Glen Dunzweiler - Unseen Stories, Unbroken Spirits

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🎙️🎙️ Glen Dunzweiler

Aloha and welcome to an extraordinary journey into the life and mind of Glen Dunzweiler, a storyteller who lives at the crossroads of empathy, entrepreneurship, and education. Glen is not just a filmmaker and producer but a voice for those who are often unseen, a mentor to students standing at the edge of their potential, and a relentless advocate for practical knowledge that changes lives. With a background that spans from university classrooms to film sets, from TEDx stages to the streets, Glen brings a unique lens to human resilience, and his work carries an urgent message for our time.

In his powerful documentary yHomeless?, Glen dives into the complexities of homelessness, not just to document it, but to humanize it—to challenge the narratives that often exclude the most vulnerable from our shared story. And his book, A Degree In Homelessness? Entrepreneurial Skills For Students, is a manifesto for the next generation, empowering young people to navigate the often treacherous financial landscape of higher education with clarity, courage, and resourcefulness.

Glen’s journey from academia to the entertainment industry reflects his commitment to teaching through storytelling, to awakening audiences to realities that exist beyond conventional success metrics. His latest work, Deuce, promises to add yet another dimension to his mission of capturing raw, honest, and transformative human stories.

Through every film, book, and speech, Glen embodies a powerful mantra: “Always be respectful. Never be afraid.” He’s here to help others grow into spiritual, strategic, and economic wealth—one story at a time, one lesson at a time. Join us as we explore the wisdom Glen has gathered from the homeless, from students, and from the creative front lines, and learn how he transforms challenges into narratives that inspire, provoke, and uplift.

Prepare yourself for an episode that questions, empowers, and illuminates with Glen Dunzweiler.

https://glendunzweiler.com/

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Ladies and gentlemen, it's Friday. It looks like we made it. So stoked everybody's here today. I hope the sun is shining. I hope the birds are singing. Hope the wind is at your back. Got a great show for you today. I got one that I think everyone's going to enjoy here. It's a I want to introduce everybody and welcome everyone to an extraordinary journey into the life and mind of Glenn Dunswheeler, a storyteller who lives at the crossroads of empathy, entrepreneurship, and education. Glenn is not just a filmmaker and producer, but a voice for those who are often unseen, a mentor to students standing at the edge of their advocate for practical knowledge that changes lives. With a background that spans from university classrooms to film sets, from TEDx stages to the streets, Glenn brings a unique lens to human resilience, and his work carries an urgent message for our time. In his powerful documentary, Why Homeless?, Glenn dives into the complexities of homelessness, not just to document it, but to humanize it, to challenge the narratives that often exclude the most vulnerable from our shared story. In his book, A Degree in Homelessness, Entrepreneurial Skills for Students is a manifesto for the next generation. empowering young people to navigate the often treacherous financial landscape of higher education with clarity, courage, and resourcefulness. Glenn's journey from academia to the entertainment industry reflects his commitment to teaching through storytelling, to awakening audience to realities that exist beyond conventional success metrics. His latest work, Deuce, promises to add yet another dimension to his mission of capturing raw, honest, and transformative human stories. Through every film, book, and speech, Glenn embodies a powerful mantra, always be respectful, never be afraid. He's here to help others grow into spiritual, strategic, and economic wealth, one story at a time, one lesson at a time. Join us as we explore the wisdom Glenn has gathered from the homeless, from students, and from the creative front lines and learn how he transforms challenges into narratives and inspires and provokes and uplifts all that he comes into contact with. Glenn, thank you so much for being here today. How are you? I'm great. I'm great. It's good to be here. It is good to be here. I'm super stoked you're here. And before we got rolling and recording here, we were having a really interesting conversation on how we both got to be here. And I thought I'd just kind of throw it back to you, maybe to fill in some background of the story, man. I gave you a nice introduction there, but I don't think it really does justice to who you are. Is there anything that I left out or you want to fill in? Um, yeah. So how did I get here? Um, I was a lighting and a sound designer for live entertainment. That was my first career, uh, in the, in the late nineties, the word on the street was, if you wanted to get hired for the big shows, the big live shows in entertainment, as a designer, you had to have a graduate degree. so I went to graduate school and then out of that was this well I don't want to go to new york I really like I grew up in california I like I like california I want to go back to california or the west coast at least but having a a degree that is from an industry that has a broken business model, live entertainment, really, you're not going to make money unless you're doing rock and roll concerts or industrials. So conventions, theaters is broken, but I had a degree in theater. It just became this struggle of, okay, how am I going to make money? And so I moved to Las Vegas and then that that company got bought out by another company and then that company was really strange I remember the guy hired me and he said he I had to re-interview for my job from the company I got bought that got bought out and he and and I was the last one out of the shop to get interviewed and he said all right great good to have you on board and he smacked me on the butt And I thought that's strange. So I go to the other guys and these are shop guys. These are blue collar, you know, even though I had gone to grad school, no one cared. You know, you start back in entertainment. They're meant, especially in Las Vegas, it's meant to pull people off the street and train them. So it, it, my graduate degree never meant anything. So these hardcore shop guys said, did, Hey, did that guy smack you on the butt? And he said, no. What are you talking about? Man, I got to get out of here. So so I just started applying, just hustling, just, hey, I have this degree. And I found out that the UNLV dance department or sorry, the theater department didn't have a sound design degree. course and I had an mfa at a terminal degree in the subject I thought well the university will let me teach it so hey let me teach it and that they liked me they didn't have any money though and they said but the dance department has a new opening for visiting assistant professor and they actually needed a resident lighting and sound designer. They said, you should apply. So I applied and I got it. So I got out of the butt smacking guy and I'm all of a sudden, I go from working in a shop and pushing boxes to being a university professor in two weeks, never having, never having wanted to be a university professor. I just had to get out and succeed. And so ever since then, my life has, I say, I say professionally, my life peaked in two thousand four with that job at UNLV. And then it's just been a struggle through different things. I mean, I got caught up in the housing crisis to two thousand eight. lost a house in two thousand four or two thousand twelve out of it. And that's what got me into understanding what homelessness was in the United States. That's what got me into filmmaking. I had been I got married and my mom was always on me to have a good job with insurance. So once that contract at UNLV was up, I took a I took a position at UC Riverside. They needed a lighting, a resident lighting and sound designer. So I was there and I thought, all right, this is stability. This is what my mom wants. This is what everyone wants. And then I got in a motorcycle accident, broke my leg and hip. And fortunately, the university didn't fire me, but I had to recuperate. And then the girlfriend that I was seeing decided that she was going to stick around. So I kind of owed her and then she moved me into her place to rehabilitate. And then she said, hey, you want to buy a house? And this is in two thousand six. Hey, you want to get married? And I just thought, all right, well, this is the success story, right? But you get married for the wrong reasons. It doesn't work out. And you buy a house because a realtor tells you this is what you need to do. And you don't know the game. And everyone's getting taken advantage of in a big way. But you don't know that's coming around the corner. It doesn't work out. And then you become a university professor because you're just trying to get out of some guy smacking you in the butt. It doesn't work out. So so, you know, you make these life choices and then you think, all right, well, what do I really want in life and how am I really going to succeed? Because, yeah, it's been a it's been a wild