December 2, 2020 • 31 mins
Music represents such a vital perspective with the potential to cut across boundaries, habits, and prejudice, and musicians have a lot to offer, not just within, but beyond the world of entertainment. John Legend is a perfect example, having blessed our screens and ears with beautiful, powerful, and important music, television, and movies over the years. But he is also working passionately to restore rights and gain equality for so many in this nation. John joins Pete to discuss why he won't just "shut up and sing," the fine line between free speech and censorship on social media, and his work with his organization, FreeAmerica, which aims to tackle mass incarceration.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hi, I'm Pete Bodh Jedge and this is the deciding decade.
The experience of music, playing music, listening, music sharing music
is a central part of life for so many of us.
Certainly for me, I played piano from an early age,
(00:23):
took up guitar as a teenager. I'm no professional, but
it's meant a lot to me as a different form
of expression, in a different way to respond to the world.
Music represents such a vital perspective with the potential to
cut across boundaries, habits and prejudice, and musicians have a
lot to offer, not just within but beyond the world
(00:44):
of entertainment. We live in a moment when we need
art and music more than ever. Yes, as a way
to stand apart from some of the pressures of the world,
but also as a way to better understand and deal
with those pressures. And that's why it shouldn't be so
surprising that some of the most powerful voices in our
political and social life today come from the world of music.
(01:05):
My guest today is a perfect example. John Legend needs
no introduction, but I'll introduce him anyways. John is a Grammy,
Tony Oscar and any award winning per former, artist, activist, husband,
and father, and all those awards make him only the
fifteen person ever to earn an EGOT, and the first
black man to do so. He has blessed our screens
(01:27):
and our ears with beautiful, powerful and important music, TV
shows and movies over the years, and he is working
passionately to restore rights and gain equality for so many
in this nation, including through his work with his organization
Free American, which aims to tackle mass incarceration. He has
been a leader in the struggle for racial justice, for
(01:48):
fair and quality education, and so much more. He is
a force for good in our country. John, really great
to have you. Thank you, Pete. It's great to be
here with you, and I'm excited to talk with you.
I want to start with what everyone has been talking about.
There's been a very important decision. The people have spoken,
the votes have been counted, and we now know who
(02:10):
the new winner is of the vote. Luckily, his predecessor
has been incredibly gracious and supportive. I'm speaking of horse
about the Sexiest Man Alive, Michael B. Jordan. How does
it feel to be a retired sexiest man Alive? Oh?
The pressure is off. I feel so relieved, like a
like a thousand pounds have been lifted off of my shoulders.
(02:32):
If only every transition was as graceful, I'll come to
I want to really excited to talk about and some
what's going on in our country right now with you,
because your perspectives have been so powerful. But but first
I wanted to go back in time a little bit,
because you are also a product of the Midwest. Grew
up in Springfield, Ohio. I believe a community where I
(02:54):
think your father worked in a factory, those communities that
that's something you understand very well. And I wonder how
do you explain a place like Springfield to people who
don't know much about the Midwest. Well, my area was
a very blue collar area. A lot of the people
in my town worked at the auto factory where my
(03:15):
father worked. He worked for a company called Navistar International,
who was formerly known as International Harvester. Uh. They employed
a lot of people in Indiana as well. In fact,
I remember when I was a kid, they were deciding
between putting some jobs in Fort Wayne or in Springfield
and uh and so uh it was. You know, it
(03:37):
was such an important topic of conversation in my community
where those auto jobs were going. And as you know,
that is a conversation that's had across the Midwest, particularly
in Michigan and Indiana, in various places throughout the country. Uh,
those jobs are very important. It was the reason that
(03:59):
my father had a stable career. He worked there until retirement,
got a pension, And I understand the value of u
a w job like he had. It was critical to
us living. Uh, you know, a decent life where they
could afford you know, food for us, shelter for us,
clothing for us, the basic needs that we we had
(04:22):
as kids. How do you think that shape coming out
of a community like that, in in a family like that,
especially somebody who's now so outspoken on on economic and
racial justice. Well, I think it makes it it clear
to you that policy decisions, that corporate decisions, have an
impact on real people. As my senator of my former
(04:44):
state talks about all the time, Sharrett Brown talks about
the dignity of work and how important it is that
we value workers. I think it's very important that we
do that in policy and in the way we talk
about these issues, that we value the honest work of
so many people throughout the country, so many of whom
aren't college educated. Some many of them are working um
(05:07):
in factories or in other jobs that are really important
to the lifeblood of this country's economy and our community,
but sometimes don't get a lot of glory or fanfare. Yeah.
I think one of the things that gets missed so
much in conversations about the economy is how much a
job can really meet right And when you're talking about
(05:27):
uh U a W workers or or people in professions,
or at the ways that you know, whether it's a
firm event for a lawyer or a union picnic for
U a W. That's where your spouses and kids get
to know each other. It's it's a lot more than
just a job. And it feels like a lot of
policies are designed to maybe make sure somebody still has
the income when their economic life is disrupted, but totally
(05:47):
overlooks how much else is at stake in the patterns
people grew up on where you could count on them
maybe a lifelong relationship with with one employer, or at
least a lifelong career in one industry, right right. And
I think it's okay to be nostalgic for the error,
but we also have to be realistic that a lot
of jobs aren't going to be lifelong. Uh. There, people
(06:07):
are going to change jobs, are gonna change careers. Sometimes
they're gonna have to go back and get retraining. And
uh we need to have I think policies uh that
are flexible for people and opportunities for them to take
some risks. Um. That's why I was always wary of,
you know, health insurance being tied to people's uh job,
(06:28):
because when it's tied to something that's not permanent, then, uh,
it's quite stressful when people lose their jobs. And um
to add the stress of having to figure out how
they're going to take care of their family if someone
gets sick. You know, we need to think about all
of that. I think we can be as nostalgic as
we want to be for an era when people kept
(06:49):
the same job like my dad did, but we have
to realize that that's not always going to be the case,
and it's more likely than not not going to be
the case. Uh, And uh we need to have policies
that may get so that, uh, there is flexibility, there's
a safety net, there are opportunities in place for people
who may have a more dynamic career path right, and
(07:10):
we can design for that right, whether we're talking about healthcare,
whether we're talking about sick leave. I mean, there's no
iron law that the unemployment insurance or you b I
even all these things that would give people some flexibility
and respond to the fact that the economy is pretty dynamic.
