March 12, 2025 • 15 mins
Known for his roles in Sex/Life, What We Do in the Shadows, and The Umbrella Academy, Ghasan uses his platform to challenge uncomfortable truths about society. After a life-changing arrest, he started questioning society’s narrow ideas of manhood, and that sparked something big: a mission to change the conversation around masculinity.
His documentary Uncanceled shares the story of his intense year-long journey. After facing both online and real-life attacks that nearly ruined his career, Ghasan turned his struggles into something powerful. The film gives viewers a raw and honest look at his life during that tough time, showing how he grew through it all.
In Uncanceled, Ghasan speaks openly about vulnerability, authenticity, and breaking free from outdated ideas of toughness. His story reminds us that embracing our true selves can drive important conversations about personal growth, self-improvement, and the future of masculinity.
Ghasan’s journey is about more than transformation; it’s about shifting the narrative about manhood itself. We’d love to share his story with your listeners and spark a meaningful conversation about the power of authenticity.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-like-it-s-live--4113802/support.
His documentary Uncanceled shares the story of his intense year-long journey. After facing both online and real-life attacks that nearly ruined his career, Ghasan turned his struggles into something powerful. The film gives viewers a raw and honest look at his life during that tough time, showing how he grew through it all.
In Uncanceled, Ghasan speaks openly about vulnerability, authenticity, and breaking free from outdated ideas of toughness. His story reminds us that embracing our true selves can drive important conversations about personal growth, self-improvement, and the future of masculinity.
Ghasan’s journey is about more than transformation; it’s about shifting the narrative about manhood itself. We’d love to share his story with your listeners and spark a meaningful conversation about the power of authenticity.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/arroe-collins-like-it-s-live--4113802/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
How are you doing, dude?
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Now are you absolutely fantastic? Man? What a journey you've
been on with this project?
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Thank you?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yes, I have, not even just the project, just in life.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Wow. Wow. How did you know inside your heart that
it was time to get a story like this out there?
Because you're not the only one that's going through this,
nor will you guys be the last ones to go
through this of course.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Well, besides the story, really jumping in on what I
was trying to get get out of my life really
because coming out of the pandemic, everyone was really isolated,
myself included. I had gone through a period of really
just focusing in on my work during the pandemic, and
I'd made some great strides, and then I realized, you
(00:46):
know what, I'm not really experiencing life all doing staying
in my room and working, and it's kind of wild
to myself and even friends outside. Like, I'm a very social, confident,
articulate guy, so the idea of me not being social
outside of my space was kind of perplexing.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So to me, I was like, I need to start
getting out there and just.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
And also just getting over my fear of making somebody uncomfortable.
With any kind of intention or advancement, like me just
saying Hey, I like you, I think.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
You're fun, I want to hang out. Scared the crap out.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
So I had to really try to understand and dissect
that both on a psychological level, but then also understand
and on a social level of Hey, how do you
do this in a way that's comfortable, and how do
you do it in a way that if it becomes uncomfortable,
how do you recover and make it totally fine, totally
respectful between both parties and really walk away. What led
(01:44):
to the dating Coach was really I got to a
place where I just could not figure it out on
my own. I was like, somebody has figured out how
to get get out of their own head to be
able to do this.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
You know what, these guys charge money for it. Let
me just check it out.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Really one of those situations where curiosity kills the cat.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Literally, yeah, all right, but to take a chance on this,
I mean, that's see. That's one of the things that
a lot of people in what you do on social media,
what I do, they don't understand what we go through
in order to get it up there. They think that
it just you know, just falls out. But they don't realize,
Like you said, you're in that room alone, and you
and you, you start missing people. Dude. I took up
a job at a grocery store because I miss people
(02:27):
so much. And and and and there you go, and
I had to be with community. I was willing to
put my life on the line during the COVID lockdown.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Yeah, and and it's it's a strange place to be in,
especially because the world is quote unquote more connected than
it's ever been, but more disconnected than it's ever been. Like,
the thing that I've learned from this is how addicted we.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
All are to our phones and our algorithms.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Like jumping on a on a on a bus, on
a subway, and you just look around for a second,
don't look at your phone. You'll see a majority of
the people if they're not talking to somebody.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
They're all their phones.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
So that also blew my mind that somehow communicating with
other humans was this strange thing, that you are breaking
a barrier by just trying to say, hey, how's your
day going, or hey I saw you, I thought you
were interesting.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I wanted to come say hi.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yeah, I always tell people or I was writing one
day and they said, are people happy to see you know?
