in these cognitive areas. For me to start the biohacking movement, I had to break my paradigm of food, of hunger, of how much control I had over my brain, over my body, over my nervous system. And it was a lot of change. And I found that I couldn't tell people what to eat, but I could show them, and that most of the way we influence other people comes from the unconscious or from the things that are not the words we say. And if you'd like to learn more about that, the episode with Robert Cialdini, who wrote the famous book Influence, is a way to just understand how much is going on that you don't see. So we're going to learn from Darrel how he did this, and you are going to be blown away. Darrell Davis, it's a great honor to be sitting here with you today.

It's my pleasure and honor. Thank you, Dave, for having me.

How was that intro? Are you a jazz musician first? Are you the guy who changes people's minds? How do you like?

Well, when you said that I was one of the most unusual people, I thought you said, oh, he has six arms and three eyes and all that stuff. No, you know, yes, I. I am a musician first, but. But ultimately I'm a human being, and I've learned to recognize everyone as human beings. Perhaps I have had some experiences that many people have not had, but still, we all have certain things in common that we all can relate to. But believe it or not, what made.

You reach out to the kkk?

Okay, well, in order to get there, you have to understand my background. I'm. I'm age 66, and I was the child of parents in the U.S. foreign Service. I began traveling around the world at the age of three in 1961. I was born in 58, and my first exposure to school was overseas. So as an American Embassy kid, you know, you get assigned to a country for two years, and at the end of the assignment, you return back home here to the States. You're here for maybe a year, and then you get reassigned abroad again for two years. So back and forth, back and forth. My first introduction to school was kindergarten, which was overseas. I did kindergarten, first grade, third grade, fifth grade, seventh grade, all in different schools in different countries. Now, the schools over there, my classmates were from all over the world because anybody who had an embassy where we were stationed with our American Embassy or all of their kids went to the same school. So this little girl here might be from Nigeria, this person here from Japan, that boy there from Czechoslovakia or Italy, Russia, you name it. All those embassy kids were all in my school. That being my first introduction to school became what my baseline for school was supposed to be. And the term multicultural did not even exist back then. You know, to me, it was just the norm. That's all it was a bunch of us kids, we played together, we worked together. We didn't look alike, maybe we didn't have the same languages. We didn't Worship, you know, the same way, perhaps. But we all played, worked, and had slumber parties together. Right at the end of the two years, I would come back home here, and I would either be in all black schools or black and white schools, meaning the still segregated or the newly integrated. And just because desegregation was passed by the Supreme Court in 1954, four years before I was born, schools did not integrate overnight. It took years. And even right now, in 2024, we're still battling integration in some parts of this country. So one time I came back, 1968, and I was going to one of these newly integrated schools. Two black kids in the whole school. Myself in fourth grade at the age of 10, and a little black girl in second grade. So consequently, you know, all of my friends were fourth and fifth graders, and they all were white. Several of my male friends were members of the Cub Scouts, and they invited me to join. So I joined the Cub Scouts, you know, did a lot of fun things. And we had a parade in which other organizations were participating. Girl Scouts, Brownies, Boy Scouts, 4H Club, and different organizations. And the streets were blocked off. Sidewalks were lined with nothing but white people. This is 1968, and here I am with my Cub Scout troop. I'm the only black participant in this parade. And people are waving and cheering and smiling until we got to a certain point along this parade route when suddenly I'm getting hit with bottles and soda pop cans and small debris from the street by just a small group of spectators, maybe four or five, mixing with a larger crowd off to my right on the sidewalk. I turned to see what was hitting me. I see these people, you know, throwing things and yelling. I couldn't hear what they were saying because there was, like, a marching band and all kinds of noise going on, but they were throwing things. And I still didn't realize I was the target. Oh, wow. You know, because I never had any precedent for this. I'm just assuming, oh, you know, these people over here, you know, they don't like the scouts, you know, 10. I was 10. And I'm trying to figure out, why don't they like the Scouts? You know, maybe their kid didn't make the cut or something. You know, I had every excuse for the right. Excuse me. And I'm thinking, they're targeting the Cub Scouts. It wasn't until my den mother, my Cub master, my troop leader, all came running back. These are white people. And huddled over me and quickly escorted me out of the danger. And I kept saying, what did I do? I didn't do anything to them. Why are they doing this? And all they would do is kind of shush me and rush me along, tell me to keep moving, keep moving, everything would be okay, you know, I kept moving. And fortunately they didn't follow us. So, yeah, the danger had passed. And by the end of the parade, I still didn't have an answer. And so I went home and my mom and dad, who were not at the parade, were putting red sticky stuff, used to call it Mercurochrome and band aids on me and asked me, how did you trip and fall down and get all scraped up? I told them I didn't trip and fall down. Told them what happened. And for the first time in my life, my mom and dad sat me down and explained to me what racism was. Now, you see, I'm an only child. I didn't have older brothers and sisters to learn from their experiences. My mom and dad were my source of information and they never lied to me. But on this day in 1968, when they told me why I was being hit with these projectiles, I did not believe them. For the first time in my life, it made no sense. My 10 year old brain could not process the idea that someone who had never seen me, never spoken to me, knew nothing about me, would want to inflict pain upon me for no other reason than this, the color of my skin. And to further prove that they were wrong and I was right, was the fact that the people over here on the sidewalk doing this did not look any different than my fellow scouts or my schoolmates or for that matter, my friends overseas, where whether they were my friends from the American Embassy or my little French or Danish or Swedish or Australian friends, for that matter. So color had nothing to do with it. My parents kept assuring me, you know, Again, this is 1968. And sure enough, I learned very quickly that was a very turbulent year. On April 4th of that year, Martin Luther King was assassinated. And every major city in this country, including where we were living at the time, burned to the ground with violence and racial animosity and all this kind of stuff. So I learned that my parents, you know, had told me the truth. And I accepted the fact that this thing I'd never heard of called racism because it wasn't in my sphere, existed. But what I didn't understand was why. And at the age of 10, I formed a question in my mind which was, how can you hate me when you don't even know me? And for the next 55 years, because I was 10 then. I'm 66 now, or 56 years, I should say. I have been looking for the answer to that question. That fall, we moved back overseas, you know, and I was back to normalcy. But every time I'd come home, there'd be some incident that would happen to me, either directly or vicariously, you know, related to the color of someone's skin, or my skin, for that matter.

Were you mad at your parents for not telling you about racism?

Initially, yes. Initially, yes, I was upset, all right? But in retrospect, I believe, you know, my parents are gone now, but I believe they did the right thing, and I'll tell you why. Supposing they had told me, darrell, you know, things are not as. You know, your friends may be fine at school. You know, you play with them, they come over to your house, you go to their homes, you have fun. And these are good kids and good parents. But not everybody is like that. There'll be some white people who won't like you because of the color of your skin. They may try to hurt you or call you names. Suppose they told me that in advance.

You'd have been suspicious all the time.

Then I would been, you know, is this a good white person or is this a bad. How do I tell the difference? Maybe just stay away from them altogether. Right? So they did not pre poison me or prejudice me. You know, unfortunately, I found out the hard way. I mean, literally, bam. You know, but, I mean, not funny, but, you know, yeah, it's.

It's got to be astounding. A lot of kids will feel betrayed when they find out their parents aren't infallible or that your parents were not telling you the truth. But parents are doing it for your own good. In your case, as you grew up, you recognize that that was a gift. Do you think you gained a superpower for connecting with people because you moved around so much as a kid? You go to a new school, have to make friends, go to a new school, have to make friends. Did that help you later in life?

You know, let me tell you something. That is all I knew. And a lot of the kids, not necessarily the native kids to whatever country we were in, we lived in Africa, we lived in Europe. You know, they're there and they do whatever they do. But all the embassy kids, they had that pretty much that same experience. So, you know, as a kid, you think that every kid does what you do because that's all you know. So I didn't know anything any different. The kids that I was friends with if they were already in the country when we got there, chances are they only had a year left. And they were leaving because we're there for two years, and then when we have a year left, new kids are coming in, you know, so it's always in flux. All right? And that was my life. Now, I'll tell you this. It wasn't hard, but I noticed something that when I would be home, you know, we traveled a lot, and my dad and mom always made sure I saw everything. I went inside the pyramids, in Cairo, inside the Sphinx. I touched the Berlin Wall. I've been up in the Eiffel Tower. I stood five feet from the Mona Lisa in the Louvre Museum. Yes, okay. And you know, when I would come back home and be in whatever grade and studying, you know, our textbook, world history, whatever, see all these items, I've been there, I've touched those things. I realized that most of the kids sitting around me here in our own country, the closest they would ever come to those things were the pictures in those textbooks. You know, they weren't going to Berlin, seeing the Berlin Wall or the Eiffel Tower or, you know, King Tut in Cairo or whatever I did. And sometimes those things in the history books were wrong. I was there, I saw what it was. And the history book was wrong. All right? So I really appreciated my parents even more, you know, for, for exposing me to these things. Because According to our U.S. census Bureau, less than 50% of Americans even own a passport. Europeans, they travel all the time. They're always going somewhere. They don't call it vacation, they call it, I'm going on holiday. Right, yeah. And, you know, when we say vacation, we mean, you know, we might be gone for a week, no more than two weeks, because that's what our company pays us for. Two week vacation. Right. These people, when they go on a holiday, they may be gone for a month, two months, whatever, you know. And so they are a lot more worldly than we are. I've been. When you combine my childhood travels with my adulthood travels now as a musician, touring or lecturer, what have you combine those two sets. I've been to 63 countries on six continents. I'm actually behind, though, because currently there are 195 countries in the world. And a couple years ago, I met two guys totally unrelated to one another, about three weeks apart. One was an American, surprisingly, from California. He'd been to 125 countries, and the other guy was from Estonia. He'd been to 161. Now, that was a Couple years ago.

