The Freedom Reader

conan o'brien needs a fan want to talk to conan visit teamcoco.com call conan okay let's get started hey reginald welcome to conan o'brien needs a fan hey how's it going hey reginald how are you i'm i'm delightful man i'm doing i'm doing great honestly yeah um i have been reading your your bio your story your marvel origin story uh reginald and it's fascinating it's amazing thank you i i it doesn't rival yours i mean yours is amazing mine is just i'm just trying to make it out here no yours is better yeah honestly i'm sorry reginald reginald i love to i love to toot my own horn but no you have me beat by a country mile um you just have an amazing story you have a law degree from yale law school and uh which uh is insanely uh impressive and um you have an mfa in poetry and here's what's those are incredibly impressive accomplishments and then you add to it that when you were 16 you participated in a carjacking and went to prison for eight and a half years yeah that was not as impressive i think that was the bane of my existence but you i think you live and learn and and for me you know picking up a gun was the most crazy volatile violent thing i've ever done in my life yep and um and nobody tells you that you could do something at 16 that'll change your life forever you know as many teachers that used to sell me you know i i would end up in jail or i could end up in dead because i went i lived in a bad neighborhood so to speak right um i didn't really understand that i could change my life forever and and i did i changed my life forever so that's the reason why i'm here and i'm here because i'm here because i'm kind of devastating thing about it is recognizing that i changed my life forever well there's so much to people like to say unpack here there's so much to talk about um you as far as i know you spent a lot of time in solitary when you were in prison and while you're in solitary you discovered books is that correct yeah i did i did two years off and on in solitary but the thing that's really remarkable is i'm 18 years old 17 years old i'm in a hole and they took all your books from me and the thing is 24 hours in a cell with just four walls not as beautifully decorated as the walls around me yeah i'm gonna say yeah you find yourself that's some impressive artwork around you and i was unraveling and and i heard a guy call out for a book and i realized that these dudes had created an underground library for themselves and all you had to do was call out for a book and they would sing you one and so i said hey yo send me a book and they sent me this anthology called the black poets and that introduced me to robert hayden lucille clifton sonia sanchez langston hughes sterling brown etheridge knight and i'm reading these words and i realized that these poets were able to capture an entire life in 14 lines yeah and i remember buying two books this is the first books i bought with my money it was a sonia sanchez book called under a soprano sky and it was sun zoo's the art of war yeah now i was i was i was trying to survive prison i was 5 5 in 120 pounds oh my god of those two books i read sonia sanchez's book a hundred times and i never really i never finished reading the art of war yeah um because i learned the real way to survive prison ended up being love it ended up being the exact antithesis of what had gotten most of us in prison because i think the antithesis of love is violence and so it was sonia sanchez's under soprano sky that became a part of the pathway of me learning to love myself but also in learning to love myself me learning to understand that we had did horrendous things to land ourselves in prison but that that we could be more than those things and and i've spent my entire life since then trying to prove that to be true i'm curious um had you been at all interested or intrigued by books or even the idea of getting around to books before you went to prison you know the last book that i read um so my local library said uh mr betts we understand you're still in prison but we need you to return this book that you checked out and it was the evelyn woods but but you wouldn't believe what book it was it was the evelyn woods got to speed reading see i've always been obsessed with infomercials right yeah they would have those infomercials yeah how to speed read yeah and i was just like my mom my mom wouldn't let me but she didn't believe that this guy could read you know a thousand words a minute when he was flipping the pages my mom said he's just flipping the pages i said no he's reading listen to this and so i went to the library and i found that evelyn woods book and i checked it out and i still remember the tips that was in it so i've always been fascinated with reading i've always wanted to be a reader my mom refused to let anybody tell me that hardback books came out first yeah so that she could keep giving me the old paperback books of like books i hadn't read yet as if they were new she would be like walter moses new book just came out book came out three years ago you know and so what prison did was like honestly the judge said to me i'm under no illusion that sending you to prison will help but you can get something out of it if you try to right and and i never forgot what he told me and i just had to lean into what i cared about and i asked myself what would you be when you leave prison i mean you 16 now what are you going to train yourself to be while in here yep and i told myself i will be a writer because the only thing that i could name myself as loving in that way outside of my mom was books and i needed to love something that i believe might save me and so i decided to lean into the love of books that's what you're doing that's what you're doing that's what you're doing that's a i mean it's it's kind of stunning to me that you wouldn't encourage people to read who are incarcerated and um you know supposedly the concept behind the penal system is for people to better themselves and reform and grow and so i'm amazed that books are denied to people in solitary and that's a new concept to me