They're happy that I see them as long as I'm
recognizing them first.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yeah, I fully agree with that.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, let's talk about uncanceled in the way that how
I mean, it's it's out there on YouTube, I mean,
and what the thing about it is you can't pull
yourself away from it. The editing in this thing is
so incredible.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Thank you, hey, that that's all my My my director
and co producer, Mikeel. Mikel is incredible at directing. We
worked really hard to figure out the story here, but
really it was just trying to make sure that this
was digestible.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Well yeah, because the timing is there and it is
a story and I think but it's also unscripted because
it doesn't feel like there was a script here.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Yeah. So here's what's crazy about this whole process. So
I'm a filmmaker myself. McKell and I had worked together
for a decade, Yeah, even.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
More now, but I work on more narratives.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
I like constructing something from scrat piecing together the words
of it. This is my first time working on a documentary,
let alone being the subject of one. Kept telling mikeul like,
is there a way to do this without me? Like,
I don't want to be the subject? He's like, well, no,
you're the gut And throughout the entire process we I
was getting frustrated very early on with him because I
(04:39):
was like, dude, what's.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
The structure of this?
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Can we like, can you tell me, like what the
story is? How you want to go about this? And
he was just like, no, you just got to film
and figure it out, because he's done documentaries in the past,
and it was so tough to be able to figure
that out. But something that I had to learn was
really trust the process and trust my director and co
producer to say, like, no, we're just gonna follow your
(05:02):
journey when things happen, when things don't happen that the
way you want it to. When you know you've got
a high, when you've got a low, let's just record
it all and we'll figure it out.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, but dude, something did happen and it totally poisoned
your life.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, Well, it's there's the one thing that it's the
it's the the arrest itself that poisoned my life. But
the story here isn't necessarily about the arrest. It's how
do you come back? That's right, that's right, and get
your name back.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
And that's the part that we often don't see in media.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Whenever see we see a celebrity put out a statement,
we see the statement itself, but we rarely get to
see their process of talking to their team, writing it out,
trying to figure it out. I'm not a celebrity. I'm
not even close to one. So how does somebody who
is not a celebrity deal with something like this when
you have your community looking at you like a like
(05:54):
a goddamn creep.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah? Yeah, no, it's so true. It's so true because
you know, as long as that headline is on that
front page, were all talking about you. But then it
disappears on page six and then it's like, well, okay,
I guess that was something that we read a few
weeks ago and now a few years ago. But you're right.
But the thing is, I love the idea that I
believe in one mantra, share your story or someone will
write it for you. You the journalist wrote your story.
(06:16):
But now you've come back and you're saying, now let
me tell you the real story.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah, and what's crazy about that as well is the
journalist will not touch the follow up of the story.
They say something of the effect of, we don't want
to touch into legal issues, when originally they were the
ones dealing with the legal issue. So with that, I
was like, Okay, I'm going to take power back into
my own hands.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
I'll tell the story.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
But see, the thing is that what's inspiring is that
you knew that you had to take a chance in
order to keep growing in the media world. And the
thing about it is so many people do do that.
We cross that line one more time, cross that line
one more time, and something as simple as the thing
that you experienced all of a sudden by somebody else,
the police thought it was wrong. Boom, your life has changed.
A lot of people are going through that and they
(07:00):
need this documentary to recover their own life exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
I mean, the hardest thing that I had to learn
from this is power really comes from making your own choices.
It's not this thing that you exert over other people.
It's you knowing that you have the options. What you're
really touching on is people know that they have the
option to do something, but it's the fear that gets
in the way. They go, I don't know that's going
to do X y Z for me. I mean, I
(07:25):
thought about it the entire time going through this. It's like,
I want to put the story out there?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Do I want to expose that I'm a dude who's
seen a dating coach, who paid somebody to teach me
how to talk to women.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
And I was like, you know what if I don't
do this now, somebody's going to have power over me
in the future and be able to tell the story
how they want to. I'm going to control it now.
