Chuck Bryan

really kind of found himself for the, I guess, for the first time as an adult.

And that he remembered like, hey, I'm a smart guy and I used to love academia and learning.

So he started, he became a voracious reader again in prison.

He apparently tried to memorize the dictionary in prison and was reading anything he could get his hands on, including eventually, which would really transform his life, the teachings of

Elijah Muhammad, who was the leader of the Nation of Islam at the time.

Yeah.

You know why?

Because you didn't have to write letters to get those books like Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption.

No, they just threw them at you.

Yeah, he was, of course, because it was Massachusetts.

So, yeah, he started, you know, basically he became a pen pal with Elijah Muhammad and really became a hardcore Muslim pretty quickly after reading, you know, his works and became an ascetic.

So that means no drugs, no booze, no pork.

Um, no movies or music, no gambling, no dancing, like the real straight and narrow.

And, uh, you know, we'll later find out that that became a bit of a riff later on because he didn't think Elijah Muhammad at one point was, um, sort of walking the walk, whereas he really was from the beginning.

You didn't know that?

No.

Okay.

I thought that would have been sort of just the basic common knowledge.

No.

But maybe not.