Here in estonia, you walk 20ft in any direction.

Yeah, yeah.

To another country.

Yeah. Yes, exactly.

I've been out there too.

Yeah. But one of my favorite quotes of all time is by Samuel Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain. It's called the travel quote. And Mark Twain said, travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness. And many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime. And that is so true. So true. Now I'll say this. All that travel does not make me a better human being than someone with less travel experience. But what it does is it gives me a better and broader perspective on humanity than most people who've not been exposed to somebody outside of their immediate environment or circle. And I can tell you this. No matter how far I've traveled from our. From our own country, the United States, whether it's right next door to Canada or right next door to Mexico or to the other side of the globe, no matter who I meet, you know, they may not look like me or speak my language or worship as I do. Maybe they don't even worship at all. I always conclude that everybody I've encountered is a human being. And I've noticed that every human being wants these five core values in their lives. Everyone wants to be loved. Everyone wants to be respected. We all want to be heard. We want to be treated fairly and truthfully. And. And we all want the same things for our family as anybody else would want for their family. And if we can learn to apply those five core values or any of those five values, when we find ourselves in an adversarial situation or in a culture or society in which we're unfamiliar or uncomfortable, I'll guarantee your navigation of that situation, that culture, that society would be much more positive, much more smooth, and much more productive.

What if there was something you could add to your water to make you perform better, have more energy, and protect your cells from damage? Hydrogen is the smallest molecule in the universe and the only one that can get deep inside your cells, mitochondria, and even your DNA. It fuels energy production, crushes oxidative stress, and supports sharper brain function. Hydrogen's a gas, so you can't take it as a pill. So you either have to breathe it in or infuse it into your water, but your tap, bottled or filtered water doesn't have it. That's why I use the echo Flask Echo Flask is a hydrogen generator that uses advanced electrolysis and a proprietary proton exchange membrane to infuse your water with pure hydrogen. No chemicals, no ph change, just therapeutic science backed hydrogen. I've noticed more energy, faster recovery, less inflammation and and mental clarity that lasts all day. Go to EchoWater.com Dave and use code DAVE10 for 10% off your Echo Flask. You'll feel the difference in days. Right now your body might be wasting energy on stress instead of healing. That's why your gut feels off, your brain feels dull, and your immune system keeps letting you down. What if you could switch your healing state back on without meds, stimulants or guesswork? Vibrant Blue Oil's parasympathetic essential oil blend is a powerful, non invasive way to activate your nervous system and shift your body into healing mode just through scent. A drop behind your ears can help switch off your stress response, calm inflammation and support digestion, detox and immune function. And it can even help clear up your stubborn brain fog. It's natural, easy to use and thousands of happy customers already love it. And right now, the Human Upgrade Podcast listeners can grab a full size bottle for over 50% off at vibrantblue oils.com Dave that's vibrantblues.com Dave don't wait to start feeling like yourself again.

Hearing your experience growing up is so interesting. I grew up in New Mexico and at the time there were essentially no black people there. I had literally never met someone black before. I went off to college, which sounds crazy, but that's how it was. There was lots of the local Native American population and lots of Mexicans. Other than that, it was, that was all I'd ever seen. I went to college and ended up sharing a one bedroom apartment with a black guy for three years. And he told me stories. I'm like, wow, this stuff really happens because it was completely outside my world. Plus I had Asperger's syndrome. So being a little bit autistic doesn't always help you be aware of the world. But I was kind of thrown for a loop going, well, I guess that stuff is real because it's something that I would have never seen. And hearing that, it still just kind of doesn't match my worldview. And I believe everything you're saying and it always kind of stuns me and a lot of people saying, well this is a problem, but there's not much we can do about it.

Sure there is.

Well, there certainly is. And it looks like curiosity was the primary thing that got you Going, but I gotta know, the first time you walked in and sat down with someone from the kkk, what did it feel like?

Let me back up a little bit after that experience as a 10 year old. One time we went back overseas, I was back in normalcy, I'd come back, stuff would happen and go back overseas, come back. So Now I'm in 10th grade and we had a class here, back in this country called the POTC, which stood for Problems of the 20th Century, who had a great teacher. And it was a senior class, I'm taking it as a 10th grader, sophomore. And he would bring in controversial speakers, talk on different topics, abortion, this, that and the other. And the 12th graders or whoever was in the class would get to question them. And so I was taking it as a 10th grader. And on this one day in 1974, he brought in the head of the American Nazi Party. Now, the American Nazi Party was founded about 15 minutes from where we're sitting right now, right across the Potomac river in Arlington, Virginia, by a fellow named George Lincoln Rockwell. And George Lincoln Rockwell was a big proponent of the ideology of Adolf Hitler.

Isn't that where the CIA is from there too?

Right, about 50 minutes up the road in Langley. Okay, so, so yeah. So anyway, George Lincoln Rockwell would always take his storm troopers and go to crash Martin Luther King's marches and rallies and, you know, confront him and all that kind of thing. Well, anyway, Lincoln Rockwell had a right hand guy named Martin. I'm sorry, Matt Cole, K O E H L and Lincoln Rockwell. Mark. George Lincoln Rockwell was murdered by one of his own Nazis. He got into an argument with this guy named John Palter and Palter killed him right on Wilson Boulevard over there in Arlington. And so Matt Cole, his right hand guy, took over and Martin Kerr became Matt Cole's right hand guy. So on this day, our teacher had invited Matt Cole to our school, to our class, and he came along with Martin Kerr. Now, there were more blacks in the school, but only two in this particular class. And I'm in there and another black guy and Matt Cole was standing at the front of our class. I'm 15 years old, espousing all of these views of white supremacy. And he pointed at me and pointed at the other black guy and said, we're going to ship you back to Africa. And then he went like this. And all you Jews out there, you're going back to Israel. I just sat there looking at the guy. I'm a kid.

Did you not know Israel was recently created? You can't send him back to a country that didn't exist.

Until you're dealing with Nazi mentality, the master race, they don't care where you go as long as you're out of here. Okay, so I'm, you know, I didn't say anything to him. I'm, you know, looking at, like, what on earth is this man talking about? Right? And one of my classmates piped up, says, well, they live here. You know, what if they don't want to go? And he says, oh, they have no choice. If they do not leave voluntarily, they will be exterminated in the upcoming race war. That was the first time I ever heard the term race war.

And what year was this?

1974. Wow. Okay. Make a long story short, I confronted Matt Cole eight years later when I graduated college. Music became my profession, but studying race relations became my obsession.

And in music, you were not a small name. You're still not. You're playing with the greatest names in jazz, right?

Well, you know, I majored in jazz, but, you know, I played jazz. I played rock and roll, I played blues, I played country, R and B. I mean, if they're paying, I'm playing, all right? So, you know, I worked for 32 years with Chuck Berry, the man who invented rock and roll. Yeah, yeah. And not every gig, but many gigs. And he was my mentor, my friend, my boss, my fellow musician. You know, I learned a whole lot about, you know, from that guy. Not just about playing, but about, you know, business as well.

So you made a name for yourself in music as you were following this curiosity about racism.

Yeah, yeah.

And when you say you confronted this guy, how did you confront him?

Okay, well, right here in D.C. there's a park across the street from the White House, Right across the street. It's called Lafayette Park. And 24 7, even right now, as we're sitting here, there's somebody or multiple people in that park who are protesting something. They are there 365 days a year. Some of them pitch a tent and just stay there. Okay. Whether it's nuclear weapons, abortion, the war, wherever it is, whether it's Vietnam, whether it's Iraq, whether it's Afghanistan. You name it, somebody is protesting something. So that's where you go. You stand in the park and face the White House. So you're hoping that whoever's in the Oval Office will look out the window and read your billboard and. And solve your problem.

You think protesting works?