(07:45):
So I gotta say, you're known to be extremely talented,
but I'm not sure people who don't know about your
political side would have expected to hear you talking with
a lot of sophistication about policy. You're you're and You've
chosen weigh in on these things. And I'm wondering, do
you do you face pressure to stick to entertainment that
this kind of outside of politics, or is it just
(08:07):
the most natural thing the world for you to talk
policy and to be uh such a larger than my
figure in the entertainment world. At the same time, I
do face uh some criticism and backlash, particularly on Twitter.
Imagine that. But you know plenty of people telling me
to shut up and sing, or we don't care about
(08:29):
your political opinions. Obviously, I think about these things a lot.
I care about them, and I talked about them because
I'm interested in I care, and I genuinely want outcomes
that I think will be better for the country. And
I say it, but you shouldn't value my opinion just
because I'm famous and I have a lot of Twitter followers.
Assess it based on the merits of what I'm saying.
(08:50):
If you think it would be terrible for the country,
disagree with me, but don't do it because I'm a
singer and I don't have the right to speak out
about it. Do it because you think I'm wrong on
the merits. So I think we can all have these conversations,
and my assertion that I think all of us should
share is that all of us have a stake and
what's happening in the country. We're all citizens. We vote here,
(09:14):
we pay taxes here, and I always remember that government
isn't some other thing, it's us. We pull our money
together in the form of taxes, and then we elect
people that we expect to represent our best interests and
do what's best for the community. You mentioned Twitter. I
(09:35):
want to talk about that a little bit. What are
we gonna do about Twitter? What are we gonna do
about social media? I mean, it's it's such an important
part of how we communicate, and it's also obviously not
a space that's exactly bringing out the best of all
of us all the time. Where do you think we're headed? Well,
you know, I'm of two minds about it, because on
one hand, I really believe I've learned a lot by
(09:56):
being engaged on Twitter. I think there are really interesting
voice is who I would never have known about unless
I UH saw a retweet from them from another person
that I trusted on Twitter, and and I think my
circle of people I'm interested in and read articles from
and and and read Twitter threads from it has expanded,
(10:19):
and I think it's been a good thing for me.
There's so many issues I would have not known as
much about, and I think a lot of voices who
previously would have been marginalized by the corporate media structure
UH had an opportunity to be heard. And I think
that is a really good thing. Of course, with that
really good thing, there's also UH the opportunity to miss
(10:44):
INFORMIM to to use disinformation in social media, and we've
seen the President of take full advantage of that and
just repeat lie after lie after lie after lie, and
UM intentionally poisoned the conversation and in a way that
needs to be addressed. Um, when it's obvious that someone's
(11:07):
lying and it's having a really terrible effect on the
conversation and on people's lives, particularly when it comes to
COVID and other issues of life and death. I think
these social media organizations need to find ways to censor
that content. People can say it and not get arrested.
That's free speech, but they don't have the right to
(11:29):
say anything on any social platform that's privately owned or
incorporately owned, and they don't have the right to say
anything without consequence. They have the right to say it
without getting locked up, but they don't have the right
to just say it. It's also the case that, uh,
you know, for all the problems that have come our
way through things like social media and technology, it's also
(11:49):
helped shine a light on abuses that people would not
have known otherwise. I was researching a book I wrote
recently on trust, and I found some writings from the
ninety nineties when people were just trying to figure out
what the internet was gonna do, and some of them
they sound really utopian now, you know. One of was
about it gushing about how you know the future and
(12:11):
the digital era, everything is gonna be driven by fact
and then we know it didn't work out. But I
saw another piece and it was written by someone who
specialized in studying the former Soviet republics, and he was
a human rights expert, and he's writing about how, you know,
as digital communications proliferate, it's gonna become more and more
possible for human rights abuses to be documented and they
(12:31):
can't be denied by the regimes where they have now.
He was thinking about Central Asia when he was writing this.
But I found this quote and it happened to be
in the summer of this year, and I thought, you know,
what he's describing is also it's George Floyd, right, It's
it's things like the murder of George Floyd that we
saw with our own eyes and a human rights abuse
right here in the US. How do you think that
(12:54):
we can make sure that the empowering side of digital media,
for for true somehow can outweigh the misinformation that goes
on there? Is it just something that the social media
companies have to do? Do you think there are things
that we can do as as just ordinary consumers or
those of us who have bigger platforms on Twitter, what
can we do to make sure that that that part
(13:15):
of it right, that the shining light on what needs
to be seen outweighs all the noise and the misinformation
and the cruelty that's out there. Well, thank you for
bringing up George Floyd and the power of social media
in uh amplifying the message of Black Lives Matter and
so many activists who have spoken out for a long
time about what's been going on with police abuses, particularly
(13:38):
in the black community, brown community as well. Another example
of why social media is so important, being able to
tell these stories in a way that's not filtered by
the corporate media. Being able to tell these stories that
we've known we're real in our communities for a long time,
but we didn't have the proof because we didn't all
have you know, cameras on our phone owns. Back we
(14:00):
didn't even have phones back in the time with mobile
phones back in the time, and a lot of this
stuff was happening. But now we're able to document these things.
