EP 104: Hustling Mindfully | John MacAdams

Welcome to Radical Responsibility, the podcast dedicated to ridding the world of blame and shame, where we explore the issues you care about from a unique perspective. 100% ownership for each and every circumstance we face in life, day in and day out. Hi, my name is Fleet Ma, and I'm honored to be your host for the next hour or so while we focus on the one place where we have any real agency and power, that is with our own actions and contributions to the relationship, teams, organizations, communities, and the world in which we participate. So I'm here today with my good friend John McAdams. How are you, John?

I'm well, Fleet. I'm well. Thanks for having me on.

So just for full disclosure sake, I've known John for quite some time, and we work together in some of the criminal justice work done through an organization I founded called Prison Mindfulness Institute and also the center for Mindfulness and Public Safety. And so we have that connection and background. And we're also part of a. We're both members of a global meditation community in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition known as the Shambhala Buddhist community. So just for sake of full disclosure. So, John, you know, we're going to cover some different, you know, areas.

But tell me a little bit just about you. To begin with, where do you live? How old are you? What's your family situation? What do you do mostly on a daily basis.

Okay, Fleet, so I am, I'm originally Canadian. I was born in Canada. I moved to Los Angeles, gosh, in the early 1980s, which is where I came across Buddhism and Shambhala Buddhism. I'm currently 62 years old. I'm married, been married for 23 years to my second wife. I have a son by my first marriage who is currently just become a doctor. Very excited about. He is married, has three children. So I'm grandfathered of three kids there. My wife Nancy has a son of her own. He has three children. Comes from a grandfather three times over there. So.

I'm six times a granddad. So that's pretty exciting for me. At 62, I am, you know, I'm kind of a multiple streams of income guy and have been for quite a while. So as you disclosed, you and I work together. I work with the center for Mindfulness and Public Safety as a senior trainer and as a program manager.

Doing some sort of trying to develop some of this work in new markets with new agencies. And so on a daily basis, I do some work structured and unstructured with that organization. I also have a background in entertainment and I have Performed for many years touring with a Celtic music group, actually. And through that world, I am affiliated with a performing arts agent and I actually work with him. I'm kind of an office guy in his agency, so I work writing contracts and helping him promote some of his work as well. So I do some of that work on a daily basis. And I'm also.

Since I turned 60, I committed myself to physical training and I compete in triathlons around the place. And it's quite a bit of fun and quite a bit of work. So I have found I can really discipline myself. And I'm working out about five times a week. And I just did my 11th triathlon yesterday and I'm a little stiff and sore from all that, but it was very exciting. It was beautiful location in Malibu Beach. I live in Los Angeles, so I was able to get over to Malibu beach and do that triathlon. So that's, you know, I practice mindfulness meditation every day. I do a little bit of that, sometimes more, sometimes less. And I try to eat well and take care of myself and do what I can.

Great.

Yeah.

Well, you laid a lot out there, and some of that is actually a territory we're going to explore today. But you left out one part of your career which I'm familiar with, is that you have been a prop master and worked in Hollywood for a long time, a lot of commercials. And I don't know, maybe you could expand on that a little bit.

Yeah, sure. So when I came to LA in 1982, I was really fortunate to develop a relationship, oddly enough, with somebody in this Buddhist community who had a husband who was in the film business. And I was kind of fresh meat in town. I was young, white, curious, excited, energetic, hard working. So I slipped right into the film business and had a career for 25 years in Hollywood working, as you had said, almost 100% in commercials, and developed a career as a property master, became a set decorator and art director, production designer as well, and was fortunate to be able to travel as well, doing some of that work. I did go to, I think I did one big job in Canada. I did one big job in Mexico, traveled across the country as well. Most of the work, though, was here in LA and in studios and on locations. And that was great work. I'm a lifelong musician as well. And there's something about, you know, the work that I was doing very close to camera.

Props and commercials. A lot of it, especially in the 80s and 90s, was about the product. Right. So we would take very extreme Close up pictures of products, whatever they were, toothpaste or, you know, whatever, a box or something. And I often had to work sort of in concert with the cinematographer, the lighting guys, the grip guys, and I was designing special effects and making things move. And you kind of have to do all this stuff together. It's a little bit like, you know, a little bit like making music in that, you know, you're not talking about it, you're just doing it. And so there was something about that that, that I really clicked with. And so I was good at that and I was able to, you know, I was able to do. Do that work for, for a long time eventually. You know, it's kind of a young man's world. And.

I just been.

You still have one gig a year, don't you, that you work with the Penn Teller show out in Las Vegas once a year.

That's very true. That's very true. So I have a very good friend who I still connect with and he offers me a job to come in as kind of an executive assistant. We work with the Penn Teller Fool US television program and we shoot at the Penn and Teller Theater at the Rio in Las Vegas. So it is a grind. It is. We do an entire season shooting in about seven days. So I think we do 14 or 15 shows in seven days. So it's a grind. And that's where I am able to earn and generate some financial resources for myself to be able to do some of the other work that I don't earn. So.

Well, I'll just interrupt here.

So you mean that illusion we have with these live TV shows that we follow week after week after week? The whole thing's actually shot in a week.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, man, you popped one of my bubbles of illusion there. I'm really disappointed. Now, of course, now we've all known that because now they, over the various cable outlets, you can just buy the whole season and binge watch them, right? That's the latest thing. You just get all 14 episodes and binge watch it, right?

Just watch the whole thing through. Yeah, yeah. So this is really a reality TV show, right? So what it is is magicians generally sort of mid level career magic or even amateur magicians come up and they do a trick and they try to fool Penn and Teller, who are kind of like at the pinnacle of their career, right? They know everything.

I caught it a couple times. It was an interesting show. I liked it.

Yeah. So it was kind of fun. And the one thing about this reality show that I appreciate is that you know, Penn does the talking. Right.

That's their thing. Right. So Penn does the talking and Teller mugs. And he's very clever guy. He certainly can speak. He's a highly intelligent, really creative guy, but on camera, that's their shtick. So Penn always opens up when he. When he's gonna go and talk about whatever trick he's just seen. He always opens up with some kind.

Of.