It used to work. It is. It has gotten watered down because so many of them now people just you know, ignore them. Right. All they. All they do these days is block traffic or something, so. But yeah, back in the day, yes, they were a lot more powerful. Now, unfortunately, people take other. Other extremes as a. As a means of protest, even taking people out and things like that. Okay. So anyway, I had found out about an unpublicized demonstration that was going to take place in front of the White House of the American Nazi Party. Wow. Nope. You know, unpublicized means nobody knows about it. They don't tell anybody, not even the police. Because if people know about it, all kinds of protesters come and they come to do violence to these people. Now, while I don't support anything of white supremacy or Nazism or KKK stuff, I do support everybody's right to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.

Thank you. You're allowed to say stuff I vehemently disagree with, and that's okay, even if I really don't agree.

Right. We have the right to hate. We don't have the right to hurt.

There you go.

Okay. So anyway, I found out about this thing and so I got down there early. Now, see, back then. This is 1982, back then, you could drive up and down the 1600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, which is where the White House is located. Today you can't do that because over those years, people have tried to ram the gates of the White House with their vehicles. So they put up concrete barriers that lift up out of the street so only law enforcement can drive there. You can walk up and down there all you want, but no, no commercial vehicles or private vehicles. Just, you know, law enforcement. So anyway, Bethany, you could. I parked my car, Caddy corner to the White House on the other side of the park. I wait, here comes this van. And about 13 or 15 of these Nazis get out. There's nothing that tells you they're Nazis. No Gestapo uniforms, no SS insignias or swastikas. Just dark black suits. There's Matt Cole and Martin Kerr, Same guys who came to my high school eight years prior to. Right. I'm two years now out of college, and I'm. I'm watching Matt Cole. He's getting his people all lined up, you know, facing the White House. It's lunchtime and DC is crowded, you know. Anyway, lunchtime, everybody's out of their office, walking up and down, right? And they're walking by, not paying any attention, not even knowing who the. Who they are, because, you know, they don't, you know, there's nothing advertising, you know, who they are. So they're walking past these Nazis, not knowing I knew who they were. And I said, you know what? I'm going to confront Matt Cole because I did not confront him when I was 15 years old, so I need to confront him. So once he got all his folks lined up, I walked right over to him and I said, matt Cole, he, like, jumped in the line. Who's this black person who knows my name, right? And he goes, do I know you? And I said, well, you spoke at my high school. And he said, what high school would that be? I told him. He goes, yes, yes, yes, I remember you. That was a long time ago. What can I do for you? I said, yes, it was eight years ago. Do you remember what you told me? Yes, yes, how can I help you? I said, well, I'm still here. And he says, I can see that. What can I do for you? I said, well, you can tell me. Who the hell gives you the authority to make permanent travel arrangements for me? He says, what's your name? I said, daryl Davis. He put his hand out. He shook my hand, and then he did something that I've used before. Attack a technique that I've used before on clan people, right? He held my hand in his hand, shaking it. He took his finger on his other hand and shook it in my face like this. He says, Mr. Davis, you have to understand one thing. It is in the interest of your people, the black people, to be a strong race. And. And you cannot be a strong race unless you are a pure race. You cannot be a pure race if you are miscegenating with other races. And on and on. And then he goes, it is in the interest of my race, the Aryan race, to also be a strong race. We are becoming a mongrel race by miscegenating with mud races such as yours. So anybody who is non Aryan or non white is a mud race because you have color in the. In the skin. So he's concerned about that. He says, the races cannot coexist until you learn you must be separate, right, to keep the races pure. And so, you know, he went on and on. And then he told me. He told me a lot of lies, but he told me one thing that is true. And the media has been avoiding talking about this. It'll come out every now and then, but they don't double down on it. And this is true. I've been following it since 1982. He told me that back then, 1982, that they're very concerned about the year 2042. And I was Asking him why. And he was telling me about the demographic shift that was slowly happening. And it's getting faster and faster. By the year 2042, this country will be 50, 50, 50% white, 50% non white. And between 2045 and 2050, it's going to shift and whites will become the minority. All right? So, you know, when you have sat on the throne of power for 400 years, that's all you know, you don't want to get off. You look at the last president, the one before Biden, he was only on the throne, so to speak, for four years and thought he was still there. He still thinks he's still there. So, you know, you get that power, you don't want to give it up. And so they're seeing this shift coming, you know, and our census is taken every decade, every 10 years. When I was a kid, when you were a kid, the black population in this country was 12% Native Americans, 1% Latino, Hispanic Americans, 2% Asian Pacific Americans, 3%. Whites were like 86, 87% today. The last census was 2020. All right, blacks, they say 12.9 or they say 13, so it's 12.9. We really haven't grown. Native Americans remain at 1%. Asian Pacific Americans have almost doubled to 6% Latino. Hispanic Americans have more than quadrupled to 17 point something percent. So if you take just 12% black, 17% Hispanic, Latino, let alone everybody else, just, just those 2, 17 and 12, that makes 29% non white. That's almost a third of the country. This is happening and it's going faster and faster. Right. So they're trying to stop that because they're afraid of losing their majority status. And in their minds, you know, you mentioned reality, you know, people's reality, it's real to them. To them, they, they think we discovered this country, we built this country, and we wrote the Constitution for this country. And people who don't look like us are coming to this country and taking our country away. We're going to take America back. We're going to make it great again. So that's the mentality, that's their patriotic reality.

One of the most powerful classes I ever took was called Religion and Violence. And we studied all the religious movements that have turned violent. Genders. Sure.

The Mormons, the Christian Crusades, everything.

The Crusades, all of them. And it was taught by a rabbinical scholar. And he said, what do they all have in common? I said, they're all irrational because they believe in all this weird crap. And he laughed and he said, no, these are the most rational people you'll ever meet. If you believe what they believe, their actions are rational. And so you realize it's questioning your fundamental beliefs. And if those are wrong, what you're doing is wrong. But if your fundamental beliefs are actually real and, and it seems like what you're doing is you're getting in at some level and you're convincing a group of people who are hard to convince. Any group that believes something very strongly is hard to convince. And somehow you're getting in and you're changing something that they believe in reality that then changes or collapses the behaviors that are based on that. So then they change.

Well, actually, yes and no. What you're saying is absolutely 100% correct. But I would not say that I changed them or that I converted them. You know, when you, when you see my name in the media, it'll say, you know, Black musician converts, 200 Klansmen or white supremacists, whatever. No, I didn't even convert one. In my eyes, I have been the impetus and continue to be the impetus for over 200 to convert themselves. Yeah, okay, let's.

Much less egotistical and more accurate. It's totally true.

Because what I know, you know, what you said earlier about reality, it's real to these people. You cannot change somebody's reality if it's real to them. And if you try to change it, you're gonna get pushback because they know it's real in their mind.

And that pushback can have bullets in it.

Oh, yes. I mean, the more you push, the more it's gonna escalate until the point of the break point where it explodes and becomes violent towards you, right? So let me give you an example. Say, if you want somebody's reality to change, don't attack it. Don't tell them they're wrong. Don't try to attack it. You know, even though you know that you're right, you've seen that, you've, you know, you're older, whatever reason you, you have the facts, they don't have the facts, all right? And you know they're wrong, don't attack it. Don't try to prove, prove it. All right? What you do is this. You offer them a better perception of, or better perceptions, plural. And if they resonate with one of your perceptions, they will change their own reality because one's perception becomes one's reality. So hypothetically, let's say you have a seven or eight year old brother and he runs off to a magic show. With his little buddies. And he comes home and tells you, dave, you're not going to believe this. This magician on stage, he asked for a lady volunteer, and 50 women raise their hand. He picked one out of the audience, brought her up on stage, asked her, you know, what's your name where you're from? And then he had her climb into this long box, and he had her put her feet out the hole at that end and her head out the hole at this end. Then he closed the box, took a chainsaw, and went right down the middle of the box. It came out the bottom. He cut her in half, and they told her to wiggle her feet, and she wiggled her feet. And you said, listen, it didn't happen like that. Yes, it did. I was there. You weren't there. I saw it with my own eyes. You weren't there. He's 100% right. You were not there. He saw it. You couldn't see it. You were home, right? So how are you going to tell him that he did not see what he saw and you weren't there? You know he's going to attack you, right? And so he's pushing back. And then to prove to you that he's right, he tells you, after the man cut the box in half and she wiggled her feet, he moved this half of the box with the feet over here to stage right and the half with the head over here to stage left. And then he walked over there and he spoke to the woman's head, and she talked back to him. And then he brought the two halves back together. He did some abracadabra incantation and opened the lid, and she climbed out full form. He cut her in half, put her back together, and there's no blood. And you say, listen, it's an illusion. No, it's not. I'm telling you now, it's escalating. Because after he's gone through all this trouble telling you what this man did and how he put it back together, you're still calling him a liar in his mind, right? So he's going to explode. Rather than attack his reality, what you do is you offer him a better perception, because one's perception is one's reality. So you say to him, listen, I hear you. I understand what you're saying. But let me ask you a question. Do you think that maybe, just perhaps, it's possible that the woman that he picked out of the audience, maybe she works for him, Maybe she knows the trick, she travels all around the country with him and always sits in that Same theater seat wherever they go that way. He looks all around the different women and always zeroes in on her. He brings her up on stage, and when she climbs into the box, there's already a pair of mannequin dummy legs laying on the floor of the box that are wearing the same stockings and same high heels that she has on. She grabs them by the poles, by the end of them, and shoves them out the hole. She brings her own knees up under her chest. So now her whole body is on this half of the box. Right? And he cuts the box in half, as you said. And then he says, wiggle your feet. She just grabs the handles on those legs and shakes them, and the feet wiggle outside the hole. And then he has to. When he separates the two halves, he can't have you looking at those feet because she has no more control over them. They're not going to move anymore. So he has to distract you from looking over there. Of course. He's going to walk over there and talk to her head, and she's going to talk back. Her whole body is there. And. And then when he brings the two halves back together, she pulls those legs back in, leaves them on the floor, stretches out, climbs out of the box altogether. No blood. And then your brother says, hmm, you know, that might be the way that that could only work. You've offered him a better perception, and he has converted his own reality. Right. That's how I do it. Too many people get triggered with their egos trying to say, you know, well, you know, this guy is wrong. I know I'm right, and it becomes a battle of the right and the wrong rather than a battle of thought. You know, what kind of other thoughts can we look at another side of the coin?

