Escaping Life's Hidden Prisons | Shaka Senghor

Hello, this is Don McPherson, your host of 12 Geniuses. Past Narratives. Survivors, remorse, fear, and the inability to forgive are all barriers that hold people.

Back from liberated lives.

Today's guest is Shaka Singh Gore, the author of how to Be A Proven Guide to Escaping Life's Hidden Prisons. Shaka knows about prisons, the hidden ones and the ones with locks, walls, and bars. He spent 19 years incarcerated, seven of which were in solitary confinement. While imprisoned, Shaka educated himself, found positive role models, and completely transformed his life in a way that has enabled him to reach his potential and create opportunities for others. In our conversation, Shaka and I discussed the power of journaling, how to become resilient, why forgiveness benefits the person doing the forgiving, and most importantly, how to break free of the prisons that hold many people back from becoming who they.

Were meant to be.

To end our conversation, Shaka answers how his understanding of freedom has evolved since.

He was first arrested. Shaka, welcome to 12 Geniuses.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Let's start out with your history. Tell us what you were doing until the age of 19. Where did you grow up and how did you get educated?

Yeah, so I grew up in Detroit, working class neighborhood. You know, my dad was in the air Force. He was also worked for the state. My mother was the homemaker. Always say we kind of look like the black Brady Bunch because it ended up being six of us, three boys, three girls, and on the outside looking in. You know, our house was the model for black middle class, working class America. Unfortunately, you know, it was a tough household. You know, my mother was very strict and physically abusive, and it was a result of her own experiences with her life that I would learn later in life why she was the way that she was. But as a kid, I didn't know that. So I was honor roll scholarship student. I dreamed of being a doctor or artist. I loved school. I loved learning and reading and working very fast. That was always a thing. I was very competitive with myself and I love to create things. I love art and music. You know, growing up in a family with just an incredible music background, something that really resonated with me. So I knew, you know, early on that one, I either wanted to be a doctor because I wanted to help people, and two, I wanted to be some type of artist because I felt like that brought people, you know, joy. But within my household, navigating those difficulties. I ran away when I was a kid about between like 13 and 14 years old. And I was just this naive kid. I thought that someone would welcome me into their home, wrap me in a warmth that I think all teens are worthy of. And unfortunately, I got seduced into the crack cocaine trade. And early on in that culture, first six months in, my childhood friend was murdered, I was beaten nearly to death, I was robbed at gunpoint. And I stayed in that culture, sadly, like many kids, not really knowing a way out. And then when I was 17 years old, I got shot multiple times, went to the hospital, they kind of took two of the bullets out, left one bullet in, patched me up, and I was right back in my neighborhood. And there was really no support systems in place back then for kids experiencing gun trauma. I think nowadays we have some more trauma informed care. But back then it was patch up, send them back to the hood. And I saw that story playing out over and over. Both my older brothers were being shot, many of my friends. And in response to that, I just began to carry a gun every day. And tragically and unfortunately, at the age of 19, one month into my 19th birthday, I got into a conflict that escalated to me shooting and tragically caused a man's death. And, you know, I was subsequently arrested, charged with open murder, and sentenced to 17 and 40 years for second degree murder. And going into prison, I just literally thought my life was over.

That's 1991, right?

Yeah, 1991. I served a total of 19 years. I was transferred 19 times to 11 different prisons in every security level from super maximum security all the way down to minimum security. You know, our prison systems in America, they are as varied as our states are. A lot of people don't know that. They think that when they hear prison that it's all just one big system. But no, it's over 50 systems, including the federal systems and localized jails and county jails and things of that nature. But all my time was served in Michigan prisons. And I was as close as being right outside the neighborhood I grew up in in prison and then as far away as 12 hour drive to the upper peninsula of Michigan. So spent a lot of time in a lot of different prisons. And it was an era where nobody was talking about criminal justice reform. It was up under that old model of punishment. Is the way that you treat people when they're in that environment. You know, be as harsh and as cruel and somehow that will fix them. And we know that to be the completely opposite. Typically, people going into that environment are already hurt and broken and the system just further breaks them down. And, you know, if you're fortunate to escape with any sense of your humanity, you're really lucky.