Way of, you know, just saying that he liked something. He finds something in about it to be supportive of before he rips it up. But, you know, and when he does rip it up, it's in a language that is particular to magicians sometimes. Right. He'll like. He'll reference this guy and that guy. And most people have no clue who they're talking about. Historical figures in magic. So, anyways, they have a way of being quite gracious, even if it's stuff they don't like. So that's one of the few things I find I like.

And so there's a quality there of one of our shared contexts is basic goodness and affirming. Basic goodness.

Oh, really? Yeah. I think that's a good way to put it.

All right, so let's see what we can explore here. So. Well, one thing I noticed you referenced. And maybe we'll circle back to this in terms of some of the work you're. And we're both involved in, but it seemed like you referenced back in the 80s when you got a start in LA and Hollywood and the film business, that there was some pretty strong racial biases which made it easy for somebody who was the right skin color to get a start there.

Oh, absolutely.

No question.

Yeah. And today, actually, maybe we'll jump right into that.

You volunteer at the Men's Central Jail, and I think also maybe Twin towers, the Los Angeles County Jail system, which is the largest in the country, I think 15,000 prisoners, and you're a volunteer senior Buddhist chaplain there, and you visit guys one on one, and you lead various classes, including the Path of Freedom class, which is a curriculum from Prison Mindfulness Institute developed by Kate Crisp.

And that has some of the elements of the radical responsibility model within it. So why don't you talk a little bit about your work there and this context of radical responsibility and how you see it being received by the prisoners, benefiting the prisoners, and maybe even how that kind of operates within this context. You know, obviously, there's a completely disproportionate number of people of color in prisons and jails in our whole country. And I would Imagine so. Especially in the Los Angeles county jail system and, you know, the overall world of injustice that they're in already and the background to their incarceration in many cases, tremendous amount of racial injustice and all kinds of social and economic injustice. And yet here you are trying to invite them into radical responsibility as a way to move forward in their lives.

Yeah, so a very complex, very complex situation that you sort of are hitting a lot of points at Fleet. So, yeah, so I've been going into the LA County Sheriff's jails for a little over six years, and when one starts doing that, back in the day, when I was doing it, I needed to sort of go as kind of an intern. I had to be escorted around by other more experienced chaplains for a year and at that point make a decision to either say, that was an interesting year, I'm going to push on with my life, or.

Take the next step and sort of do some additional background checks and choose to go in, escort myself around and do my own work in there. And really what had struck me most with all of the men that I just work with, men, all the men that I had met who were incarcerated, there was a level of humanity that.

I just had no idea. I didn't know anything about jails. I'd never been to jail. I just went in there and this is a wretched place. Mid Central Jail is kind of known as like the crappiest jail in la. There are no windows, there's no fresh air. People live here for years. And it's just not built for that. It's built for people to be in and out and. And so it's a very tough place to live. There's danger in there. There's, you know, there's a lot of gangs in there. There's some violence in there. There's, you know, the food is atrocious, the water is not filtered, et cetera, et cetera. It's just a really rough, rough place to live and don't know how well I do in there. If I had to sleep there and wake up. So these guys, you know, yes, there's some violence, but in the main, right, you got 5,600 people in there. They really take care of themselves and they take care of each other in their own particular way. I mean, this is not, you know, I don't want to candy coat this at all.

Not necessarily what we call enlightened society.

But they make it work.

Yeah, they make it work. And I have met some incredibly interesting people and what I've Met in, you know, the type of folks that are particularly attracted to kind of, you know, either talking to me or being involved in some of these classes are people who want to do something different. You know, a lot of the folks who are in there, like you, like you mentioned, you know, there's a whole history of, you know, chaos in their family and their community and challenges and lack of resources, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, there's people I meet who have been in and out and in and out since they were in their teens, you know, and. And unfortunately, quite a few in that way. And so I meet people who are. Who say to me, I don't want to do this anymore. You know, so they're talking about transformation. They want to do some form of transformation, and they don't really have any tools.

Right.

They don't really know how. And I've seen people who are so committed, you know, and they'll say, I'm never coming back here again. I'm never, you know, I've been in and out, and I've got three kids outside, and I'm 27, and I don't want to do this anymore. So there's a ton of conviction and. But, you know, what are the tools that are actually going to help them once they step back outside those gates to turn their life around? Right. Yeah.

Because, as you know, we both know that we operate in very mechanical ways. There's a tremendous amount of automaticity until there's not. In other words, we're really driven by a lot of internalized conditioning, and it takes a lot of awareness and mindfulness to actually live consciously. And so with the best of intentions, we can get out of jail or out of prison, and old programs take over. We're back in a certain environment, certain situations. We're getting triggered by various challenges, and these old programs just kick in, and we go right back into the old behaviors. And it actually takes. Not only. It does take intention and commitment, but it also takes some tools to have the awareness to not get caught up in the old patterns.

Yeah, absolutely. And as you say, to recognize them, see when they're starting to kick in, and to hopefully make another choice.

Right.

Make another choice.

So in this kind of environment where I really see it as a hellish place to live, I really understand they don't want to come back.

So, you know, for me, there's a lot of affirmation of their, you know, what we've already touched on their sort of their fundamental nature. And, you know, the fact that they're not broken people and they don't really need to be fixed. But, you know, we're in this constant flow of shift and change and transformation anyways, obviously we're not staying the same. So how can we kind of work with that, you know, that sort of ongoing reality of shift and change and do it in an intentional way and a mindful way and in a caring and kind way. So I talk a lot about caring and kindness and being good to yourself and being friendly to yourself. And you know, some people, it's the first time they've heard that kind of thing. And.

For me, you know, and I don't know, and I kind of wanted to talk with you about this. Fleet is, you know, sometimes this, you know, the movement of kind of straightforward mindfulness or secular mindfulness about being aware and being clear what's happening in your mind and what's happening in your body. And that's all very well and good and super useful tools. But.

There'S also this, in my sense is I really trust that and I really trust these practices to help cultivate our.

Innate qualities that are, you know, seen it with empathy and compassion and caring and taking care of ourselves and taking care of others.

But, you know, I think that those practices and those skill sets need to go along in parallel or certainly as an adjunct to these straightforward standard, you know, these secular mindfulness practices. And it's something that I struggle with, you know, it's something that I, you know, because you're sitting down. I sit down with guys who get locked up into chairs. You know, these are high level offenders and you know, they're actually kind of sweet in certain ways, you know, but I don't know their history.

