Hey everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome back to work in Progress. Today's guest is actor, producer, director, and one of my very favorite good dudes, Justin Baldoni. You may recognize him from Jane the Virgin, where he plays Raphael Solano. I had the great fortune of popping in for an episode in Jane's final season to work with Justin and our sweet friend Gina and just play with all my friends on Jane the Virgin and my goodness, playing his girlfriend for an episode was such a treat, especially when his lovely wife Emily brought their kids to set. Through his work on shows like Jane and the movies that he directs and produces and his platform, Justin brings social issues to the forefront. His production company, Wayfarer Studios, has a philanthropic arm whose mission is to bring love, dignity, and compassion to people experiencing homelessness. Here in our hometown of Los Angeles, Justin and Wayfarer launched an incredible initiative called the skid Row Carnival, where they bring joy to unhoused people in our community. I highly recommend checking it out. Last year three Wayfarer Studios, Justin directed the film Clouds, which is available on Disney Plus Clouds, is based on a true story and tells the tale of Zach, a teenage singer songwriter who writes a song that takes the music world by storm while Zach battles with terminal cancer. Previously, Justin directed the movie Five Feet Apart, which is hands down one of my favorite films, and you'll learn in this podcast makes me boo who every time I watch it. And Justin has a new book out. It's called Man Enough, Undefining My Masculinity. This extraordinary personal perspective of gender roles and masculinity is a topic that Justin has been thinking about for a long time. He spoke about it in a Ted talk, He's written about it at length, and it's something that will hopefully broaden what it means to be a man and re evaluate the social norms that work to confine us in gender roles. He's referred to the book as a love letter to men in which he invites them to be brave enough to be vulnerable. In my opinion, that is true masculinity. And if that wasn't enough, Justin also launched a podcast based on his book, The Man Enough Podcast with co hosts Jamie Heath and Liz Plank. Clearly, Justin and I have a lot to talk about, so let's dive in and hear from Justin Baldonie. It's good to see you. I know, this is fun. It's always really exciting to me when work just feels like life right right, said that that's seamless integration. Yeah, I just wish that our business was different. I just wish that we didn't always apply the lowest common denominator and our lower nature to everything that we do, which is why I'm so happy to talk to you today, because you're somebody who your entire life and your whole career has been about trying to do things for the betterment of the whole and using what you have to amplify other people's voices and not always center yourself and talk about things that Matter's why I think when we met, when you came and did Jane, which was so sweet. I'm so happy you did that. It was just like, who are you, soul sister? Where have you been all my life? Totally thank you? That's so kind, Justined. I look, I think we all have a long way to go and is always more to learn. I had this sort of vision when you were saying that about how very often in the line of work we do, it's like the lowest common denominator sort of thought, or what's obvious or you know what, some generic something or someone says we'll sell that gets applied to what we do. And and as you were talking about it, what I realized is that to me, that feels like being put in a very small box, in a coffin, or in a straight jacket. And I have always hated that feeling. And when that feeling began for me in my twenties on my first show, when I was working on One Tree Hill, I was like, Oh, I'm going to claw my way out of this. I'm gonna rip this thing open from the inside. I cannot This is not okay. And it didn't feel okay for me, and it was very clear to me that it wasn't okay for other people. And you know, whether that's um the way that we can be made small in the cog of you know, corporate the corporate world, which entertainment really you know, it's it's a battle between artists, artistry and corporations, or if it's like larger social systems that try to shrink people or step on people. I'm like, no, we have to tear these things apart. And actually, I really didn't think this was going to be my next thought, but here we are a stream of consciousness. Because this is a part of the fun about having conversations like this with friends. I'm like, I don't have to stick to my prep doc. We're just going to talk. I was realizing that the feeling of freedom when you start dismantling you know, your own oppression, oppressive thoughts, or oppressive systems or social structures. It feels like being in nature, like you are out in the world, breathing air. You're you're in space. You have space for yourself and space for others. And and I think I think it's this sort of wide openness, the green everywhere that has always made me love this place that we're from, that that makes me love California. I don't know. I think falling in love with nature here made me fall in love with the whole of America. And it's probably the reason I love road trips so much, because I'm like, well, I just have to see everybody's nature. I want to go out and be in nature everywhere. I love that. I love that when as you were talking, I've been talking to my wife a lot about this, doing a lot of um very deep therapy right now, very deep, like doing a lot of deep inner child work and really regressive, going back, really really looking at the core of what happened, why I became who I am? What are these unmet unmet needs that I am um disguising as am vision. And one of the things we've been talking about a lot is this idea of remembering and as you were talking about like that kind of that liberation or that feeling of feeling of nature. For me, what it feels like is it's remembering our purpose, right, That's what nature is. It's like, it's remembering that we are all connected. We're all organisms and one body. We're all you know, in the High Faith were told by how all this says, we are the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch. He takes it back to nature and when you and and you look at nature and you're like, how is this? How is this possible? Because when you're when you're in nature and you and you know, being so grateful now to live in nature, uh, you know, moving from l a to an hour and a half north and going out and stepping onto the soil barefoot, or you start to see all of the complexities of something that designed and built this that wasn't us, and how it all works together, and how harmonious it is and how beautiful it is, and it's like, oh my god, that's that's it. This is how we're supposed to be. We forgot. We've been so distracted by our ambition and this man made world we have designed that we have completely forgot what it is to be human, which makes sense because one of the Arabic words for human is in san, which translates to they who forget. So human beings are literally insane because we are beings who forget, and so that means that life is about helping us remember, which is what nature does for us. There's such a battle going on right now in our national discourse about what we are willing to acknowledge from our memory. Oh yeah, and I I think it's so interesting when when we think about the cyclical nature of things, even even pandemics know this is a once in a hundred years kind of situation to look at, you know, what began in late twenty nineteen and what was happening in It's wild to me that we are so forgetful. It's terrifying to know that, um, you know, something like two thirds of millennials don't know about the Holocaust and what happened in World War Two. It's it's crazy to me that, you know, Texas just removed a requirement to frame the teachings of the Jim Crow era and the KKK as morally wrong. I'm like, what could be more morally wrong than discriminating against your neighbors than lynching your neighbors. I mean, it's it's such a crazy thing. And I've been really trying to consider why we are so afraid to be honest about our history, particularly when it's generations removed from us. You know, I might understand why someone in the you know, nineteen sixties who was an active member of the KKK might not want it to be taught about because they don't want their dirty laundry, and then then the terrible deeds they've done to be aired to people. But for us, for for our generation, the fact that we don't want to lean into remembering what humans are capable of so that we can choose between what we're capable of on the worst end of the human spectrum. We can say we're not going to lean into that side. We want to lean into what we're capable of at our best, you know, saving children with a polio vaccine, creating technology that allowed you know, men to go to the moon, um being able to code in a way that means people in the most rural parts of the world can have internet and access to telehealth like that. That's the remembering. I actually lizes that that's what's capable if we're willing to