And I don't like watching these videos. In fact, I
avoid a lot of the videos because I just don't
like seeing so much black death and pain m broadcast
in such a ubiquitous way, but the fact that these
videos exist is important and it has moved the conversation,
(14:26):
and social media has spread messages that I think are
really important and uplifted the voices of activists whose voices
we need to be hearing. You mentioned something I really
want to explore with you, which is the kind of
one dimensional nature of what is often seen in the
Black experience death, injustice, harm, suffering. I think you've mentioned
(14:48):
your your recent album Bigger Love, not knowing of course
the context it was going to arrive in, but how
important it was to you that a broader experience be
represented as a black artist with the huge black following
and a huge multiracial following. What do you think it
takes two? On one hand, you know, do the right
thing and make clear that you know what these experiences
(15:10):
of pain are, and at the same time also do
the right thing and make sure that the black experience
is not reduced to injustice and suffering and pain, but
it is kind of amplified in all of its richness
and um, we experience the full range of human emotion,
and we want to express that in our We experience love,
we romance, joy, questioning, inspiration Black people and I think
(15:35):
all people I want to see those images as well,
and not just images of us being in pain, us
being treated unfairly. I think it's important for us to
also show the range of our experience in this country
and around the world, UH, show the richness of our
culture and and put that on display for the whole
(15:57):
world to see. And not only is it the right
thing to do, but it's also been I think proven
to be commercially viable that we're showing the range of
our experiences and that UH and that representing UH these
underrepresented minority groups in this country, UM actually sells well
to Hollywood is I think learned that lesson recently in
(16:20):
the past few years, and it's been better for the
creative community, but also better for our audience that they're
seeing a wider range of images and stories and more
voices are being heard than ever before. Part of it,
I think is kind of a fortunate consequence of just
the sheer breadth of entertainment opportunities that you know, with
(16:42):
with Netflix and Apple TV and HBO, Max and Peacock,
there's so many outlets for entertainment, which means there's a
lot of demand for storytellers. As an audience member, is
cool to just be open open to the idea that
you can get a look into a different culture or
from your own, learn something, be entertained by it, connect
(17:03):
with it in some way that universal and very human,
and hopefully everyone opens themself up to that, because you'll
be richly entertained if you open yourself up to that. Uh.
I mean, you know, I've been watching The Queen's Gambit.
I have nothing in common with the girl from the
Queen's Gambit, but it's very entertaining and it's very like
interesting to see a subculture that I'm not a part of,
(17:26):
but the stakes are interesting, the humanity of the person
is interesting, and I can connect to the person on
an emotional level. So you mentioned something else a few times.
You mentioned the kind of business side of this, and
and you know the commercial structures around the media, what
it can pick up, what it suppresses. Sometimes, when I
was getting ready for our conversation, one thing I did
not know that we had in common was working for
(17:49):
two or three years in consulting before into something we
were more passionate about. Do you think your brief time
in consulting and in that that kind of corporate world
shape the way you think about how corporate forces now
influence what's going on in the creative space. Well, I mean,
I feel like I learned a lot when I was
(18:10):
at BCG. I worked at BCG. I know you worked
at mackenzie and Uh. I applied to McKenzie, got one interview,
but did not get the job there. I plied BCG
and didn't get a job there. So there we go.
But both of those firms, obviously, UM, they recruit from
top schools around the country, and they are places where
(18:33):
you interact with a lot of other smart people, UM
learn about things that you may have never even thought
about before, and have access to a lot of the
top boardrooms in the country, whether it's corporate or nonprofit.
And I did a little bit of both. I felt
like it was a valuable experience. UM. I didn't want
to do that for the rest of my life. I
(18:55):
knew that music was the most important thing for me
and something I was really good at and wanted to
do professionally. But I felt like my time at BCG
taught me quite a bit about how the business world works,
and I think it made the transition to me interacting
with my record label and all the other business aspects
of the entertainment business. It made it easier for me
(19:16):
to make that transition and represent myself in a way
where I was able to advocate for myself in the
right way and understand what was going on outside of
the creative side of things. Now, you also have a
(19:44):
lot of organizational experience in building advocacy and nonprofit organizations
like Free America. Can you share a little bit about
how that came about and and what the future is
of the work that you've been doing around the criminal
legal system. Yeah, so we found did Free America a
few years ago. I don't know if people remember my
Oscar speech, but I went up on the stage when
(20:06):
we won uh An Oscar for writing Glory for the
film Selma. I went up on the stage. I talked
about us being the most incarcerated country in the world,
and that there were more black men under correctional control
now than who were in enslaved in the eighteen fifty
A lot of people were shocked when I said those
things because they didn't even know that that was true,
(20:28):
and it wasn't being talked about so much during that time.
But since then, obviously a lot more attention has been
paid to mass incarceration. We've seen a film by the
director of selma Aba du Vernet, a film called The Thirteen.
We've seen a lot of people on both sides of
the political spectrum advocating for changes in our prison system,
(20:51):
in our criminal justice system. We've seen people going as
far as saying we should abolish prisons, abolished the police,
uh two. On the other into the spectrum, at least
reform these institutions and and reduced our use of these institutions.
All of these conversations have been had, and I feel
like we at Free America were on the forefront of
(21:12):
making those conversations more amplified, more salient, more part of
the broader national conversation. And we did it because we
recognized that it was a major issue. I was inspired
personally by reading The New Gym, Crow and other books
about this issue. I was inspired by my own experiences
(21:34):
having family members who were in prison, in local jails,
caught up in the system in one way or the other,
and just growing up black in America. You just see
how much prisons, jails, policing effects our everyday existence. And
that's why we've been on the forefront of trying to
make really significant UM change in those institutions. And when
(21:58):
we started Free America, we started just by listening. We
went around the country, talked to stakeholders. We talked to
people who were still in prison, people who had been
incarcerated formally and had returned to society. We talked to
district attorneys, We talked to UH state legislators, We talked
to corrections officers, all kinds of people who had experience
(22:19):
in the system and understood what was going wrong and
and and had done some thinking about how to change it.