You said that you felt like your life was over when you were arrested and when you were sentenced. Talk about your experience in prison and then obviously you've turned your life around. When did that occur?

I had incredible mentors, and these weren't mentors in a traditional sense. These were men who were serving life in prison who saw something redeemable in me that I didn't see in myself. And in their quest to help me stay out of trouble, they guided me to books. And I was fortunate. You know, I was literate. People talk about hitting the genetic lotto or what area codes you're born into or what family you're born into. For me, my version of that was being lucky enough to be literate in an environment where the average reading grade level was third grade. And so those books that they guided me to really just kind of exploded these ideas that I had about myself. The insecurity, the self loathing, the not feeling worthy of anything beyond what my circumstances were. And those books challenged me to awaken my mind to different ideas. But it didn't happen overnight. It was a process. And so, you know, I was getting in a lot of trouble in prison. And, you know, I ended up doing a total of seven years in solitary confinement. The longest stretch was four and a half years from 1999 to like 2004 and or 2005, one of them. But that time period, all the things kind of culminated into these defining moments for me where I began to ask myself these tough questions. How did I, a kid with dreams of being a doctor and an artist, end up serving up almost promising years in solitary confinement? And that questioning came from me reading. I was reading Plato's Republic and came across apology and unexamined life. That line, the unexamined life isn't worth living. That challenged me to, like, figure my life out, you know. And so I started journaling. And through the journaling process, what I landed on was that if I'm ever going to turn my life around, I have to make a commitment by proving it to myself. And what that looked like to me was I challenged myself to write a book in 30 days. And I said to myself, if you don't write that book in 30 days, you're gonna die in here. And it was an ultimatum. It was the biggest ultimatum that I've ever made in my life. And I wrote that book in 30 days. And that began the arduous journey toward reimagining a life for myself inside prison. But Also outside of prison.

Let's talk about your book, because it's called how to Be Free, A Proven Guide to Escaping Life's Hidden Prisons.

And.

And at the beginning of the book, you write, the most powerful prisons aren't made of concrete and steel. They are built from grief, anger, shame, trauma, and self doubt. Before you were ever imprisoned, what were the prisons you carried with you?

One of the things I discovered on this journey to freeing myself was that I had been incarcerated before I ever stepped foot in a prison cell, and I had been free before I ever got paroled and let out back to society. And the biggest prison for me was the narrative that I accepted about my life's outcomes, that they can only end two way in jail or prison. And it was based on all these other prisons. Grief, guilt, anger, shame. Things that I had navigated as a kid and did not know how to unpack or free myself from. How those things shaped the narrative I had about my life. And I find that to be true of a lot of people. Earlier, we were talking about the fentanyl epidemic. I can't tell you how many incredible leaders, you know, entrepreneurs come up to me when I'm out speaking, and they talk about how they feel shame because their child is addicted to an opioid, or they feel guilt because they wasn't able to save their children from these life outcomes or their spouse or their siblings. And what I realized was that this was rampant, that people were imprisoned by things that they had to hold close to the chest that they couldn't share with a colleague, that sometimes they couldn't even share with their intimate partners. And I was struck by how limiting that was when I experienced it. And then I was incredibly struck by how limited it was when I experienced it through people who had never set foot foot in a prison cell. And I realized that they were more incarcerated than some people who are behind bars.

Yeah, you know, what strikes me is you talk a lot about vulnerability and you're open to being vulnerable, and it just does not seem like your upbringing or your time in prison would allow for that. So where did that come from?

