Shaka Senghor
👤 PersonPodcast Appearances
the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day what's up pleasure to meet you oh such a pleasure to be here my yeah it's um i heard your story why don't you tell everybody your story because the story's it's pretty wild
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So what initially sent you to solitary?
And you were like, what, 13?
So what did you write?
The assault was on an officer?
So they were under the impression that you had got some crazy big book deal.
And so they were just trying to stop it and try to fuck up your dream.
I mean, I kind of almost can see it from their side if they hate you.
You know, like, fuck this dude.
What can we do to derail this?
Or, you know, if you're a corrections officer, you're not making a lot of money.
And you're in there and then you think, is this motherfucker getting rich?
And then there's also jealousy of talent.
When you find out a person has talent, and especially if you don't have any talent, talent is like, talent is a gift from God.
It's like you either have it or you don't.
You can develop some talent, but some people have talent.
There's something that some people, like there was a video we played the other day of Biggie rapping on the street when he was 17.
You ever seen that video?
I mean, you can't teach that.
You can't teach that kind of power.
Some people just have a gift.
And sometimes that gift comes from pain.
Sometimes that gift comes from a life of struggle and hardship.
And it's just the emotional turmoil builds something inside of you that comes out in your art.
And people hate people with gifts.
Especially if they hate you already.
What is it like the day you get out of solitary?
Wait, so you did it three times.
Two one-year stretches and then one long one.
And so how many years in was this?
And how much time do you have to wait before you can apply for parole again?
That's got to be a horrible feeling to just be in a category where –
They don't take into account any of the circumstances.
Don't take into account any potential growth or this direction that you're trying to move your life into.
You're just in a category.
Your story is so similar to many stories that I've heard.
You know, I've done a lot of podcasts with my friend Josh Dubin.
This is a guy who used to work for the Innocence Project and now he works for the Ike Perlmutter Center for Legal Justice.
And it's mostly dealing with wrongfully incarcerated people.
And, you know, and some of them, the stories, you just, you hear it and it's...
And just try to imagine what it's like to be that person.
Dealing with corrupt DAs, corrupt prosecutors, corrupt everything, corrupt cops.
And people just get railroaded because they need to hang a conviction on somebody.
We should probably have an appreciation of freedom.
That's just different for everybody else's.
You know, we should all keep that kid.
I mean, life forces you to get hard in a certain way.
And I'm sure your life forced you to get hard in a way that most people can't comprehend.
But the fact that you can hang on to that childlike joy of things.
Yeah, the system is just set up to punish.
They're set up to just lock people up so they're off the streets and so other people don't have to deal with them.
But they are, like you said, they are going to get out, most of them.
And they're not going to be rehabilitated and oftentimes they're hardened and it's oftentimes even worse.
And there's so little effort put into how to fix things.
How do you make it better?
What do you do that you can help these people contribute and you can have them come out of jail actually a better person?
Yeah, they're in prison too.
They just can leave at night.
It's a different kind of prison because they're in control and they can quit.
But a lot of them, they're probably imprisoned by their bills, too.
And a lot of the environments where these prisons are...
there's no other jobs.
The fact that prison is an industry is also insane.
The fact that privatized prisons are an industry.
When I found out that prison guard unions lobby to keep drug laws on the books, I remember that moment.
The moment I found that, I was like,
You're using people as like batteries to generate money.
And private prisons are, they want more people in there because that's how they make money.
It's like, if you're a chicken farmer, you want more chickens.
If you're a people farmer, I mean, you're essentially a people farmer, which is evil.
You got to work a week to make a phone call.
Still, if you make it 17 cents an hour.
Do you know the Freeway Ricky Ross story?
I've had him on a few times.
But he learned how to read in prison and then became a lawyer and realized that they wrongfully convicted him under the three strikes rule.
And that's how he got out.
That's the thing is like they don't think of you as a person anymore.
Once you're a convict, you're not a person anymore and they can do things to you that should be illegal.
It should be a crime, but they could get away with doing it.
I'm a little older than you, but I remember when all that happened.
I remember, like, all of a sudden, crack was on the street.
And we find out through Freeway Ricky how it happened.
It was our own government.
Which is fucking insane.
Not our own government for real, for real, but people in our government that are cowboys and renegades and people who are criminals.
Who realize they get away with this.
And in Ricky's case, they were using it to fund a war.