do remembering in total. But turning away from you know, the quote ugly parts of our history is essentially like turning your back on yourself. It's like turning your back on yourself when you are dealing with trauma and you and your brain wants to protect you and it dissociates you from your experience and you say, I'm just never going to look at that and I'm going to focus on the positive. And what you're doing is you're leaving a whole piece of yourself behind and that piece is like a dead weight in the ocean. And we're doing it as a culture, right now and it's it is so surreal to me that we can't admit that. On the other side of honest, remembering an acknowledgement is our is our real freedom? Mm hmmm uh um. You said it perfectly and beautifully. But you've got to remember we're not doing that individual So how can we ever do it collectively? Like we're not doing that. You you don't. We're not walking around you know, I talked about the therapy I'm doing right now. We're not walking around actively going into our trauma. We're not doing that. We're running from it. We're numbing it. Every single day. All we do is we numb ourselves to distract ourselves from feeling all of the things that we actually truly need to feel. The whole world is set up as an escape. This, this stupid thing, this phone, right, all of it, all of it's an escape. The Internet, social media. Yes, there's great things that happen, like you know, we can have these amazing conversations, these elevated conversations on a podcast, But how much are we actually using all of these things for good. We're distracting ourselves. Look at the look at the television that gets made right, you know we You and I both know. It's why I started my studio. Look at the stuff that's happening in the world. We're just constantly trying to make ourselves feel better about being worse people than actually kind of trying to pull us up and elevate us to become better. We will it's too painful for us to look at our trauma because all of us have it, And how can we expect us to collectively look at it if we won't do the work individually? Right, That's what comes up for me when when you talk about not to put words in your mouth, but what it sounds like to me is is this coming home to yourself? You know it wasn't what you said, but but the way you said it gave me that feeling of, you know, going inward and looking at your inner child and and doing this work. It makes me realize that the first question I asked everyone who comes on the show, and I didn't ask you, we just dropped in is always I didn't even know. I didn't even know we were filming. For the first ten minutes. I thought were just catching up. Yeah, I was like, oh, I guess we're just going We're just Okay, I love this, UM, But I usually I like to ask people because the world knows you as this man that you are, and maybe from your show, maybe from a Ted talk, maybe from your book and any any combination of those things. And you highlighted childhood. And I always like to ask people, you know, were you a little version of the person who sits across from me today when you were eight or nine or ten, or were you completely different? And given the conversation we're having, I'm almost more ampt to hear your answer than I have been to hear anyones. Here's what I can tell you. It's so funny because my brain's catching up. My brain's catching up, and it's like that you're not just talking to your friends, Sofia, you're talking to whoever, all the people that listen to her show. They're really lovely people. I can only imagine you only surround yourself with those people. What I yesterday, what I realized, and what I told my therapist, was that I feel that little Justin is trapped inside and just desperate to get out mm hmm. And I feel that today as the man sitting in front of his computer screen looking at yours, UM, and so you know, I don't know what age I I banished him to existence in this prison of self, but I think it's probably probably somewhere between four and six. I was. I'm somebody who was always told he was too much while simultaneously being told he wasn't enough preach. Oh my god, I have chills. And so that really does a number on a kid. And um, you know, feeling like, you know, I was too much in some ways for my own family, and then also feeling like I wasn't enough in the world, and you start to create a version of yourself. And as I kind of joke about, as I write about in the book, like it's so it's like it's almost like this, uh, this lifelong science experiment where I'm beta testing which version of me will get the best response in the field, and then taking that response and then adjusting at home without even this is not this is all subconscious, right, um, to create whatever this version of me is. And what I'm what I'm doing now is is asking myself really difficult questions, which is which is like, you know, if I was, if I was my true, sincere, authentic me, you know, going back and looking at the history going back and looking at the things that happened to me that I didn't have control of, going back and and telling that little justin that he's safe and he's okay and it wasn't his fault, and all of the various things that we tell our younger selves. Am I really him right now? Or do I need to become him? And in the version of becoming him, is the life that I've created for myself what he would want? Or is it the trauma response to the stress response to become the not enough or the too much version? Right? So, um, that's kind of what I'm unpacking right now and recognizing that, wow, so much of my ambition, so much of and I think you've even said it to me. I think on set, like how do you do it all? Like we've like so much of that. It isn't actually me. It's the desperate plea to be seen as enough. Yeah. So, as I wrote a book called man Enough the Jokers that I just don't feel man enough to have written it, and realizing as I wrote it it was in an attempt to actually be enough. How's that for a mind fuck? Oh? I get it. Someone said to me that you know diet is the worst four letter word in the English language. And I kind of laughed m just like visceral response. I was like, okay, you know, because in my head, I'm like, well, yeah, like the oppressive diet culture is terrible, but also a person's diet, like my dog's diet is like it's you know, we can we can disempower the word. And I realized when when my friend was like, well, okay, and now I need to know your word because clearly it's different, and I said, oh, hands down, for me, the word that is the most triggering in the English language is enough. H. I find it to be deeply painful. Um. And I think that that, you know, the sort of double edged sword that you can be stabbed with as a young person is the duality of being told you're too much and not enough. I mean, I did an episode of my show about this. I talked about this in my early twenties with the writers on One Tree Hill, and we did a whole episode where my character, the girl who everyone thinks has everything, stood in a classroom. I had not not smart enough, not good enough, not pretty enough, not enough, all these not enough projected onto her to symbolize how she really felt about herself. And and it was so interesting feeling alone in that and then having hundreds of thousands of women and men and our non binary friends for years, I mean over a decade. Now, right to me and tell me what that scene meant to them, And I have it in community with you when you share these things, and I yes, we have you know, different experiences being in you know, are differently assigned genders, and I know that affects the way we are perceived and received in the world. But when you share these things, I feel seen. It's such a an ethos of good storytell But it's really I think about showing up well in the world, which is that the specific is deeply universal. So if we can get honest about our experiences, we can realize how much we're all connected. And and it it takes me back to what you said about your faith, you know, being behind this notion that we are all fruits of one tree, all of us. We're so connected in a world that, weirdly, while being more technologically connected than ever, makes us all kind of feel alone. Well that's the that's the joke. We're more connected in appearance than we've ever been, and yet also we feel more alone than we ever have. I can't think of one segment of the population, Like there's all these different kind of like subgroups. And you know, my wife works with moms a lot, she has her company Amah, and they, you know, they're really building a community of moms to support moms in their first few years of pregnancy and then and then you know, bearing children and then and then you just look at that group and you see like we've lost our away. Moms are completely alone, right you look at you look at men, you look at the labor force. These men are completely lonely. They have no one to talk to, they have they're they're suffering from depression and isolation. And yet they don't even have the language too to talk about it because they've never been asked how they feel, so they don't even know that they're suffering, and they're just angry, you know. You you you you look at alcoholics and folks in the