ride. I've been hit by distracted drivers more than six times. Whoa. On a motorcycle more than three times. It's really hurt my body. And so, yeah, you just I always say life is chaos. But out of that, you're talking about films. My newest deuce, I would it's it's a it's a a feature length narrative feature film. But I I'm looking for funding for it. But in the meantime, I thought, what am I going to do? So I made this animated film short and it took me three years because I got hit again in January of twenty twenty two and messed me up. Didn't break anything, but a lot of soft tissue damage. I'm still going to physical therapy for it. but on october tenth because I've just buckled down you know you need to succeed you need to be out there you need to be relevant my new animated short film uh the bag is it's public on youtube and it's on the film festival circuit now and I released it on october tenth and it's doing well and again it's the same thing it's kind of success out of poverty uh it deals with a guy that he's sleeping on the street and an addict tries to steal his stuff and he gets his bag ripped. And when you're, all the people that I talk to on the street, their whole lives are in this bag that they carry with them. And so it deals with the anxieties of what that means to have everything taken away from you and vulnerable. And then it also deals with how he's now on a search for a replacement bag. And so he's asking the public. And it's also a story about how the public, the proper public, the housed public, interfaces with him, right? And the one guy that kind of gives them a chance is in danger of receiving the brunt of this guy's frustrations, right? And we've all been there, right? In my work to kind of solve homelessness, which really started in Interfacing with a homeless person. Well, what if they're a criminal. What if they're on drugs. What if, and so it kind of deals with that and hopefully it's a comedic and respectful way and hopefully it inspires people to look at those interactions a little differently because what I found The only solution we have out of homelessness is a rebuilding of our families and communities because our families and communities don't give up on us. And what we've built in the United States out of the degradation of family and community and investing ourselves out of shelter, like the two thousand eight housing crisis is a perfect example. um we're we're in a rough state and we're not going to get better it's just going to be be be as bad so the bag helps maybe open up some of those interactions to maybe get something better and my tedx like I said it's it's not what can you do it's well what can you do what because it's it's going to be on you it's not it starts with you I call it direct positive action that's I'm going to apply I want to pause you right let me pause you right there for a minute because I think there's so much cool information coming there but I think there's a lot of different threads we can pull on sure Like in the beginning of the story, like it's interesting to me to get to hear the way in which the world pulled you. Like you had this idea coming out of school. You were working at this place. It didn't work out. Then all of a sudden you're at the shop and you become a university professor. And in some ways it seems to me the life that was happening to you became a scaffolding for the movies you were going to make or at least the topics that you were going to investigate, right? Let's start off with like the, that first movie that you made. I think that like, there's so much rich information there and then we can move on to do moving forward. But why homelessness? Like what, at what point, if we can just back up a little bit, at what point in time did you decide to make that movie and why? So I got cut back at work at UC Riverside. I think we all went to eighty percent contracts or seventy five percent contracts. because the universities had invested in all of these housing markets and they all tanked. So the universities lost money. They don't have money to pay their people, staff or faculty. So I couldn't make my mortgage. I just bought a house two years before and I called the bank and I said, hey, I'm being a responsible citizen. I got this job. I made this investment. I took this bet behind this house. I have this monthly mortgage payment. In about three months, I'm not going to be able to pay it because I'm going to get cut back to seventy five percent income. And they said. After after just not talking to me and me just being tenacious, I finally got someone that admitted, she said, we will not talk to you until you stop paying us. Whoa, what? That's not what I was taught. I was taught from my grandfather to be an upstanding citizen, to pay my debts, to curb the trauma. What are you talking about? And then I realized what they were asking me to do is ruin my credit. but prove to them that they weren't going to get paid. That's the only way. They wouldn't believe me. The only way I could convince them that I couldn't pay them was to not pay them at that moment. And then I realized, well, wait, I remember what it's like to get into an apartment. You have to have good credit. So now I'm conceivably going to lose this house and I'm going to destroy my credit doing it So I won't even be able to get into an apartment. And I'm a university professor. And I'm supposed to be doing the right thing. I'm doing the right... This is what my mom told me to do. This is what my dad told me to do. This is what my grandpa told me to do. This is what society in general told me to do. And then that's when I started realizing, oh, this is a rig. And I don't know the game. And then I started investigating... Because I was in danger. I never went homeless. I'm too tenacious. I renegotiated that loan. They hung up on me for probably two years and I just kept at it, right? What are we doing? What are we doing? Not everyone has that. So I'm not going to go homeless. But because I was threatened to be homeless, I decided I'm going to find out what the heck's going on in this country right now. What is this homelessness thing? Because to me, the homeless were always drug addicted or mentally ill. That's the story we had, especially in twenty ten. Right. I never thought about homeless people. Then I realized, oh, wait. maybe homeless people are university professors that didn't know what they were doing, getting into Alone because they didn't know the game. They just knew they were supposed to play the game. And that's what got me into making the movie Why Homeless and filmmaking. Because I knew as a lighting designer and a sound designer, I knew what the thing needed to look like and what it needed to sound like. and I wasn't a filmmaker I was live entertainment but then I started learning cameras once I knew what it needed to what the result needed to be and then I just started learning backwards from there and that was a storytelling device I as as you said I I all storytelling all the time film is just another medium to get to people And sometimes your story can be live. Sometimes your story can be a podcast. Sometimes your story can be a film. All of it works. You just have to figure out entrepreneurially how you can get the meaningful story that you want to tell to people and then how you can make it sustainable. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good point. So then you – I know that feeling because I had a mortgage in – I bought at the top of the market in – and I bought a condo for like, three twenty. And a few months later, it was worth like, two seventy. And I remember, I was a UPS driver for twenty-six years, and I remember that same conversation with Bank of America. Like, look, I can't make this. I'm dying over here. And they said something to me like, Looks fine on paper. You haven't missed any payments. And that same thing hit my head. Oh, you're telling me to start missing payments. You'll talk to me. And that's what I told the guy. I go, okay, so you want me to start missing payments and then you'll do it. He goes, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't do that. Don't do that. And I was like, that's exactly what you want me to do. And I hung up on that guy. And sure enough, like I didn't want to do that. Like I was taught the same thing as someone who gets up, you know, the red blooded American and gets up, you go to work, you pay your dues, you get what you get and you don't get upset. But you know what? Sure as heck, man. I missed a few payments. Those guys were banging on my door. Hey, what's going on? You need some help over here? You know, and at that point in time. And, you know, they say if you sit at a poker table and you don't know who the mark is, then you're the mark. I was the mark. You were the mark. Every American has been in the mark and the banks have just been playing us, man. Like, yeah. groundswell in my opinion of populism they call it has just come up and people are starting to get nervous now it's like they were able to whack-a-mole a little bit some of the people in two thousand eight but what we're seeing in twenty twelve twenty twenty twenty sixteen twenty all this thing blowing up all over the world is the game is Is rigged. And you are the mark, man. So what you were saying resonates so deeply with me. And I'm so glad that you came out and you're telling