Which was like crazy, right?
I remember hearing about that shit in the news.
When I was a kid going, what?
But I didn't, at the time, I didn't know that it was being funded by selling drugs in Los Angeles.
I had no idea that was.
That it was in the news, and Oliver North was in the news, and this was when Reagan was old, and so he's like, I can't recall.
He just said he didn't remember.
It's horrible to think, because you...
You know, as a boy, I remember thinking, well, the government's good and they're looking out for you.
And they're the good people.
And the cops are the good people.
And all the prisoners are there because they're bad.
Biden said that on TV.
And it's also corporations.
See, the thing about Detroit, most people don't know that Detroit, up until they started moving jobs overseas, Detroit was the third wealthiest city in the world.
To think that inside of a lifetime—
Detroit goes from being one of the wealthiest cities in the world to one of the poorest cities in America.
And just because they wanted to make some more money.
They didn't want to pay the union wages.
They didn't want these factory workers making a great living.
They wanted all the money.
Like a bomb, just like crack.
But fuck, the fact that that can happen.
education facilities to keep people out of prison yeah so but also how do we have these same communities decade after decade after decade that are deeply impoverished and filled with crime yeah and no no no course correction nothing being done on a on a federal level to try to correct that uh it's it's just and i think there's a problem in this country i mean it's a
It's a good problem in some ways that you have to get reelected if you want to be president.
You have four-year terms.
But because of that, they just think about getting elected.
And then once they're in, then they think about getting reelected.
And the last thing you want to do is do anything controversial that might take 15, 20 years in order to reap the rewards of it.
If you're trying to say, hey, we've got to do something.
I know we're investing...
So much money overseas.
We invest so much money into these nonprofits overseas and all these different things.
We're doing regime change and untold billions of dollars.
We've got to invest in these cities and try to make less prisoners, less people incarcerated, less people that start off in a terrible position.
But that's like an unpopular thing to try to run on, man.
Because the people that are just trying to protect their money, you know, there's so many people in this country that think about people in prison, they don't even think of them as prisoners.
They want them in prison because then they're not out in the street inconveniencing their life.
They don't want to deal with like, why?
Why does someone, you think you're different?
If you lived in that environment, you would be in there, man.
We're all the same exact fucking thing.
We vary biologically, but not that much.
If you lived in a terrible environment and grew up in a terrible household and dealt with terrible pressures, you would be in there too, man.
We would all be in there too.
And the callousness of people to like look the other way is, you know, it's a blight on our society, that callousness.
We're supposed to be the most –
advanced society that's ever existed.
But yet we still, which is crazy, right?
United States of America is supposed to be the most prosperous, advanced society on earth.
And we have the highest level of prisoners.
We have more people in prison in the United States than any other country by a long shot.
So take me through what it's like when you got convicted.
You know now you're going to jail.
What is this feeling like?
You know, and so it's like the insurance is such an evil scam.
I mean, California, there's a new fire.
I don't know if they put it out yet.
Did they put that fire out, Jim?
It was raging yesterday.
I didn't even know that.
Yeah, I mean, you can't get fire insurance.
You know, I have friends who have houses now that they can't get insured for fire.
And they're like, what the fuck do I do?
And they can't get out.
They don't have enough money to get out.
And then it's hard to sell your house now if you're in an area.
Like, I have a friend who's trying to sell her house, but it's in an area that's too close to Laurel Canyon.
And Laurel Canyon burns.
And nobody wants to buy a house there.
It's like, what the fuck?
13-year-old boy arrested for brush fire that led to evacuations.
I started a fire when I was a kid.
I started a big-ass fire doing fireworks.
So I was living in Jamaica Plain, which is, at the time, it was a bad neighborhood outside of Boston.
I think it's supposed to be gentrified now.
So now that was, I was 13.
And we we were lighting firecrackers in this field and it started off just like this little fire and we're stepping on the fire and then the wind blew and we're like, oh, shit.
And then it just raged, raged through this field.
And we ran out into the street and just by fucking sheer luck found a cop.
And then we told the cop.
The cop's like, get the fuck out of here.
Like we told them what we did.
We were like, we're sorry.
And they wound up putting it out.
This is said in a statement.