because i would think you want people to read you want people to build their minds um and the fact that you had to kind of do it uh secretly is kind of surprising to me yeah but that you know the sort of credit of the department of corrections around this country i think that they've improved and changed a lot yep my my biggest supporters are the department of corrections our first freedom library was in angola uh i i won a and one one b angola in mci norfolk where malcolm x did time and you gotta understand that there's work that we've done um opening 600 libraries across the country um prisons in 14 15 states about 50 different prisons that doesn't happen without the department of corrections and the senior leadership in the department of corrections and the last ceos all um ceos all saying we believe in books we believe in literature and we but i mean we bring 100 pound bookcases and put them in cell blocks that have never had anything but plastic and metal and steel we bring 500 brand new books into the lives of people who many of whom have never seen a brand new book have never smelled the brand new book i mean you know it's about work that i do but and with all due respect it's like the most humbling you know all inspiring thing i've been a part of because to be a part of it is is deliberately why Watch how an invention that dates back hundreds of years, the Gutenberg printing press, actually is still the conduit for people to have access to the world. If we first imagine a printing press, we get them access to. Yeah, yeah. It is, it's cool. Well, I mean, it's beyond cool. I want to make sure I stress this. You get out of prison, you go to Yale Law School, and you have founded something called Freedom Reads. It's an organization that gives incarcerated people access to books. And you guys have, as you said, opened somewhere around 500 libraries across about 45 prisons in 14 states. And this is going to have an enormous impact. I'm sure it already has. But I do think that exposing people to books and giving them the chance to better themselves and find actually the love. Yeah. It's not like eating your spinach. The love of books and the possibilities opened by books, that's a massive thing that you've done. It's huge. I know you're a humble person, but it's incredible. You had this great misfortune when you were 16 years old, and you've, you know, you've, you've, it's just a massive contribution you've made. I cannot tell you how impressed I am by what you've done. I appreciate that. And I, you know. We have seven, eight people in the workforce out of our team of 22 served time in prison, anywhere from 18 months to 30 years. And, and for each of us, you know, books played a profound role in. us reshaping our lives and so i love the fact that i feel like it's um remember i i got a bald head but you remember um um i'm not just a client i'm not just a president i'm a client you know oh yeah yeah the hair club the hair club for men cy spurling cy spurling would end his commercials it was a as a spray i think that you could put on your bald spot he would say i'm not just a satisfied you know i'm not just the president i'm a client and then he would reveal yeah this is like i feel like i just i carry books around with me everywhere to be like we i just don't talk about this i got a book in my bag you know we tell people that we keep books because um books are the talisman that would have kept us safe uh when we chose to pick up pistols yeah books were the talisman that would have kept us safe instead of the pistols that cause more harm yeah the um did you know when you were getting out of did you have a plan when you're sent sentences coming to an end did you have a a clear goal then i am going to get this higher education uh or was it something that unfolded gradually after you got out now i mean i was just talking to somebody a few minutes ago about adhd and one of the real blessings in my life is that i have horrible adhd which means um i've never had a plan in my life and the reality is you go to prison at 16 if you're a person that operates on the plan you might have a hard time i have literally never had a plan i've kind of just moved through this world with a hope and a desire to be better than i was when i committed that crime and a curiosity and an openness and so you know i ended up in law school because i was struggling to get jobs that would support me and i ended up representing friends of mine and i got five people out of prison that i did time with because once i went to law school they were like well duane you're a lawyer can you can you help with my case i started freedom reads because a friend and a supporter who also works for the mellon foundation had asked me what would i do for people in prison if money wasn't an issue and i said we put millions of people in prison i will put a million books in prison and she said how and i said one library at a time and with that phrase i started making up freedom reads i started making up the organization has had a profound change in my life this is the first job that i've had since 2006 because i've essentially been a student and an independent writer and and performer you know from 2006 until now and and now i run an organization with a multi-million dollar budget um 20 people that work under me i mean it's been amazing but i would be lying to you if i pretended like this was a part of a plan i think the only um plan i've had was trust no that's well said yeah i mean that but that's true of that's true of a lot i can't say i had a plan i just um kind of followed my passion and uh and and it was always news to me like i i didn't know where it was going to lead i didn't know where i was going to go i'm sure i took a lot of missteps along the way but you um you know i think that's a good message to get out there is that it's not people saying okay this is exactly what i'm going to do and here are the steps jazz quality to it where you're just playing what you feel and if you trust and you're leading with that kind of positive energy and you marry it to a work ethic things happen and