this story. But what did you learn when you started going out on the streets? Did that change the paradigm for you? Like, oh, these people on the streets aren't drug addict, crackhead losers. These are people... that didn't realize they were getting screwed. A lot of them. I mean, there might be some people that have a drug problem or a mental illness, but a lot of it's real easy to fall into that crack and realize that the government, the multinational corporations, the banks, they've been suckering people for a long time. And that's how you get a lot of homeless people on the street. Is that something you found when you were out there? Yeah. The thing I did find, though, once we hit about two thousand twelve and some people were able to make money again, that dream of being able to exploit people yourselves came back. And so the machine just started back. You know, I think that we still have that now where there's still we hold on to this idea that, yeah, it may suck right now, but we have the ability to exploit people. people ourselves. So we're going for that. And that's the, what the conclusion I've come to is you're gonna, that's the game, but you have to learn how to, to succeed in that game and then subvert that game hopefully. And then you can start changing the game, but you got to learn the game first. You got to play the game first. And yeah, just we've seen it now with this election you hit you try and win people over with feminism and it doesn't work like it just doesn't because we're so geared towards making money that is that is what we that's our validity in life how much money do you make what do you what do you do how successful are you what do you do that's our Everything else is secondary, right? Everything else comes, we can have high-minded ideas once we're in a position where we are comfortable and we have already exploited whoever. It doesn't even have to be another American. It can be the Chinese building our computers for us, or it can be whatever it is. So yeah, my journey has turned, when I found Demographics of the Homeless, Mentally ill, sad, poor, poverty, coming from bad places, some middle class, some business people, some escaping abuse, some children running from their family life. All of it. It's all these people in different areas have different... uh specialties of homeless let's say like for example when I was in portland because that's a portland oregon that's a west coast train line it goes up to seattle and so you have a whole whole bunch of homeless youth that are addicted to drugs and they're just riding the rails from San Diego up to Seattle, San Diego up to Seattle. So their their demographic was different than, let's say, Memphis, which had a lot of because you have historical segregation in Memphis and you have a lot of black poor when the housing market hit hard. in two thousand two thousand eight, it hit the black community first because they were the poorest. So you had a lot of black homeless in Memphis, different in San Diego. Right. Different different flavors. But The only thing that is successful for me, and I covered this in my TEDx, I met a woman in Riverside, California. I was screening my documentary at homeless shelters and I just struck up a conversation with her and she was trying to get into the shelter and she was probably in her mid-fifties by then. The way she got homeless is she quit her job to help her mother because her mother couldn't take care of herself. So moved into the condo with her mother. And then when her mother died, she had no income and they were going to the condo was going to get sold or that the contract was over. So she was sleeping behind a grocery store. And after talking to her, I realized that she wasn't the homeless that we think of, right? The mentally ill, the drug addicted, the whatever, the violent, the bad choices, the unworthy. And so I went to my wife. I said I can't we we have I know you told me not to bring any homeless people home that when I've done this documentary but we have to do something I can't let this woman sleep behind a grocery store and we got her back right it caused a lot of problems in my home life because my wife was in some ways jealous of the attention. She also didn't like this foreign person, even though she was a nice older lady. She was a church lady. She had a musical ministry that she would take to other churches. Apparently, that still was something that my wife didn't want in her house. but we negotiated, right? I was very insistent that this needed to happen and she let me be insistent and we got her back. It took time. I bought her a bus pass, a monthly bus pass, and I bought her phone minutes so she could call for job interviews and get to the job interviews. And she got a job within a month and a half, two months. And she was sleeping in a room in our house And then she was, it took about nine months, but she got herself to a point where she could move out. So we got someone back, right? That's what it takes. And it took me, it takes that interaction to say, oh, is this person a threat to me or not? Do I want to help someone or not? And that's hard. That's hard for people because people have ideas and judgments about poverty. And we don't like poor people here. Poor is not successful. So even poor people don't like poor people. That's one of the things I also found out, right? So, yeah, it is just about... that human interaction, which I've always that's my magic power that I guess you were you were saying now something about your life is more spiritual, or I think that I connect with presidents and homeless people in the same way. It's kind of this equal footing. I don't have any No, no, there's no power dynamic with me ever. We are equal because we both have legs and arms and a head. We're done. We're equal. And that's, I think, what I found is the solution. Plus, you have to figure out how to economically make it sustainable. I always tell people I almost went homeless trying to help the homeless. Even after the bank situation and I made the documentary, my life was falling apart lost the house didn't want to teach anymore lost the marriage I came to los angeles and and I bought into this idea that okay I'm going to become the happy homeless guy I'm going to try to change the world and I'm going to try to get people to connect with homeless people street by street homeless person by homeless person and I'm going to get paid as a public speaker to do that and I listen to a public speaking company sell me on their courses and their publicity. There was a chink in my business model though. No one wanted to pay me to speak about homeless people because there's no joy in speaking about homeless people. People think there's no joy. So I almost went homeless trying to help the homeless. It's like, you can't do that. Cause you can't be helpful. You can't, you gotta figure out how to make it sustainable. You have to work within the system that everyone buys into and then slowly start to subvert that system into a way that you feel okay succeeding in. Cause it's, it's a system and you better, you better buy into it. We've been buying into it since this country was, was founded. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. It's, it's, I call it the padded two by four, you know, you get smacked in the face with this two by four, but you know, it's, it's what it takes to be awakened to the reality of how life works. And, you may look back on those times as horrible times or difficult times, and they probably are both, but it's also a glorious time because you've been chosen to be awakened to something that can make a difference. Like now that you're aware of something, it's very difficult to go back to sleep on it. So you're at least looking for these particular circumstances. You're at least looking for these opportunities and something inside you changes, right? Like you begin to... have a little bit more empathy. You begin to understand, like, hey, maybe this is kind of a different version of me out there. Like, this could have been me. If these circumstances happened to me, that probably could have been me. And when you see yourself as that other person, it's a lot more difficult to be so judgmental. It's a lot more difficult to have these, you know, these incredible feelings of what a loser that person is or what a big dummy they are, you know? And I think that that is not only... I think that the message that you have in that film is contagious. And that is subverting the system towards a more view of empathy on some level. Was that the message that you wanted people to get from that film? So for Why Homeless... I always looked for a solution, but it was more of an exploration and kind of saying, no, really, let's look at this population. And then with me living, trying to be homeless for a month as I slept in my car and you getting to watch me lose my mind very quickly as all of those creature comforts are taken away. hopefully you get to empathize with me because you see me and you think, oh, that's a nice guy. That's a nice white guy, right? He's well-spoken and he's kind of handsome and he's non-threatening, right? I can relate to that guy. Whoa, that guy is losing his mind in just a month. Oh, that guy is kind of scary. Oh, that guy... What do you mean he misses his wife? What do you mean he's now talking about human needs and wants from