recovery programs, these are some of the only people that I know that feel like they have a sense of community right now. Um, because and then you look at all like you look at teachers, unions, and you look at like all of like our entire world has been fragmented to these different subgroups of people that feel like they have nobody, that they're alone. Everywe and that's everywhere that I look and um and so yeah, we're super connected and yet we're more alone and we've ever been because we've lost community, you know. Um. So yeah, that's a that's a that's a really really deep and and true statement. Um. I only I only remember what you were if you asked anything, or what you're talking about right before that. But I just got me thinking about all the people that I know who are so lonely right now. Oh, this is what this is one thing that I was gonna say when you said that you felt seen, you know, one of the sweetest things, one of the sweetest responses from from the book has been from hearing from people who couldn't be more different. Um. And I saved this message but at a friend of mine. He is fifty year old trans man Black Transmit, and I wrote about him a little bit in the book when he said I I've never felt more seen I'm and he was finished it and he was crying in it. And I had to take a second because I started judging myself at first, and then I recognized and realized, oh my god, that's the whole point. Like it doesn't matter what body he was born into or what the color of his skin is. We're all raised in the same system. We all suffer in different but also identical ways, and we're all craving, as you said, like the storytelling of our of our and we're craving that shared vulnerability. We're craving somebody to come out and say like, hey, I'm you like what you did in in One Tree Hill, you see me this way, But this is what's actually, this is what I'm projecting. This is what I'm feeling, because we all just project our images of what how happy you must be, you know this and all this, and then go back to our rooms at night and we distract ourselves with social media or whatever we're looking at or and then we feel alone. And then we wake up the next morning and we try to go out of bed and we feel like there's a thousand pounds weight on our chest and we don't know why. You know, what's so interesting to me about your reaction to your friend telling you he felt seen. You can recognize all of the intersectional weights that exist on his shoulders, and it reminds me of what we were talking about earlier, where when you exist in a position of or you perceived position of privilege, what is often not acknowledged is that it gets very easy to dissociate from your own suffering or feelings because you think, well, I have no right to feel this way because look what my friend deals with. I don't have a right to. I feel like I'm struggling because look at what this other group deals with. It's so much worse than what I do and what I actually what's what's illuminating for me in this moment is that that's one of the problems I think about how we're talking about privilege. Oh god, I'm so happy you went there, because that is yes, you're right, agree completely, because here's the issue is the way, and look, the way it's talked about is talked about in a narrative to serve the people whose privilege wants to be preserved. So when you look at pundits who are like, oh, well, where's my privilege card, like they're trying to do gotcha bs, inflammatory nonsense, it's well, exactly, they don't want to have real conversations about it. But what I what I would encourage anyone to think about and and maybe to like, you know, this could go and your little tool kit I always talk about like I've got a tool kid or a backpack and I just like collect all the good things to have resources um and and I think what should go in our tool kits is and this would help us to talking about our relative privilege. Right is to say, rather than oh, well, show me where my privilege got me out of this or this feeling or whatever. Rather than that, to say, I can acknowledge that I live in our current world in a privileged group, and I can hold how much I've been through the ways in which I've been violated, the ways in which I've suffered. I can hold space for my trauma. And if I know how hard I've had it, it knocks the wind out of me to think about how much harder some of our friends have had it. Like your friend who is a fifty year old black transman, the intersections of things he goes through, the the number more hurdles that he has had put in his path. I know how hard my hurdles have been to jump. So what what I would encourage for any of us is rather than weaponizing this notion of privilege meaning you got something you know that you didn't earn, or that your life hasn't been hard, what it should do for us is allow us to own where we stand and hold space that we happen to stand much further along the line than a lot of other people who have been held back because they don't have the relative privileges that we do. I actually think that understanding privilege should be a a doorway to creating lifelines to others, rather than uh some like proving ground or pissing contest where we're supposed to prove that we've we've earned every single thing we have, Like, yeah, we've all worked really hard, but not but some of us haven't had as many literal obstacles thrown in our way, Like we haven't had the action movie sequence of when someone's running away from the bad guy and they keep knocking over bookshelves, like I haven't had as many bookshelves tossed in my path. And it's it doesn't actually hurt me or my worth or how hard I've worked or how creative I am or whatever to admit that what it should do is create greater empathy for others and a willingness to see the particulars of other people's experience. That that would be my hope for how we could reframe this conversation because it's been like hijacked by you know, clickbait nonsense, and it's not it's been hijacked by identity politics. I would add, I think that my version of that is, I think the purpose of recognizing privileges to build a bridge too, empathy and compassion. That's it. That's a better analogy than the doorway and the rope thing. No, no, no no, but it's a doorway bridge. It's it's that's the purpose of it, right. And but my wife said something to me, if you can't tell, I learned probably most from my wife. We're an she's amazing. But she said she had she had this download if you will, and we were talking about this and she said, I really think that we've lost our way and that the greatest activism is self activism. M because you can't have compassion or empathy for another person or marginalized group until you have compassion for yourself. So in many ways you have to engage in a radical form of self activism and allow yourself to feel all the things you need to feel, go into your traumas, go into your past and say like, oh wait, I went through this in order to even have compassion or empathy for somebody else and what they're going through and recognize where you are. So that self activism is so important. I will say it was so much of my activism for community that led me to that for myself, because I realized there was an incongruency and how much grace and love and like ferocious defense I could give to others and how I always put myself last. And and it was actually through realizing how well I love other people that I had to start learning to love myself a little bit better. And interestingly, what that enabled for me was this expansion of grace because in trying to apply some of that kindness to myself, I also realized that the way in which I love, which is big and hard and ferocious and like I'll go to the ends of the earth for someone, like everyone always jokes that, and please don't actually call me if you do something like this, But you know, everyone in my in my friend group always jokes like, oh, if we ever had to bury a body we call so like, no question, she's just the person who would show up for you, literally no matter what and should have Yeah, And I'm like, well, I would rather not be about murder. I would rather just be about anything else. But I get that. It's like, you know, it's a phrase. Um, it's a cliche for a reason, because it's fun to say. But I realized that in offering myself more kindness, I also had to give a little space and say, oh yeah, not everyone loves and shows up to my standard. And what that enabled for me then was it gave me the permission to create better boundaries. I cut a whole superfluous swath of people, not cruelly or whatever, but just was like, you know what, we don't show up in the same way, and that's okay. But I only have so much time, and I am only going to prioritize with my whole heart the people who are in my life with their whole hearts, and everyone else can go from like being on the inside to being an acquaintance. And that's great. I love all my acquaintances. They're lovely. But that was a sort of byproduct of applying community love to self that I didn't I didn't expect. That was a surprise, the lesson of being clearer about my boundaries and not just giving all my love a way. But a lot of that also comes from and I don't know your personal work