I have the full truth of what happened here.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah, to me, I see you as you're now the teacher.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that. I go back to
a quote that I really love, which is the student
is sure appears when the student is ready.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, we'll be right back with more of Sam. He
thanks for coming back to my conversation with Sam Alisi.
Isn't this the way? I mean, let me ask you
this question. In the way, do you think that what
you went through was a form of censorship, that people
took the law in their own way and their understanding,
and then all of a sudden your life changed.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
No, so it was it was never an issue of censorship.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
It was an issue of taking everything with face value,
which is I hate to be a.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Cancel culture warrior.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
I don't want to be with But essentially, what it
does come down to, in the form of cancel culture
or whatever you might want to call it, is this
idea of, oh, we have some information that's been presented
to us, We're not going to think past it. We're
just going to make our quick decision and then it's done.
So I had friends who have been you know, like
really close friends of mine who did not talk to me,
(08:57):
who do not reach out to me when this came out,
and it blew my mind to go, WHOA, hang on,
you guys know me. You guys know I would never
do something like this as it's reported. Why is it
now that you're trusting this?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And it's funny.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
It's a lot of the same people who I've seen
say like defund the police, don't trust the media. It's
the same philosophies, and I don't blame them. I don't
blame them when it comes to something like this. It's
incredibly tricky.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
But what we wanted to explore here is, hey, are
you going to trust everything that you're reading or are
you going to do what Michel did and try to investigate,
try to figure it out, ask the right questions, and
be patient with the person that you know well and good.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
You could have easily put this in a podcast and
put it inside the imaginations of those listening, but no,
you went the route of the video, which I'm so
proud of you guys for doing that.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, well, thank you. It's the one medium that we
absolutely love here.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah. So, then, how trusting are you of the things
that you do today? How long did it take you
to come out of that shell?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
It took me the entire journey of arrest to arrest,
the statements, and even a little after that to really
go like, no, I trust my gut. Now I'm in
this new place where I'm no longer on safe ground.
Everything I work on now is more on in your
(10:20):
face ground, and it's I hate saying it in your.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Face because it's I'm not trying to be edgy, but
more so.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
I'm standing on my opinions and my beliefs, and I'm
willing to polarize.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I'm willing to get in there and start that conversation
with everyone.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Do you ever feel that fear of looking over your
shoulder and it's like, damn it, they're still watching me.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah. I mean that's the nature of this. This thing's
gonna follow me for the rest of my life. But
that is also human nature.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Your your mind is gonna do some crazy things and
it's gonna try to pull you down at the wee
hours of the morning. But you have to trust that
it's really just going through its own thing. It's it's
it's an organ, and it's it's got a mind of
its own, even though it is aline one of.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
The powerful strengths here. We've all talked about that culture
canceled or canceled culture blah blah blah. People don't understand it.
But when they watch uncanceled, Oh, they're going to change
because they're going to understand what it really is.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, I would hope.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
So I find it funny though when I dropped the statement,
I don't know if I've mentioned this anywhere, but when
I dropped the.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Statement, I didn't get much of a response on social media.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
On my social media, I got like a ton of people, like,
you know, liking the post, but nobody really read.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Not a lot of people reached out and wanted to
start a conversation.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
But as soon as we dropped the documentary and really
made this, Uncanceled took everything back in our power. It
seemed like people really wanted to come out and support it.
So I think there's something too that where when you're
entering action with boldness, people seem to respect it a
lot more.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Do you see this as being a movement in the
way that it's time to get some merchandise and say,
uncanceled on it and your photo?
Speaker 3 (12:04):
You know, maybe we've discussed it. I'm more so hoping
that this starts a movement of.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
People trying to communicate with each other more than anything.