I grew up in a household where children are silenced. And I don't even think it was just our household. I just think that culturally, back in the era we grew up, children were meant to be seen and not heard. Children didn't have opinions on what was dinner for the night. We didn't have opinions on pretty much anything. And, you know, so there was a silencing that happened very early on, which when I Look at it now, especially as a dad, I see how that can imprison the spirit and curiosity of a child. And then going into prison, there's another level of putting that kind of armor on where you want to protect yourself, because any opening to your emotional life is opening to your vulnerable spaces. So your family, the idea of getting out and dreams and things of that nature is very hard to get to. But what I found. This is why I say that of all the things that I offer in a book, journaling is the best is I got to know myself in the most intimate of ways, because I sat down and I said, if you're going to go on this journey, you have to be so honest with yourself, so wrong with yourself, that it shakes you to your core. And you have to deal with all the things that have happened to you. You have to deal with all the things that you've done to cause harm to others. You have to deal with all the uncertain thoughts that arise in your mind, and you have to challenge those thoughts. But you first have to be courageous enough to only agree to sit down, to write when you're ready to be completely honest. And when I sat down and began to journal and get real with myself, I was able to discover this full spectrum of what it means to be human. I was complex. I was responsible for a lot of harms. I was the victim of a lot of harms. I was brilliant. I was funny, I was mean. You know, I lacked empathy at times. I developed compassion. Like, it was all these things that I was able to sit with myself and say, wow. Like, man, in that moment, you just didn't show up as a good person. You didn't show up for yourself. And then there was other times where I was like, wow, in that moment, you really showed up for other people, and you really showed up for yourself. And I realized through this process that some of the things that I was grappling with, like shame, for example, it reinforces your losses, but it conceals your wins. And so what journaling allowed me to do was to actually put the wins in the win column where they belonged and to realize that I had way more wins than I had losses. But I let the losses dominate my thinking and dominate how I felt. And so that ability to get raw with myself, to write it, but then to go back and read it and sit with it, you know, once I was able to do that, I'm like, if I can be real with me, I can be real with anybody. And that. That is actually power. Like, any harm that comes from me as a result of sharing my truth. Like, I will die on that sword. Cause harm has come to me for no reason at all. So for me, it was just like, man, this is beautiful. And it was empowering. And, you know, one of the things that I discovered that, to me, I have the most gratitude for was the beauty of my own mind. And it's something that I think that when I set out to write this book, if I don't accomplish anything else, what I want people to walk away with is a new introduction to their own mind and to become friends with their own brilliance, their own insights, their own wonderings and curiosities. And that, to me, is the power and the magic of, like, being vulnerable with yourself. And then when you do it with others, people just open up and you realize we're all just sitting here stuffing down what we feel, what we desire. And it is literally killing us. Like, it is a real thing. Stress, overeating, overindulgence, and you name it. When you come back to the source and the root cause, a lot of times it's just the things that we stuff down.

Can you just briefly describe what solitary confinement is like and mostly what it's like on your mind?

It's one of the most barbaric things we do to human beings in America. And the reason I say that is that America has an incredible reputation at being the kind of beacon of light and hope for the rest of the world. And to set the example of humanity.

For the rest of the world and specifically around freedom. We harp on being the beacon of freedom for the world.

Absolutely. It's one of our country's virtues. And when you think about that and then you think about what we do when we have people up under our chair who are incarcerated, it is the complete opposite. We are psychologically maiming people right now. We're putting people into lockdown for 23 hours a day, which I spent five days a week and 24 hours the other two days of the week. And in an environment that is chaotic, barbaric, and, you know, something that we would not do to our pets. Like, in fact, it's illegal. I don't even think you can legally treat dogs the way that we treat people. And so for me, being in that environment and recognizing the chaos and the disorder again, the thing that saved me from losing my mind, and it's not like I didn't have moments where I was on a brink, was literally my ability to read. I had read a book called Cages of Steel, which articulated all the things you were supposed to experience when you were put into solitary. The disconnection from your own humanity. The instability of not knowing when you're going to get out. The inability to communicate effectively because you're behind bars and steel walls, I mean, and doors of steel. And it's really interesting because when the pandemic hit and people were forced to isolate in their homes, a lot of people that I knew were struggling, especially people who were single and who didn't have kids and didn't have family. But even some of the people with kids and family, they struggle with the uncertainty of when will this thing end. And that's kind of what happens in solitary. And then amidst that is the. It's just the chaos of the environment. There's lockers being banged, there's people throwing feces on each other, there's screams. I mean, I remember this one guy, he was being harassed by the officers because of his sexuality and he set himself on fire. He got hold to some matches and it was one of the most heart wrenching cries for help that I've ever experienced in my life. You know, before he set himself on fire, he did this, what sounded like a prayer, it was in Spanish. And I just remember him screaming this out. And you could just tell this person was in psychological agony. And then next thing you know, they're rushing to cell to put him up as he set himself on fire. And like that level of desperation was the norm in that environment. There were men who would cut themselves open with whatever they can get their hands on. You know, a staple from a magazine became a knife that they would rip their skin open with just to get out of that environment and go get medical care. And it's not just the men inside that I saw it taking a toll on. You know, it's taking a toll on the officers who work there. I mean, you know, you have to think about the barbarity of that environment and the way that humanity is broken down and then these people have to take that home. And so this book is also for them because I'm sure they have to liberate themselves from that environment. And actually being out of that environment, I've developed way more empathy for people who work there than I ever would have had while I was incarcerated. Because, you know, it was kind of a class of personalities and what side of the fence you stood on. But, you know, as a thought evolved human being, you know, I can see how the rigors of that environment would tear a person apart. In the same way that happens when People get ground down by their work out here. They have unpleasant work experiences. You know, managers who aren't the best, supervisors who are mean spirited, and CEOs who are tyrannical. What does that do to the human spirit? And how does one show up when they come home and they bring their job with them? So all those things intertwine and intersect.