Once we had kind of done our rounds of really
listening and talking to folks, we started advocating for certain
policy changes. We we got with UH some Texas Justice advocates,
some California advocates, some Louisiana advocates, some Florida advocates, and
(22:43):
UH joined with them to advocate for changes that were
enacted by legislatures, changes that were enacted by ballot propositions,
changes that were acted by governors when it came to
things like clemency and commutations. We've gotten involved in trying
to make tangible policy change around the country and We've
(23:05):
also gotten involved with educating the public around the role
of district attorneys. We got with the a c l
U to do a Know Your d a campaign where
we taught people how important district attorneys are in your community.
Most people don't realize that. UM most cases don't go
(23:26):
to trial. Almost all of them are kind of negotiated
between the defense attorney and the and the district attorney.
And the district attorney holds most of the power because
they can pretty much tell the grand jury what to do.
They can pretty much dictate the terms that they want
UH in in almost any case, and so their discretion
(23:49):
is hugely influential. And if they have a more progressive inclination,
if they if they have a specific intent to not
lock up so many able to use alternatives to prison
whenever possible, to UH do things that are more just
and more fair and more edifying for the community, they
(24:12):
have the power to do it. And so we educated
people that that was the case. And then also I
personally went out and advocated for more progressive district attorneys
and states attorneys in various major races around the country,
whether it was Chicago for Kim Fox or Philadelphia for
Larry Krasner or most recently George Gascon here in Los Angeles.
(24:37):
I got involved in those elections, educated people about the
importance of those elections because a lot of times people
don't pay attention to anything under President Senator governor. Wanted
to educate them about that and advocate for district attorneys
that I thought would take the city or county in
the right direction. This is such an important point because
I think that often when you think about, you know
(24:58):
who in the criminal legal system can play a role
from a progressive or pro justice standpoint, you think about
public defenders in the work that they do, which is
important absolutely, But you know there's a case to be
made that if you really care about justice, if you're
thinking about reform, and from a progressive anglod the best
thing you could do is run for d A or
will be involved in supporting somebody who's up for UH
(25:21):
for prosecutor. Because of that discretion you're talking about. I
feel so proud that I have been part of informing
people about this UH and it's really a new thing.
It's a new conversation that we're having that we weren't
having ten years ago. It just was not happening, and
so if we have someone with the right values and
(25:42):
the right sensibility in those offices, the outcomes will be better.
And we've seen it, uh, people like Krasner and Fox
have reduced incarceration and crime has gone down in those
communities too. It shows you that you can lock a
lot fewer people up and also reduce crime. And a
(26:04):
lot of times people don't realize the cost of locking
people up is beyond just the physical cost of having
a staff there and a building and all the things
that go into the building. It's an opportunity cost because
every time you choose to do that, you're choosing not
to spend that money on something else that could be
better for the community. You're also causing harm to that
(26:27):
person's family. You're causing harm in so many ways, and
we don't count all of that stuff. We just count
the physical costs, the personnel costs, the cost of you know,
feeding and caring for them medically. But we don't think
about all the other societal costs that come with us
locking so many people up. And my belief is, in
(26:49):
most cases we don't need to lock people up. You
strike me as somebody who is very clear eyed about
everything that's wrong in this country, and not without optimism
and hope for the future. What's your level of optimism
that the next decade will go well and what would
have to happen over the next decade for us to
be able to look back with satisfaction from and say, Okay,
(27:11):
it got pretty rough as but then we turn things around. Well.
I think the most important issue, notwithstanding the fact that
my nonprofit is around criminal justice reform, I think the
most important issue is our climate and how we respond
to the challenge of climate change. If we don't get
this right, it could mean some really terrible things for
(27:33):
the entire planet over the next few decades. It could
be immensely tragic for so many people. And we've gotten
kind of a preview with COVID of what it's like
to have a president who doesn't believe in science, a
president who doesn't have long term thinking, a president who
isn't strategic about anything that requires um, multi layers, multi years,
(28:00):
you know, all these aspects of tackling a big problem
that um the payoff for doing it right is an
immediate We've seen what a president like that does in
response to a pandemic and climate change is even more
challenging because the results aren't as immediate, the costs of
(28:25):
inaction aren't abundantly clear in this present moment, and so
it's a scary, scary thing because it's so hugely impactful,
yet we can't see the impacts at at a sufficient
level right now to have a sense of urgency about it.
(28:45):
So if I were to say an optimistic view of
what will happen in this decade in response to that
would be one we elected Joe Biden who actually believes
it's a real issue and has a real robust plan
to attack it um and that there's a way to
attack it without sacrificing the economy, without sacrificing jobs, And
(29:09):
in fact, we would create jobs and and it would
be healthier for the economy and healthier for our infrastructure,
and UH, tackle a major, major, major problem that could
be catastrophic if we don't attack it. Um. So I
believe there are plenty of reasons for us to get
(29:30):
this right. That doesn't mean we will get it right,
particularly if Mrs McConnell is still running the Senate, but yeah,
we have to get it right. And I think the
benefits of getting it right, are right there in front
of our faith, um and and so I'm somewhat hopeful,
(29:51):
somewhat optimistic that will actually do the right thing. And
as President, Joe Biden can do some things to executive
order and how he runs the e p A. It
just kind of administratively. UH. He can do some of
those things that we need to do. He can rejoin
the Paris Accords and a few other things. But some
of this uh is going to have to be enacted
(30:11):
by our legislature, and that means the Georgia elections are
very important. When I was looking over recent news stories
about John before this conversation, I was amazed by the
number of projects that he's taken on, from the Voice
to his new album, to his political activism, to being
a husband and a father to two beautiful young children,
(30:34):
and on and on. He is a leading figure in
the fight for racial equity. He's making a tangible impact
in our policies and in the entertainment world. I think
back to what he said about his inflection point, leaving
a coveted job and consulting and deciding to pursue music
with everything he had. We know that's not an easy thing.