One of the arguments that racists have used for a long time is about latent genes. Tell me how you deal with that.

Oh, my goodness. Okay, again, it's a perception thing. An example of that would be I was in my car one time, this true story with an Exalted Cyclops. An Exalted Cyclops. Well, let me give you the hierarchy of how the clan operates. If you have a chapter of your particular clan group in another state, in your state and in another state or in multiple states, you may then consider yourself to be a national clan group. Therefore, you must appoint a national leader who oversees all of the states in which you have a chapter. Like our national leader. We call that person the President who oversees all the states. They call that person the Imperial Wizard. All right, so anybody on the imperial level is a national person, wizard being the top. An imperial clayliff is like a vice president. All right? And then you have secretary, treasurer and all that. And they all have different, you know, mystical names. So the head of a state, which we will call the governor, they call that person the grand dragon. Anybody on the grand level is state level, grand dragon, governor, grand cleft, lieutenant governor. Then you have secretary treasurer within the state. You have counties, a county, or we call the county leader, the county executive or the county manager. They call that person the great titan. Anybody on the great level is countywide, right within the county, you have districts and we call those people councilmen or select men, aldermen, mayors. They call those person exalted cyclops. All right, so this exalted cyclops was.

In my car like a county commissioner, basically.

Exactly, precisely. So we're riding around and somehow we got on the topic of crime and some black crime. Something might have happened in the news or something like that, and some black person had done something. And so he was talking about, you know, black on black crime. He says, you know, black people are born, you know, with a gene, you know, that makes him violent. I'm driving, he's sitting over here. And I said, man, what are you talking about? And he's like, well, y' all are born, you know, with this gene, you know, that's what he heard. And yes, that's what I heard it before too. Not from black people or the white people, but from klan people. You know, they make up stuff and they disseminate it to their group. Brainwashing. So I said, you know, what are you talking about? And he says, who was doing all the drive bys and, and carjackings in southeast, referring to Southeast Washington D.C. which is predominantly black. There are some white people who live there. It's predominantly black. And yes, it is high crime ridden. I said, okay, it's black people, but that's who lives there. You're not considering the demographics. Who is doing all the crime up in Bangor, Maine? White people, because that's what lives there. No, no, no, man. Demographics had nothing to do with it. You know, you, you all have this gene, you know, you can't help it. I said, look, man, I'm as black as anybody. You know, I have never done a carjacking or drive by. How do you explain that? This guy did not even think about it. He answered me like that. He said, your genus Layton hasn't come out yet. I was stunned.

How do you argue against that?

How do you you don't. It's so far out, you can't even reach it and even bite on a little piece of it to chew on it, to figure out how to. How to resist it or whatever. Right? It was so far out, I realized he was far out. So I have to somehow get to him. I can't get to him on a logical level. I can't present him with a stack of books written by neuroscientists and whatever else from the floor to the ceiling.

He won't be able to see it. It's not in his worldview. It's in reality.

Right. It's not exactly. Not within his purview or worldview. So I have to go to where he is. So, you know, I'm sitting there, he's all smug, looking at me like, you got no answer. And so I thought about this, and I said, well, we all know that all white people have a gene within them that makes them a serial killer. He said, why would you say that? What are you talking about? I said, name me three black serial killers. He couldn't do it. I waited and waited. I said, here, I'm going to give you one. I named one for him. I said, just give me two. He couldn't do it. I said, charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Henry Lee Lucas, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz, Son of Sam, Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler. On and on and on. I said, son, you are a serial killer. He says, darryl, I never killed anybody. I said, you're a geneflated man. Hasn't come out yet. And he goes, well, that's stupid. I said, well, duh, you know. I said, you're right, it is stupid. But it's no more stupid for me to say that about you than what you said about me. He got very quiet, but his wheels were turning, you know, and moments later, he changed the subject. Right. We talked about something else. But within five months, this guy quit the Klan based on that conversation.

Wow.

His clan robe was the first clan robe I ever got. Wow.

And just mailed it to you or.

No, no, no. I see him timed around Maryland. You know, he was one of the local ones. You know, I travel a lot and see a lot of different ones, but he was local. And so, you know, he, you know, he called me up, said, hey, you know, what are you doing? Blah, blah, blah, let's get together. And he told me, you know, he said, you know, we're done, you know, I mean, not. He and I are Done. We're done with the clan. And he was going to throw away his clan robe and I said, no, no, no, please give it to me. So he said, you really want it? I said, yeah, so you gave it to me. Wow.

And what, what do you do with the Klan robes that people, believe it.

Or not, this, this is funny too, but I've seen people without their Klan robe. And let me tell you something, Dave, it is a Clark Kent Superman moment when they put on that Klan robe. You know, if you remember Superman, he's a, you know, meek, mild mannered reporter in a little suit and tie, you know, but then when he rips off that suit, Superman, you know, that kind of thing, there is a visible personality change, you know, I mean, it's. I don't believe it's a physical thing. I believe it's a mental thing, you know.

Yeah.

You know, they have the same thing, huh?

You know, I take off my true dark glasses and I'm just a normal guy. I put these on and I'm biohacker man.

There you go. Now I gotta give me a pair of glasses. So anyway, I've seen that transformation, right? And I knew it wasn't real. It's like somebody, they walk around all slouchy and then they put on their police uniform or their army uniform and all of a sudden they straighten out their shoulders abroad. And so it's a mindset change, right? Okay, so what do I do with a clan robe? I never had one before, but I knew I wanted it. I didn't know what I was going to do with it. When we say he was going to throw it away, but I said, no, give it to me. He goes, well, what do you want it for? Why would you want. You want one? I said, I don't know, just give it to me. And he did give me his hood, his membership certificate, everything. And so I took it home and guess what I did? I put it on. Yes. I put on a klan robe and a hood.

Damn.

And because, you know, I wanted to see if it had any magical power in it, right? So I stood in front. Well, I disempowered it, basically. How does it feel? It felt stupid is what, is what it felt like because I put it on. Put on, put on the hood, right? The pointy thing. And I went and I stood in front of my mirror and I looked at myself and I looked stupid and I took it off. So I took, I put it on a hanger. He put it in a green hefty trash bag for Me, along with other stuff that he was getting rid of, you know, clan related stuff, Klan belt buckle, all kinds of stuff. I took it down to my basement. Half of my basement is finished, you know, where I would have band rehearsals and stuff. The other other half sort of, you know, washer, dryer, that kind of stuff. I hung it on a. On a coat hanger over one of the rafters, and so it remained there. And I would see it every, every day when I'd go downstairs to get fresh clothes or do laundry. And I saw it so much I didn't notice it, you know, it just became part of the, you know, whatever. Well, guess what? Every quarter of the year, the meter reader, water meter reader guy comes, oh, wow, hi, Mr. Davis. And if I'm home and he goes downstairs, gets the numbers off the meter, and then I get a bill a couple weeks later. Right. If I'm not home or whatever, he'll leave his thing on the door and you fill it out and mail it in. So he's always very friendly, very cheerful. Hi, Mr. Davis. You know, goes on down. And then when he came out, he didn't even say goodbye to me. He kind of gave me a look and just like went on out the door, you know, that's kind of odd. Was he. I'd long for. He was a black guy.

He was black, okay.

Yeah. I'd long forgotten about the damn robe.

Because you didn't see it, because it was just there.

I didn't see it because it was there. Exactly.

Wow.

And then later on that day, I don't know, something triggered me or something. I thought, oh, man, that dude saw the robe, man, you know, no wonder he was acting all bizarre. So I took it and I put it in my closet. Now today, I have tons of those things. I have many, you know, I've gotten several hundred items. How many robes and hoods do I have? I probably say between 65, maybe 70.

Wow.