But it seems to me that the thing that saved you was having an outlet, which was books. Would you agree with that?

I think there's the books for sure. And I think it was having an indomitable will. And how I arrived at that is when I was able to journal. And I went back and I saw all the things I survived as a kid. It was remarkable, like the level of physical abuse that I experienced, the trauma, the beatings, the gun violence, like to arrive at a space in life where I still had a sense of what it meant to be human after having gone through all that. I was like, man, what an incredibly resilient kid. I mean, I was addicted to crack cocaine at 14 years old and I broke that addiction on my own. There are people who are in their fourth decade of crack addiction. And that's why the journaling piece is so important, because you can really go back and look at like, man, I survived all that. If I survive this, I can make it. I can make it through anything, you know. And so for me, it was the reading for sure, but it was also the journaling. So when people ask me about resilience, I always say that we all have it in us. You know, you don't know until you're tested, until you challenge. But if you go back in your own life, you probably will find moments when you've had to stand up for yourself, stand up for something you believe, stand up for somebody else, overcome something, some obstacle in your life. That's all resilience, how it shows up in our lives. I mean, obviously I'm living the extreme of it, but it's also why it's was so important for me to write the book, because I've lived extreme of it. And my belief is like, listen, if I came out on the other side of all of this stuff in my life, whatever you're going through, you can get through it, but you gotta believe it first. I can believe it for you, but ultimately you have to believe it. Here's the thing about these hidden prisons is they're not obvious. And if you don't check in with yourself, you'll find yourself right back in them. And so what happens in My life. There are moments where I have to check in with my physical being, you know, where I'm like, oh, what is this I'm feeling? Why am I so tense right now? Why am I. Why am I navigating so many thoughts right now? Is something happening in my brain? Am I getting old? All these things? And I'm like, no, like, check in with yourself. What is it really? I do my breathing exercises, and I realize, oh, it's just a little bit of anxiety. You're excited about this day. You're nervous about this outcome. It's naturally human. But breathing through it, owning it, being vulnerable enough to say, hey, I'm excited. I don't know if this thing is gonna happen, so I'm a little bit nervous. I really want it bad. So it's all the things that are very human. And the more you check in with yourself, the more you dissipate the negativity. Cause then it doesn't have an opportunity to rest and build. Right? Cause if you just let it sit there, it grows. And then you're. You dropped a bottle of juice on the kitchen floor, and you're like, oh, Jesus, that spirals into whatever. The thing is. You scroll too much toothpaste, and now your whole day is just, like, a complete mess. But then, energetically, you start to show that energy, and it shows up. You're being short with people. You're being unkind because you got all this other stuff about how bad your day is going, when really it's just like, it's orange juice. It's okay. It's orange juice. You can just get it up and you'll get to your day. But that comes with time, right? It comes with meditation. It comes with journaling. And so for me, getting some of it out then. And then the other part is that vulnerability piece that I talked about is when I would sit down and journal, I wrote it all. And sometime my journal might start very negative. And it evolves as I'm writing through it, because I'm challenging the idea, and I'm saying, hey, you're. You're angry right now. You're. You're being an angry person right now. But then I'm also able to identify my why, you know? And so that was really helpful inside.