the standpoint of what a homeless person has to deal with when they don't have four walls around them and privacy, right? That's kind of creepy, but he's a nice guy. But, you know, so it's kind of that was the, it was hopefully the window into the reality of what this population is. And the population is as varied as the population that is in housing right now. You know, I've been hit by cars. And when you don't have your health, when you can't walk, things get pretty dire, pretty quick, right? How do you, this last time I got hit, I was at a stoplight waiting for my left-hand turn. And this car, this driver turned too sharply, made her left too sharply into my lane. And so just crammed me. I wasn't doing anything. When I moved to LA, I decided I was going to get back on a motorcycle and I was going to drive like everyone was out to kill me all the time. And that worked for six and a half years until they started hitting me when I was stopped. You just think, well, yeah, what do you do? We like to build this stability around us and that society gives us some stability, but we drive these multi-thousand pound vehicles that can cripple us. in a second and we just accept that and we don't think about that and I'm very fortunate in that I am constantly reminded of that right I had in in january twenty two twenty two two twenty twenty two I was I had my my mojo working in los angeles I had consistent income I had enough money left over to work and push on these projects, doing the entrepreneurial thing, trying to figure out who's going to pay me for what to public speak. I thought the book, Degree in Homelessness, I think it had a shot with high school students, but then COVID hit. And so all that stuff got canceled. So I was delivering food, right? And it was subsidized by all the DoorDash and whatnot. It was, you make good money. I made better money hourly than I ever did as a university professor. delivering food and that's what I was doing for the cash to push me through and then this lady in a split second not only ruined my vehicle and my ability to ride my vehicle but ruined me physically and my my ability to make money and you just think oh yeah, this is how people go homeless, right? This is how the structure of the society that we buy into, this is how fragile it is. And it also gives me the great opportunity to say, all right, they didn't kill you this time. Again, they just maimed you. Now what, right? So when I stood up, when the... paramedics got there and pulled me out from under my bike and they said well can you stand up and I said I don't know do you want me to try and they said yeah let's do it and they they pulled me up and I and I as soon as I bear weights and so I they're not I'm not I'm not leaning on them the paramedic says He can bear weight. We're not taking him to the ER because they had just had an outbreak of COVID. It was on the back end of COVID still. And they didn't want to give me COVID too. So they didn't want to take me to the ER. And I remember standing and just looking up and saying, I'm alive. And the paramedics were laughing. I said, man, this isn't my first rodeo. And this time they didn't break anything. We're good. I'll figure this out. I'll figure this out. And so... That also just gives me this tenacity. My sister calls the Dunswellers cockroach people. Like you can't kill us. So I guess I'm being the best cockroach person I can be. Yeah, you're right. It's interesting to talk about not only what happened, but to see it as a metaphor for uncertainty. We're going to wake up and go through our day and we worry about these little things that may or may not happen. But the truth is... We trade a lot of our liberty for security, for this idea of safety. You know what I mean? And it's not guaranteed to you, man. You could go out, get hit on your bike, and that can be it for you. You could be homeless. You could end up in the graveyard, end up in the hospital, lose God's gift of mobility. We're not given this idea of uncertainty. It seems like your relationship with uncertainty gave you a really incredible gift on how to move in the world today. It does. It makes people angry because my life is a very, I have a very absurdist view, right? Absurdism grew out of nihilism. It means nothing, nothing, you know, you could be, get eaten by a bear at any moment. It doesn't, there is no meaning to the world. But it's also a very negative view. And so absurdism grew out that said, yeah, life means nothing, but why be sad about it? Just go. Just do whatever you do and enjoy your presence. When I was teaching and buying a house and getting married, I was obviously working for a future business. which is what we're told to do. And that future never came. And my now was hell. I never liked owning a house. I felt like I was a slave to that house. It was a nineteen fifty three bungalow that just kept breaking down. And so I was always under the water. I was always working on something on that house. It was taking all my time. I remember mowing the yard when I got home in the dark. And I thought, is this what home ownership is? This sucks. And so I tell people now, you know, if you want to invest, I say, look, live in a tent and buy gold. Don't keep the gold in the tent, right? Because it's going to get stolen. Someone's going to steal it. You have to figure out some place to secure it, but just pay for the gold. And then, because for some reason, people love gold. They just, they never, for millennia, we just keep, finding it valuable. It's a metal that's soft and pretty. I don't know, but people keep liking it. So that's my bet. Just buy gold and then live as low as possible. I'm a minimalist now because I really just look around and I say, what do I need for right now? What is my immediate joy? Because that's the only thing that matters. I could get hit by a distracted driver Walking out of my car, walking out of my house. And I have. So I know that's a real thing, but I'm not going to get sad. And since I'm a forced pedestrian for the past three years, what joy can I get out of being a pedestrian? Oh, I can look at flowers. I live in Southern California. And that is beautiful. Amazing weather, right? We have the weather. Mother Nature is not trying to kill us every day, every season. We got earthquakes. Sometimes that's bad. But in general, it's brilliant to walk outside. So that is my immediate joy. For me, motorcycle riding was always meditative. That was the thing that I did best. that kept me present, that kept my fear and my anger and my whatever in check. I just need to focus on doing this thing now. Now I don't have that. That was the one thing. Obviously, family stuff doesn't work for me. I don't want to be married again. Housing stuff doesn't work for me. A stable job doesn't make me happy. So what makes me happy? All right. Well, motorcycle riding made me happy for six and a half years from twenty fifteen to twenty twenty two. And now that's even taken away from me. What do I what what do I do? So I look at flowers. So exercise. Hey, I can still walk. I can still walk. Thank God I'm alive. She didn't break anything. Not like the Durango in two thousand five, which broke my leg and hip and I was in a wheelchair. Right. Like that's not it's not that time. Yeah. Your soft tissues all messed up. Got to work on it. Yeah. Your legs go numb, but they still work. Try to get them not to be numb. What's the joy? All right. I ran a quarter mile. See if you can do that three times a week. All right. Hey, I'm feeling better about running. I'm enjoying running now. Oh no. And now I'm walking too much and your feet are messed up. All right. What is my joy? Right? No, I mean, it's just like, yeah, you got, you gotta go. You just gotta go. Cause the alternative is awful. Being sad is awful. Yeah. Yeah, I think it speaks to the idea of anxiety and depression and understanding that we have a choice. You know, I forgot who's... Depression is being trapped in the past and anxiety is being trapped in the future. But if you live now and if you look at the world around you, like there's a lot of things that you could be thankful for. And if you have your freedom and you have... you know, your, if you have freedom and you have your health, man, you got a lot, you got a lot, you can, you have a lot more than a lot more people. And it's a great place to begin, you know, and it's easy to, to get more thankful for when you already started thankful. So yeah, I think it's a good advice. Yeah. Yeah, always. I started handing out, I picked up some part-time work as I was rebuilding my life from getting hit. I picked up some part-time work at a library here locally in Burbank. I live in Burbank, California. And those people didn't like their director. They were so sad. Every day I thought, okay, my job is to give these people some kind of joy. That wasn't my job. I was a library monitor. So I got to walk around and make sure that people observe the social norms of the library. So we're usually talking about me interfacing with homeless people that have just kind of given up. They're angry. And they're doing something because of mental illness or because of bad habits. And so I'd have to talk to them. But other than that, I would just go around to everyone on that shift and I would give them what they needed. What do you need? Do you need to vent to me? Do you want to hear a funny