John. I want to create the visual for people. So you go into a secure room, right? And then one, and they have these chairs in there that prisoners are then brought into and put in a chair and locked into the chair so that they can't harm each other and can't harm you, ostensibly. And they're actually brought in one by one by several guards and they lock them up in the chair and then guards bring in another one, another one. And then you've got like what, five guys in there locked up in chairs?

Yeah, so we'll have five or six. So there's a particular day room in the mid central jail where they put in what they call treatment chairs or program chairs. And yeah, so it's bolted down to the floor. It's a steel. It's actually like a desk. Right. So you could do you know, you could do like schoolwork in there. And as each inmate comes down, they've been transferred down from upstairs. Each inmate's escorted by two deputies. When they come in, they're coming into another floor. They need to be transferred over to the, you know, the jurisdiction of another set of deputies. So, you know, we have three deputies per. Per inmate there. They get wanded down to see if there's any shivs or any metal or anything. So they all get wanded, you know, for metal. Before they're locked into their chairs, their ankle. They get ankle chains. So they're set up with ankle chains. And those ankle chains, once they sit down, can drop into a trough. Those get locked in with a bar and then they're. They lock up one hand, they release one hand, and they lock up the other hand into a chain to the back, the chair. And there is a Plexiglas screen that's vertical between each one of these chairs. And I've been told that that's a spit shield. It's just kind of a way for, you know, so people won't attack each other if they were going to use that form of attack.

So it's quite a scene as they start to come in. I mean, we can have, you know, at most six people. So you can have up to 18 deputies in the room with six guys in orange. And sometimes, you know, a sergeant will come in, senior will come in. So it's a whole bunch of people.

A whole bunch of activity.

And I tell you what, it works because everybody smiles. There's nothing is going to go down.

Right. Nothing.

Yeah.

Well, thank you. I really want people to get that visual because it's really Orwellian in nature and. Or beyond that, bizarre. And at the same time. Yeah, because the guys know they can be there. They're not going to get attacked. And so in some sense it works. And they get off the unit and they get to receive a class. Now we have to step back for a minute and realize all the causes and conditions that cause it to be necessary to do that in order for those guys to feel safe together in a room and for you to be safe with them and all that. I mean, you know, in a practical terms, yeah, it works. And these guys are happy to have the class. But when you step back, you know, the visual of it, it's not hard to get just kind of, you know, all the steps back we'd have to go to prevent having the need for that kind of Orwellian or worse outcome. But nonetheless, it's still great that you're doing the work. So, you know, as I listened to you talking about, you know, what you could bring to them in terms of basic skills and even in terms of the more secular skills of mindfulness and attention training and so forth and how they could be helpful. But I think what I hear you alluding to is these gentlemen you're working with, all men in this case have backgrounds with tremendous amount of chaos and pain and suffering and trauma. And so not only do they need self regulation skills, right? But they need self healing skills. Because I don't care how good you are at self regulation, if you're sitting on a volcano of trauma, you know, that's gonna be a really hard thing to manage. Right. Even with the best self regulation skills in the world. So interesting. You know, I know you're trying to communicate that context of self compassion and basic goodness, innate goodness, innate resilience, which I think is very important, but very interesting. Here you are with a bunch of guys locked up in these chairs separated by plexiglass and that kind of environment, and you're talking to them about self compassion, right? Which could, which could, I know, in that environment even be considered kind of a weak thing to even talk about or consider. I want to say something and then to get your take on this, you know, when I go into prisons and jails, the way I think about it is I want the prisoners to get two things. One, I want them to get that I understand that most of them come from horrendous backgrounds and that they were pretty much programmed to end up where they are. And, you know, tremendous chaos in their childhoods and backgrounds and lack of resources and all kinds of different kinds of abuse. And having grown up under a tremendous amount of racism and oppression and social economic injustice, and then the amount of racial and social injustice that exists within the criminal justice system and the sentencing policy just from there, you know, people of color are much more likely to get arrested. If they get arrested, they're much more likely to be prosecuted. If they get prosecuted, they're much more likely to get severe prosecution.

For charges that carry higher sentences. And then when they get sentenced, they're more likely to get stiffer sentences when compared with white Europeans. So the whole I want them to get that I understand all this and that I really have tremendous empathy and compassion for their situation actually breaks my heart every time I walk in. I don't care who's in there locked up and what they've done. It breaks my heart to see human beings in these cages and that I get all that injustice. So that's one part of what I want them to get. The other part of what. And they do because it's who I am and how I feel. But the other part of what I want them to get, that regardless of all that, that their future, how they're going to do their time and if and when they're going to be able to get out and whether they'll be able to stay out and the quality of their life going forward, if they are able to stay out, when they get out, is going to be determined by one and one only thing. And that's the choices they're making right now. And that's the radical responsibility message. So I'm just curious about how that works for you and how you see.

Men in these situations being willing to own that on some degree, despite all their suffering and all their trauma and all the injustice they face that are they able to get that still they have the agency to create their own future, facing challenges that most of us don't face, but still the agency lies in our hands.

Yeah, that's great. League.

Yeah. So I don't.

Does that work? You know, I'm at. So it's what I'm wondering, or how do you, how do you set, you know, what's the work you do with these men so that they are able to hear that message, you know, and so they can get enough compassion and affirmation, as you were saying, for their own innate goodness and maybe enough empathy and compassion for their situation that then they're able to actually consider a message like that.

Well, I, you know, I have to go in under my own context. Right. I have my own history. I grew up, you know, in an upper middle class.

You know, basically white society in Canada generally. I mean, there was, you know, there were.

There were national.

Sort of nationalities represented within the. I grew up in Vancouver. You know, we had a wonderful Indian community and, you know, there was great Indian food. And then we had, you know, actually a checkered history with the Chinese community, but wonderful Chinese community. And, you know, we'd go to Chinese restaurants. But basically, you know, my school, it was all, you know, white folks. You know, there was one Jewish person. There were no black people. That's just my context. That's how I grew up. Right. So I have to go in with real sort of humility around what their culture is, what their culture was. You know, what was their community in their family? I don't have a clue. I really don't know. So I really try to adopt this idea of cultural humility. And I do know that we share, as any young child, at some point somebody tells us we're being bad or they give us a whack, or we do whatever we can just to kind of get a hug or not get hit. Right. So we all end up at some point questioning ourselves and criticizing ourselves. Because when we're, you know, three or four or six or seven or however, people are telling us we're doing the wrong thing, and we believe them.