One of the things that we haven't explored yet, or
I haven't explored fully in the.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Art is the lessons I've learned about just communicating people
communicating with people, whether it's the same sex or the
opposite sex.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
But those moments.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
When you're in a waiting room, those moments when you're
an elevator, with moments when you're in a park and
you feel that thing of this person wants to talk.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
To me and you shy away from it. That's humanity
and we're losing that.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
So I'm hoping inspires people to go, you know what,
I'm just gonna do this.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Let's see what happens.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
What is your go to thought? When you're in that
elevator or you're in public and nobody's saying anything, do
you The first thing I do is I'll look at somebody,
say you binge watching anything? Just to get the top going.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Man, that is awesome.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I've for the longest time kept silent and pulled out
my phone. I have since gotten off the smartphone to
to try to stay as present as possible. But then
the one thing I do is just turn to the
person and say, how's it going. Just like you said,
you just need to break that silence because they're feeling
it too.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
If you're feeling it, they're feeling it.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yeah, I'm the crazy dude that I'll even look at
him and say ball return on Alle five, and they'll go, what,
guy Alli five needs his ball back? And then then
all of a sudden, you know, you just kind of
just start talking.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Honestly, it's the biggest lesson that I've learned with all
this stuff. I mean, the pickup artist community talks about this,
even though I don't align with them. One of the
things that they do say, which I agree with, is
the first is the hardest. The first one you talk
to is going to be the hardest one. And it's
human nature. It's one of those things that I've talked
to probably a few hundred people now, both men and women,
(13:50):
and it still resets every single day. Every single day,
I run through the same fear of oh no, if
I say this, will this person get mad at me?
Will somebody come to their defense? And it's really just
how the brain works.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Wow, outside of the documentary, what are you doing? Because
I want people to really get into your job.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Oh man, I'm going full force on the filmmaking stuff,
so I'm a writer and director. The thing with this
current story is, yes, we've told the uncanceled story, but
we haven't told the other parts of this. There's still
so many tentacles to this octopus that we're willing to explore.
(14:30):
So really it's trying to figure out what the next
step here is it? How broken the system is? Is
it something regarding the algorithms, Is it talking about men's
issues without becoming men's.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Rights, is it the dating crisis?
Speaker 3 (14:45):
There's so many different nuances to this that people aren't
willing to explore or have tried to explore in an
academic sense, but aren't willing to explore it from a
personal sense because it's very easy to jump to one
side or another. Is like, I'm not here for either side.
I'm here for the side of humanity. Let's just connect
with each other.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
So where can people go to find you?
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Then you can check out the website uncanceled dot ca
A that's one L not two. Or you can check
out my website, Samlisi dot c A s A M
A L E s AI.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
You got to come back to the show anytime in
the future, man, as you continue to grow with this
in other projects. Man, this platform is always going to
be open for you.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Oh beautiful. I'd love to hear that arrow. Yeah, I'll
reach out next time something a.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Big comes up.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
All right, man, you'd be brilliant today.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Okay, ah, you as well. Thanks a lot, man,
How are you doing, dude?
Speaker 2 (00:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Now are you absolutely fantastic? Man? What a journey you've
been on with this project?
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Thank you?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yes, I have, not even just the project, just in life.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Wow. Wow. How did you know inside your heart that
it was time to get a story like this out there?
Because you're not the only one that's going through this,
nor will you guys be the last ones to go
through this of course.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Well, besides the story, really jumping in on what I
was trying to get get out of my life really
because coming out of the pandemic, everyone was really isolated,
myself included. I had gone through a period of really
just focusing in on my work during the pandemic, and
I'd made some great strides, and then I realized, you
(00:46):
know what, I'm not really experiencing life all doing staying
in my room and working, and it's kind of wild
to myself and even friends outside. Like, I'm a very social, confident,
articulate guy, so the idea of me not being social
outside of my space was kind of perplexing.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So to me, I was like, I need to start
getting out there and just.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
And also just getting over my fear of making somebody uncomfortable.