here, but I know with my stuff that that comes down to our trauma disguised as fill in the blank, because so often for people and look, you and I are very similar in this way. My wife in her vows to me, she actually, you know, said she's so grateful for a man who would be willing to do pretty much everything you just said, except she didn't say buried body. Um. And because that's how I've been living, that's how that's that's in the same way, my love is so big it'll fill up a town, it'll fill up a community, it'll fill up my everyone else's house except my own. And and what I've learned similar to you, is, oh wait, I forgot to love myself first. I have been loving everybody else. I've had all this love to give, but I haven't been giving that same love to that little justin that we were talking about earlier, which is which then goes to show for me, well, a lot of the love that I was giving wasn't truly unconditional pure love I might have thought it was. What it was was still my desire and want to be enough because my love made other people feel that way, and in turn, I was able to then feel loved when in reality, that first place that I should have I should be going, And now what I'm doing is starting to love the person I am without all of that, And that also then leads to the same place you just went to, which is boundaries um boundaries for work, boundaries for do I really need to take that job? Do I really need to do this this person? Is it the same as it is it reciprocal? Am I filled up as much? And and you start to have to take stock of your life in that way. And I'm thirty seven years old now, and I can't believe that this is really one of the first times that I've been I've started doing that in a meaningful way. But that couldn't happen without that righteous, radical active self activism and like actually going in and doing that work. Because on the appearance everything is fine. I'm arguably happier than my parents and their parents and their parents. Right I have my kids and my wife. Everything's great, But is that enough? Like is that what this life is all about? There's more well, and that's just it? Why why do we measure at this moment where we are more connected, where we know more about the rain and its development and trauma and love and happiness and oxytocin and psychology and child imprinting. And our parents didn't know any of the ship we know now, and our grand parents certainly didn't. So this idea that we are the generation with more information and access than ever before, and we're supposed to settle for being marginally more happy than the people who were born fifty years before us. Like, No, I don't settle for that. I want us to level up. And that doesn't mean we judge what came before. You know, I thought that was something that was so beautiful. Um in your ted talk when you when you acknowledged your dad and you talked about the deep love between you and how much you admire him, and also how your child brain really resented him and his sensitivity because because you know, to that that little boy, he wasn't masked ellen enough. And I understand the evolution of those years in those generations, and I want for us to have opportunities each of us like the one you've created in your own family, where you say, I see why I thought that, and I see why my dad when he was little thought that, and I see why my granddad might have taught my dad this. And I want to do better for all of us. And you have a better relationship with your dad than ever. And he just he actually just came on our podcast and I had a public conversation with him that was so powerful and also healing for me, m because most most of us men haven't had that conversation. Right. Can you tell the folks at home a little bit about these dynamics, because I realized I sound like your ultimate like fanboy or researchers. I'm like, well, and then when you said this to your dad and maybe something listening to us talk, I haven't heard the part of the talk yet. First of all, First of all, if you're still here listening, thank you for hanging out and watching. Sophie and I just catch up. Uh yeah, So what I read about in uh Man enough and what you're mentioning and the Ted talk is really this idea that masculinity has passed down from generation to generation, and that there are an unspoken, unwritten set of laws, code of conduct, if you will, that all men must adhere to for fear of having our masculinity, our identity taken away. Which is the masculinity conundrum, right, It is something that can be literally taken away. Femininity doesn't work that way. Masculinity is such that, uh, somehow, somewhere, somebody can decide that I'm not a man, or I'm not acting in accordance with the code of laws that were passed down um. And these laws, the man box, if you will, are the is this thing that governs are very existence right in this patriarchal system in society that we live in, and it is also the thing that creates the most suffering for us. So on my journey, I tried to understand where I learned the things that I learned, such as why I have such a hard time being truly open and vulnerable with other men or other people. Where does that come from? Uh? Well, it comes from my dad. Because I never saw my dad ever share things that weren't good. I my dad never confessed to me that he was struggling. I never saw him admit to weakness. I saw him cry and show emotion. But as I write about, there's a difference between being emotional and vulnerable. And he raised me in a way where he was, you know, as we raise as many men raise their children, like men are all knowing. We have to be all knowing, we have to be all wise, we have to be impenetrable, perfect providers and you you name it. That was how my dad brought me up. The difference was is that he also was extremely sensitive and compassionate and empathetic and kind and service oriented. Right, But he had all of those stereotypical masculine qualities. And in my research and talking to him in my family, I had learned he got those from his dad, you know. And and the deeper you dig, the more you actually just end up having compassion and empathy for your parents or their parents because of what they went through when they were children. Because they didn't have the wherewithal or the knowledge or the books to do some of the work that we're doing, this this radical activism of self work. They didn't do that because it wasn't it wasn't in the zeitgeist. It wasn't a thing that necessarily that people were doing except for you know, a few Um, so that was kind of the journey. I think what you're kind of referencing. But but the one thing I want to bring up that that you talked about earlier, and I want to bring it back to my faith in this way, is that all of this stuff like why we want this, why we want generations to be better, why we want to be better than our parents, we want our children to be better than us, It's got to it's got to come back to the whole. It's got to come back to this idea. In the faith, were told that the unity has to start in the home. You can't just have this idea of unity and peace and throw it out and broadcast it over radio signals to everybody. It's got to start in the home. And only when it can be established in the home can it spread to the street. Then can it spread to the neighborhood and the community, And then can it spread to the county or the city, and then the state and then the country and then eventually the world. So it's actually a very small like we're were raised in a culture, in a society that that awards us for being big, Like everything's gonna be big how many social followers you've got, like you know who's watching your you know how many podcasts listener because biggest tied to monetary game and fame and all of these types of things. But but the smallness in this activism, the smallness in going in and doing this work to become better than our parents, of like just tearing our insides out to figure out why we are the way that we are is the prerequisite, the precursor to unity. That's why we have to be doing this. It can't just be because I want my kid to grow up better than me. It's because I want at the end of my life, I want to get to a place where I look at my life and I didn't leave anything on the table. I don't want to have regrets and like I didn't talk to my dad about this, I didn't talk to my son about that. I didn't show up there. If I'm thinking about it and there's something stopping me from doing it, then I have to go to that uncomfortable dark place and figure out what's stopping me so that I can pass that on to my son, so that my son can grow up and he can or my daughter can grow up and she can have the ability to see clearer than I could, so that then she has less resistance to doing that self works for the reason that she can take that out into the community, take that out into the world, see people with empathy and compassion not have the same road blocks and barriers privilege that maybe we had because we couldn't see it. Um. So it's just tying it all back to like kind of what you bring it all the way back to the beginning to conversation, which is like, why we can't address our history? Why can't we look at this stuff? Why can't we move forward while recognizing