(30:54):
To do, but it was a choice that had huge impact,
as his commitment to his passions wound up helping brighten
the lives of millions. His story is a reminder of
what's waiting on the other side when you're ready to
make that leap of faith and work on the things
you care about. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
(31:15):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi, I'm Pete Bodh Jedge and this is the deciding decade.
The experience of music, playing music, listening, music sharing music
is a central part of life for so many of us.
Certainly for me, I played piano from an early age,
(00:23):
took up guitar as a teenager. I'm no professional, but
it's meant a lot to me as a different form
of expression, in a different way to respond to the world.
Music represents such a vital perspective with the potential to
cut across boundaries, habits and prejudice, and musicians have a
lot to offer, not just within but beyond the world
(00:44):
of entertainment. We live in a moment when we need
art and music more than ever. Yes, as a way
to stand apart from some of the pressures of the world,
but also as a way to better understand and deal
with those pressures. And that's why it shouldn't be so
surprising that some of the most powerful voices in our
political and social life today come from the world of music.
(01:05):
My guest today is a perfect example. John Legend needs
no introduction, but I'll introduce him anyways. John is a Grammy,
Tony Oscar and any award winning per former, artist, activist, husband,
and father, and all those awards make him only the
fifteen person ever to earn an EGOT, and the first
black man to do so. He has blessed our screens
(01:27):
and our ears with beautiful, powerful and important music, TV
shows and movies over the years, and he is working
passionately to restore rights and gain equality for so many
in this nation, including through his work with his organization
Free American, which aims to tackle mass incarceration. He has
been a leader in the struggle for racial justice, for
(01:48):
fair and quality education, and so much more. He is
a force for good in our country. John, really great
to have you. Thank you, Pete. It's great to be
here with you, and I'm excited to talk with you.
I want to start with what everyone has been talking about.
There's been a very important decision. The people have spoken,
the votes have been counted, and we now know who
(02:10):
the new winner is of the vote. Luckily, his predecessor
has been incredibly gracious and supportive. I'm speaking of horse
about the Sexiest Man Alive, Michael B. Jordan. How does
it feel to be a retired sexiest man Alive? Oh?
The pressure is off. I feel so relieved, like a
like a thousand pounds have been lifted off of my shoulders.
(02:32):
If only every transition was as graceful, I'll come to
I want to really excited to talk about and some
what's going on in our country right now with you,
because your perspectives have been so powerful. But but first
I wanted to go back in time a little bit,
because you are also a product of the Midwest. Grew
up in Springfield, Ohio. I believe a community where I
(02:54):
think your father worked in a factory, those communities that
that's something you understand very well. And I wonder how
do you explain a place like Springfield to people who
don't know much about the Midwest. Well, my area was
a very blue collar area. A lot of the people
in my town worked at the auto factory where my
(03:15):
father worked. He worked for a company called Navistar International,
who was formerly known as International Harvester. Uh. They employed
a lot of people in Indiana as well. In fact,
I remember when I was a kid, they were deciding
between putting some jobs in Fort Wayne or in Springfield
and uh and so uh it was. You know, it
(03:37):
was such an important topic of conversation in my community
where those auto jobs were going. And as you know,
that is a conversation that's had across the Midwest, particularly
in Michigan and Indiana, in various places throughout the country. Uh,
those jobs are very important. It was the reason that
(03:59):
my father had a stable career. He worked there until retirement,
got a pension, And I understand the value of u
a w job like he had. It was critical to
us living. Uh, you know, a decent life where they
could afford you know, food for us, shelter for us,
clothing for us, the basic needs that we we had
(04:22):
as kids. How do you think that shape coming out
of a community like that, in in a family like that,
especially somebody who's now so outspoken on on economic and
racial justice. Well, I think it makes it it clear
to you that policy decisions, that corporate decisions, have an
impact on real people. As my senator of my former
(04:44):
state talks about all the time, Sharrett Brown talks about
the dignity of work and how important it is that
we value workers. I think it's very important that we
do that in policy and in the way we talk
about these issues, that we value the honest work of
so many people throughout the country, so many of whom
aren't college educated. Some many of them are working um
(05:07):
in factories or in other jobs that are really important
to the lifeblood of this country's economy and our community,
but sometimes don't get a lot of glory or fanfare. Yeah.
I think one of the things that gets missed so
much in conversations about the economy is how much a
job can really meet right And when you're talking about
(05:27):
uh U a W workers or or people in professions,
or at the ways that you know, whether it's a
firm event for a lawyer or a union picnic for
U a W. That's where your spouses and kids get
to know each other. It's it's a lot more than
just a job. And it feels like a lot of
policies are designed to maybe make sure somebody still has
the income when their economic life is disrupted, but totally
(05:47):
overlooks how much else is at stake in the patterns
people grew up on where you could count on them
maybe a lifelong relationship with with one employer, or at
least a lifelong career in one industry, right right. And
I think it's okay to be nostalgic for the error,
but we also have to be realistic that a lot
of jobs aren't going to be lifelong. Uh. There, people
(06:07):
are going to change jobs, are gonna change careers. Sometimes
they're gonna have to go back and get retraining. And
uh we need to have I think policies uh that
are flexible for people and opportunities for them to take
some risks. Um. That's why I was always wary of,
you know, health insurance being tied to people's uh job,
(06:28):
because when it's tied to something that's not permanent, then, uh,
it's quite stressful when people lose their jobs. And um
to add the stress of having to figure out how
they're going to take care of their family if someone
gets sick. You know, we need to think about all
of that. I think we can be as nostalgic as
we want to be for an era when people kept
(06:49):
the same job like my dad did, but we have
to realize that that's not always going to be the case,
and it's more likely than not not going to be
the case. Uh, And uh we need to have policies
that may get so that, uh, there is flexibility, there's
a safety net, there are opportunities in place for people
who may have a more dynamic career path right, and
(07:10):
we can design for that right, whether we're talking about healthcare,
whether we're talking about sick leave. I mean, there's no
iron law that the unemployment insurance or you b I
even all these things that would give people some flexibility
and respond to the fact that the economy is pretty dynamic.