He was not accepted to Orange County Juvenile Hall due to absence of injuries or immediate threat to buildings.
okay he's a kid they just said you're a kid you fucked up yeah well that's good yeah i mean um but we got out of there and then we came back like the next day and we saw all the shit we burnt it was like oh my god it was like this huge area that was burnt luckily no one lost their life but it was just sheer luck yeah you know it could have totally been next to someone's house totally yeah
I mean, it was just luck.
The fact that any kid could go buy a lighter.
And you can just light things on fire.
Yeah, you want to light things on fire.
There's a million times in my life I could have done something stupid and gone the wrong way.
And just by sheer luck, I didn't.
And when I talk to people like yourself who obviously are very intelligent and have a lot to contribute, and you just imagine, that could have been me, man.
It could have been any of us.
That's the thing that people need to really get in their head.
It could be any of us.
And leaving these communities the way they are and not doing anything to try to fix them is, to me, it's the biggest failure of our government.
Other than interventional war, interventional foreign policy and starting wars that are unnecessary and costing lives, which is the worst thing we've ever done.
And that's the next worst is that we don't do anything about it.
Just think about the thing about being able to make a tattoo gun out of a piano wire or a guitar string and an engine from something else, some sort of a motor.
And you see some of the tattoos these guys make in jail.
You're like, Jesus Christ, these are incredible tattoos.
Was that when you were already out of solitary?
Like how many of those guys could get out of jail and be excellent tattooists?
Well, it's because it's so competitive.
And oftentimes people that aren't educated are some of the most incredibly talented people.
They just have some weird thing about them that allows them to think differently.
They don't care you didn't get a degree.
How do you how do you sort out a program like this?
Like you had never done this before.
That's the only thing that applies.
Being super real, it's everything.
As soon as you're bullshitting, like now what is truth?
How do you succeed if you're not dealing in reality?
I think so, too, because I think it's too easy to focus on negative, and negative begets more negative.
If you just find the things in your life that suck and dwell on those, your life's going to suck more.
It's just simple mathematics.
I know people that are very successful that don't have gratitude.
I know so many people that are very successful but very unhappy.
I remember one time, this is a story, when I was on television, I was on this TV show called News Radio, and we would get the ratings in.
And when we would get the ratings, we weren't doing that well.
It wasn't a very successful show.
It was only successful once it got off the air, ironically, in syndication.
Because it was a good show.
But they were all sitting around and they were reading Variety and Variety magazine and the Hollywood Report.
I would call them the devil's rag because you guys are like concentrating on all this shit that is making you compare yourself to other people.
You're all getting upset that we're not after friends.
We're not after Seinfeld girl last time I checked I'm on television.
We're on television You know few people get to be on a fucking sitcom and we're here We're here pissing and moaning because we're not on the biggest sitcom.
That is so crazy The only people would trade lives with you.
I mean I had a ton of terrible jobs
doing construction, delivered newspapers.
But for these people, like there was never, you know, it's just a symptom of Hollywood itself because Hollywood is all about who's number one.
It's not just about like you're making a great living doing something that's really fun.
It's like, no, no, no.
Someone is out there being Tom Cruise.
You know, this is bullshit.
Tom Cruise is Tom Cruise.
And that's literally... And then they live miserable.
They're multi-millionaire miserable people, which is...
Yeah, which is the craziest thing ever.
A kid like me who grew up on food stamps was like, what is fucking wrong with you people?
Like, you're living the dream.
Maybe you don't have the number one dream, but guess what?
No one's paying attention to you, so you don't get scrutinized.
You can go to a restaurant.
You don't have fucking cameras in your face.
You're actually living a better dream.
My friend Brian said this to me once.
My friend Brian Callen, he said, all you want is to be able to go to a restaurant and order anything you want and not worry about what the bill costs.
Everything after that is bullshit.
I was like, that is like some of the best wisdom ever because...
It doesn't matter how big your house is.
It's just your fucking house, man.
You get used to all that shit.
There's some nice things that come with money.
But freedom is nicer than all those things.
And everybody has that.
No, it's the ultimate wealth.
It's the ultimate wealth.
And just not worrying about your bills.
I remember I got a development deal.
Which for comedians is this is back in the day when everybody – they were trying to turn everybody into Jerry Seinfeld.
They tried to turn everybody into a sitcom, Roseanne.
So everybody – they would come to comedians and they'd give you a development deal and they would give you like $100,000 or something like that.
And then they would try to write a sitcom around you and develop a pilot.