With any kind of intention or advancement, like me just
saying Hey, I like you, I think.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
You're fun, I want to hang out. Scared the crap out.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
So I had to really try to understand and dissect
that both on a psychological level, but then also understand
and on a social level of Hey, how do you
do this in a way that's comfortable, and how do
you do it in a way that if it becomes uncomfortable,
how do you recover and make it totally fine, totally
respectful between both parties and really walk away. What led
(01:44):
to the dating Coach was really I got to a
place where I just could not figure it out on
my own. I was like, somebody has figured out how
to get get out of their own head to be
able to do this.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
You know what, these guys charge money for it. Let
me just check it out.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Really one of those situations where curiosity kills the cat.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Literally, yeah, all right, but to take a chance on this,
I mean, that's see. That's one of the things that
a lot of people in what you do on social media,
what I do, they don't understand what we go through
in order to get it up there. They think that
it just you know, just falls out. But they don't realize,
Like you said, you're in that room alone, and you
and you, you start missing people. Dude. I took up
a job at a grocery store because I miss people
(02:27):
so much. And and and and there you go, and
I had to be with community. I was willing to
put my life on the line during the COVID lockdown.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Yeah, and and it's it's a strange place to be in,
especially because the world is quote unquote more connected than
it's ever been, but more disconnected than it's ever been. Like,
the thing that I've learned from this is how addicted we.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
All are to our phones and our algorithms.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
Like jumping on a on a on a bus, on
a subway, and you just look around for a second,
don't look at your phone. You'll see a majority of
the people if they're not talking to somebody.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
They're all their phones.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
So that also blew my mind that somehow communicating with
other humans was this strange thing, that you are breaking
a barrier by just trying to say, hey, how's your
day going, or hey I saw you, I thought you
were interesting.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
I wanted to come say hi.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yeah, I always tell people or I was writing one
day and they said, are people happy to see you know?
They're happy that I see them as long as I'm
recognizing them first.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yeah, I fully agree with that.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Yeah, let's talk about uncanceled in the way that how
I mean, it's it's out there on YouTube, I mean,
and what the thing about it is you can't pull
yourself away from it. The editing in this thing is
so incredible.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Thank you, hey, that that's all my My my director
and co producer, Mikeel. Mikel is incredible at directing. We
worked really hard to figure out the story here, but
really it was just trying to make sure that this
was digestible.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Well yeah, because the timing is there and it is
a story and I think but it's also unscripted because
it doesn't feel like there was a script here.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Yeah. So here's what's crazy about this whole process. So
I'm a filmmaker myself. McKell and I had worked together
for a decade, Yeah, even.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
More now, but I work on more narratives.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
I like constructing something from scrat piecing together the words
of it. This is my first time working on a documentary,
let alone being the subject of one. Kept telling mikeul like,
is there a way to do this without me? Like,
I don't want to be the subject? He's like, well, no,
you're the gut And throughout the entire process we I
was getting frustrated very early on with him because I
(04:39):
was like, dude, what's.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
The structure of this?
Speaker 3 (04:41):
Can we like, can you tell me, like what the
story is? How you want to go about this? And
he was just like, no, you just got to film
and figure it out, because he's done documentaries in the past,
and it was so tough to be able to figure
that out. But something that I had to learn was
really trust the process and trust my director and co
producer to say, like, no, we're just gonna follow your
(05:02):
journey when things happen, when things don't happen that the
way you want it to. When you know you've got
a high, when you've got a low, let's just record
it all and we'll figure it out.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
Yeah, but dude, something did happen and it totally poisoned
your life.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, Well, it's there's the one thing that it's the
it's the the arrest itself that poisoned my life. But
the story here isn't necessarily about the arrest. It's how
do you come back? That's right, that's right, and get
your name back.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
And that's the part that we often don't see in media.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
Whenever see we see a celebrity put out a statement,
we see the statement itself, but we rarely get to
see their process of talking to their team, writing it out,
trying to figure it out. I'm not a celebrity. I'm
not even close to one. So how does somebody who
is not a celebrity deal with something like this when
you have your community looking at you like a like
(05:54):
a goddamn creep.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah? Yeah, no, it's so true. It's so true because
you know, as long as that headline is on that
front page, were all talking about you. But then it
disappears on page six and then it's like, well, okay,
I guess that was something that we read a few
weeks ago and now a few years ago. But you're right.
But the thing is, I love the idea that I
believe in one mantra, share your story or someone will
write it for you. You the journalist wrote your story.