Well, one of the books that you mentioned in your book is Man's Search for Meaning. It's my favorite book. It's the book that I've given away the most, the hundreds of copies. I just find it so important. And one of the things that Viktor Frankl says in the book is that everything can be taken from a man. But one thing, the last of human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And what you're talking about is a choice, right? Dropping the orange juice. Okay, I can allow this to disrupt my day, to ruin my day, or I can clean it up, move on, have a great day. And in fact, this can be taught at a very young age.

Absolutely.

My children, every day on the way to school, we say, are you going to have a good day or great day? Those are the only two choices they get. There's no bad day or good day. It's good day or great day. We have this incredible freedom. We live in a nice neighborhood. We walk to school. We have enough. It's good day or great day. And they get to choose. But not everybody learns that they have this choice. So I'm assuming. Assuming maybe one of your mentors taught you that you have choice and that you can exercise choice. How did you learn that?

I learned it through reading. You know, I learned it through reading and really examining my life. And when did I have to take agency over how I felt? And so when I was in solitary, I was just, like, writing these journals, and I'm like, well, I didn't get mail today, so I'm unlovable. I didn't get a letter from my family. They don't care about me. And it's all just these false narratives, you know? And I got a chance to say, do I believe that to be true? So I got a chance to examine it and really take time. And so it came through just a variety of things of, like, I love biographies and memoirs and being able to read other people's stories because through their stories you find, like, man, we're choosing all the time. You know, we're choosing every experience, and we don't always get it right, which is, like, it's the most human thing to do, right? Because, you know, I have a kind of similar practice with my son of, like, you know, you get a chance to decide your day right now. Does it mean that you're going to go through life and somebody's not going to upset you? That would be false? Like, I can't tell them that that's true. But what I can say is that you get a choice in what you do with the things that upset you, and you get a choice in how long you allow them to make you upset. There are some things that are unjust and unfair and they should rouse something up in you, but you don't have to fly off the rails because of it. You know, you get a choice in how you choose to show up. Is this person exhibiting behavior because they have their own issues that they haven't addressed in their own lives? And if you can do that, you can change the majority of the outcomes energetically in terms of how you feel about it. But it's, you know, again, it's work. It's self awareness. You know, I think we live in a society where people just aren't always open to being self aware. Because there's something about the vulnerability of just saying, hey, I didn't get that right, or I have to take some agency over how I showed up today. Again, it's kind of like two lessons I have for my mentees are two things. One, take all excuses off the table, and two, master your thinking. If you can do those two things, you can win at life. Like, I promise you, you can win at life. And the excuse part is how long you lean into anger, sadness, or any other emotion that doesn't serve your greater good is really up to you.

One of the things that I love about your book is you talk about resilience. You share a model for resilience. Could you just talk about what that model is and how you developed it?

You don't know how resilient you are until you're faced with something that challenges you. And it's not always a bad thing. You know, sometimes it's accomplishing a goal. It can be, I want to run a 5K, and you haven't ran since middle school. But you're willing to put one step after the next, and you're willing to continue to, you know, forge a way forward. And for me, it was recognized that we were born with resilience. Like we're one of a billion sperms. So that's encoded in our DNA. We got here. And what's always interesting to me is we always hear the stories of the mothers in their experience with birth, which I think is like the. One of the most incredible natural feats in the world. But we never hear the baby's version of what is it like to be squozing through that little portal? Because they can't articulate it right. But that is such a way to enter the world.

That's the original trauma. Shaka. I mean, come on.

Right? Right.

It's nice and warm in here, yo.

And all of a sudden I'm being forced out through this blood little portal.

What's this light.

What is this stuff hitting my face as my head? Changing shapes? And so you think about that. That's the one time that our body completely transforms, like, and it's the last time that it transforms in that way. Obviously, you know, we get older and things of that nature, but I mean, like, in an instant moment, we go from this insular world to, like, being pushed out of this portal. And so we don't hear that story. But what that does is, like, that is part of our ability to work through anything in life. You know, it's. It's literally encoded in our DNA. In my story and in my experience, it's literally the culmination of all those things. It's all these moments that really brings it full circle, you know, where I'm at now. You know, I've been in a variety of spaces, in business life, in relationships, and all those stories are in. I don't want to give too much away, but all those things were like the building blocks that I discovered when I was inside that literally led me to this moment.