we committed wrongs and errors and use those as learning experiences, And this is where that work is. It all comes back to that, because it's so easy to look at another person and say you are so much more than the worst thing you ever did or your worst day who cares? But with ourselves it can be so hard. And I find it so fascinating that it's been this sort of study and pulling a part of masculinity that is really brought you here. And and I wonder you know when when you talk about learning and on learning those gender roles within your own family and household and how you want to do them differently for your kids. How does work intersect with this stuff, because, as we mentioned in the beginning, we really get men and women obviously in our industry, you know, I think again women have it to a multiplier, but a lot of people ignore how much it happens to men. We get so objectified and com modified, were treated like objects rather than people. Um, you know, the worst of it is when you're told you exists for other people's pleasure rather than you know, for your own personhood. So how do the roles that you've landed an actor and and what those things can revolve around? How does that impact you in this unpacking? Well, look, I I am I haven't been as fortunate as you and that I haven't gotten to choose my roles as an actor in that way, which is it's really just been Uh yes, that's so rare for your Sophia Bush. I mean, you're very kind, but I don't think that I I have a ton of choice. I yes, so like to a certain extent. And that's the thing about this business. I was actually talking to another friend who's an actor today about this. It's like, no matter how successful you get there's a part of you that feels like you're failing because because because maybe because you can't just choose, right. So I haven't actually had a choice. I wasn't even acting when I got Jane the Virgin. I was building my company and starting I was directing. I was behind the camera, but spent years doing a documentary series called My Last Days, where I traveled the country. I told the stories of amazing people who were dying of a terminal illness but living amazing lives because that's where, like, that's where my heart wanted me to be. And and so I gave up by abandoned acting and jumped into that and that fulfilled me, and that's kind of what led to start to build all of this. And then when Jane the Virgin popped up, I jumped in and I got it, you know, but like anything else, it was me and a bunch of guys, and I was the lucky one to get it, And and then it was the conscious choice to then use that to build all of this. So I haven't acted since Jane Um. I haven't been in front of a camera really taking roles. Or I also haven't had a ton thrown at me because I'm very you know, I've really been focused on creating content as a filmmaker. But where I think work, more than anything comes into play is that I really struggle. And it's not exactly an answer to your question, but where I really struggle isn't so much as like the roles that I play as an actor or will play, or even necessarily the holms that I'm going to produce or direct. My relationship with work is that I am learning and trying to figure out on a daily basis um what work really means to me. What I believe and what I was raised to believe in my faith is that your work should be a form of service to humanity. Now that doesn't mean that you need to become famous, that doesn't mean that your work should be something that serves a ton of people. Whatever your work is, if you approach it with an intention to be of service, that is a prayer. And and so my what I'm trying to figure out now in this strange, capitalistic, weird business that we're in where art and as you like we talked about earlier commerce intersect, is how to actually enjoy my life and have it not be about work, Because One of the things I know from spending time with so many people on their deathbed and having deeply intimate conversations with friends just before they pass, is that nobody ever says I wish this, I wish I worked more. Yeah, And and I have two little kids and they're growing up faster. I mean everybody, everybody would joke, Oh, they're gonna it's gonna go by so fast. I didn't realize how cruel of a joke it really was. And honestly, I feel like I've missed a lot of it. In some ways. That's just the way that it works, right, because this is the system that we're in and we have to work. This is a part of it. But at the same time, UM, I have a choice. When do I turn off? When can I decide where's my boundary? As we talked about earlier with boundaries, where's my boundary with work? Where where is that line where I'm no longer doing it for service and I'm doing it to fill a void, or I'm no longer doing it for the reason I thought I was doing it. I'm doing it because little justin wants to be seen is enough, and that it's the thing that I am actively working on right now. And what that might look like in my life is that I end up saying no to things I would normally say yes to, or I end up pushing things away Like you pushed some people in your life and made them more acquaintances. I might end up having to do that for things that other people might be like, why the hell would you ever do that? It's an unpopular thing. Why Because at the end of the day, at the end of my life, I get so much time on this planet right time is our most valuable resource, and the way that I spend it matters, and what I water grows, and I have a gorgeous wife and two beautiful children and dreams beyond this or social media and money and all of that, and I have to at some points start to honor that. And that is it's an almost antithetical, if that's even the right word, perspective of what I should have in this industry, which is hustle, hustle, hustle, you've got it like somebody's gunning for your job. That that fight or flight fear based mentality that we have in this business, which is like as soon as you get something, you got to hold onto it, or you can't even enjoy the damn thing you get because you're thinking about the next thing that you have to get after that thing to stay relevant. And that's the thing that I want to shed right now in my life. Yes, uh so much. I mean, the my girlfriends and I talked about this a lot, you know, the girls who I did my first show with, looking back, especially now as women who are producers and directors, and I know you know this being one of the most you know, successful and smart producer directors. I know we were told every year, and you think we would have caught on, but we were told every year for nine years, shows on the bubble, probably gonna get canceled this year, so that we wouldn't ask for anything, so that we wouldn't try to renegotiate or get any any better protections for ourselves. We always thought our job was under threat. It was fight or flight for nine years, and you just realize how tiring it is and how rooted in a scarcity mentality. Choices like that are on on the part of the people you work for that they don't want you to have a better quality of life, so they try to keep you scared and it's so common in our business. And and I'm I'm really curious, you know, when you talk about the documentary series you were working on, when I think about the kinds of movies that you've made, um, you really choose to tell stories of merit and about the human experience. And I'm curious how you how do you run your sets differently as the boss than some of the sets you might have found yourself on as an employee. Yeah, that's a great question. First of all, I'm so sorry that happened to you, and I totally get it, and I've been there, and it's so crazy. It's so crazy crazy to us, it's so crazy, even on Jane the Virgin. I mean, our show is amazing, run by an incredible woman and people. But I was never able to renegotiate. We knew we're gonna be on for five years because it was like, yeah, but you know they're not giving us any money because they probably weren't because you know, um, And and then you you you find yourself in this privileged position where you are grateful, and yet you're not allowed to advocate for yourself. Well you're not, and you're not allowed to fully participate because if you because if you do, then you're taking away from the whole, or that's at least how you're made to feel, rather than anyone getting honest about the fact that it's actually a massive pot at the studio level, and that again transparency. We can trace the numbers, you know how much of that pot is yours, and they just don't want to give it to you because they want to like do advise at the super Bowl? And you're like, but wait, wait, that's the thing about so so answer your question in a second. But that's the thing about our industry, specifically to the entertainment business. Um. And it's honestly why I started my own studio because I was so hurt and disenfranchised by my experience making five ft apart, as an example, my first film, which one of the best. To pause you there and tell people, I don't know what you've been doing. If you haven't seen this movie, but my god, watch it. And if you've seen it, watch it again. I've seen it three times. I've seen it. Yes, every time I get on a plane and it's there, I watch it. Well, I