(06:16):
But now you've come back and you're saying, now let
me tell you the real story.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Yeah, and what's crazy about that as well is the
journalist will not touch the follow up of the story.
They say something of the effect of, we don't want
to touch into legal issues, when originally they were the
ones dealing with the legal issue. So with that, I
was like, Okay, I'm going to take power back into
my own hands.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
I'll tell the story.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
But see, the thing is that what's inspiring is that
you knew that you had to take a chance in
order to keep growing in the media world. And the
thing about it is so many people do do that.
We cross that line one more time, cross that line
one more time, and something as simple as the thing
that you experienced all of a sudden by somebody else,
the police thought it was wrong. Boom, your life has changed.
A lot of people are going through that and they
(07:00):
need this documentary to recover their own life exactly.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
I mean, the hardest thing that I had to learn
from this is power really comes from making your own choices.
It's not this thing that you exert over other people.
It's you knowing that you have the options. What you're
really touching on is people know that they have the
option to do something, but it's the fear that gets
in the way. They go, I don't know that's going
to do X y Z for me. I mean, I
(07:25):
thought about it the entire time going through this. It's like,
I want to put the story out there?
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Do I want to expose that I'm a dude who's
seen a dating coach, who paid somebody to teach me
how to talk to women.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
And I was like, you know what if I don't
do this now, somebody's going to have power over me
in the future and be able to tell the story
how they want to. I'm going to control it now.
I have the full truth of what happened here.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah, to me, I see you as you're now the teacher.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that. I go back to
a quote that I really love, which is the student
is sure appears when the student is ready.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah, we'll be right back with more of Sam. He
thanks for coming back to my conversation with Sam Alisi.
Isn't this the way? I mean, let me ask you
this question. In the way, do you think that what
you went through was a form of censorship, that people
took the law in their own way and their understanding,
and then all of a sudden your life changed.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
No, so it was it was never an issue of censorship.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
It was an issue of taking everything with face value,
which is I hate to be a.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Cancel culture warrior.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
I don't want to be with But essentially, what it
does come down to, in the form of cancel culture
or whatever you might want to call it, is this
idea of, oh, we have some information that's been presented
to us, We're not going to think past it. We're
just going to make our quick decision and then it's done.
So I had friends who have been you know, like
really close friends of mine who did not talk to me,
(08:57):
who do not reach out to me when this came out,
and it blew my mind to go, WHOA, hang on,
you guys know me. You guys know I would never
do something like this as it's reported. Why is it
now that you're trusting this?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And it's funny.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
It's a lot of the same people who I've seen
say like defund the police, don't trust the media. It's
the same philosophies, and I don't blame them. I don't
blame them when it comes to something like this. It's
incredibly tricky.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
But what we wanted to explore here is, hey, are
you going to trust everything that you're reading or are
you going to do what Michel did and try to investigate,
try to figure it out, ask the right questions, and
be patient with the person that you know well and good.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
You could have easily put this in a podcast and
put it inside the imaginations of those listening, but no,
you went the route of the video, which I'm so
proud of you guys for doing that.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, well, thank you. It's the one medium that we
absolutely love here.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Yeah. So, then, how trusting are you of the things
that you do today? How long did it take you
to come out of that shell?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
It took me the entire journey of arrest to arrest,
the statements, and even a little after that to really
go like, no, I trust my gut. Now I'm in
this new place where I'm no longer on safe ground.
Everything I work on now is more on in your
(10:20):
face ground, and it's I hate saying it in your.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Face because it's I'm not trying to be edgy, but
more so.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
I'm standing on my opinions and my beliefs, and I'm
willing to polarize.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
I'm willing to get in there and start that conversation
with everyone.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Do you ever feel that fear of looking over your
shoulder and it's like, damn it, they're still watching me.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Yeah. I mean that's the nature of this. This thing's
gonna follow me for the rest of my life. But
that is also human nature.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Your your mind is gonna do some crazy things and
it's gonna try to pull you down at the wee
hours of the morning. But you have to trust that
it's really just going through its own thing. It's it's
it's an organ, and it's it's got a mind of
its own, even though it is aline one of.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
The powerful strengths here. We've all talked about that culture
canceled or canceled culture blah blah blah. People don't understand it.