In your book, you talk about the innovation that happens in prison. Could you describe some of these examples? Because it's really, really remarkable how clever people are. And I distinguish between intelligence and being clever. I think being intelligent is great, but I would rather be clever. Because when you're clever, you think of novel ideas, you think of new ways of doing things. Intelligence is being commoditized, but cleverness is not.

That's a really great way to put it. And, you know, when I think back to my time incarcerated, one of the things I always marvel at is, like, just the ability for people to make something out of nothing. And, you know, when I got out of prison, about two years after I was out, I became a fellow at MIT Media Lab. And I remember going to the lab for the first time, and I was so intimidated. I saw, like, bionic legs. I saw cars that folded up and parked themselves. I saw holograms and all these things that were being built and created. And I'm like, I don't even know why I'm here.

It's science fiction.

Yeah. Literally, it's science fiction. Right. I mean, you know, I grew up with Kit, the car from Knight Rider, and I was like, oh, my God, the car can talk. This is the most amazing thing.

And, yeah, that'll never happen.

Yeah, Right. And then I end up at the. And I always describe it to people as, you know, Fred Flintstone stepping into episodes of the Jetsons. I mean, that's what it Was like, for me, coming home in general. But it was extremely like that at the lab. And I remember one time being there, and the director seeing that I was a little bit uncomfortable, and he was like, you have a lot to contribute here. And I couldn't quite take that in until I was working with a student in the lab, and he was trying to solve a problem, and I had an answer that actually worked. And. And I remember just going away from that. Like, man, that answer was so obvious to me. Like, how could he not see that? And then I realized in that moment, that's what iteration is, is where you get a chance to work on an idea. You figure it out. You work collaboratively with other people so that they can see things that you may not see. And I was like, man, this happens in prison all the time. Like, we're creating, we're innovating. We're taking whatever tools we have at our disposal to make life easier for us. The same thing that our ancestors did when they discovered fire, when they discovered that you can actually cook these animals, that you catch all the things, right? And so I created a prison hack challenge at MIT Media Lab, and the goal was to present them with five design challenges based on problems we had to solve in prison. And everything from making a tattoo gun out of a tape player, motor, ink, pen, and guitar string. It's on. To making a lighter out of batteries and wire. And so that ability to watch these students try to solve this, and then knowing that in an environment I came from, people saw this stuff in 30 seconds. Because the survival really reminded me of, like, how much intelligence, genius, ingenuity, resourcefulness, we're leaving in society. But it extends beyond that. I mean, like, in America right now, I think there's about 17 million people who have felonies. Some of these people can't get employment. There's, at any given time, almost 2 million people in prison. At one point, it was 2.5. We've helped reduce that. But this is what a lot of people in society doesn't know. Over 90% of people will get out of prison. And I have my detractors. I always have people that's like, well, you should still be in prison, and, you know, you should have never got out of prison. And that's their personal belief and opinion. I served the time I was given. I honored the parole that I was on, and, you know, and I could contributed to society at probably the extreme level when it comes to, like, volunteering and sacrificing and donations. The reason I share that is because it can be complex. We don't want people committing crime. We don't want people causing harm. And I'm in perfect agreement with that as well. And I think as a society, we also have a responsibility that when we have people incarcerated up under our care, we get a chance to decide do we want to further harm these people who most likely not in every case, but most likely come out of traumatic environments, come from pain and abuse, they're already serving the time, and if that's how we choose to treat them, we can't be shocked when they come out and commit more crime. Or we can say, you know what these people are in here? How do we ensure that they're contributing members of society and that they come back as assets instead of liabilities? And the way that you do that is one recognizing that there's a talent pool inside that we're just leaving to the wayside. There's a labor force that we can be employing upon their release from prison who would be excited to have a job and an opportunity. And, you know, there's this incredible brilliance in that environment that we're leaving on the table. And so, for me, in my experience, I was lucky. You know, I was at a company, this company called Navon, for three years, and the CEO saw my ability to contribute after we had dinner, and he didn't care about my past. He didn't care that I had a felony. He didn't care that I served time in prison. What he cared about was, could I contribute to helping shape the culture of the company he was building. And he gave me that opportunity, and I was there for three years, and it was one of the most incredible experiences that I've had in my work life. And so, you know, we need more courageous people like that in the world, and we're starting to find them. You know, the more of us that are winning, the more opportunities are opened up for other people coming behind us.