story? Do you want to hear about my life? And I would just try and give joy. And I made these cards to remind them. I said, check out these cards. And I've had them printed up. And I said, what gives you joy? What gives you immediate joy? Tell yourself. Tell me. Tell someone else. Because Being on the happy side of your brain is a lot better than being on the sad side of your brain. So what can you do? It can be a little thing. It doesn't have to be huge. It doesn't have to be in the future. It has to be right now. What can you do right now to get on the happy side of your brain? Because being on the happy side of your brain feels a lot better than being on the sad side of your brain. Yeah, it's true. What about this new project you got coming up, Deuce, man? Tell me about that. Yeah, so my friends that I, I was a professor at three places, UNLV, UC Riverside, and then the last place was CSU San Bernardino. And a guy was floating through class. He was floating through that school. He was an older student named Guy, Guy Stetley Jr. And Guy grew up in Chicago. South side of Chicago, rough, like grew up with criminals. He was pretty much a criminal. And he just, since I was a younger professor and he was a older student, we were more friends than, than professor student relationship. And he would tell me these stories and they just things like when he was in high school, he, he, was getting high with his principal in the back of his cousin's car in the high school parking lot. And I'm just going... And he would tell these stories and I and it just kind of puts a spin on. And it's a it's a look into a world that I don't think America thinks exists, but some people know it does. And so I was working with him or he came to me once I moved to L.A. and he moved to L.A., He said, I want to work with you again. He was my... I did a short film and he helped. He was my cinematographer for that short film. He said, I want to work with you again. I said, yeah, what do we want to do? And he didn't kind of know. And I said, well, you have these amazing stories. What if... you tell me these stories and then I will make a screenplay out of it and then we'll try and get this thing funded and so we started on that path where he gave me the characters he gave me the stories and then I'd fill in trying to to make a narrative out of it and and it's this journey of him because of the people he knew in in chicago specifically one his girlfriend got him out of that environment of not thinking your life is worth anything and not thinking about the future right so he was now that I am where I'm at and I'm looking at my life only in immediate gratification, but the positive side in Chicago, it's kind of him growing up. It was immediate gratification. My life is worth nothing. It doesn't matter anyway. Right. It's kind of that nihilistic side. She got him out of that and he went to Tacoma and he found Tacoma, Washington. And he found that the skills that made him a good hustler in Chicago were made him a good legitimate businessman in Tacoma. And he's like, what is happening? And it's the environment, right? It's the outlook. And so it's kind of this urban escape story. And it's this success through poverty or success out of poverty story. And it's his journey. I got it. We got it to a point. It's a screenplay. I ran a budget and a schedule. We've got a storyboard trailer for it. And now it's always that idea of, okay, how is this thing gonna get funded? I had a line producer work on it. built a budget and a schedule for it. He calls it about a three million dollar film. He said, you know, it's easier to make a million dollar film than it is a three million dollar film because it's easier to get the funding for one million than three million. So maybe you should think about scaling Deuce down a little bit. And then of course I get hit by a car. So, and I'm working on another project. So Deuce is out there. Deuce is the characters and the stories are out there. When I was pitching it, I was pitching it around and I was talking to a guy from the poor side of Miami. and I'm telling them these stories about Deuce. And the guy, he looks at me and he says, he told you about that? So it's this untapped reality that very few people know that I think is so evocative. It's kind of that behind the scenes of the banking industry. We're told the world works this certain way, but then there's this whole other way. and the banking world has their rich way of doing it and deuce has his own poverty criminal world of looking at it you know so it's a little bit underworld and it's a dramedy you know my stuff is always you look at the funny you get grab the funny out of the sad stuff That's the way I write. That's my writing style. So yeah, that's Deuce. I need to get back up. Deuce keeps saying, Guy keeps saying, Deuce was the nickname. Part of the strategy is he has three names and depending on who calls him what name, he knows where he met them from and how they view him. So if they call him Deuce, he knows where they met him and how they see him. If they call him Guy, he knows where he met him and how they see him or how they heard of him, right? If they call him Junior, because his name is Guy Stutley Junior, he knows that they know him from being a kid, right? So it's, who thinks of the world that way? You know, but in that kind of, underground elements, you start looking at that. One of the things I do is I have a podcast called Difficult Questions, where I talk about these things that other people are afraid to talk about. And I got an inspiration for the next episode because I was always taught that there is, my dad would always say, safety is relative and not guaranteed, right? There's no guarantee that you're going to be protected. And so I carry that with me through the friends I was with, the criminal friends that I grew up with, the mechanic friends that I grew up with, the blue collar people, my parents, my family. I always have to look out for myself. I was a lifeguard. I'm the stopgap. I'm the thing that stops bad things from happening. And bad things are going to happen. But I realized I was on the bus yesterday and I had forgotten my wallet. And I thought, oh, no, because I have been arrested once. And I realized that if the police need you to be a criminal, you are a criminal. And so you never give, when you're out and about in the world, never give people an excuse to define you, right? And so I'm freaking out that I forgot my wallet and I know I need to get home as soon as possible. And I'm on the bus and I see this woman walk across the street in front of the bus in flip-flops and a sundress, looking down at her phone like she doesn't have a care in the world, right? That's a victim. You are ready to be victimized. And I thought, oh, we have in this country different expectations of protection, right? When you move to Tacoma, Washington, you have this expectation of protection. You can do these things without the fear of someone coming up on you and taking your car or the fear that you have to check this person out because he may want to extort something from you. But in South Side of Chicago, there is not an expectation of protection. Where I grew up in the South Sacramento, there was not really an expectation of protection. But in Burbank, California, downtown, there's this expectation that everything is going to be nice. And I just, I love the inner. Oh, sorry. My headphone fell out. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. I love the interplay of those two worlds. And that's a lot of that. That's the backbone of deuce. I love it. It's such an American story of like the hero's journey on some level, you know? And I, it's interesting. I like, I see it as you can have all the right things ready to go, but if it's not the right time, things don't get made. But that sounds to me to like a story whose time is rapidly approaching to be put on the big screen. Like, We are looking for people in this country that grew up in a way that may not have been real savory, but have found a way to navigate the world. And isn't it interesting that he can go from the South side, Tacoma and crush it as a legitimate businessman. Like maybe some of these things we're learning in schools, aren't the best way to become a businessman. Maybe you've got to learn over here. Maybe these, these lessons that our grandfathers, these lessons that our friends on the street, that our neighbors, that the guy down the way, like, Or the woman down the way. Maybe these are the real teachers. And if you look at it from that perspective, maybe we're the teachers that are bringing up the next community. Man, that movie sounds amazing, man. Thanks. Well, in my first book, Things I've Learned from the Homeless, again, I'm trying to flip the idea that we have nothing to learn from people that are on the street that are poor. Are you kidding? I've learned so much from people that have had everything taken away from them or have lost everything. You become... back to your spirituality you become very aware of what your joy in life is and you hopefully focus on the ones that that were successful they focused on that and they worked to repeat and get out of that it sometimes it got convoluted because they gave up and their immediate joy was with drug addiction you can fall into that right you fall into the hole of my life sucks the best