Yeah, that's just. That's the baseline human condition that we all face. And unfortunately, a lot of the people in prison, they get that. We all share that, and there's a universality to it. And then they get it on steroids, right?

Yeah, absolutely. They did get tons and tons. And so when I, you know, when I sort of bring that up and just talk about being little boys, you know, so I can relate to them because I was a little boy and they were a little boy, and, you know, and, you know, I got spanked or whatever, but, you know, I got yelled at. And, you know, you do stuff, you run around, you knock. You knock over a glass of milk, and, you know what happens? Who knows what happens? Some parents will go out of their mind, you know, so there's this. We're so trained at criticizing ourselves. We're so trained at being hard on ourselves. We're so trained at thinking that we're a problem. You know, I'm a problem. And so that's kind of where I go in and try and, you know, show them that, you know, it's really up where we're trained, that that's a. That's a really strong habit. And it's very easy for us to kind of notice that as we're sitting in, you know, mindfulness practice that, you know, where does the mind go to? Well, often we tell ourselves we're crappy meditators, you know. Right. And all that kind of stuff. And so to kind of point that out and allow people to realize, oh, you know, hey, that's that habit, hopefully, that they can kind of get that. That's that habit. And what can I cultivate and train in myself that is going to bring this sense of wholeness and empathy. And so, you know, as far as going deep into the societal.

Drives that have brought them to where they are to this day, I don't really go too deep into that because I don't have a huge context around that. I haven't really studied the criminal justice System, you know, So I see it, obviously, every day I walk in there. You're absolutely correct. There's a huge number of Hispanics, there's a huge number of blacks, and there are very, very few white people in there. That's just the way it is, you know. And.

So it's like how on a day to day basis, when I step through that gate, how can I be there and be present and be some. You know, sometimes I just kind of have to smile. I might feel crappy, but, you know, I kind of put on a smile. It's like I'm the guy. It's funny, you know, you've got all these deputies, you got all these people in uniforms, you got all these people in blues and, you know, yellows and oranges. And it's like, I guess you walk in the chapel and you're like the light of the day, right? You're the person who brings in some sort of lightness and friendliness and enjoy.

Yeah, that's really important. So you were talking about the different colors. I guess they wear different color jumpsuits depending on what unit they're in.

So. Yeah, that was very much my experience during my 14 years in prison, that, you know, when people come in from the outside, especially if they come in with a good attitude and, you know, they're not trying to save you or, you know, whatever. I mean, I don't mean the more conversion or saving kind of oriented religious traditions that come into the prisons, because actually I think they all do good work. But anybody coming in from the outside has a different vibe than you get from your fellow prisoners, than you get especially from the officers. Right. And it's like you get this little hit of humanity from the outside world, and especially with somebody who's had the training you've had where you're not trying to save them and you don't have any attitude, you're just coming in there as a genuine human being, relating to them as a genuine human being. And you're friendly and open.

And you're not treating them like you're not putting them in a box or much less treating them like the prison system is like they're some kind of useless or worse thug.

So that's a really positive experience you mentioned. It's like the light, I mean, you're like the sun shine coming into this very dark world.

Yeah, hopefully a little bit.

Even on your worst day, Right?

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

I mean, don't go to your head, John. I don't want you to start. Once again, you Got like some, you know, big radiance of the sun of your aura following you around. But no, really, I mean, just the fact that you care enough to come in there, you're not getting paid for it. You're coming in there because you care. And you've had enough training to work with your own mind and projections. And so you're not coming in there with a lot of projections. And they just get to spend some time with a genuine human being who cares about their lives and their future. So I think that's really powerful. Again, even on your worst day.

Yeah, and I do some preparation before I get there. I have some.

Texts that I recite on my walk to jail, and I kind of try to get my head in the place right, don't you?

I thought you spent hours listening to me on audio tape before you went in that way. You do. No, of course.

Of course. Of course I do. You know, I'll tell you one of the things that. That I always see lights up the eyes of some of these guys when I do one on ones behind the bars. And this is an old jail. This is an old jail where it's, you know, there are rows of steel barred cells, right? Either one man, two man, four man, right?

Out of the movies.

Rare. The movies. Yeah. Like if you think of the. Of the. The cop with his billy club walking along a row of steel bars going, clank, clank, clank. Yeah, it's like that. That's what it's like. It was designed in the 50s, built in the 60s, and really needs to come down. But it is what it is for now. And anyways, you know, when people ask for literature, right, they're hungry for anything to take their mind off what's going on or to. Or to get engaged with something different. And so, you know, I'll handle little books and we'll talk a little bit. Sometimes I give meditation instructions through the bars and do it standing. But I always say when I give them a book and kind of before I go, before I leave, I say, don't believe a word you read in that book. Don't believe a word of anything I've said. And they kind of look at me because, as you know, they might be getting other messages from other people who are dropping off books. And I say, don't believe a word I say. You have your own intelligence and wisdom. Use that. Figure out what you connect with, what makes sense to you. And the rest of it, just discard it, don't worry about it. And I love doing that. Because in a way, it's playful for me, but eyes open up, you know, and it's like, oh, you know, again, how often are people told that they have their own wisdom and their own intelligence?

Yeah, somebody do. Yeah, somebody's respecting their own mind. Yeah. Amazing. That's great. So I want to shift topics in a moment here, but before we leave the men's central jail in Los Angeles, what are some of the common questions that they ask you in your classes? What do they want to know about? What are they curious about?

Hmm. What are they curious about?

The weather.

Like, really? Because there's no windows.

Yeah, they want to know what's going on outside. Sure. Yeah.

They want to know what the weather. I mean, they used to live out in the world, and this is literally an environment with no windows and no fresh air. So they get three hours a week. They're offered three hours a week to go to the roof. That's their outdoor time. Right. This was not built as a prison, so there's no yard. They go to the roof, which is all. And if they're high power, then they go into cages, chain link. Or if they're kind of a lower level, then there's a bigger area. Area with chain link. And they can see the sky. Sometimes they see clouds, sometimes they see a bird. So they kind of. They want to know what's going on out in the world a little bit. I mean, I don't get into politics.