Thank you for sharing that, because I do find that innovators are critical to our future. What fills you with a sense of optimism?

The thing that fills me with a sense of optimism are two things. One of them is going to sound completely contradictory, but youth, young people. I'm so fascinated by watching my kid grow up.

How old is he?

He's 13 now. And I'm just fascinated by watching him and his friends and how they think about life, what they're curious about, what they're interested in. He's growing up in a way that's vastly different from how I grew up. So seeing a kid grow up in an environment that's not traumatic, like, it's magical to see, like, a kid not in survival mode, but in thriving mode. So I'm really fascinated and inspired and optimistic about the future. I think our youth have way more going on than we give them credit for. I think they're really smart and we'll be fine. You know, I'm sure generations before thought we would, you know, destroy this whole thing, but we made it through. And then the other thing I'm optimistic about is, like, technology. Like, I'm probably, like, the coolest nerd ever. But I love AI. I love the way that it's challenging us to innovate our humanity. Like that gives me optimism, is that instead of being afraid that this thing is going to usurp us and take over is forcing people to lean deeper into what it means to be human, to differentiate themselves from machines, and to recognize that we have a form of intelligence that can never be accessed by technology. That intuitive nature of what it means to be disconnected humanely. So I'm optimistic about it. I think at some point we'll play nice together. We'll create new things. We'll build faster, smarter ways of getting people healthier and more treatment for the things that ail them. And I know we can't do that without technology.

You've written a very human book, and I don't know if you think about it that way, but I think about AI and I think about, oh, no, what strengthens us is what makes us human. And that's what your book is about.

Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. Cause I hadn't even quite thought about it that way. But I think that's probably a testament to the vast nature of my relationships and friendships. I just grew up with people being people. I've encountered racism unlike anything that most people can imagine prison being very racially challenging environment. But what's wilding is me. I. I literally just had a racial incident, like, last week. And it shocked me. You know, it shocked me because I found it comical versus angry, and I found it sad. If I was to name America's hidden prison, it is race, but it's not the not so hidden prison. But it's hidden in the sense that we cannot have honest discourse without it being adversarial, which to me is like, super problematic because you can't fix it if you can't actually address it in a healthy manner. And it's so, you know, for people who are even navigating that I think this book will be really helpful.

Do you want to go a couple more minutes?

Yeah. Yeah, I got a couple more for sure.

Okay. What do you want your legacy to be?

Yeah, you know, when I think about legacy, I think mostly about my creative legacy. You know, when I. When I set out to be a writer and to take writing serious, I thought about the great scribes that came before me and the impact that they have on the world. How they shape culture, how they. How they shape ideas, how they inspire, how they entertain and like that. To me, if I have done my job well, when it's all said and done, I'll be one of the respected scribes that people turn to as a source of inspiration, wisdom, insight, and that people appreciate my actual writing. When I first started writing, one of the things that I wanted to avoid was being labeled as someone who was pretty good for someone who happened to be in prison. So I set the bar for myself super high, and I wanted to make sure that I honored that. And so, for me, legacy is like, what did I contribute as an artist that helped people in their lowest moments, help people in their best moments to be happier, more fulfilled, that made people go and pick up a dictionary and be like, oh, I wonder what that word means. You know, for people to appreciate a simile, a metaphor that I use, or a story that I told that really brought them into my world. You know, if I've done my job well, that's the legacy that I think about artistically. And then, you know, as a parent, as a dad, that when I get to be a hundred and my son is like, man, I got the coolest old pops. You know, he still listens to hip hop. He still has cool sneakers, even though they're Velcro straps now, they're still cool. And then ultimately, that my wife, you know, when she looks back, you know, on our 25th anniversary or whatever the case may be, is like, man, I have a husband who's a dreamer and a builder and a doer, and he honors his word in a way that, you know, has not only helped our family achieve our goals and dreams, but has helped the world in a meaningful way.