(07:45):
So I gotta say, you're known to be extremely talented,
but I'm not sure people who don't know about your
political side would have expected to hear you talking with
a lot of sophistication about policy. You're you're and You've
chosen weigh in on these things. And I'm wondering, do
you do you face pressure to stick to entertainment that
this kind of outside of politics, or is it just
(08:07):
the most natural thing the world for you to talk
policy and to be uh such a larger than my
figure in the entertainment world. At the same time, I
do face uh some criticism and backlash, particularly on Twitter.
Imagine that. But you know plenty of people telling me
to shut up and sing, or we don't care about
(08:29):
your political opinions. Obviously, I think about these things a lot.
I care about them, and I talked about them because
I'm interested in I care, and I genuinely want outcomes
that I think will be better for the country. And
I say it, but you shouldn't value my opinion just
because I'm famous and I have a lot of Twitter followers.
Assess it based on the merits of what I'm saying.
(08:50):
If you think it would be terrible for the country,
disagree with me, but don't do it because I'm a
singer and I don't have the right to speak out
about it. Do it because you think I'm wrong on
the merits. So I think we can all have these conversations,
and my assertion that I think all of us should
share is that all of us have a stake and
what's happening in the country. We're all citizens. We vote here,
(09:14):
we pay taxes here, and I always remember that government
isn't some other thing, it's us. We pull our money
together in the form of taxes, and then we elect
people that we expect to represent our best interests and
do what's best for the community. You mentioned Twitter. I
(09:35):
want to talk about that a little bit. What are
we gonna do about Twitter? What are we gonna do
about social media? I mean, it's it's such an important
part of how we communicate, and it's also obviously not
a space that's exactly bringing out the best of all
of us all the time. Where do you think we're headed? Well,
you know, I'm of two minds about it, because on
one hand, I really believe I've learned a lot by
(09:56):
being engaged on Twitter. I think there are really interesting
voice is who I would never have known about unless
I UH saw a retweet from them from another person
that I trusted on Twitter, and and I think my
circle of people I'm interested in and read articles from
and and and read Twitter threads from it has expanded,
(10:19):
and I think it's been a good thing for me.
There's so many issues I would have not known as
much about, and I think a lot of voices who
previously would have been marginalized by the corporate media structure
UH had an opportunity to be heard. And I think
that is a really good thing. Of course, with that
really good thing, there's also UH the opportunity to miss
(10:44):
INFORMIM to to use disinformation in social media, and we've
seen the President of take full advantage of that and
just repeat lie after lie after lie after lie, and
UM intentionally poisoned the conversation and in a way that
needs to be addressed. Um, when it's obvious that someone's
(11:07):
lying and it's having a really terrible effect on the
conversation and on people's lives, particularly when it comes to
COVID and other issues of life and death. I think
these social media organizations need to find ways to censor
that content. People can say it and not get arrested.
That's free speech, but they don't have the right to
(11:29):
say anything on any social platform that's privately owned or
incorporately owned, and they don't have the right to say
anything without consequence. They have the right to say it
without getting locked up, but they don't have the right
to just say it. It's also the case that, uh,
you know, for all the problems that have come our
way through things like social media and technology, it's also
(11:49):
helped shine a light on abuses that people would not
have known otherwise. I was researching a book I wrote
recently on trust, and I found some writings from the
ninety nineties when people were just trying to figure out
what the internet was gonna do, and some of them
they sound really utopian now, you know. One of was
about it gushing about how you know the future and
(12:11):
the digital era, everything is gonna be driven by fact
and then we know it didn't work out. But I
saw another piece and it was written by someone who
specialized in studying the former Soviet republics, and he was
a human rights expert, and he's writing about how, you know,
as digital communications proliferate, it's gonna become more and more
possible for human rights abuses to be documented and they
(12:31):
can't be denied by the regimes where they have now.
He was thinking about Central Asia when he was writing this.
But I found this quote and it happened to be
in the summer of this year, and I thought, you know,
what he's describing is also it's George Floyd, right, It's
it's things like the murder of George Floyd that we
saw with our own eyes and a human rights abuse
right here in the US. How do you think that
(12:54):
we can make sure that the empowering side of digital media,
for for true somehow can outweigh the misinformation that goes
on there? Is it just something that the social media
companies have to do? Do you think there are things
that we can do as as just ordinary consumers or
those of us who have bigger platforms on Twitter, what
can we do to make sure that that that part
(13:15):
of it right, that the shining light on what needs
to be seen outweighs all the noise and the misinformation
and the cruelty that's out there. Well, thank you for
bringing up George Floyd and the power of social media
in uh amplifying the message of Black Lives Matter and
so many activists who have spoken out for a long
time about what's been going on with police abuses, particularly
(13:38):
in the black community, brown community as well. Another example
of why social media is so important, being able to
tell these stories in a way that's not filtered by
the corporate media. Being able to tell these stories that
we've known we're real in our communities for a long time,
but we didn't have the proof because we didn't all
have you know, cameras on our phone owns. Back we
(14:00):
didn't even have phones back in the time with mobile
phones back in the time, and a lot of this
stuff was happening. But now we're able to document these things.