They probably get to go up there and suck in a lot of smog. Right.

Hey, Ellie's cleaned up our smog quite a bit since the 80s, I'll tell you that. Not 100%, but we're a little cleaner out.

Yeah, that's good. That's good.

Yeah. So.

You know, nothing really jumps to mind. Fleet. I'm sorry, I don't. They want this to be a dude.

No. I'm curious about, you know, when you're presenting the material, do they challenge you on it or, you know, or what do they want to. Are they curious about their own mind or about, you know, the connection between their past, present and future and what lays in wait for them when they get outside, et cetera, etc?

Often, you know, within the path of freedom and within the radical responsibility, we, of course, we get into the drama triangle. Right. And just those three positions. And you're talking.

You're representing Stephen Cartman's drama triangle with the triangulation between the mindsets of the victim, persecutor and rescuer.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And so again, lights really go off with inmates because there's a lot of drama on these tiers. Even where they're single man cells, the way it's set up, the inmates can't really see each other, but if they talk, they can hear each other because it's all open bars, right. So they're constantly yelling and there's a lot of talk, let's say back and forth amongst all these different tiers and all these different people.

A lot of trash talking.

A lot of trash talking. Yeah. And sometimes it escalates, you know, and there have been attacks from some of this, you know, just kind of whatever they're trash talking about around family and weight and etc. Etc. Whatever. So.

Yeah, people really sort of start to work with that. You know, I encourage them to kind of work with it and see what they can see. And they see it very quickly and find that they can step back and step out. So, you know, we have those conversations around that kind of, that part of the training. And again, as you and I have seen with corrections officers and law enforcement and everybody everywhere, right. I mean, once you kind of start to get those distinctions and have the ability to possibly step away from some of the drama in your life or not contribute to it or not generate it yourself, it's a huge relief. Just a huge relief.

Great. So let's, we'll leave the world of prisons and jails behind for now. And so.

You came to the US and as I said, you've always had kind of multiple streams of income, which tells me that you basically have been self employed largely and.

That you're somewhat entrepreneurial by nature. So you're not locked into a particular place where you got a weekly paycheck and benefits and a long time career and retirement fund, but you're actually having to get out there and hustle. So as a musician, you were having to get yourself gigs. Working in Hollywood as a prop master, you had to get yourself gigs. Now working with us in the criminal justice space, again, we're having to go out and get gigs and you're not on salary. You get paid when you deliver trainings. It seems like you're a pretty entrepreneurial guy by nature who's not afraid of.

The uncertainty involved in that. Not afraid to.

Have your livelihood and your financial security dependent on what you can actually get out and do and hustle every day.

And now along with that, as you referenced that when you turned 60, you decided you, you know, weren't satisfied with, you know, what many of us might be satisfied in terms of health and physical conditioning at 60 and you decided to become a triathlon athlete and start competing pretty seriously at that level. So I'm just curious as to what, what, what was it about your background and, and do you have any reflections on this? Because, you know, this models some of the principles. I mean, I would say I'm not trying to just give you a big head here, but, you know, with radical responsibility we talk about.

It really represents the integration of both personal and collective responsibility. And we begin with the personal because I don't think you're able to work with others for collective responsibility to overcome the many, you know, economic, social, political, environmental challenges we face with greater and greater complexity. The only place we can do that collectively is from a personal place, in my view anyway, first embracing personal responsibility and then personally responsible people can work together collectively to solve problems. So here you are, someone who's been willing to be responsible for your own personal well being and livelihood, both financially and physically. And at the same time, you're dedicating a lot of your time.

To some of our major social issues, which is our criminal justice system and a tremendous, you know, mass incarceration and its impact on people of color and communities and just, you know, the desperate situation so many human beings are in. You dedicate a lot of your time to that. So I see that as a representation of these two. And I'm just curious about, you know, how you came by that or how do you feel like, you know, you've been willing to be more self sustaining, more entrepreneurial and personally responsible in your own life. What was the ground of that and how does that work, work for you?

Well, what's the ground of that? You know, to be honest, I think the ground of that was uncertainty, like not. And a sense of directionlessness. When I was in my early 20s, late teens, early 20s.

So you're saying you earned this by necessity?

Yeah, I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know really what I wanted to do. I, I knew I wanted to play music. And I was in a kind of a happening punk band, you know, the, in the late 70s, early 80s of Vancouver.

And, and what was, what was the band's name?

His band was called the Modernettes. The Modernettes.

The Modern. Can anybody find anything online from the Modern?

Yeah, yeah, go, go, go to YouTube.

Put in Barbara, are there some videos there that we could really embarrass you if we put them out today or no embarrassment.

You put them right up there. You put them right up there.

Hairdo and All. There wasn't like a. What do you call it? A. You didn't have a. A mullet or something like that?

No, no, no, no. This was not the. This was not yacht rock.

This wasn't good rock.

So the hair was. The hair was short. Yeah, no, that was good. It was. It was actually a pretty happy little scene. It was before the Seattle scene and where Nirvana came out of. But so anyways, so, you know, I. I don't know, I had this dream of being a rock star, whatever the hell that meant. I had no idea what that meant. But it's like, it looks good. So I started playing music. And as I said, I've been a lifelong musician, but that fell apart. Of course. There was no money in it and I had to drive taxi to be able to play music. So I guess that was kind of one of the first things. I had a great job at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in the radio technical department. And I could have been a technician. And actually within the first year of landing my job at the cbc, I got a notified I had my own mailbox. I got a notification in the mailbox when I could retire.

I kid you not. It was like in whatever year that was and it freaked me out. It was like, oh my God, I can't think that far in the future. Like maybe I can think three months in the future, but.