Well, I hope a part of your legacy that you feel is that you're representing people who are unknown to most of society. And that's the people who are still incarcerated. And hopefully the rest of us will understand, okay, we have something here. Let's welcome them back into society, because Shaka is what could happen. It's not going to happen to everybody, obviously, and not Everybody's going to be a best selling author and be an executive at companies and be speaking to CEOs and whatnot. But they can be contributors to society and we have to open up to that idea. And hopefully you feel that will be part of your legacy?

Absolutely. You know, that part of my legacy, I feel like, is a collective legacy more so than my individual legacy because there's so many incredible men and women who are doing this work, colleagues in this field who were formerly incarcerated that I think about John Ponder, Topeka, Samsung, you know, Wallow, Glenn Martin, Sam Lewis, you know, so many incredible leaders that have done this work to humanize people who are incarcerated. And so just being a small part of that legacy, that's more of a collective legacy for me and hoping that my work honors their work and supports their work. But I truly received that and I thank you for sharing that.

Yeah, of course. One thing that you wrote about forgiveness that I think is so important that most people don't understand is that you do it for yourself. When you forgive others, you actually benefit the most. I didn't learn that until I was maybe 40, you know, so I walked around with all this baggage like, oh, that person, you know, did something wrong with me, lied to me, cheated me or whatever, and I just held onto it. They just moved on with their life. They weren't thinking about me at all. But when you forgive them, then you just shed all that baggage. And that's what you say in the book. It's so important, so powerful.

Yeah, that's one of those things that I feel consistently comes up as a later life lesson. And it's kind of like we hear it early, we may hear it early on, but I feel like it's something that just hits us all as we get later in life, you start really seeing what life becomes for people. You're like, hey, I'm not going to torture myself any further. That was one of the toughest chapters, but also one of the most important chapters to write because it's complex. Complex, right. You know, forgiveness is a tricky, tricky thing. To give up that thing that you're holding on like a lump of coal inside your being is really, really hard to do, but it is so liberating. Like, you know, to me, it reminds me of the relief that people say when they finally pass a kidney stone. It's like, man, like, I've been holding that thing is the thing that's been torturing me this whole time. And like, let me get that out of my life and really free myself and, like, it's powerful and it's hard. It's hard. You know, especially when it's like a parent or a lover or, you know, a child or, you know, those dynamics get very complex, you know, but again, you know, you can hold on to all that anger, frustration, sadness. Meanwhile, the person is off living their life. They're not even thinking about you.

That's exactly right. Last question, and then I'll get you onto your Friday. How has your understanding of freedom evolved since you were first arrested?

Oh, that's a great question. So the way that my understanding of freedom has evolved is really the building blocks of how to be free in that freedom is an inside job, more than anything else is an inside job. And if you found yourself on a path that can lead to physical incarceration, the path of avoiding that is an inside job, you know, is getting therapy and finding mentors and resources. And if you're already there, then is the path, again, is still an inside job. Like, I could have chose to leave my solitary confinement cell as a solitary confinement cell, but instead I chose to turn it into a university and a writer's workshop, because a building is a building. And so the mindset that I had in that environment was that for a portion of this day, this is going to be my educational center for ports. To this day, this is going to be my creative office. And so that was an inside job. And, you know, when I look at life out here and I can tell you, you know, I speak all over the world, and people come up to me and they share things with me that are like one. I'm honored that they feel like they can trust me with the things that they share. And then also, I'm, like, overwhelmed. But that's a lot to just walk up and share with a person. But, I mean, it's mind blowing that people share stories of being trapped in grief for decades. A child that's went out into drug addiction or, you know, committed suicide, or a husband or a wife that's cheated and has destroyed the marriage, but they're still in the same household. I mean, I get all these different type of stories, and it just reminds me that we all have our own hidden prisons, and they that it truly is an inside job. And some of these prisons will reoccur in our lives if we're not aware.

Shaka, well put. This has been a phenomenal conversation. Thank you for your time and thank you for being a genius.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you for listening to 12 geniuses.

To listen to bonus content of this.

Interview with Shaka Sengor, please check check out the 12 Geniuses YouTube channel. We will be back in two weeks with another episode of the podcast when I interview Colin Fisher, professor at University College London and the author of the book the Collective Edge. Colin and I discuss the important topic of how leaders can improve the way.

People operate in groups and teams.

Until then, thanks for listening and thank.

You for being a genius.