And I don't like watching these videos. In fact, I
avoid a lot of the videos because I just don't
like seeing so much black death and pain m broadcast
in such a ubiquitous way, but the fact that these
videos exist is important and it has moved the conversation,
(14:26):
and social media has spread messages that I think are
really important and uplifted the voices of activists whose voices
we need to be hearing. You mentioned something I really
want to explore with you, which is the kind of
one dimensional nature of what is often seen in the
Black experience death, injustice, harm, suffering. I think you've mentioned
(14:48):
your your recent album Bigger Love, not knowing of course
the context it was going to arrive in, but how
important it was to you that a broader experience be
represented as a black artist with the huge black following
and a huge multiracial following. What do you think it
takes two? On one hand, you know, do the right
thing and make clear that you know what these experiences
(15:10):
of pain are, and at the same time also do
the right thing and make sure that the black experience
is not reduced to injustice and suffering and pain, but
it is kind of amplified in all of its richness
and um, we experience the full range of human emotion,
and we want to express that in our We experience love,
we romance, joy, questioning, inspiration Black people and I think
(15:35):
all people I want to see those images as well,
and not just images of us being in pain, us
being treated unfairly. I think it's important for us to
also show the range of our experience in this country
and around the world, UH, show the richness of our
culture and and put that on display for the whole
(15:57):
world to see. And not only is it the right
thing to do, but it's also been I think proven
to be commercially viable that we're showing the range of
our experiences and that UH and that representing UH these
underrepresented minority groups in this country, UM actually sells well
to Hollywood is I think learned that lesson recently in
(16:20):
the past few years, and it's been better for the
creative community, but also better for our audience that they're
seeing a wider range of images and stories and more
voices are being heard than ever before. Part of it,
I think is kind of a fortunate consequence of just
the sheer breadth of entertainment opportunities that you know, with
(16:42):
with Netflix and Apple TV and HBO, Max and Peacock,
there's so many outlets for entertainment, which means there's a
lot of demand for storytellers. As an audience member, is
cool to just be open open to the idea that
you can get a look into a different culture or
from your own, learn something, be entertained by it, connect
(17:03):
with it in some way that universal and very human,
and hopefully everyone opens themself up to that, because you'll
be richly entertained if you open yourself up to that. Uh.
I mean, you know, I've been watching The Queen's Gambit.
I have nothing in common with the girl from the
Queen's Gambit, but it's very entertaining and it's very like
interesting to see a subculture that I'm not a part of,
(17:26):
but the stakes are interesting, the humanity of the person
is interesting, and I can connect to the person on
an emotional level. So you mentioned something else a few times.
You mentioned the kind of business side of this, and
and you know the commercial structures around the media, what
it can pick up, what it suppresses. Sometimes, when I
was getting ready for our conversation, one thing I did
not know that we had in common was working for
(17:49):
two or three years in consulting before into something we
were more passionate about. Do you think your brief time
in consulting and in that that kind of corporate world
shape the way you think about how corporate forces now
influence what's going on in the creative space. Well, I mean,
I feel like I learned a lot when I was
(18:10):
at BCG. I worked at BCG. I know you worked
at mackenzie and Uh. I applied to McKenzie, got one interview,
but did not get the job there. I plied BCG
and didn't get a job there. So there we go.
But both of those firms, obviously, UM, they recruit from
top schools around the country, and they are places where
(18:33):
you interact with a lot of other smart people, UM
learn about things that you may have never even thought
about before, and have access to a lot of the
top boardrooms in the country, whether it's corporate or nonprofit.
And I did a little bit of both. I felt
like it was a valuable experience. UM. I didn't want
to do that for the rest of my life. I
(18:55):
knew that music was the most important thing for me
and something I was really good at and wanted to
do professionally. But I felt like my time at BCG
taught me quite a bit about how the business world works,
and I think it made the transition to me interacting
with my record label and all the other business aspects
of the entertainment business. It made it easier for me
(19:16):
to make that transition and represent myself in a way
where I was able to advocate for myself in the
right way and understand what was going on outside of
the creative side of things. Now, you also have a
(19:44):
lot of organizational experience in building advocacy and nonprofit organizations
like Free America. Can you share a little bit about
how that came about and and what the future is
of the work that you've been doing around the criminal
legal system. Yeah, so we found did Free America a
few years ago. I don't know if people remember my
Oscar speech, but I went up on the stage when
(20:06):
we won uh An Oscar for writing Glory for the
film Selma. I went up on the stage. I talked
about us being the most incarcerated country in the world,
and that there were more black men under correctional control
now than who were in enslaved in the eighteen fifty
A lot of people were shocked when I said those
things because they didn't even know that that was true,
(20:28):
and it wasn't being talked about so much during that time.
But since then, obviously a lot more attention has been
paid to mass incarceration. We've seen a film by the
director of selma Aba du Vernet, a film called The Thirteen.
We've seen a lot of people on both sides of
the political spectrum advocating for changes in our prison system,
(20:51):
in our criminal justice system. We've seen people going as
far as saying we should abolish prisons, abolished the police,
uh two. On the other into the spectrum, at least
reform these institutions and and reduced our use of these institutions.
All of these conversations have been had, and I feel
like we at Free America were on the forefront of
(21:12):
making those conversations more amplified, more salient, more part of
the broader national conversation. And we did it because we
recognized that it was a major issue. I was inspired
personally by reading The New Gym, Crow and other books
about this issue. I was inspired by my own experiences
(21:34):
having family members who were in prison, in local jails,
caught up in the system in one way or the other,
and just growing up black in America. You just see
how much prisons, jails, policing effects our everyday existence. And
that's why we've been on the forefront of trying to
make really significant UM change in those institutions. And when
(21:58):
we started Free America, we started just by listening. We
went around the country, talked to stakeholders. We talked to
people who were still in prison, people who had been
incarcerated formally and had returned to society. We talked to
district attorneys, We talked to UH state legislators, We talked
to corrections officers, all kinds of people who had experience
(22:19):
in the system and understood what was going wrong and
and and had done some thinking about how to change it.