I can do is this high and this is what I'm going to look for but the ones that got out I love my family I want to get back to my I need stability for my family that's what I'm going to do I love health so that's what I'm going to do I love god so that's what I'm going to do you know People slam organized religion, and I'm not an organized religion person. I grew up United Methodist, so Protestant, but it didn't really speak to me. But I'll tell you, it's about finding your center. And if you don't have a center, if you don't have a place from where every other decision grows out of you, religion can be that center for you right that's why so many missions work with homeless people and they give them a program and they give them the structure and they say your center your decision making all comes from the teachings from this book and some people need that some people need that structure Your center can be yoga. Your center can be football. Your center can be motorcycle riding. But you have to focus on that. And that's what the success is. And Guy, going back to Deuce, he would call himself observant. That's his superpower. He said, that's what I grew up as. I wouldn't call myself a criminal. I call myself observant. And I don't know that he has a center. I think he's still, and he may hear this podcast and he may disagree with me, and that'll be a great moment for us to talk through. But I don't think he has a center. I think he's still looking. I think that growing up hustling you don't have a center growing up in poverty you don't have a center and or it's very hard to have one some place that calms you some place that you get to decide things from and uh yeah that's also what I'm for giving trying to give people And in my book, Degree in Homelessness, I'm trying to give their center business skills. Like, you got to not flounder and worry about how you're going to make money. You have to figure out how to make money. So this is your center. And some people, their center is capitalism. We know them, right? Elon Musk. Very centered on having as much power and making as much money as he can. He's very good at it. And I had friends growing up, I had specifically a friend that was really good at making money. And that was his center. He had a Facebook before there was Facebook. So he would literally take pictures of important people that he was going to go to a party and host a party for and study their names and faces and their backgrounds. So then he could interface with them at parties like that's that's a strategic mind right that's that's a strategic mind for success and he can't not think about that so that's his center what's your center right yeah yeah it's do you think that sometimes these places we find ourselves in if you know, we brought up like religion or in order that you can build back to a place that is beyond what you could have been. You know what I mean? Like a metaphorical death on some level, like everything has to be stripped away from you for you to really be aware of what you care about. And only then can you begin living a life worth living. so I saw the movie fight club in in the theaters and it really didn't do anything for me again I hadn't hit my peak in life of but after That movie, I don't want it to be life, but I say Fight Club is life. And a quote in that movie is, we can do nothing until we lose everything. And yeah, I mean, I just pull from that quote. I keep pulling quotes from that film and I just think, oh, I'm living, this is life. I don't like it. It's very nihilistic. It's not a happy world, but to some extent it's true. For me, it's very true. And I don't want it to be true, but I have to admit that, yeah, I could do nothing until I lost everything. Because I was building something that someone else told me was valuable. And until that all fell away and it got taken from me or I lost it out of ineptitude, that's when I started to become... awake to what I wanted to do, what was important, what worked, what didn't, why it didn't, what I was willing to do. You know, to be successful, a lot of times you have to kind of give up on your integrity. And that's been really hard for me, too. You know, when you're talking about scaling a passive income at some point. you may be stepping on miles, there may be competition, there is a loser. And I have a hard time with that. Because in my heart of hearts, I'm I have liberal leanings, right? I care for people. And so I often wonder, all right, is my path in life to struggle? It's very Buddhist, right? I think the Buddhists come back to me and say, all right, life, yeah, it's about letting go and it's about struggling because you're not willing to... make decisions that may hurt some other people or that may disregard some other people. And I think that that is a very privileged position to be in, to not have to be able to make money and not have to worry about exploiting others. And employees in general don't have to worry about exploiting others. They worry about being exploited. But the employers, in order for that business to succeed, end up exploiting others or not telling truths or telling people a good story about a product that's not quite true or it was true once and it could be true but in general it's not really I had an entrepreneur friend that said you know to tell it tell something is true it only had to happen once so if you say my program can build you ten times your income You only had to have one client that built ten times their income in income. And then you can say that as I'm going through film festivals. For the bag. know marketing everyone wants to hear the good story everyone wants to know that you did good stuff I know it's a good film I've worked at being a good film but I have to prove it to others and one of the ways that you prove things to others is by other people saying it's good and by film festivals saying hey you win an award so now there is this industry in creative land with people that are that's supposed to be morally upright where you have to pay for recognition and an award and then somehow that good story makes you legitimate right you pay for entrance into a film festival for the chance of someone saying good job and then that film festival builds their business model off of your hopes and dreams your gambling so is that morally correct well again I almost went homeless trying to help the homeless so I know that being just morally correct isn't enough you have to figure it out you have to maybe make some accommodations yeah it's it's a bend don't break sort of a model like in Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting to think about that. Maybe I'm an idealist or maybe I'm just naive in a lot of ways. I think a lot of people may feel like me, but it's There's got to be a way where you can make money in a way that doesn't step on people. You know, and I think that's kind of where we are in the world today is people want that to happen, but I don't, I don't know. Is that, is it possible? Glenn, can we find a way to do that? So I'm looking, I'm trying to find a way. I have my, I have my stop that says I won't do this. I will do this. My landlady, Rita Green, the wallpaper queen. She was a starlet in the late fifties, early sixties in Hollywood. And then, and married a comedian, a very popular comedian named doodles Weaver and a uncle of Sigourney Weaver. And, uh, he, uh, he ended up, uh, killing himself. So Rita was on her own with two kids and she started hanging wallpaper. But she is this gregarious woman, this friendly, lovely person that people want the experience to be around her. They've always wanted the experience. So she gets hired not for her wallpapering. She's a good wallpaperer. But people hire her to just have her in their presence. So there are people like that where you work hard, but you are also rewarded because people love your personality. And I think in those ways, you have people that can live their, their integrity and still build a, a following or build a support network or build a, build a group. But then you have some people like we've seen the, the, the, the horror stories of cult leaders, right? So what, what do you have to do in order to get people to follow you? So I think it's out there. And I would love to be Rita Green, the wallpaper queen. And I would love to be this amazing dancer from the late forties, early fifties, starlet of the late fifties, early sixties. Just... that positivity shooting out of her all the time. But I'm the happy nihilist, right? I'm the absurdist with my life. You know, Rita's never been hit by a car. I've been hit by a car a lot. I have different viewpoints. But how do I roll that into inspiring people? And I'm still working on it. Some people, I was on another podcast a few years ago And the guy said, wow, I can see how both the left and the right don't like you. And I said, yes, that right there, that I am somehow inspirational for the unlikable. Maybe, I don't know. I don't know. We're working at it. People, I have a good time. We have a good time. This is what I'm good at. Because of my life, I have viewpoints that people don't want to hear. They want to hear the ideal. They want to hear the good story. So then my goal has been to find a good story that I can actually give them, right? Without hurting my integrity, without telling someone, no, no, no, give me a billion dollars and