watched you first came out. I'm I'm sobbing on the plane. I love them anyway, It's just it's one of my favorites. So we'll move on. But listeners, thank you, catch up or rewatch because good God, and clouds. Clouds is on Disney. You can watch Clouds on Disney. But but back. But my experience with five ft apart was, you know, it made a hundred million dollars and I made it for seven million dollars and I killed myself to make it. I paid myself almost nothing. Then turned it into a book before. I had the idea to turn it into a book before the movie came out, because I was like, you know, if we can get if we could get the book out, because I knew the script was gonna the script was so good, and there was an original idea inspired by my friend Claire with CF who passed away. I'm looking at my last day's poster with her face on it right now. Um. And anyway, so all then the book became a best seller, was number one forever. Um. And I just saw this machine take me, this like kid with a dream and exploit him for the benefit of the machine. And and you know, I'm in a situation now where you know, we have to do an audit and we're going after them to be like where's the money, where's the hundred million dollars? Where to go? Like are depended on like it wasn't on, wasn't on the set, And what I saw in that experience, it was like it sucks the joy out of it, and talked about the service and the joy and I and I said to myself, like I don't think I want to do this anymore. Like it was such a hard experience because you put your love, your soul, you put love into something which is gonna when I'm gonna how I'm gonna answer your question, And then you see it only be about money to the people who control um everything, which again it's like this patriarchal system where the few at the top all of the benefit and um and who even knows who those people are really? You know they're not It's not even the presidents of the studios who are on salary. It's above them. Um. So I started my own studio for that reason because I wanted to put power in back in the hands of the creators, which I think you and I have had a couple of chats about, because creating like you create out of love. You know. The problem with our and taking this also back the problem with our business, this low and common denominator, is that our industry creates out of fear and the high faith that du Baja says that love never dwelleth in a heart possessed by fear. And everything we're doing in this town is about relevancy and keeping up with what's hot and and just you know, the fear of doing something different keeps us in the same box that we keep. You know, It's like why we have superhero movies, that's all there is now. It's like the only movie is getting fun. Um. So all, let's say, that's why I started wait for our studios, That's why we're making our own movies and TV shows. That's why I raised the money is so that we could actually give people a chance to tell their stories in a beautiful way and not like you know, and not take all of them the money and not share it. So back to how my sets are different. I believe that as a male director, creator, I have a responsibility to not always know what's right. And this is antithetical to how as men were raised, because we are raised to not ask questions or other people's opinions, and to just pretend like we know everything, because who wants to follow a leader into battle who doesn't know how to win or you know, And what we fail to see is that we'll know what you actually want to The person you want to go into battle with is the person who almost killed his entire platoon the last tour, or the captain who almost died because he wrecked his ship once because he almost hit I don't know an Iceberg, Titanic. Whatever you want, you want somebody with that experience. And what I've learned is that I didn't. I've never I haven't seen very many of those collaborative filmmakers on sets growing up. In fact, there was never space for me to offer an opinion. You know, you get to be the director, you're the boss, you know, the producer, you you know, you you're the ones doing the hiring. In general, again, there's the scarcity mentality, which is what you experience, which is like, oh we might get canceled, so be careful. You put the fear into everybody, and and that's how we that's how we lead in our industry. And I just truly believe that that's not that's a recipe for unhappiness and regret and remorse and disunity, And that's not at all how I would ever want to behave in my family, So why would ever want to behave on a set? So I always take the approach of I might not know the answer, what do you think? This is my vision for it, But I'm not attached to anything. How can and how can we collectively make art? Because again, like if you really think about art and inspiration, it doesn't come from us, It's all through us. I think it's like a radio frequency that we turned that we turned to and you might get the same idea that I might get depending on how open, and we might get him at different times. And what I've learned is that there are times when I'm only getting a part of the signal, and so long as I'm open, the other part will come through somebody else. And what I found is that empowers people, that makes them feel seen. You know, I really try to lead with love and not ever to get upset. I rarely get upset on a set. Not to say that I haven't gotten upset or that I haven't been disappointed. Um and I and I try to approach. I try to approach all of the crazy things that happen on a set with in the spirit of consultation, which is a which again got to beat home on faith and things. But that's really one of the driving forces for me is this high principle and that you put something into the middle and you just hatch from the outcome and you allow other people to weigh in, understanding that we all have roles and responsibilities on the director or producer or whatever that is. But it doesn't mean my opinion is more important than yours, because you might be able to see something that I can't see. And what I think is such an important distinction is art is not war. No, we're not supposed to follow someone into battle who's barking orders at us. Art is about connection. The thing we love when we witness it on screen is the sparkliness of genuine human chemistry that doesn't come from being barked at. That comes from being collaborative. And so my favorite kind of director, my favorite kind of kernel, if we keep the metaphor going, is someone who asks everyone for their opinions and there experience so that we might find an even more sparkly outcome than what's on the page. But men aren't taught to do that. I know, because men are taught. We are taught, especially as men, that by asking someone else their opinions, we're giving them power over us, and suddenly we're not like and we're seen as we, which is truly the opposite. I think it takes true strength to be willing to ask somebody else what they think so that they can so that you can together make this thing better, because it's a collaborative. It's it's it's all collaborative. Yeah. And there's also nothing and I don't mean this in the in the traditional like um potential for romance way that we often categorize the notion of attraction. We're all attracted to things. We're attracted to art and sunlight and you know what I mean. So so you have to be attracted to a script or a character to want to play it or do the project. I think there is nothing more attractive in a leader than someone who says, what do you think I'm like? Well, now I'm here, I'm on your team forever, you know um. And then even when you go into you know, traditional relationship dynamics, like I would bet you money that when you ask your wife, honey, what do you think, She's like, God, you're so hot. Like I feel that way about my partner when when he turns to me and says, you're the expert on this, what do you think? I'm just like you? What did you say? I'm not paying attention. I'm just looking at your face now, Like, there's nothing wrong with acknowledging that there's actually a deeply whether in a you know, a platonic sense or in your romantic partnership, there is a deeply attractive quality to giving a ship about other people's opinions. And I will say, you know, it's a place that I mentioned my coworkers in my first show. You know, there's no secret that, especially as women, we really struggled on one tree hill. But we've talked about, you know, the famous adage it was the best of times and the worst of times. There were wonderful experiences there. And one of the best experiences I had with a boss, with one of my producing directors, was very early on when I knew I wanted to direct, and I started shadowing and going to production meetings and doing all these things. He said to me the most important piece of advice that I can give to you, and the way I run my set because I asked him, I said, why are your sets really fun? Some people's are not? And he said, the most important advice I can give to you, especially when you're somebody like me. You know, he was a man, you know, fifty years old, in a position of serious power. He said, I tell everyone on my crew, the best idea always wins, he said, And I don't care if it's my idea or