Once we had kind of done our rounds of really
listening and talking to folks, we started advocating for certain
policy changes. We we got with UH some Texas Justice advocates,
some California advocates, some Louisiana advocates, some Florida advocates, and
(22:43):
UH joined with them to advocate for changes that were
enacted by legislatures, changes that were enacted by ballot propositions,
changes that were acted by governors when it came to
things like clemency and commutations. We've gotten involved in trying
to make tangible policy change around the country and We've
(23:05):
also gotten involved with educating the public around the role
of district attorneys. We got with the a c l
U to do a Know Your d a campaign where
we taught people how important district attorneys are in your community.
Most people don't realize that. UM most cases don't go
(23:26):
to trial. Almost all of them are kind of negotiated
between the defense attorney and the and the district attorney.
And the district attorney holds most of the power because
they can pretty much tell the grand jury what to do.
They can pretty much dictate the terms that they want
UH in in almost any case, and so their discretion
(23:49):
is hugely influential. And if they have a more progressive inclination,
if they if they have a specific intent to not
lock up so many able to use alternatives to prison
whenever possible, to UH do things that are more just
and more fair and more edifying for the community, they
(24:12):
have the power to do it. And so we educated
people that that was the case. And then also I
personally went out and advocated for more progressive district attorneys
and states attorneys in various major races around the country,
whether it was Chicago for Kim Fox or Philadelphia for
Larry Krasner or most recently George Gascon here in Los Angeles.
(24:37):
I got involved in those elections, educated people about the
importance of those elections because a lot of times people
don't pay attention to anything under President Senator governor. Wanted
to educate them about that and advocate for district attorneys
that I thought would take the city or county in
the right direction. This is such an important point because
I think that often when you think about, you know
(24:58):
who in the criminal legal system can play a role
from a progressive or pro justice standpoint, you think about
public defenders in the work that they do, which is
important absolutely, But you know there's a case to be
made that if you really care about justice, if you're
thinking about reform, and from a progressive anglod the best
thing you could do is run for d A or
will be involved in supporting somebody who's up for UH
(25:21):
for prosecutor. Because of that discretion you're talking about. I
feel so proud that I have been part of informing
people about this UH and it's really a new thing.
It's a new conversation that we're having that we weren't
having ten years ago. It just was not happening, and
so if we have someone with the right values and
(25:42):
the right sensibility in those offices, the outcomes will be better.
And we've seen it, uh, people like Krasner and Fox
have reduced incarceration and crime has gone down in those
communities too. It shows you that you can lock a
lot fewer people up and also reduce crime. And a
(26:04):
lot of times people don't realize the cost of locking
people up is beyond just the physical cost of having
a staff there and a building and all the things
that go into the building. It's an opportunity cost because
every time you choose to do that, you're choosing not
to spend that money on something else that could be
better for the community. You're also causing harm to that
(26:27):
person's family. You're causing harm in so many ways, and
we don't count all of that stuff. We just count
the physical costs, the personnel costs, the cost of you know,
feeding and caring for them medically. But we don't think
about all the other societal costs that come with us
locking so many people up. And my belief is, in
(26:49):
most cases we don't need to lock people up. You
strike me as somebody who is very clear eyed about
everything that's wrong in this country, and not without optimism
and hope for the future. What's your level of optimism
that the next decade will go well and what would
have to happen over the next decade for us to
be able to look back with satisfaction from and say, Okay,
(27:11):
it got pretty rough as but then we turn things around. Well.
I think the most important issue, notwithstanding the fact that
my nonprofit is around criminal justice reform, I think the
most important issue is our climate and how we respond
to the challenge of climate change. If we don't get
this right, it could mean some really terrible things for
(27:33):
the entire planet over the next few decades. It could
be immensely tragic for so many people. And we've gotten
kind of a preview with COVID of what it's like
to have a president who doesn't believe in science, a
president who doesn't have long term thinking, a president who
isn't strategic about anything that requires um, multi layers, multi years,
(28:00):
you know, all these aspects of tackling a big problem
that um the payoff for doing it right is an
immediate We've seen what a president like that does in
response to a pandemic and climate change is even more
challenging because the results aren't as immediate, the costs of
(28:25):
inaction aren't abundantly clear in this present moment, and so
it's a scary, scary thing because it's so hugely impactful,
yet we can't see the impacts at at a sufficient
level right now to have a sense of urgency about it.
(28:45):
So if I were to say an optimistic view of
what will happen in this decade in response to that
would be one we elected Joe Biden who actually believes
it's a real issue and has a real robust plan
to attack it um and that there's a way to
attack it without sacrificing the economy, without sacrificing jobs, And
(29:09):
in fact, we would create jobs and and it would
be healthier for the economy and healthier for our infrastructure,
and UH, tackle a major, major, major problem that could
be catastrophic if we don't attack it. Um. So I
believe there are plenty of reasons for us to get
(29:30):
this right. That doesn't mean we will get it right,
particularly if Mrs McConnell is still running the Senate, but yeah,
we have to get it right. And I think the
benefits of getting it right, are right there in front
of our faith, um and and so I'm somewhat hopeful,
(29:51):
somewhat optimistic that will actually do the right thing. And
as President, Joe Biden can do some things to executive
order and how he runs the e p A. It
just kind of administratively. UH. He can do some of
those things that we need to do. He can rejoin
the Paris Accords and a few other things. But some
of this uh is going to have to be enacted
(30:11):
by our legislature, and that means the Georgia elections are
very important. When I was looking over recent news stories
about John before this conversation, I was amazed by the
number of projects that he's taken on, from the Voice
to his new album, to his political activism, to being
a husband and a father to two beautiful young children,
(30:34):
and on and on. He is a leading figure in
the fight for racial equity. He's making a tangible impact
in our policies and in the entertainment world. I think
back to what he said about his inflection point, leaving
a coveted job and consulting and deciding to pursue music
with everything he had. We know that's not an easy thing.
(30:54):
To do, but it was a choice that had huge impact,
as his commitment to his passions wound up helping brighten
the lives of millions. His story is a reminder of
what's waiting on the other side when you're ready to
make that leap of faith and work on the things
you care about. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio,
(31:15):
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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