And that maybe that sets some of it going, you know, I didn't want to set a sights on retirement when I was whatever, 21 or something. So, you know, I. I quit that job. I found a punk band and we were doing good. And then it fell apart. And then just, you know what, I figured I could go do this in Australia. And a lot of Canadians travel to Australia. So I thought, you know, there's some. There's some big bands coming out of Australia. I'll go play drums there. So I set on this. I set off on a journey and you know, I absolutely had to take care of myself, my journey. So I. You and I ended up being in the Caribbean on sailboats at the same time. We didn't run into each other, but yeah, I ended up down in the Caribbean hitchhiking on sailboats. I'm a lifelong sailor. And then that kind of whole plan fell through. I couldn't get a boat to Australia, so I ended up back in Florida. I took a bus across to LA and kind of landed in la. Didn't want to go home with my tail between my legs because I didn't fulfill my dream. And so I Just kind of of plopped into LA literally with 43 bucks in my pocket. Literally with 43 bucks in my pocket. And, and some friends, you know, and I found a sofa to sleep on and I just needed to make some money. And within.

Six months I had three part time jobs and I was playing in five bands because I, I didn't know how to say no, right. So I had met these people who said, hey, you want to play in my band? We're about to get a recording contract and this. And it was all Hollywood, Hollywood stuff. And so yeah, I was playing in five bands, like new wavy punk bands and had three part time jobs. One in the morning, one at noon and one in the evening. And so I, I was full at that point.

Yeah, well, it sounds like you know how to hustle. Yeah, in the positive, in the positive sense of the word.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's kind of how, that's kind of how it all started. And, and when I, when I was able to drop into the film business, you know, the first job I got, I made 50 bucks a day. That was huge for me. 1982, I made $50 a day. I didn't, you know, I thought, God, if I made $75, I wouldn't know how to spend it all. But.

The thing with, with that kind of freelance work is they're all really short, you know. And so I had some friends, you know, we do a commercial for 5 days, 7 days, 12 days or something, you know, and then this friend of mine said, oh, 365 day weekend. You know, it's like we just didn't know job was going to come in. So you absolutely had to hustle. You had to make those calls or make those connections or, you know, or things. Eventually things will fall in place for a little while and some director will keep hiring you and you get a couple of years work out of that and then that falls apart. They go on to somebody else. You got to find somebody else. So it's, yeah, kind of a constant hustle and there's, you know, there's an edge of anxiety around that for sure because you don't know where it's going to come from. And you try to keep things in balance a little bit.

But yeah, in the midst of that you managed to have a family and.

You had one marriage that I guess didn't work out, but you have a second one that's been running for 25 years now, I think you said. And you've obviously had to take care of business.

And provide and create some level of security for your family. And I believe your wife works as well. So it's not all on your shoulders, but just that quality of being able to.

I'm wondering how. So it seems like you have a natural inclination, you have the ability to get out there and hustle. You realize nobody's going to do it for you. And you're kind of entrepreneurial enough to do that. But it also requires, I think, living that way. And it's getting tougher and tougher because, you know, I mean, there is, there is, if you're willing to hustle, there's always a lot of opportunity out there, but depending on your situation and of course there's a lot of, lot of racial and social justice disparities around those opportunities. But still, if you're willing to hustle, there's a lot of opportunity out there.

But the world is getting more and more complex and it's getting more and more challenging and the level of competition everywhere is so intense that it requires a lot of resilience. And so I'm wondering what the interplay has been for you in your career between your willingness to get out there and hustle and be kind of self employed and a freelancer and the rest of it and put the cobble together a livelihood that's worked for you and the interplay between that and your long time now meditation practice and spiritual practice, both as a practitioner of meditation, but also as a practitioner within the Buddhist tradition. And how those two things have dovetailed for you, if you have any sense of that?

Well, I mean, they're conjoined, right? I mean, there's direct correlation. I feel internally that the resilience and the ability to sit with my challenges and thrive with my challenges, sit being literally on the cushion has been invaluable and I think really is the foundation of who I am.

And by my good fortune that I again kind of stumbled into.

Into.

What was Vajradhatu Dharmadhatu Shambhala and met good people who were genuine and willing to sort of teach me and guide me. And obviously, as we know, this is a very personal practice. So I spent a good number of hours working on myself that way. And.

You know, without sounding pat, coming back to the moment, I mean, with all of this, with all of this stuff, it's, you know, the only next step happens out of this moment. So that ability to work through the, you know, the challenges and the uncertainty and the despair and the depression that comes with being unemployed, along with the excitement of being employed and, you know, you make a lot of money for a little while and then all of a sudden you're, you know, you're out of. You're out of employment altogether. So, yeah, I just think that it's invaluable that I have, you know, that I have this practice, this sort of spiritual path that I've been able to go down.

And.

I've actually studied over the last 10 years quite a bit around death and dying. And that's quite liberating for me.

And so I don't know if there's much more to say.

Well, you know, I mean, the thing about being in the moment, obviously, things are pretty simple in the moment, right? You just have to take one step at a time in the moment, when we start doing the time travel right into, you know, fantasizing and worrying about the future and being full of, you know, regrets and, you know, all the stuff we do with our past. But in the moment, things are fairly straightforward and simple. They can be incredibly challenging sometimes, but still, things are simpler in the moment, obviously, and that's actually where we live. And it's when we're willing to actually embrace that. And it also from, you know, we have a shared background in Buddhist education and training, and, you know, that training kind of conditions us to embrace uncertainty. And, you know, because the Buddhist tradition points that that is the nature of things, that's the nature of reality. And of course, we can gravitate towards things that will give us a sense of security, and that's normal and human, but none of those things are ultimately secure. And that's been ever more true in terms of people's careers and livelihoods. It used to be you could sign on with a particular company and work there your whole career. And you did maybe get the memo the first day on your retirement date and how much you'd have in your pension, but that's pretty much disappeared unless you work for the government. And so things are pretty uncertain for everyone. And of course, for any of us, a change in our health or. Or a company going out of business layouts, it can just turn our world upside down overnight. So I think having both an education and a practice that is really training us to be more comfortable in a world of uncertainty combined with the practice that actually allows you to have more resilience and more capacity to just be in the moment, even in those very challenging moments, is obviously something that's been incredibly helpful for me, and I'm sure that's the same for you.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, yeah, there Are there are all these challenges and it is always changing. And, you know, I wish it would stay the same because sometimes it's really good, sometimes life feels really good. And it's like, can I just keep that? I want that, you know, but that don't work.