you're a proof of that it's amazing absolutely amazing thank you um you talk about the smell of new books i've been kicked out of bookstores because i just go and smell them oh yeah yeah yeah like you open them and smell them or you're just standing by the bookshelf sniffing the book no i open them and i smell them okay and um i guess it's it's a perversion are people holding if you don't buy the books though as long as long if you buy a couple of the books the people at the bookstore they'd be delighted you know you just gotta buy no i'm just gonna buy two or three you know i'm gonna tell you something reginald i'm a uh i'm a sniffing runner i get a good deep sniff and then i run and i'm wearing a raincoat when i do it the sniff and sprint yeah yeah sniff and sprint i'm that yeah and uh there's my pictures up in a lot of uh bookstores around the country um they'd be like yo they'd be like who was in who was in the section with the books with a reader's digest yeah you know from the early 20th century oh that's favorite section have you seen this man hey it's 100 degrees out and it's a sunny day why are you wearing a raincoat that's my business uh look reginald i'm a creep and you knew that when you contacted us so this is on this is all on you um but i also think that you know a lot of us have bad make bad mistakes when we're around 16 years old we don't have i wouldn't have had access to um any you know i wouldn't have known where to get a gun or but so there's a you know i i there's a quality to some of it which is like yeah mistakes usually people make mistakes bad mistakes when they're in those teenage years that's when they do it and then um you know i'm very aware that i was incredibly fortunate to be in a situation where i'm not able to do it and i'm not able to do it and i'm not able to do it um my bad impulses couldn't get much worse because i'm living in a in a very stable kind of environment do you know what i mean and i wouldn't have known where to get a gun frankly and i used to ask people how do i get a gun you know i did why my sons yeah because you know makes you cool i mean somebody asked me once yes i had no idea i'm gonna disagree with you me with a gun does not look cool i don't think it would do i look like a frightened old woman who found a gun just wondering where to return it the crazy thing about it though is i deeply believe that so like i even as a kid i really had no access to guns yeah i could pretend that i did but i didn't and then this one day i did but i think about my son's life and they have never seen a fight before you know and so some of it i think about how radically different the life that i've been able to provide for my sons have been because they haven't seen the consequences of it and they haven't seen the kind of violence that my childhood was steeped in even if i didn't grow up in the worst neighborhood i didn't grow up in the worst neighborhood but i got beat up more i got beat up you know at least 15 times how many fingers do we have fingers and toes i was you know i spent my childhood on the ropes you know i mean they used to call me glass joe that's that's a joke see cody got me trying to be a comedian now because this is the first time that i've been around somebody truly funny but wait so where did you grow up where where where did you grow up right right outside of dc in pg county maryland yeah okay so which we had the benefit of like the nation's capital and you could see everything and my mom had a great government job but it also had the poverty and in a sense of being a black belt and being like like right outside of the center of everything but literally right outside of the center of it i was the first person in my family to go to college and the first person to graduate from prison yeah and that's not supposed to be a potential reality of somebody growing up in in the 80s and the 90s that's not supposed to be the landscape of what it means to you know be an american citizen but it literally was my perspective yeah what do you what do you credit because there have been many people obviously that have been in your situation and not had this uh spectacular turnaround where do you who do you credit or what do you credit the ability to turn this massive negative into a positive and to as you sort of say pursue love and understanding and acceptance where did that come from i'm gonna go ahead and credit my mom and i'm gonna credit my mom for two reasons um first uh you know on the front end she forgave me and and i didn't she didn't make me beat myself up she just accepted that i was better than that and she had to accept it on her faith you know she had to really believe that i was better than the crime that i committed yeah and convey that to me in such a way that i could believe that i was better and so i'll credit my mom and then she put money behind her belief i took a per legal course in prison she paid for it you know i was buying those books in prison she sent me the money for it so i'll credit that and i will also credit you know like every time somebody was honest with me yeah the judge was honest with me he told me i'm under no illusion that sending you to prison will help but you can't get something out of it and it was it was a challenge as as well as just being a statement that like you 16 and everybody else is going to tell you how little power you have how small you are how violent prison is i'm gonna tell you you can get something out of it if you want and i think that i've always had this attitude once i went to prison and felt like i was i have sinked to rock and roll and i'm like i'm gonna get something out of it if you want and i think that i've always had this attitude once i went to prison and felt like i was i have sinked to rock bottom that i could be who i say i am and and i have just sort of committed myself and dedicated myself in a go away to doing that. And then I also say the last thing is that because I spent so much time in prison, I was able to become an autodidact. I was able to pursue and chase my interests. And I was able to learn a lot about things