By now. Okay. But I keep most of them off site, locked up. I keep a couple with me, you know, when I go on lectures, I can show them.

Now, the Klan knows that some of their members talk with you and then they decide to leave. Yet they still invite you to come and speak at rallies. You've shown me pictures on your phone of you standing next to burning crosses. As a black man, how do you stay grounded in that situation?

Because, Dave, I realize that I've seen all kinds of things that they have never seen, and chances are they never will. And so I know what's out there. I know what they're. What they think it is is not real. They think it's real, but I try to bring something to them vicariously, all right? And I've been very honest with them. They know where I stand. And as you point out, yeah, they do know my background, that some of their members have left because of me, and some of them do resent me. And, you know, and I get threats, okay. You know, I view it as an illness of the mind. And, you know, a lot of illnesses, especially that one, can be cured. It may take some time. They were not born with that ideology. It's learned. And what can be learned can be unlearned. You know, just like, you know, this gut that I have on me, I didn't always have this, and I want to lose it. We're going to work on that. Yeah, I put it on over time. Um, but there's nothing I can take today or tonight before I go to bed and wake up looking like you. Okay. And wearing. And wearing, you know, your waist size. All right? It's not going to happen. All right? It takes time. So I, you know, I have the patience to. To show them, you know, hey, this is wrong. But I realize it's going to take some time for them to shed it, because they did not put it on overnight. They grew up with it or they surrounded themselves with it. Whatever. It takes time.

You mentioned earlier how hard it is for someone who believes something it is absolutely true to discover it's not.

It's a shock to their system.

Are there things you believe now that you know might not be true?

One of the things that I learned was this. When you were a kid? When I was a kid, and most people that we know were kids, we were told a tiger does not change its stripes. A leopard does not change its spots. Right. We grew up learning that. And we believe that because our parents or whoever told us that that's who the leopard is, that's who the tiger is. It's not going to change. So I went into this believing that a Klansman does not change his robe and hood, or her robe and hood. That's who they are. All right? I never set out to convert them. All I set out to do was ask a question and get an answer. The question was, how can you hate me when you don't even know me? That's all I want to know. Just tell me the reason why you hate me and you don't even know me. All you see is the color of my skin, and then we can shake Hands or not shake hands and go our separate ways, and I never see you again. You never see me again. That's all I wanted. What happened was this. The first Klansmen that I interviewed. Now, I'd met a Klansman before. The first one that I interviewed, it didn't go so well. I wasn't looking to interview him. I just happened to meet him. He was beating up a woman, and I beat him up. And so anyway, so I didn't interview him. Fair point. The first one that I interviewed, yeah, he didn't like me. Okay. But. Well, none of them really liked me initially. He gave. You know, I thought about writing an article and maybe submitting it to Life magazine or Reader's Digestion, you know, but he gave me too much information for an article. I mean, I was thinking, how can I cut this down? Well, this is good. No, this is good. I can't throw that away. It was too much for an article, but not quite enough for a book. So let me expand upon this. I started in Maryland. Let me go up north, let me go down south, let me go to the Midwest, go to the west, interview other Klan leaders and members from other regions. And then all this information I will compile into a book. And my book will be the first book ever written by a black author on the Ku Klux Klan based on Face to Face in person interviews. Right. So that's how the book thing started.

What's your new book, by the way? It's about to come out.

Yes. The new book is called the Klan Whisperer, and the first book was called Clandestine, spelled with a K, not a C, Clandestine Relationships, and it came out in 1997. Now, since that time, we've had a black president, we've had more immigration, we've had Donald Trump, we've had an insurrection, we've had all kinds of things that have fueled white supremacy. And so it's time to update. So the first book, Clandestine Relationships, is out of print, and there are some booksellers that have extra copies, and they have jacked up the price enormously. So I tell your people, don't go on Amazon or ebay or whatever and buy them there. Okay? Go to the library. Check it out from the library. You can read it for free if you can't wait for the new one. The new one will have most of the material from the old one, plus updates and new stories. The new book is called the Clan Whisperer, and it should be out by the end of December 2024, or at least by January of 20, 25.

Well, I'm looking forward to a signed copy of it.

Absolutely.

Were you an angry young man?

I was angry about certain things, especially when people would discriminate against me. Yeah. And I couldn't figure out it was based on my skin color. And I could not figure out why my own fellow Americans would do this to me. When people who were. Who look like them and probably even whiter than them, because a lot of white people in our country are mixed in with something, whether it's Native American, whether it's a Hispanic American or from slavery or whatever.

Now that we have genetic testing, there's not a lot of any one race.

Left in our country. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, a lot of black people, including a lot of celebrities back in the 40s and 50s, moved to France. Black Americans, some of them even gave up their citizenship here and took on French citizenship because they were treated as equals in France and they weren't being treated equally in their own country. What did Muhammad Ali say? You know, he changed his name from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali and he got drafted to go to Vietnam and he objected. And they said, we'll take away your belt. Because he'd won, you know, the world champion. He says, I've already won. Take the belt. You know, don't do anything good for him. We'll put you in jail. Put me in jail, you know, nothing like, I've already won, you know, and he, you know, he made us. He said he was not afraid to go, but he said, why should I go over there and kill Viet Cong people and in the name of my country and come back home and be treated like a second class citizen when I'm fighting alongside first class citizens. And then he said something that has always resonated with me. He said, no Viet Cong ever called me a. Wow.

You know, he was quite a philosopher.

Yes, he was.

Yeah.

Yes, he was. You know, and I mean, he's right about that. He wasn't afraid to go over. But if he's going to go and fight for his country, why can't he be treated as an equal countryman?

You make so much sense and I know there was so much anger back there in 68.

I was 10 years old in 68 when King was killed. I remember it distinctly. Okay. I'm from Chicago originally, but we were living right outside of Boston, eight miles outside of Boston, in a town called Belmont, a suburb of Boston. But when we first came back from one of the countries, we lived in Boston, we lived in Roxbury. Okay. I was at home watching tv. I remember exactly what I was watching. I was watching Bewitched. Now, now Bewitched is in reruns today, you know, on. On. On some, you know, retro channel or something. But I was watching it, you know, in. In real time, whatever. All of a sudden I'm just watching Samantha, you know, do you twinkle her nose or whatever and do something? And all of a sudden the TV goes beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. And that was always a signal that the program is being interrupted. And then here comes on this newscaster special bulletin. And this guy was like taking off his glasses and like wiping his eyes, this newscaster. And like he was crying or something. And he said, you know, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Has just been assassinated. Dave, you know, I'm not stupid, but I can be naive. And I had no clue who he was talking about. Wow. No clue. Okay. Because I didn't grow up with that, right. You know, I was overseas, okay? So now I hate to say this, but in my mind my. I was thinking, why can't this, this news wait until 6 o'? Clock? Why does it have to interrupt my program?

Because that's an honest recollection.

Yeah. I'm 10 years old, you know, I don't get this, you know.

Yeah.

And so. But I figure, well, if he had to interrupt the program, it must be important. Even though I don't know who it is, I better go tell my dad. Now, my mom was down in Roanoke. She'd gone down to visit her parents and she was coming back, you know, over the weekend or whatever. My dad was home. He was in his study typing or something. And I. And I've seen my mom cry. I'd never seen my dad cry. And I go inside his study and I say, hey, you know, this guy came on TV and said somebody named Martin Luther King was just assassinated. I'm like, my father's head fell into his hands and he began crying. I'm like, you know, what's going on here? The first TV guy is crying. Now my dad's crying. And he began telling me who Martin Luther King was. And my dad had marched with him on the march on Washington, right? And we went. The riots began starting, right? And we went down to Roxbury and got some of my. Because when I first moved to Boston, right, From overseas, when I. We were only there a few weeks because the schools were so bad, my parents said, no, we're out of here. Moved to Belmont, but I made some little friends and we went down there and got my some of my little friends and brought them out to Belmont so they would be safe from all the rioting and, you know, stay in our house. And we saw the buildings on fire, saw the fighting in the streets, all kinds of craziness. It was then that I realized this phenomenon called racism. Racism really does exist, you know. And I learned more and more about Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King said he had a dream. He named a lot of things that he dreamed about in that dream. One of the things that he said, and I want to paraphrase it, he said, I have a dream that one day the sons of slave owners will sit down with the sons of slaves at the table of brotherhood. And that's what I'm doing. He has been a profound big influence on my decision to do what I do today.