Yeah, well, I've been in person, I've been. Been practicing in the Buddhist tradition and working with impermanence and uncertainty for more than 45 years. And I still don't like change, even when it's not that great. Just don't move that. I put that there. That stays right there on my bedside table. You don't move that. Just that need for control, that desire for things to stay the same and be predictable. On the other hand, there's times when you don't want things to be predictable. You get bored if they're predictable. So we have both this need for, for. We have this need for certainty and variety, right? And they can seem to pull us this way, in that way. But I think our training certainly helps a lot. We just have a little bit of time left. John, I'd like to spend the last bit of our time here talking about the fact that I believe you said at the age of 60, you embrace this new level of physical training and have become a triathlete. And talk about that a little bit about, I mean, where were you health wise at that point and where had you been? And then what kind of level of dedication has it taken for you to get to where you can compete fairly successfully as an amateur in your age group in triathlons?

So just before I turned 60, I was looking around the Internet and, you know, 60 seems like a pretty big one. And I found a couple of articles, though I've been told by some of my now, now that I've kind of gone through it and found some friends who are Chinese told me that it probably was wrong when I was reading, but it was on the Internet, right? So it's got to be true. So I read this thing about, with the Chinese calendar, that age 60 is a huge year. It's kind of a year where.

One steps into being recognized as an elder, as in one way, but also steps through into a new life because they've done the entire.

Calendar, that entire zodiac, right? So the whole zodiac thing. And so I thought, I like that. Let's have a new life, let's be reborn or what, you know, and what might that look like? And I was in a particular location regularly where they were about to have a triathlon up in Big Bear, California. And.

I thought that sounds kind of cool because, you know, it's swimming and it's biking and it's running and none of it sounded too daunting. It was like, that's like a half a mile swim. I figure I could do that 18 mile bike ride. I figured I could do that. And a 5K run, which is 3.1 miles, and I figure I can do that. I don't know if I can do it all together, but I could knock out any one of those, right? So then I figured, well, geez, how about I'll just do some training, train for about six weeks. So I was able to find a coach through an online platform. She's a great coach. She actually lives pretty close to me. I've only met her twice. We do all of our sort of training either online or through text and phone call. And I figured, yeah, I'm going to do this. I'll do six weeks of training and I'll go do this triathlon. So I did that and I was beat. I was beat down. So it's 6,500ft up at big Bear. And you know, my body was. I thought I was pretty healthy and I was pretty healthy. I don't, I don't, I don't. Hadn't been to the doctor. I eat well. My wife, who actually is retired now, she supports me really well. She cooks a lot of my dinner meals and, and I stay healthy that way, but I kind of got the bug. You know, one of the things is you get to buy spandex clothing when you're training and you get to wear it in front of people.

So that, the truth is, you didn't really want to be a punk rocker. You wanted to be a glam rocker. Right? Glam rock was your true. That was your true calling.

Yeah.

And then I could have had the mullet.

Right?

Could have happened.

But I also was hoping that my son was going to get involved. He's a very healthy guy now. He's a doctor. He's all into health and wellness. And I thought I was going to be able to seduce him to come out and train and work with me. But guess what? He was in medical school and he was too busy. Now that he's a doc, maybe in the next few years I'll be able to get him to come do some of these things with me. I have run a 5k with him. But anyways, it's kind of exciting. It was really challenging and, and.

There'S a lot of them around. It's a Whole world, it's like in this country, Right.

So what kind of hours are you putting into this? What kind of time? Talk about your, you know, what you do. Like you just competed yesterday, right? How'd you do?

So Yesterday was the 33rd Nautica Malibu Triathlon. And I did the classic distance. It's a half mile swimming, 17 mile ride on a four mile run for whatever reason. And it was. It was tough. The swim went good, the bike went great, felt really strong. And then my body kind of started to break down in the run and I didn't quite get it, but I started to, you know, my hamstrings were almost cramping up and my knees started to gripe at me and. But there were 34 in my age group, 60 to 64, and somehow I pulled out a fifth place. And at this point, this very generous event, they give medals from fifth to first. So I got to get up on the podium and got my picture taken. And so that's kind of cool. That feels good.

Congratulations. So how many times have you been on the podium so far? And sometimes it's just three, right? The usual. First, second and third.

Usually it's first, second and third. That was my fifth podium.

Oh, my goodness. Wow. That's fabulous. That's great. Congratulations on that. Okay, so what was your true training like to prepare for this particular triathlon? How many days a week, how many hours a day were you putting into switching biking or running?

Yeah, so I did about a six week block. The last thing I had Done was a 20k time trial on the bike. So I had kind of trained up for that. So my training is five days a week with two recovery days. Right. And as we age and this whole thing about wellness is really about stress and recovery. Stress and recovery. Recovery, right. And so in the physical world, it's very much about stress and recovery. So, you know, I stress my body five days a week, and then I let it recover. And some of those are more intense and some of them are less intense. So by the last three or four weeks, I was doing open water swims. I was swimming a little over a mile in a wetsuit out in the ocean off Carpenteria Beach. I was riding, I think, generally 20, either once a week or twice a week, 18 miles a shot, you know, between 16 and 21 miles a shot. And then I was running 4 to 5 miles, all of them highly structured.

So you're running every day over those five days?

No, no.

Separate event for each one of those five days. So. So one day I'll do a swim one day, I'll do a ride one day I'll do a. I got it.

Okay, great.

And one day I'll do strength training.

Great.

Yeah, so, but they're all very highly structured and my coach, Amanda has, you know, she knows what she's doing. She was a 10 years as a pro triathlete. So I have, I'm in physical therapy right now to kind of again recover and keep my body, you know, so it's not getting injured. And you know, I shared one of my trainings with one of my pts and they said, how do you know to do that? I said, well, I've got a coach. And he said this, you got a good coach. She's got it laid out exactly the way it should be. So, you know, war. So you do a slow warm up and then get into intervals, right. So it's this high intensity interval training approach and I only have so much time, so I'm not able to go hours and hours a day. You know, some of these people who can really dedicate and be retired and do this, you know, you could really take longer time. But how can I get the biggest bang for the buck?

So you're, you're, you're hacking the physiological code there. We all, everybody likes to talk about hacking these days. And it's 60. I think to perform as an athlete you got to get into what are the shortcuts and what the most efficient ways to use your time to condition yourself to be able to compete. Sounds like you're doing that pretty well.