your idea, or the Dolly grips idea or an idea that comes from one of the electricians when he's getting awful ladder and says, you know what might be great, I don't care whose idea is the best idea always went And and when everyone feels permission to be fully represented in a space, you always get better ideas always because it's not about the individual, it's about the whole. But unfortunately, so many folks in our industry are focused on the individual and their stamp, when in reality, like we're all like, it takes hundreds of people to make and we don't think about that. So safety is safety is the other piece and um and the answer to your question is I really want to create a safe set for people, and the other way I do that is by is by being vulnerable myself. Yeah. Um, And I think that it's a really really it's it's really sweet to see the response, especially with actors and folks when when you feel like you're in the trenches with somebody like you felt with your old boss, when you feel valued and seen and you don't feel like you're just there as an object or can it can be moved around from you know, or fired on a whim and all the things that we do to make actors feel afraid. Um, you're a part of the thing, and then when it's released, you have ownership of it and you're proud of it because you made it. Yeah. Do you think that wanting to be of service, especially when you haven't been in the position of you know, ultimate sort of controlling power um on a set like you are now when you're producing and directing, do you think some of that is what led you to create the philanthropic arm of Wayfarer because you do such incredible work for folks in the Los Angeles community, your work with unhoused people's and struggling Angelino's is one of my favorite things about you, and how I think we actually became digital friends before we were like I r L friends. So how how did you decide to focus efforts there? And how do you build something like this kid Row Carnival. I mean, it's a massive thing that you do annually. So so where does something like that even start? Again? It's not me, I really think. I don't know. One day, when my time is called and I'm no longer in this body, I'm I can't wait to see the way that all of those who have passed on are influencing this life and all the and all the whispers and all of our ears that we ignore sometimes here. And that's kind of the radio frequency I mentioned earlier about art and inspiration. I just you know, I know all my friends who have passed are constantly whispering in my ear and telling me to go a direction in one direction or another. So so none of this was intentional. When you ask how to build it, I it's like field of dreams. It's like I don't know, It's like they will come and but it all has to start. What I can tell you about me is that it starts. It started from a pure place, and and that I think is the most important thing. Like best companies in the world all started because they wanted to genuinely help or solve a problem. Right now, are they still there, that's debatable, but the kernel of the idea when they were in the garage and trying to build the mac or whatever, it was like everybody starts because they have a dream. It's one of the things like back to l A, like we're here because we have a dream. The problem is we get lost along the way because the dream then becomes about ourselves and not about the collective whole. So for me, it's started with it started with service. It started with you know another quote, tell the rich of the midnight, sign of the poor, says Bha. And walking around the streets of l A and my early twenties and being so confused of like why I wanted to ignore somebody on the street, or watching other people ignore somebody on the street, and then feeling like my heart sink and then going over to that person and asking if I can buy them food and having amazing conversations within a jewels um who are unhoused and recognizing like, wait, they're just like me, you know, so I Actually one of my first things I ever did was this documentary series called Stories from the Street. I started making it at the same time I made my Last Days. And I would travel around l A with two of my buddies, and I would pull over and I'd have a conversation with an unhoused person and I'd say, can I tell your story? And we'd sit there for two hours and we talked and buy them food and I'd let them share their story and I follow them around for the day. And I turned that into like a little five or six minute clip because I thought that if I could show people that the folks that they passed by and ignore every single day, the folks that they're complaining about. And by the way, l A, I'm so mad at l A. L A just passed I think last night. And a bill that criminalizes homelessness. We literally I don't, I don't. I can't even get into it because it's so confusing to me. But like we're criminal Like now it's illegal to be in an encampment as of today, which but yet, but yet, if you look at all the housing in Los Angeles, like I think only thirty nine percent of all on housed. People could even be housed because we have too many, So that's neither here nor there. So the idea that these people that were punishing for for being needy for honestly just needing to be seen and loved and held. Our human beings just like you and me that have just had different experiences and we're all products of our experiences and socialization. So it started with that desire to shine a light. And then um, on my birthday, I started going down to skid Row with friends and just like, let's go talk to people and let's give some food, and you know, and little by little, because you know how Hollywood works. As I became quote unquote like kind of cool because of my profession, more people, more people started coming. Before it was like four or five of us, and then it was ten of us, and it was twenty of us, and then it was fifty of us, and then it became like a party. And I rented. I remember renting vans every year, like these two sprinter vans and we pile everybody in and then we'd go down there. And the mission wasn't to end homelessness, it was to have conversations with them. So that's how it started. It started with a genuine desire to connect and to bring people down who had forgotten, if you will, and to help them see like, these are our neighbors and we got to be there for them. We can't fix all of this stuff unless we fix this and that eventually, when I got Jane the Virgin, I had the crazy idea, you know, because it's like you get a little bit of fame or you get followers, it's like, what the hell am I going to do with this? And I had this idea. I'm like, what if we threw a carnival? And then I tried it again. I didn't think it through all the way. Uh. It wasn't until I was there and three people showed up volunteer showed up that I went, oh, ship, now what have I done. I didn't even think about security, Like I was just so sweet and innocent going into the middle of skid row and having no plan. But what we learned is all the volunteers had ideas, yeah, all of them. And I had an idea to create a carnival, but everybody else had ideas about what that carnival could look like. And so we created this thing together one one um young woman said hey, what if we all lined up and made a friend and took them around the carnival, which was at the time, it was just food and clothing. I had, I had our Jane, the Virgin guys come in and cater it and um and it was just food and clothing and books and feminine products. And then that's what we did, and then we turned it into a dance party and every volunteer partnered with somebody who was in line waiting. We had like maybe four d five hundred people that day, and that was the beginning of the carnival, and then year after year we refined it, and I reached out for more people, and we made it bigger, and then before we knew it, it was two thousand volunteers showing up for one day and creating this and you know, three city block thing and conjunction with the city, which by the way, we had to beg the city to even do anything, which is a whole another issue. And it just took on a life of its own because what we saw and realized was that people care. People are good. We have so many good human beings in this world, but we're so distracted that we that we don't even know what to care about anymore. And so many people also have fatigue because there's so many problems that exist in the world. We don't know what to give our energy to. And so what I try to remind people is like, great, yes, focus on what's happening in Africa, but also don't neglect what's happening in your own backyard. And this is like, these are human beings also, we can't forget about them. And so in essence, now it's an organization. We're rebranding, we're changing our name at the moment, which is really exciting, and we're really just trying to change the way our community responds to the unhoused population. And that has also evolved because in that process, one thing we didn't do early on was asked the community what they needed. We just came in as the great White Savior and we're like, oh, we should do this, and didn't ask the community what they needed. Then when we started asking the community what they