that I thought were completely unrelated until they became related. Who would have known me maneuvering around the Department of Corrections and around COs and around wardens would be the skillset that I needed 20 years later when I'm starting an organization that demands that I not look at COs and wardens as my enemies. I had to choose in prison that they weren't my enemy. And that's why it's easy for me to do it now. I had to choose in prison that I had a story that needed to be bigger than me being a felon so that the COs had to have a story that was bigger than them being a CO. And so it was all of these small things that actually built a set of skills that people trusted me to deploy in a way that matters. But honestly, I'm just here for the ride. And I could say that I wouldn't have guessed any of this when I was 16. I wouldn't even have guessed that I would survive prison. But I don't think I would trade anything for the journey. Well, Reginald, you're an incredibly inspiring person, a really impressive person, honored to get to talk to you, seriously. And you're doing something that's huge, really is huge. Very few people can say they've had this kind of impact. Yeah. That you're going to have on all these lives. And so I could not be happier to talk to you. And if you have a question for me, sometimes people call and they have a question. You may not have a question for me. I do. I got one. And I'll tell you, I wrote you myself like two o'clock in the morning when I was like, man, I would love to be on this show. And it is one of those things. It's like, I'm going to be on this show. I'm going to be on this show. I'm going to read this. And out of everything that I've done, I really jumped out the window like that. But two o'clock in the morning, I sent that email out. And the question I have now is we all say books change our lives, but we live different reading lives. I wonder what book changed your life or what book you really remember from your 20s. Wow. I remember there's this book, I think I've mentioned it before by a writer named Shara called The Killer Angels. And it's about the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg. And it's written. It's, it's a fiction. It's written like fiction, historical fiction. But it's very beautifully written. And I read this book, and I just became obsessed with it. And I had already been a fan of history, but I read this book, and I've gone back and read it many times since. And it's just kind of a beautiful, very accurate account of history. And it's just kind of a beautiful, very accurate account of not only what happened, but the kinds of personalities that were involved. And it just brought what could have been a really dry historical account to life. And I realized you can do that with anything. Do you know what I mean? Any, any story can be told in a very dry, boring way. Or if you've got a really talented writer and storyteller, they can tell it in an amazing way. And that book was really powerful for me. Really powerful. See, look, I'm going to tell you, you won't even believe this. This is such a great question. That's such a great answer. My son's birthday is the Gettysburg, is the date of the Gettysburg Address. Oh, wow. Okay. That's my oldest son's birthday, November 19th. Well, get the Killer Angels. Now, this is perfect. Get the Killer Angels. You're going to read it. It's just a great book. And if it was just fiction and wasn't about real, how the battle really unfolded, it's just filled with amazing characters it's so well done i think shara died shortly after he wrote it he died young um but it's just fantastic um you should go on in the library yeah i'm putting it in the freedom library for now on it's going to be in the freedom library this is a great new hey let me ask you a question how do people um how do people donate is there a way that people can donate to this cause yeah they should go to the website freedom reese f-r-e-e-d-o-m-r-e-a-d-s yeah okay that o-r-g and um they could donate right at the website i think that i mean uh i know i'm gonna want to make a donation um and i'm gonna make david make a donation of course with your credit card with um but no i i love what you're doing i love your message i love your energy your positivity your sweetness um I mean um you know we you're one of those people i get despairing sometimes about all the stuff that's happening in the world and then i meet someone like you and i think i think we're going to be all right so um but then i go back to drinking um and book sniffing god i'm leaving this interview right now and i'm gonna oh you're ending it on book sniffing i'm gonna go i'm gonna end it so i can get to there's a there's a bookstore just down the street oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh i'm gonna go i'm gonna go i'm gonna go i'm gonna end it so i can get to there's a there's a book store just down the street put on my put on my put on my bathrobe and go rushing in there you're book sniffing my book sniffing robe yeah hey reginald well i don't want to go into that let's just say it was about personal it was about churchill that's all you need to know um hey reginald uh be well keep doing what you're doing i hope we get to meet in person someday because i'd be honored to shake your hand really i will be honored to meet your person thank you so much and everybody else man the whole team has been lovely from the first interview oh cool now it's been amazing well i gotta let them all go today but getting some ai in here to replace them all right take care reginald bye bye take care guys conan o'brien needs a fan with conan o'brien sonam of sessian and matt gorley produced by me matt gorley executive produced by adam sacks jeff ross and nick leo incidental music by jimmy vivino take it away jimmy supervising producer aaron blaird associate talent producer jennifer samples associate producers sean doherty and lisa berm engineering by eduardo perez get three free months of sirius xm when you sign up at siriusxm.com slash conan please rate review and subscribe to siriusxm.com slash conan o'brien