Yeah, yeah, I just don't have any time to lose. I'm, you know, now I'm 62, so I've got two years training in and you know what, I'm still getting faster, I'm still getting stronger, so that's kind of cool.

With the caveat that, that I never trained up until I was 60, so I haven't put my body through this kind of intensive, disciplined training ever before. And it's like, wow, this is kind of interesting. If I continue to do this training and it's all about.

It'S about managing pain. I think you and I have kind of talked about this before. It's like it's not that comfortable to go out and train and run and ride. I mean, some of it's great and some of it's really hard. I train really hard. But when you're doing these short intervals, it's this high intensity where you have to manage that challenge and then you back off. I mean, it can, the interval can be as short as 20 seconds. I do 22nd run, 42nd walk, 22nd run, 42nd walk. Sometimes it's 12 minutes, you know, high intensity on the bike. Basically go, you know, go all out, not quite a sprint, but just below a sprint. Do 12 minutes of that and then do a four minute recovery. Right. So it's these short bursts of high intensity and it seems to really work.

That's great. That's great. Well, very inspiring, John, and really enjoyed our conversation today. There are just so many levels in which you are taking charge of your own life, taking charge of your own health and then giving back, finding really effective ways to give back. So that seems to me to be kind of an ideal integration of the radical responsibility message. And happy to be partnering with you around our work with, especially with law enforcement, first responders, correctional officers and I gotta just share one story for our audience. Recently, John and I were down out in the desert on the border of the California, Mexico border in El Centro, California to work with the US Border Patrol out there. And so John met me, picked me up at the airport in San Diego and we drove over the mountains and then down into the desert. And as we're crossing the desert, the temperature gauge in his car, he had an external temperature gauge and it's going up and up and up. It's up in the 90s and it crosses 100 and it keeps going and it finally got up to 118. And we just happened, there happened to be like one of the little rest stops. I asked John to pull over and I wanted to get. I'd never been in 118 degree weather. So we opened the doors and it was like a blast furnace hitting you. We got out and walked around for a few minutes in 118 degrees and, and then when we got Del Centro to our hotel there, it was still 115. But that was kind of an interesting experience working with the US Border Patrol agents. Any reflections you have on that, John?

Yeah, actually, no, not dinner. But I was delivering the training and you were delivering parts of it and we were co. Delivering it. But I know you're really good on the brakes. You're always talking to the guys, the officers and the participants and you even managed to get them to get you one of the, what do you call those coins? Coins.

A challenge coin.

Challenge coin, yeah. So anyway, you were kind of getting in there and getting to know the guys a little bit. So you know, what could you share from that?

Well, you know, I think their horns were Retracted because they ended up being regular folk. Right. I mean, they're just people. And a lot of them long time career people who had been through a number of administrations and were out there every day doing their job. Now, a lot of the folks, you know, all the folks we were working with were peer support people. So they're trying to get the biggest bang for their buck because they're going to have the line staff coming to these folks that we were training, right. To work, to help, to support them as peers if they were having some challenges on the job. So, you know, there was a mixed bag fleet. I met some guys who were like really intense into the way it's being run now. And there were other people that you and I talked to really were having some personal challenges just around.

Their moral compass. Right. So then this is something that we come across, that there's this kind of role conflict. And so I found that they were just real people who were doing the best they could and.

They live in a challenging environment. It is that. And they're out the. In that. In their trucks. You know, their trucks break down or they.

Motorcycles. Four wheelers. Yeah, they're.

They're four wheelers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that terrain is, you know, the terrain is really challenging. You can trip and turn your ankle. And most of the work happens at night because most of the people who cross the border, they go at night and rattlesnakes, the whole deal, rattlesnakes, spiders, all kinds of stuff.

So, you know, we all know the U.S. border Patrol has been getting a black eye with what's been going on down there at the border and especially separating mothers from their children and, and having to detain children in detention facilities and all of that. And of course, these guys aren't the ones making these. And women are not the ones who are making the decisions. They're just carrying out their orders.

But what I saw, I think similar to you, that there were some, in fact the guy who was the main manager there, who was our liaison that set up us coming in there to do that, he was very vulnerable about his feelings about it all. He talked about one time when he had to separate a mother from her child. And that was a different situation. It wasn't just a migration situation, but she was actually involved in some drug smuggling, I think, and using the child as a cover, but still separating that mother from her child. And you know, he said it just really did him in and, you know, it took him a long time to get over it. And he didn't even know if he could continue in that work. So he was, he was willing to be vulnerable about how much that impacted him. And a number of the people we were working with, I think were. And then some of the others that were covering it up with a kind of bravado or negative attitudes that really felt to me like more like a cover for the pain that they're in than real belief systems in particular. So, you know, there are men and women down there doing a really tough job and hopefully, you know, we brought them some skills that can be helpful and hopefully we're going to get the opportunity to go back down there and train more of the line staff. Because from what we heard, the people that did receive the training, they felt like this is a kind of training we were giving them. Basically mindfulness based self regulation skills. Right. And some communication skills to lower the amount of drama and better interact with each other and with the, with the people they work with. So, you know, they were there. The feedback we got was that they felt, you know, all the, all the agents should get this training.

Yeah. So we'll see if that happens. But anyway, it was cool to go down there and do that with you and glad you got your challenge coin and so you can show that to our friend Nick when next time you see him, he's got his whole. His old collection of challenge coins. That's a, that's another Hollywood guy. Guy who's out there bringing mindfulness to Nick Stein. He's out there bringing mindfulness to law enforcement. So I'm gonna have to get Nick on this podcast. All right, John, thanks so much.

Yeah, it was great to, great to speak with you about all this and thanks for having me on your podcast. A real honor.

Yeah, thank you very much and keep doing the good work you're doing.

Thanks, Fleet. I will.

Hello, it is Ryan. And we could all use an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we? Just to make up for things like sitting in traffic, doing the dishes, counting your steps, you know, all the mud, mundane stuff. That is why I'm such a big fan of Chumba Casino. Chumba Casino has all your favorite social casino style games that you can play for free, anytime, anywhere with daily bonuses. So sign up now@chumbacasino.com that's chumbacasino.com no purchase necessary vgw group void where prohibited by law 21 + terms and conditions apply.