needed, that changed again. What were some of the things that the community I told you they needed that you hadn't considered, UM, legal help, resume building, I D cards, basic medical things, UM, what what we found was that a lot of folks, especially on and around skid Row, they have access to services if they choose to go to a mission, if they do X and X and X and x, and then there's a whole thing with missions also in l A, because of course they're funded by the city, and it becomes this perpetual issue when in reality, I believe if you're a nonprofit or a mission and you're working with the homeless, you should aim and strive and desire to be out of business. M hm. So when you have these things that are you know, you've been existing for a hundred years, while you have good intentions, it's like, no, you should be out of business by now. We should have solved the problem so we can do we can do better. Um So now it's like it's it's the purpose of it is. Imagine you're on the streets for this day. Everything you need is within these three city blocks. So we bring all of the services that one could want, whether it's applying for housing, which I'm a housing first person, so I believe that we can't solve the problem until you get the people off the street. How are you gonna show up for a job interview. If you don't have a home or you know so, so it's everything that you could ever need in one day. Um, the desire is to have. But more than anything, it's a one on one connection so that you feel seen, heard and loved, because that's one of the things we realized that folks don't have down there is they don't have it. They don't feel seen by their community anymore. They feel worthless and dirty and bad, and we want to remind them that they're good. So for those four to six hours, there are just no richer or poor. We're all just one. We're dancing, we're partying, we're hanging out, we're hugging. Hopefully that will happen again after COVID and UH and we're gonna start doing a lot of more, a lot of many carnivals and things like that. But it started with a dream and a purpose and a pure intention. That's how it all starts. M H. What are some ways that people who are listening can get involved in helping unhoused folks, whether it's here in l A or around the country. Again, I would go back to that idea that my wife had, which is like the most radical activism is self activism. And the first thing that I would do is ask yourself on a daily basis, if you see any people who are unhoused, and what your response is to those people? Do you think about them? Do you just walk by them and ignore them? Like do you have is there a response in your body or a fear response? And what is that? And then I would say to stop and have a conversation with somebody if it's if it's of course, if you feel safe doing it, and I really think about your perspective on it before anything else. A lot of us just want to jump into help and we have no idea why we're doing it, and then that never lasts. It's like in in nonprofit organizations like ours, you always see people come in and out. It's because they don't have a true grasp of what they actually care about. And so I really believe the first step you gotta the first thing you gotta do is ask yourself, like why do you care? Um? And if you do care, I'd say most cities around the country have, especially now post COVID, because rents and prices are so high, are seeing many more people out on the street. UM. So nonprofits, local organizations, food banks, you know, there's all kinds of places that you can reach out to. Just literally do a Google search and find out who's serving in your area. Um. But more than that, it's not even about homelessness. I would say, find find a cause that speaks to you that you believe in, even if it's not It doesn't have to be unhoused for for you. It could be something else, right, and find that cause and dive into it. Yeah, that's something I really try to encourage people to remember, is it's not possible for all of us to show up for everything. But if we can all show up and be all in on something, we can really really create change. And you helped me with that, actually, Sophia, because I've I've had a charity FATI good times, and hearing you say that has always been really helpful because oftentimes you feel like you want to do it all but you can't. Yeah, but there's how many billions of us in the world if we all did something? Yeah, right? Yea. When you think about that, that notion that we can all really show up for something, that that feels like a great gateway to potential for the future. And that's big, right, it's billions of us, it's all of us. It's working on issues. When when you bring it into the personal and you think about this moment you're in, having written the book, hosting the man Enough podcast and having you know, frank and intimate conversations like this one, what do you hope from this place you're in. What do you see or desire in how manhood and or masculinity will be perceived in the future. Sure, my hope is that the work that I'm doing now is like throwing a rock into a still lake, and it's not going to change the lake, but it will send a ripple, and that ripple can spread from one end to the other and inspire other then to them throw their rocks and and and eventually, I just really hope that masculinity can become something that isn't isn't performative, that is innate, and that is that that, like femininity, is seen and looked at as a piece of us, not the thing that defines us. Because the problem with it right now is that it's an all or nothing thing. It's you're either masculine or you're not. And the reason I chose to, you know, say, I want to undefine masculinity is because I want to see a future or anybody who identifies as a man feel safe and free to be able to be a man, and where we don't raise boys two not only reject the feminine, but to have a disgust for it, to hate it. And I want to I want to see I want to see men. I want to see grown men one day be willing to make a phone call when they're hurting to another man and say, hey, I need someone to talk to because because it makes me want to cry, because we're hurting. We're hurting, so many men are hurting, and yet we don't have anybody to talk to about it because talking to it, talking to somebody about it is an admission of weakness, and that weakness is almost worse for us than the pain. I want to see a world where it's not an insult for a boy to call another boy a girl, where that boy can say something like so what instead of instead of it defining his very existence, Where it's not an insult for a boy to call another boy gay anymore, because until we stop being affected by it, it's going to keep happening. And every time that happens, we don't realize that we're we're internalizing that language and we're taking that with us for the rest of our lives. And seeing girls and gay folks is weak or less then. So I want to see a world whereas men, we can embrace the feminine parts of ourselves and recognize that we can be men and have empathy, compassion, and sensitivity and in fact those things make us not just men but human, which is really, at the end of the day, where I want masculine to go. I want masculine to be something that is a part of us, yeah, and and and helps us become full humans, not something that actually takes away from our humanity, which is what I believe it's doing. Now. Yeah, I love that. I sign up for that world. Me too, Me too? What do you think? And this is this is my favorite thing to ask everyone who comes on the show, and always are closing questions. So you may be prepared for it, or it may catch you off guard. I don't know, but I'm not prepared for it. Um what in your life in this moment feels like your work in progress? What doesn't same? I love being a work in progress. I can't imagine not being a work in progress. I can't imagine. I've never met any buddy who isn't, even if they don't think they are. You know, I write about in the book a moment that I had again with Emily. We're talking about imperfections, and I realized that so much of what I want to bring to my films, to life, to social media, to everything that I do is a normalization of imperfections. And I looked down and I had written it out, and I realized for the first time, and maybe I've been ignorant to it, maybe other people have seen it, but I realized that when you look at the word, it actually says I'm perfect. And I had this moment of like, how can a word have caused me so much pain over the course of my existence, because I because we've been striving for perfections when in reality, the word imperfect is the very thing that makes us perfect. And I feel the same way about being a work in progress. M hm, you know when we're not, when we take our last breath. Yeah. So everything that I'm doing in my life, my way I'm raising my kids, the way I'm I'm showing up in my marriage, the way I'm trying to run a company, the actor. It's all a work in progress. And what I believe is that I think true vulnerability and bravery is actually championing that and leading with it instead of trying to cover it up and pretend like we should be somewhere. We're not here, here, my friend, here here. Here's to being works in progress.