Your phone screen is aging your skin and wrecking your sleep at the same time. Artificial blue light goes from your phone screen straight into your eyes and deep into your skin. That light messes with your melatonin levels, interrupts your deep sleep and speeds up skills skin aging by breaking down collagen. The Bodyguards Red Light Converter fixes this at the source. It's a first of its kind screen protector with real tech that converts blue light into beneficial red light before it hits your face. It turns your scrolling into a skincare routine. It supports healthier skin, reduced eye strain, improved sleep quality and fewer screen related headaches. Third party testing showed a 50% plus in increase in red light exposure within the optimal range of 620-770nm and this comes with zero compromise on your screen. The Red Light Converter preserves your screen's true colors and full touch sensitivity. Beyond its wellness benefits. The Red Light Converter provides ultra thin edge to edge protection for your device and bodyguard stands by their quality. Enjoy peace of mind with lifetime replacements, ensuring your Red Light converter continues to protect and support your biology for the long haul. Visit bodyguards.com and use code Dave for 25% off. That's bodyguards with a Z.com for 25% off. Is the air you're breathing making you sick? Just because you don't see mold doesn't mean it isn't there. My friend Jason Earle has been on a mission for over two decades to help people understand the hidden role of indoor air in their health. He's one of the world's leading experts on mold and indoor air quality and he created the GOT Mold Test Kit to make professional grade Air testing. Simple and accessible. It uses cutting edge air sampling tech that top inspectors trust. And it's engineered for you at a fraction of the cost. It takes just minutes to get samples using the patented Biovac air sampling pump. Then you send them, prepaid to one of the most prestigious microbiology labs in the world. No guesswork, no paperwork and no hidden fees. You get fast results, intuitive reports and great support. And since you keep the pump, you can retest anytime for less. It even comes with a lifetime warranty. Mold may be invisible, but its impact isn't. This kit helps you understand your environment so you can take action for your health. Go to gotmold.com and use code DAVE10 to save 10% and see what's in your air. Because the best biohackers don't guess. They test.

When people enter the. We'll call it the path of biohacking. This idea of I'm going to change my environment around me and inside me so I have control over my biology. They always get their energy back. They lose weight or gain weight, gain muscle, whatever. And then they say, man, I want to be happy and I want to live longer. So it's about longevity. But when you get into the being happy, the thing that I teach, the thing that everyone eventually has to face, is forgiveness. It's like, how do you let go of the things that trigger you, things that make you mad? And because of that, I'm doing a biohacking consciousness event with the King family and with Victor Chan, who co writes books with the Dalai Lama. In April and Austin, we're going to come together and talk about forgiveness and talk about these, I'm just going to call them, advanced states that humans are capable of. I want to know, how do you go about forgiving people who threaten your life, people who say all sorts of bad things about you? What's your inner dialogue? What's your process for not being just angry all the time, given what's directed at you?

Well, as I was saying, I consider it an illness. You know, how could you be angry with somebody because they have dementia or because they have diabetes or because they got cancer and they can't play with you anymore or something.

So it's a compassion practice. Then you're having compassion for the people who hate you because it's like there's something wrong with them.

Something's wrong with them. Yes, definitely. Because there is no rationale to hating somebody. If, if I had done something to them, yeah, they might have a reason, but just because they see the color of my skin? No. So I. You know, a long time ago, yes, I was angry. Very angry. Okay. Today I'm not angry. What I'm angry about today are people trying to rewrite history and ban history and, you know, and alter history and ban books and things like that.

That's a free speech issue.

Yeah.

And you said something earlier that I just want to honor. You said that you support people's right to be wrong, and you extend that even to the Klan, saying that they have a right to. To be in the clan if they want to, as long as they're right.

Stupid, too.

Exactly. And, man, that is such a mature and grounded perspective on things. Because I keep seeing this world where if I get to tell people what to say, they get to tell me what to say. And that feels like it's always going to end up in violence at the end of the day. How did you learn this?

We have freedom of speech, and we have to honor that. Now, there are. For everything, for every rule, there's always an exception, Right?

Sure.

Okay. So the.

Like, if you're the President's son, there's.

Yeah. One of those things, you know, or. Or you take home documents that shouldn't go to your house. You call, you know, or you pay off hush money, you know, all these things.

We are in D.C. yeah.

We are in standard practice. What's that called? SOP? Yeah. Standard operating procedure for all politicians.

But I'm not being president at all here.

Yeah. Okay. So I will say that there is some racism involved in this. A lot of it.

Yeah.

Okay. Because. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the first exception to our freedom of speech was when the Supreme Court ruled you can't shout fire in a crowded theater. And for good reason. Unless there is a fire. If there's a fire. Yes. Shout it. Get everybody out of there. Okay. But if there's no fire, you're going to create a panic, and people are going to trample over one another, injured, possibly, you know, accidentally kill somebody trying to get out of the theater when there's no fire. Yeah. So you cannot shout fire in a crowded theater unless there's a fire. So that is one denial of freedom of speech. All right. The second one came when we had a lot of hijackings and people were, you know, just goofing off, you know, shouting, hijack in the airport. You better not say that word in the airport. Or gun in the airport, you know, unless there is something going on. Otherwise you will be snatched up real.

Quick and be in Jail, assault is just the laws. You can't assault someone, which means threatening them. So basically, you're not allowed to hurt other people or tell people you're going to hurt them.

Well, you can tell people you're going to hurt them. Yeah, you can.

That's assault when you do that.

No, that's not really assault. It's a threat. But. But, you know, now it may. It may be different in different states and different counties, but, you know, around here, you know, if a woman, you know, go calls the police and says, you know, hey, my boyfriend is threatened to beat me up, and da, da, da, da. Well, I'm sorry, man. We can't do anything unless he acts on the threat. And then, of course, he kills her. And now they can go do something, you know, after the fact. Right. And that happens all too often. I had a teacher in college. He was dating this divorced woman. She was an elementary school teacher, and he had just begun dating her. Her husband. Ex husband, was stalking her, would not let her go. Wow. He was violent. He was, you know, bad person. All right? And she kept calling the police saying, you know, he's outside in the parking lot. Da, da, da. They couldn't do anything unless he acts. So anyway, one night, my teacher from. From college, dating her, goes with her to her. To her PTA meeting at her elementary school where she teaches. They come out after the meeting and walk to the car. The ex husband is hiding behind a dumpster. Boom, boom. Takes them both out. All those calls to the cops, what good did it do? You know, you can get a restraining order, but somebody who's going to shoot you?

Crazy?

Do they care about a piece of paper? No.

Crazy people are crazy.

Exactly. So I just named you two exceptions. I don't understand why. And I've seen this why the Klan and Nazis can march down a public street, even in a black neighborhood or a Jewish neighborhood, and yell through their bullhorn, 6 million is not enough or we're going to ship the back to Africa.

That sure seems like a threat to me.

Well, not only does it seem like a threat, but it causes a panic. It causes a riot. People come out. I've seen Klan riots. I've seen them in person. Yeah, okay, you're inciting a riot. Okay, but yet something as tame as when? I won't say tame, but less tame than inciting a race riot by yelling fire at the movie theater or hijacking the airport. None of that should be done. But why are you allowing this? It.

It's such a slippery slope. I don't know the right answer for it. I do know that if we make a mistake, we should make a mistake on people being allowed to say the stupidest shit ever. And they shouldn't be allowed to hurt other people. And it's that line. I don't know where it ends up. I do worry about censorship and editing history and things like that. Because anytime someone says they're going to do something for my safety, whether you.

Like it or not.

Yeah, that. That's usually not true. That's frankly in the middle of the pandemic. That's why I call my coffee company Danger Coffee. No, thanks. I choose Danger. It's not for my safety. So it's a. It's a. A tough situation there where everyone wants to feel safe. Right.

Well, you're entitled to feel safe.

Yep. Well, are you? Because a lot of people don't feel safe, no matter what's happening.

I'm not even sure what safe is that, I guess because I'm always, you know, living on the edge or something. And maybe if I wasn't, I wouldn't know what to do with myself.

You feel really peaceful.

Do I feel peaceful?

You do. I mean, you've got fire in you. You're motivated, but you don't. I know how to read people.

I'm not a violent person by nature.

No, but you'll take care of your shit.

I will take care of my. I would protect myself and my family for sure.

Yeah. And that's what I would hope all humans would do, but not all of them will.

But, you know, here's the thing that we gotta start doing, all right, in the past, let's just say me, a black guy, I'm walking down the street. Up ahead on the sidewalk, I see a white guy and a black guy. And they're into it, you know, they're yelling at each other, calling each other stupid, idiot, this, that and the other as I go by. I'm not gonna have anything to do with them. I don't know either one of them. It's not my fight, none of my business. I'm gonna mind my own business, right? As I go by, the white guy calls the black guy an idiot. For all I know, he may be an idiot. I'm gonna keep on going, all right? Not involve myself. But let's say as I walk by, the white guy calls the black guy a. Oh, now I gotta turn around and go back. Because that word also affects me. It affects my family. It affects everybody who looks like me. If you got a Problem with this individual, then you deal with the problem with the individual. Yeah. Don't involve me by calling out a whole group of people, right? I'm gonna go back and maybe the black guy was wrong, maybe the black guy was right. It doesn't matter. You involve me now, I'm in your fight, and I'm gonna be in your face regardless of what you think this guy did to you. All right? Now, if I'm walking down the street and let's say a white guy and a Jewish guy are into it, I don't know either one of them. Not my fight. One's an idiot, one's stupid. I don't care which one is which. I just keep on going, right? But let's say as I go by the black guy calls the Jewish guy a. Do I say, well, that's his problem. I'm not Jewish. I just keep on going. Or should I come back and intervene? I should come back and intervene. Okay. Because you calling that man that, you're not dealing with him. You're painting a broad brush, which is wrong.