This was like the game.
And the first time I got a development deal, I think I was –
26 I guess I was 26 something like that and you know my whole life I'd been paycheck to paycheck always broke you know and for the last five years just hustling as a comedian trying to get by I was just as happy that I didn't have to have a regular job I was just a comedian but I was always broke
And then all of a sudden I got, I think I got $150,000.
And it was like this enormous weight was lifted off my shoulders.
It was the craziest weight.
It was like physical weight.
I was like, now I don't have to worry about my bills.
Every month it was like, can I pay rent?
Can I keep the lights on?
Can I afford gas to get to my gigs?
It was just like that.
I was like barely getting, no health insurance, no nothing, nothing.
Just barely getting by.
But that physical weight, I'll never forget that.
I was like, that's the most important thing is to not worry about your bills.
But then everybody's worried about, like, Bob's got a 22-foot boat.
I've got an 18-foot boat.
Like, Jesus Christ, man.
All things that don't really matter when it comes down to it.
Yeah, it's like that, there's an, I forget who said it, comparison is a thief of joy.
Thoreau is most men live lives of quiet desperation.
That's my other favorite one.
Yeah, it's a great one.
I think it might have been
It might have been Jefferson who said, in comparison, this thief of joy.
It's like you can miss out on gratitude when it's right in front of your face.
You have so many things to be happy for.
This is why I also tell people, stay the fuck off social media now.
Jonathan Haidt wrote a book about what it's doing to young girls.
It's like they're comparing themselves constantly to everybody else.
And these girls are using filters and everybody's like, and then they're getting plastic surgery and changing this and changing that.
look at all my shit look at my bag look at my jewelry look at my car look at my this look at my that and it's just everyone's constantly in this state of comparison and no one is happy just to be alive and healthy in America in a wild time of change you know and
Nobody gets all highs.
A lot of leased cars out there.
There's joy in most aspects of life that people miss out on because they just can't appreciate it because they haven't been in prison.
You know what I'm saying?
There's a thing about that, man.
We should send everybody to the Bing, at least.
I don't advocate for that, but I think in your mind, I think what you were saying, that you were in prison before you were ever in prison, there's a lot of people that just don't understand how to think, and that's something we don't teach people at a young age, how to think.
And I think it's a gigantic factor in where you find yourself in life, and whether you find yourself living a happy, fulfilled life, or whether you find yourself
You know, one of those people that lives in quiet desperation, which is most people out there.
The thing about men being competitive with each other, that's a huge problem.
Not enjoying your friend's success, not wanting them to succeed, secretly wanting them to fail.
You will never live a happy life if you're secretly wanting people to fail.
You will never live a happy life if you want to seek joy in other people's failure.
You will never live a happy life.
The way is if someone is doing really well and you feel jealousy, what is that?
That you're comparing yourself to them.
Well, you have two choices.
You can either be bitter and upset and negative, which does you no good, or you can be inspired.
So their success can be fuel that makes you work harder.
And actually, you should thank them for that.
You should even thank people you don't like if you find their success to make you feel uncomfortable.
Like, oh, fuck that dude.
The way is, what is he doing?
Oh, he's working harder.
He's figured out this.
He's figured out a way to work harder.
He's figured out a way to work smarter.
He's more honest with himself about stuff.
He writes things down.
He's got a chart on his wall where he figures out what he's doing wrong and how to correct it.
And he's doing that work and he's correcting it.
That's why he's getting ahead and I'm not.
But you got to be vulnerable even with yourself.
How much time did you wind up doing it?
Well, I think those lessons that you get from athletes is one of the reasons why we love sports so much.
So we see ourselves in these athletes and see their struggles and their triumphs.
And we say, I think if I work hard, I can do that, too.
I could do something similar in my own life.
I think a lot of people are going to get that out of this conversation, too, from you.
What you've gone through and who you are now is very admirable.
Really, the way you express yourself, the way you can talk about these ideas.
The way you're so vulnerable to just talk about what you went through.
It's an insane journey, you know.
And I really appreciate you coming on here, man.
But I think we all have that.
I think it's just not nourished.
I think everyone's curious.
And I'm very curious about people, very curious about what makes a person who they are.
What did you go through?
How do you go through your day?
What is your thought process?
You can learn a lot from people, man.
I learned a lot from you.
Thank you very much, brother.