But when they watch uncanceled, Oh, they're going to change
because they're going to understand what it really is.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Yeah, I would hope.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
So I find it funny though when I dropped the statement,
I don't know if I've mentioned this anywhere, but when
I dropped the.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
Statement, I didn't get much of a response on social media.
Speaker 3 (11:28):
On my social media, I got like a ton of people, like,
you know, liking the post, but nobody really read.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Not a lot of people reached out and wanted to
start a conversation.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
But as soon as we dropped the documentary and really
made this, Uncanceled took everything back in our power. It
seemed like people really wanted to come out and support it.
So I think there's something too that where when you're
entering action with boldness, people seem to respect it a
lot more.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Do you see this as being a movement in the
way that it's time to get some merchandise and say,
uncanceled on it and your photo?
Speaker 3 (12:04):
You know, maybe we've discussed it. I'm more so hoping
that this starts a movement of.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
People trying to communicate with each other more than anything.
One of the things that we haven't explored yet, or
I haven't explored fully in the.
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Art is the lessons I've learned about just communicating people
communicating with people, whether it's the same sex or the
opposite sex.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
But those moments.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
When you're in a waiting room, those moments when you're
an elevator, with moments when you're in a park and
you feel that thing of this person wants to talk.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
To me and you shy away from it. That's humanity
and we're losing that.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
So I'm hoping inspires people to go, you know what,
I'm just gonna do this.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Let's see what happens.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
What is your go to thought? When you're in that
elevator or you're in public and nobody's saying anything, do
you The first thing I do is I'll look at somebody,
say you binge watching anything? Just to get the top going.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Man, that is awesome.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
I've for the longest time kept silent and pulled out
my phone. I have since gotten off the smartphone to
to try to stay as present as possible. But then
the one thing I do is just turn to the
person and say, how's it going. Just like you said,
you just need to break that silence because they're feeling
it too.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
If you're feeling it, they're feeling it.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yeah, I'm the crazy dude that I'll even look at
him and say ball return on Alle five, and they'll go, what,
guy Alli five needs his ball back? And then then
all of a sudden, you know, you just kind of
just start talking.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Honestly, it's the biggest lesson that I've learned with all
this stuff. I mean, the pickup artist community talks about this,
even though I don't align with them. One of the
things that they do say, which I agree with, is
the first is the hardest. The first one you talk
to is going to be the hardest one. And it's
human nature. It's one of those things that I've talked
to probably a few hundred people now, both men and women,
(13:50):
and it still resets every single day. Every single day,
I run through the same fear of oh no, if
I say this, will this person get mad at me?
Will somebody come to their defense? And it's really just
how the brain works.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
Wow, outside of the documentary, what are you doing? Because
I want people to really get into your job.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
Oh man, I'm going full force on the filmmaking stuff,
so I'm a writer and director. The thing with this
current story is, yes, we've told the uncanceled story, but
we haven't told the other parts of this. There's still
so many tentacles to this octopus that we're willing to explore.
(14:30):
So really it's trying to figure out what the next
step here is it? How broken the system is? Is
it something regarding the algorithms, Is it talking about men's
issues without becoming men's.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Rights, is it the dating crisis?
Speaker 3 (14:45):
There's so many different nuances to this that people aren't
willing to explore or have tried to explore in an
academic sense, but aren't willing to explore it from a
personal sense because it's very easy to jump to one
side or another. Is like, I'm not here for either side.
I'm here for the side of humanity. Let's just connect
with each other.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
So where can people go to find you?
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Then you can check out the website uncanceled dot ca
A that's one L not two. Or you can check
out my website, Samlisi dot c A s A M
A L E s AI.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
You got to come back to the show anytime in
the future, man, as you continue to grow with this
in other projects. Man, this platform is always going to
be open for you.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
Oh beautiful. I'd love to hear that arrow. Yeah, I'll
reach out next time something a.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Big comes up.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
All right, man, you'd be brilliant today.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Okay, ah, you as well. Thanks a lot, man,
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