We should call out idiocy when we see it.

Exactly. Okay. And the more, you know, in the past, we all used to call out just for ourselves. Today, we need to call out for each other. And when we start doing that, we will see a rapid decrease in discrimination, anti Semitism, racism, whatever.

So I'm asking myself, when I publish this, do I beep out the racial words? Like, those are things I'm not gonna say, never have? And I'm thinking, what are the rules there?

Well, you know, I guess it depends upon where you're airing it. Yeah. Okay. And, you know, if you want to beep it out, that's your business. But I'll tell you what. Nobody ever called me the N word. They called me. Mm.

That is true. And, you know, I support your right to say it, and I think I won't beep it out. But I do ask myself that question because I don't want to for no benefit push people's buttons and trigger them. But I think it's real. So I'm going to leave it in.

Okay.

And thanks for just being real.

I don't know how else to be. What you see is what you get.

Yeah, that takes a lot of courage these days. You're 66 years old. You've seen a lot of stuff that most people have never seen. Do you believe in evil?

I do believe in evil. I've seen evil.

What is it?

Evil is the antithesis of benevolence. So if benevolence exists, it has an equal opposite reaction. You know, you don't know what. What cold is until you know what hot is.

Yeah, it's a polarity.

Right.

I think you're right. There are. I don't think you can have good without evil. So evil will exist, and it's how you respond to it and whether you let it suck in that that makes the big difference for how you evolve and how you grow. It's a. It's a tough one. It feels like if I was to spend the rest of my life fighting against evil, I probably wouldn't win, and it might make it stronger, and it wouldn't make me stronger. So working on being more benevolent, more peaceful, and spreading, you know, fighting against.

That almost is an oxymoron. Let's fight for something.

Back in around the late 60s, early 70s, some protesters here in D.C. asked Mother Teresa to come to the rally against the war. And she said no. What do you mean? And she said, oh, I'll come to a rally for peace, but I won't come to a rally against the war. And that always stuck with me.

Well, you know, I, along with two other people, co founded a foundation recently called the Pro Human Foundation.

Oh, I like this.

Yeah. Because, you know, there's so many organizations and foundations that call themselves anti racist. Well, I am not anti racist. I think of racist as being the person.

Yeah.

I am anti racism.

Very different.

Okay. I'm against the ideology. I am for the person, the racist, because that person can change. I'm not for that person's ism, the racism. So let me try to help this person get rid of his or her ism. Wow. That is, you know, I mean, you know, if we. If we. If we're using anti racist as an adjective. Yes. But I think of anti racist as the person, the noun, and the ism being the adjective, the embodiment of the evil, or whatever you're trying to be against before the person be against the ism.

Wow, that's really powerful. How do you respond when black people tell you that they hate your work?

I have my share of detractors, okay? White and black. But, you know, black people are no more monolithic than white people. You know, for some reason, people try to put us in that box. We all think alike. We all gonna vote for the black candidate. We all are gonna do this and do that. We all have this gene, you know, the whole nine yards, right?

Everyone's different.

Everyone's different, okay? And I get it, you know, I Understand that. But part of it is they have not had the experience that I have had. Again, that does not make me a better person than them. It just gives me a broader view. They may not have had as many experiences with white people as I have had and seen that these particular white people that did some transgression against them do not reflect other white people. Just like if some black guy snatches some white woman's purse, mugs her, he hits her in the head or whatever and takes her money or carjacks her. Does she have the right to hate all black people? Well, yeah, she can, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

She has a right to. It's just dumb.

Right, Exactly. Precisely. Okay. It's ignorant ignorance.

You know, listen, it's actually natural. I'm gonna take it back. It's not dumb. What's going on is her unconscious mind and body saw a threat, and they do rapid threat detection. And before she has a chance to think, her body's going to be responsive that way. And the ignorance is believing her body instead of overriding it, like a mature, healed human. And say, oh, wow, my body is experiencing a stress thing because I saw another person who looked like the other person who hurt me. That means that I got a mismatch and I need to do my work on that. My forgiveness work, my letting go, my compassion. So it isn't even dumb. It's that they believed what their nervous system told them the next time they saw someone.

Well, you know what? Yes and no. Okay. Okay. People, especially in this country, tend to tribalize.

Yeah, we do. It's unhealthy.

Believe it or not, I don't tribalize. And I think the reason why. If I had grown up here my whole life, you might have. Yeah, I might have tribalized. Okay. But like I said, my first introduction to school, that's where you make your first friends, right? I have friends from all over the world. How many Americans get that? Not a whole lot. Unless they're serving overseas in the military or their company sends them overseas, or in this case, the State Department sent my family overseas. Right. People from all over the world. That was my tribe. That was my tribe. Black kids, white kids, Asian kids, whatever kids. That was my tribe. That's why I think it's important when we bring children into the world. Don't just give them dolls that look like them. Give them all kinds of dolls. You know, if they're little girls who want to play with dolls or if they have GI Joes, aren't there mixed colors in the US Army. There are black GIs, there are Asian American GIs, there are Hispanic American, Native American. Kill them all.

Yep.

You know, let them see that. And you know, yeah. So I think that is key. But now, you know, when you were a child, and I've seen this, okay, a friend of mine was a sheriff's deputy, white girl, and I went into a restaurant one day to eat and she and her family were just leaving. I didn't know her family, I knew her. And she was there with her brother and his wife and their little daughter. Little daughter might have been two or three years old. And so the woman, when she said, hey, Darryl, how are you doing? Blah, blah, blah, comes up and gives me a big hug, right? And introduces me to her sister and her brother in law. And you know, the little girl, she was shy. She ran, hid behind her father's leg, peeping around, looking at me. And I'm talking to my friend, she's standing right here as they're paying the bill, whatever. She leaves. I'm watching the little girl out of, out of the corner of my eye, looking at me. And so finally I'm looking at my friend, but I can still see her peripherally, right? She comes out, my hands are down here. And she went like this. I said, no, baby, it doesn't come off. And she ran back. She ran back and grabbed her dad's leg. Okay. Was she racist? No.

She's curious.

She knows nothing about racism, but she had not been exposed to black people. And all she saw were people who look like her. So she figures, well, under this, I look like her. So you wanted to find out what's up. Why is he like this? It's a curiosity, okay? But as an adult, we should know better that if one person does this, if a white person did this, is this lady going to be triggered every time she sees a white guy walking down the sidewalk or gets into an elevator, you know, she's going to grab her purse real tight. It happens all the time with white people.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I mean, I mean, when they see a black person get in the elevator, I know that because I've got, I've gotten in the elevator, I've seen that there's.

There are white women who've been mistreated by men. Every time they see any man, they'll have the same response.

Okay, Any man. Okay, great. Okay. But.

And by the way, there are men who feel that way towards women too.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. And I. Listen, I know, I know white women who, who appreciate me opening the door for them. And I know white women who've cuts me out for opening the door for them. Wow.

Like, how do you know, right?

Like, what the hell? Should I open it or not open it? You know, I was raised to be a gentleman. I thought that's what a gentleman was.

Me too.

I, you know, a woman comes, comes in the room. If you're wearing a hat, you take the hat off. Or you get on the elevator, there's a woman there, you pull your hat off until she gets off. You know, a woman comes in, you know, your buddy comes in, you shake hands with him, you stay in your seat. Woman comes in, you stand up and shake her hand. I mean, that's how I was raised. Is it old school? Maybe, but at least. But it's what I did, right? You know, but some, some people don't like that. You know, it.

It's true. And there's. Especially if you travel internationally. I mean, I was in Tibet once, and I asked for directions, and the guy sticks his tongue out at me. He goes, that's how they point directions. Yeah, I could have been offended or just. I don't know what's going on.

Well, you know, in a lot of Muslim countries, you know, over here, if I've lived in some of those countries, you know, if I see you over there and I say, hey, man, come here, come here, I want to show you something. I go like this. That's an insult. That's how you call a dog. You call a human being. You do this palm down.

See, I wouldn't have known that.

Yeah, exactly. And that's why, you know, it's so important, you know, that we know each other's cultures so that we're not offending somebody by accident.

It's.

It.

There's a lot of cultures to learn, and there's always something to learn from each one.