I will go to Mars. And then, well, I'm going to look cool. See this rocket that I just landed? that good enough right you know or I'm going to have uh driverless cars which I think being hit by cars I think that's an awful idea but people love that because they feel that car safety is safety for people inside of the car and they don't want to drive so they love this idea this good story oh you mean I don't have to do anything and I get to be in my little safety bubble and and he promises that and never delivers on it or delivers on it and kills people but he still says no it's fine he keeps trying to deliver on this this vaporware right that's what they call it things that never never really exist it's a promise it's an empty promise and people want the good story. They will continue to buy the good story. They don't want, not many people want money Python, right? Money Python was the absurdist story. It was like, she's a witch burner. Make fun of everybody. Satirize everybody. See the ridiculousness in humanity. Make fun of the church. Make fun, you know, make fun of everybody. that obviously they succeeded someone saw something in them so I need to find my own brand of absurdist humor and ways of looking at life and my own immediate joy and direct action and I need to find I'm always just looking for the audience that wants to to hear that but I'm not afraid of the bad story And people don't like that. Right. People don't want to. It's about staying in the happy side of your brain. And not everyone wants to be an absurdist. Everyone wants to to believe. I love it. I think the absurdity is what on some level keeps you sane. You know, when you start hearing these stories or but it's beautiful. Yeah, I can't help whenever I think of Elon Musk. Like, I think a lot of things, but I think it's also very interesting to think about rockets as a weapon system. And this thing might go to Mars one day, but you know what it can do today? It can bomb everybody. It's an advanced weapon. Like, we're building an advanced weapon system that's subsidized by the government, and everyone thinks we're going to Mars. Like, it's so absurd. Like, when you start thinking about it, you're like, oh, yeah. We have Wernher von Braun here, and this is the greatest rocket scientist since Wernher von Braun. We're building a Starlink weapon system that can annihilate individuals by satellite. It's so amazing, but it's absurd at the same level to put this funny idea of space travel. Hey, we're going to Mars, man. Or... We can just kill everyone on the planet. Either way. Same thing. Rocket system. And funnily enough, that was covered in a nineteen eighties movie with Val Kilmer called Real Genius. I don't know if you remember that, but I don't think so. They were developing a laser technology that. In academia, they wanted the laser to work, but it was being funded by the military industrial complex. So then the third act of the movie was them subverting the military because it was a comedy. But yeah, it's about weaponizing technology, but it's funny because it's absurd. Yeah. And sometimes all you can do is laugh. Yeah. It's just like, that's out of control. Yeah, because the alternative is just sad, right? And ultimately, we've built amazing stability for ourselves. You look at what society has done and what we have as protection to grow and to specialize and to think about larger things and to make movies and And what the animal kingdom is still doing, right? Subsistence. I need to eat now. I'm going to eat. I need to find my food. I need shelter now. I need to find shelter. So we've done amazing things. People that... would not be able to live on their own are able to live and do do things you know stephen hawkins it was amazing and and able to think his stuff and communicate his stuff because of the society around him if we were back in the animal kingdom that guy would just be done, right? And sometimes you are done, but sometimes you're not. I have a friend that's fighting cancer and she's an amazing storyteller. The technology of cancer, of chemotherapy, her cancer keeps responding really well to chemotherapy, but they keep shrinking the tumors, cutting things out. And then once she's off chemotherapy, they come back because cancer wants her for some reason. But the miracle of modern medicine and her ability to kind of get in on that pipeline and make people spend money on her has kept her alive for another two and a half years. And she's using it. She's doing it. She's telling amazing stories. She's inspiring people. Don't give up. Don't listen to... Get a fifth opinion. Get a sixth opinion. And for what? I don't know. Because again, what's her end look like? Who cares? She's rocking it right now. And she will not give up. So that's... That's great. Why hate on Elon Musk? Just don't worship him, but appreciate what he's done. If he gets you a contract, be thankful that you have money to eat. If you're working on his rockets... You work on your thing. You worry about what your moral compass is. And your moral compass is not what another person's moral compass is. You know, in the animal kingdom, they don't have the luxury of a moral compass. We do. And then we all get different ones. You know, different societies are always going to fight for resources. And control. And we're seeing that with this previous election. We're seeing that all over the world. You know, people always ask, why can't we have a warless society? Well, because everyone wants to succeed and there's not necessarily enough Well, no one wants to give anything up for other people to succeed. Let me just put it that way. Everyone has, back to the story about bringing a homeless woman into our house. What did that cost us? But my wife was not happy about it. In her mind, she needed all of the attention from her husband. And if she didn't get all of the attention from her husband, she was not happy. She needed all of the resources. And why shouldn't she fight for that? that's not my morality. And what I realized is that's why I can't be in a relationship is I can't make someone feel special enough because I'm too busy connecting with homeless people or I'm too busy working on my projects or I'm, you know, that's I, and yeah, people, why, why, People always talk about their children. You don't know what it's like until you have kids. And then, yeah, your job as a parent is to really care about those kids. But guess what? Other people have kids that care just as much about their kids. And you will undercut that. that person so your kids can survive. I listen to mothers talk about, don't mess with me when I'm a mama bear. And I think, yeah, you know what? Mama bears are killers. You don't even have to mess with their cubs. You just have to accidentally be around their cubs and they will kill you. Is that what you want to be? Is that what you're aspiring to be? A killer? And people do. And they take pride in that. And as a person that decided not to have children and was the best stepdad to two kids, I met them when they were five and nine when I was married and was around for ten years. They had a good dad. They mainly lived with their dad. I was the best Glenn I could be. But I saw that these kids were better off than some other kids, and I didn't think that was cool. But they weren't my kids, so I could think about that. My wife could not think about that. Their father could not think about that. Their father needed to think about the success of my children. Because I always say, you care about you most. That's when I speak on my entrepreneurial skills for students. I say the goal is to take care of yourself so you can take care of others. Because I say it's lifeguard rules, right? And when I was a lifeguard, you had to make sure that you could save this person. And if they were panicking and if they put you in danger, you had to step back. And so there was always this fight. Don't let them drown you. Because if they drown you, you're not a help to anybody, right? So I tell the students I talk to, I said, you care about you most. You have to, but take care of yourself so you can take care of others. And different people have different ideas of what taking care of themselves are. I have an entrepreneurial friend. Her whole goal is to own a jet plane. I think that's a waste of fuel. I think that's a waste of money. That's not my, but hey man, if that drives you, or I have another one that she loves five-star hotels. She loves being pampered. The whole idea of socialism is you can't defend luxury, any luxury. Everyone gets a white shirt. That's it, because that's fair. Well, how do you play that out? So that's capitalism said, all right, well, if you can make the money, you can get whatever you want. And again, it's you care about you most. So I can't defend a five-star hotel. I can't defend pedicures and manicures. I can't defend someone just making me feel good, but she can. And why shouldn't she? don't know I don't have the answer yeah I think that's what allows us to live in this beautiful melody albeit chaotic at times it's still harmonious in its own way and if you can see it you know if you can see that multiple things can be true at once I think it helps you navigate the world that we live in on some level yeah You said that moral compass that each one of us is given, it changes from time to time. As you get older, all of a sudden, true north is over here now. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. It changes. And it's completely specific. And who's to say who is right? And society is just... Majority rule. So I remember listening to a guy that said he hated traveling to work for the Middle East in the Middle East because at five in the morning, the call to prayer came over this loudspeakers throughout the whole city and would wake him up at five in the morning. He wasn't Muslim. But for Muslims, that is their center. That is their essence. That is their city. And who's to say they can't have that? Now we're running into, let's say, immigration problems. I think something in Switzerland, or I think it's Switzerland, is having problems with men that are having problems. Men from North Africa... getting mad that they're not being served first in restaurants before women, because in their culture that they grew up in men are first. And in, in Switzerland, people have been battling that. So women aren't, or men aren't first. And we have that in this country as well. We have a lot of people from a lot of different backgrounds with a lot of different priorities and, And everyone is fighting for their own legitimacy and their own privilege and their own success. And that's the battle of life. The battle doesn't end. Just hopefully you can be respectful about it. But even then, sometimes emotions get in. And I personally have a problem with emotions. I've always tried to walk away from my emotions because it made me make, I would say, bad or questionable decisions. But then... I have no friends because friends depend on emotion friendship depends on emotion like I like you you like me and I definitely don't have romantic relationships because that is a series of bad decisions in my in my world of me on top of the mountain right I'm not making conscious decisions I'm living emotional decisions but we have emotions for a reason. I think the reason is mother nature is gaming us to propagate, right? That's what I think is happening. Other people love their emotions. Read a green wallpaper queen. Her emotion is love. She loves to love, um, who's right. I have no idea. We just kind of coexist respectfully and then try to navigate who's in control when and why and who gets to do what, uh, I don't have the answers. That's, again, why I run that podcast, Difficult Questions, because I just love to explore the friction between two ideals. And I'm not saying one is right. I'm not saying one is wrong. I'm saying I do what I want. That was one of the frictions in my marriage was I just wanted to do what I wanted. I didn't want to do what my wife wanted. She gets to do what she wants, but... She doesn't get to ask me to like doing what she wants. Oh, wait, maybe that is marriage. Oh, wait, maybe I'm doing this wrong. Ah, I don't know. So, yeah, I but I realized that I wasn't making her happy and she wasn't making me happy. And then I started making I got really angry with her. And I started making bad decisions like, oh, you're going to accuse me of adultery? Well, if I'm going to get accused of it, I'm going to go do it. That's not a good decision, Glenn. But Glenn was angry, right? Glenn was like, I'm not liking this. I'm tired of this battle. You're always jealous and accusing me. You think I'm going to have a romantic relationship with this woman that I brought, this homeless woman who's ten years older than I am. No, I love you. All right. But, you know, you and she wasn't we weren't. Let's say. um romantically involved by then anyway this is like I'm just gonna go bad decision glenn like I I in I made my life was falling apart right I hadn't figured out to embrace the absurdism I was making bad decisions left and right um don't do don't be glenn that's one of my inspirational things a lot of my stuff I was thinking about last night Don't be like me. A lot of my stories, okay, don't do this. And this is why. Okay, don't do this. I would like to get a few successes in once in a while, but I've got some good don't do this stories. And this is why. No, don't buy a house in Yeah. So for me, emotion is the bad thing. Everything bad came from emotion. And other people say, well, you're no fun. I don't drink. I've been a teetotaler my whole life. And that bonding, there's some kind of bonding that happens with people when what I call is you you validate their bad decisions, right? They're going to have a drink. You have a drink with them. Oh, now you're, you're bonded in these bad decisions. Other people wouldn't call them bad decisions. Same with smoking, you know, marijuana. No, thanks. I like my sober mind, but that connection is, never exists for me because I'm always the outsider. And if you're always the outsider, what can you get done in a society, right? If you are the proclaimed outsider, I always joke, I realized maybe five years ago that my role models were a combination between fonzarelli from happy days the hey guy without the womanizing right I didn't want the womanizing part but just being your own person living in a garage and uh and clint eastwood's high plains drifter or clint eastwood that that character that just wanders into town and he's never part of anything For some reason, I really in my subconscious gravitated towards that. And that's what I wanted to be. And that's what I am. For good or for bad, right? I'm the guy, I'm the consummate outsider. I am outside. If you try to put me in a group, I don't want to be in your group. Groupthink was listening to George Carlin, and he was very much the outsider. But he was successful. He found a way for people to want to embrace what he was saying and the product that he was giving. How can I be like George Carlin? How can I be like Monty Python? We're still working on it. I think you're doing a tremendous job, Glenn. And the longer our conversation goes, the more the bigger the smile on my face, man. I love the fact that you're bringing up all these different ideas and different points. And I think we've covered like I feel like the hour and a half we've been through was like five minutes, man. I think anybody within the sound of my voice should go down and not only reach out to you and check out the movie that you made, but you know, You know, I, I, what, like they should check out the bag. They should try to start digging into deuce. And I love it, man. I think that you have a really unique way of, of looking at the world and beyond that being a phenomenal storyteller, man. Thank you for that. That's amazing. Yeah. It's been fun work. Yeah. Well, before I let you go, where can people find you? What do you got coming up and what are you excited about? Yeah. Um, My name is a heck of a last name, but if you can spell it, you can find me. I am the only that I know, as far as Google is concerned, I am the only Glenn Dunsweiler in the world. so glenn dunsweiler.com everything comes everything is is that's a hub for everything so that's where you can find me I'm on all social media so twitter facebook instagram threads tick tock all under my name glenn dunsweiler uh so that's the that's the big that's the big hitch hitch if you can spell my last name d-u-n-z-w-e-i-l-e-r and yeah go check out the bag that's again it's my new short film it's up on youtube for free it's my glenn dunsweiler productions uh youtube channel and it's five minutes of a kick in the pants first scene is a lot of cussing because it's a it's a fight scene so be aware of that it's adult adult curse cursing second scene has a few few few uh curse words in it but uh pretty tame other than that it's a bus bus stop conversation and a meeting on a street corner but the first scene is a is a fight so it's a it's a one minute ride It's a one minute ride. So yeah, go check that out, please. That would be amazing to me. I just need eyeballs on that film. That is my voice. That is the way I, from front to back, I did everything except the voice acting. I hired amazing voice actors. They did the perfect characters, but that's written, directed, edited, animated. That is my voice. You want to know what Glenn Dunsweiler is about? Spend five minutes with the bag. That's what I ask. I love it, man. And what about the podcast? When does that air? Is that available on all platforms? Yeah, it's all platforms. I've been doing it since COVID, so about three, four years now. I can get out one episode a month. They're about twelve minutes. Sometimes I have a guest. Most of the time, it's just me talking into a camera. It's also... On YouTube is video, but it's audio on iTunes and Spotify and anywhere else you pick up your podcasts. And yeah, difficult questions with Glenn Dunsweiler. I've been doing it. I can get one episode a month out. I'm looking. I've been... My goal is two episodes a month. And I've been doing that in the past. I did that last month and I'm going to do it this month. So that's my goal. Well, fantastic. Ladies and gentlemen, go down to the show notes, check out the bag, reach out to Glenn. Glenn, hang on briefly afterwards, but to everybody within the sound of my voice, I hope you have a phenomenal weekend, man. I hope you dig down deep and you become the very best person that you could possibly be because the world is waiting to reward you if you're willing to have the courage to take some chances out there. That's all we got, ladies and gentlemen. Have a beautiful weekend. Aloha.