And the beauty of it is we have all those cultures right here in our country. You know, we don't have to necessarily cross the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean like you and I have done to learn those cultures. I'm not saying don't do it if you have the chance, but we have enough rich diversity right here that all we have to do is walk out our door and take the opportunity to absorb some of it. It's beautiful, you know, but we try to avoid it. You know, we put a man on the moon. We Americans built that technology to put Neil Armstrong on the moon. And while he was walking around talking about one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind. We were able to talk with him live from Earth all the way to the moon via satellite radio phone. We invented that technology. We invented email, cell phones. Hit a few numbers, type a few words, hit send. You're talking to somebody right in the next state or halfway around the globe, wherever you want to talk, Right? How is it that we Americans can talk to people as far away as the moon or anywhere on this planet, but find difficulty talking to the person who lives right next door? And because he or she is a different color, a different religion, a different persuasion, a different whatever. So it seems to me that before we can call ourselves the greatest nation on the face of this earth, maybe our ideology needs to catch up to our technology. And once we get them both up there, we can truly brag about how great we are. Because we are living in the 21st century. We are living in space age times, but there's still so many of us still thinking with stone age minds.

What an amazing interview. I'm, I'm working on understanding what makes you tick. And I get rock and roll, man. Rock and roll.

So, so this is, this, this is part one. When we do part two, we're going to talk music.

I love to talk music. And I know we're running out of studio time. I, I get you, I would say your curiosity and you got a lot of compassion. Less so empathy, though, which is interesting in my understanding of the world. Compassion is a higher level skill than empathy where you can see it from the other person's perspective, but you're not necessarily taking in all their anger and pain. And you've got a hell of a strong backbone.

Because I realize they have not experienced what I've experienced. And if I can show it to them vicariously and let them get some kind of sense of it, you know, then their eyes get open and they get curious because I've had some of the most hard. Listen, I'm well aware there'll be people, black or white, you know, who hate me, who will go to their grave being hateful, violent and racist. You know, there's just no changing them. But I've had some of those same people who have attacked me physically, all right, come back to me later and apologize, say, I get it. Wow, you know, something has happened, something, something triggered, something clicked, you know, so.

There, yeah, there's, there's a difference between fearlessness and, and courage. And I get a sense that you've got a lot more fearlessness in you than most people, is that it's not so much.

I don't fear. Yeah, okay. But for me, it's not so much courage. It's curiosity. Curiosity.

Why afraid and curious at the same time? Curiosity extinguishes fear. So you have curiosity, compassion, and that's leading you to be fearless and to be the guy who can stand there at a clan rally with a burning cross and hold your ground, but not in a I'm going to kill you. Hold your ground, but hold your ground. And I'm curious. And man, that is a unique combination. So I hope that's inspiring for our listeners this is possible. And you're an example of something that is amazing. And I think there's a lot of lessons in this interview for people who are just saying, you know, how do I. How do I do this?

You know, you're talking about how people say, the lady gets mugged, and then she sees somebody of the same color or the same shirt on or whatever, it triggers and she hates that person or whatever, has some kind of animus towards that person, even though that's not the person who mugged her. As an adult, our. Maybe our innate instinct might cause that trigger, but then our human logic should counter it and supersede it. Say, okay, well, that's not the same person. And I know other black people or other Jewish people or other. Whatever, people who don't do that. I work with some in my office or my best friends, whatever, that would override that. Okay. But now if you talk about animals, it may be a little different. Like, for example, if I'm giving you directions to my house and you've never been there before, and I say, you know, you make the right turn on this street, and I'm the second house on the, on the, on the left. And you'll probably see my little teacup poodle running around the front yard. You're not gonna think anything of that. You're gonna go ahead, pull in and walk through my front yard. My little teacup pool's gonna bark at you. Cause it doesn't know you. And you're gonna be, hey, baby, how you doing? You know, right? And come on and knock on my door. But same scenario. And I tell you, yeah, second house on the left. You'll probably see my pit bull running around the front yard. You can be like, is Pitbull okay? Is it going to be in the backyard or the front yard? Right. Not all pit bulls are mean, man. There are a lot of great pit bulls, but they carry a certain amount of baggage behind them. Yeah, right. Because of what we hear about them, you know, they're always in dog fights and stuff, you know, so, you know, and you hear these stories about pit bull bite you, it will not let go, it will bite you to the death, you know, kind of thing. So you got that in the back of your mind. But see, as human beings, we shouldn't think that way unless we're thinking about a pit bull or. Or a snake or, you know, some other things that we're not as familiar with as human beings. Yes. Because, you know, you know, we look at. We. We all grew up. Well, most Christian people grew up, you know, with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the. The Tooth Fairy. At what point do we stop believing in those people? Yeah, right. So we know, you know, certain things we were told about Santa Claus, we believe them initially. The guy comes down the chimney and brings us goodies and somebody else, you know, some fairy puts a. Puts a dollar, or today it's like $10. When I was a kid, it was a dollar or a quarter under my pillow. I put my tooth under there, you know, and the Easter Bunny brings us certain things. As adults, we no longer believe in that. So why not as adults? Do we. Do we stop believing? Because as kids, we were raised. Those people are bad. You know, why don't we try to find out for ourselves? Like we found out Santa Claus is not what we thought he was, you know, it's our dad, you know, or it's whatever. The Easter Bunny is not who we thought it was, or the Tooth Fairy. Why. Why are we taking somebody else's word for another group of people?

Well, that's something I've never heard before, and it makes a lot of sense. If you can stop believing in Santa Claus, you can stop believing in racism. They're both just stories.

Yeah. Wow.

So powerful. Daryl Davis. D A r y l davis dot com. Thanks for taking time on a Saturday in D.C. to sit down and share your wisdom. It's an honor.

My pleasure, My pleasure. I have one last amusing story for you.

Do share.

So sometimes I go to senior living facilities and perform for the residents. And, you know, music is a very powerful thing. People who don't talk anymore or they can't remember what they had for lunch five minutes ago, you play a song from the era when they were growing up, all of a sudden they're singing all the words. Wow. You know, it just triggers a certain part of the brain that. That, you know, sort of like, you know, if you walk down the street and you're an adult now, your grandmother is long gone. And you. And you walk down the street and you pass some older lady and you smell. My grandmother used to wear that perfume. I remember when I was a little boy. It takes you back, right? Right. That sense of smell, music does the same thing. It affects a certain part of the brain. Well, I. I was at this nursing home, and I go there quite frequently to. To play for the residents. So I get to know a lot of them. I see new ones coming in. Unfortunately, a lot of them die. And, you know, but this one lady came in. I remember when she first came in, she was, you know, old, and she was very feisty and very energetic, but she was getting a little bit of dementia, and it was slow, slow decline, right? And then it began happening more and more rapid. It got to the point where if you go to some of these places, sometimes you'll see an older woman carrying around a baby dollar. You know, they have regressed back to when they had their baby or whatever. So as therapy, the, you know, person, caregiver, whatever, would give them a baby doll. And they walk around, they think this is their baby. I had not seen this woman with the baby doll. And I was in the common area. And at this particular nursing home, all the residents at this time were white. All the caregivers and therapists and nurses were either Hispanic or black. And I saw the lady come out of her. Of her room. Her name was Hazel, and she had the baby doll. I'm like, oh, my goodness. Hazel's really, you know, gone down now. I enjoy talking to her and all kinds of stuff, you know, and she was, like, looking frantic. And she comes into the common area with this baby, and all these people are sitting around playing dominoes or reading the paper, and she goes, who's the father of my baby? Are you the father of my baby? Who's the father of my baby? On and on and on. And she asked everybody but me, right? White lady. And some of these guys, you know, they realize she has a problem. No, Hazel, not me. You know, and some of them just ignored her. And she's being asked them the same once again. And I watched this. I watched this in astonishment for, you know, about a minute or so. And finally I said, hazel. She goes, what? I said, hazel, I'm the father of your baby.

Oh, my gosh.

Like this looked me up and down. She goes, I don't think so. I realized something. No matter how deep dementia goes, she can't remember who fathered her baby, can't remember what she had for breakfast. But she damn sure knew she never slept with a black man. Wow. Racism. Racism goes deeper than dementia.

That deep.

Wow. That.

That's mind blowing. Wow, Darrell.

Mind blowing to me, too.

Wow.

But, you know, just the opposite, though. I've met people who were racist and they come to these places and I guess the shroud that goes over the frontal cortex shrinks and they lose that. They treat you just like anybody else. You know, the brain is a funny thing.

I spend a lot of time with electrodes on my head looking at what's going on before you think or invisible what you think. And it is. It is messy in there, but it can be improved, that's for sure.

I hear you. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Oh, man, it was. It was my pleasure. And I'd love to chat with you about music on another.

Absolutely.

All right. Thanks again.

Thank you.

If you like today's episode, you know what to do. Leave a review, share it with someone who might appreciate it. And I would love to see you at the biohacking conference that's coming up. Biohackingconference.com, the oldest, largest and most amazing conference on biohacking in the world. And if you're in the Austin area a month before that happens in May, you might as well come in April to the event that we're doing with the King family and with Victor Chan and some other leaders in consciousness working on the furthest reaches of biohacking, which is becoming happier, more aware, more conscious, because that's a part of living a very long time, is enjoying yourself and doing something that matters.

I'll see you there.

See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.

The Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call us your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services is referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.