The Mindful Activist – Episode 8
Matt Ready: Matt Ready: Okay, so Facebook just went live. All right, so you should see on my timeline, I just went live. How can you see… I’m going to share it.
Scotty McNab: So we can watch it and then watch myself watching it?
[Laughter]Matt Ready: We could be doing that.
Scotty McNab: You see, as a comedian, I’m totally into that.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: It’s like, oh man! I get to see me too! Come on man!
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: That’s like the best of any world.
[Pause] [Matt sets up the equipment]Matt Ready: Aaron is already watching and we’re also on YouNow. We’ve got a couple people who came in, Isabella, Sea Snowy, Thelma A. I’ll turn this audio off it’ll drive us — [unclear 00:01:32] crazy feedback.
Scotty McNab: Well, as much as I love Hendrix [as heard], they don’t know how to work the feedback like he did, so.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Okay. We’re live on Facebook, we’ve live on YouNow, we’re live on YouTube, and we’ve got like a couple people watching [laughs] and let’s see, I tweeted out in case anyone wants to try to actually join the podcast, which someday is going to really be the fun part. Let’s start the meeting.
Scotty McNab: So if somebody’s looking for the stream on Facebook, as far as going live, do they need to be your friend? Or do they need to —
Matt Ready: I don’t actually know. I think if you see it and you share it, I think —
Scotty McNab: Okay.
Matt Ready: Do you see the stream on my, anywhere on there yet?
Scotty McNab: One second. Let my “mumi” know what’s going on [laughs].
Matt Ready: What did you say?
Scotty McNab: My “mumi”
[Laughter]Matt Ready: That’s great, I never heard that one.
Scotty McNab: Yes, I was kind of those [sings The Odd Couple theme by Neal Hefti] things, you know, I was always trying to keep things clean [inaudible].
Matt Ready: 12:46. We’ve got plenty of time! We’re so ahead of schedule.
Scotty McNab: This is so unlikely.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: I’m always like, “Oh my God, I want to get from Bremerton to Port Townsend in 10 minutes!”
[Laughter]Matt Ready: [Types] …to join our live podcast with… Can I say comedian Scotty McNab?
Scotty McNab: [Laughs] You can say whatever you want to say, that’s fine.
Matt Ready: Comedian and filmmaker.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Not yet, not yet.
Matt Ready: Film student?
Scotty McNab: Film student, sure. Procrastinator…
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Let’s see what else that would be appropriate. Son of Port Townsend?
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Let’s see. Go People! Carmen, Aaron, Diane, go people! Dropped in Facebook. We’re not quite live yet, we’re going live at 01:00 p.m. Thank you everyone that’s dropped in so far. You can sit here if you want to be on camera, start to feel the energy of the universe staring at you.
Scotty McNab: [Laughs] I’m now going to put my phone away too.
Matt Ready: [Unclear 00:06:04] actually see.
Scotty McNab: Can you get, can you get this in there? [Pats his belly] Oh, man, I’ve been working on this for years. I’m pretty proud of it.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: So, let me show it around a little bit on cameras.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: That doesn’t just happen, you know?
Matt Ready: You’ve got to work on that? [Laughs]
Scotty McNab: You’ve got to work for that. I started out in the “Chair force.”
Matt Ready: The “Chair force”? [Laughs] Yeah, you can keep talking to the camera. I have a couple more things to do [laughs].
Scotty McNab: Okay.
Matt Ready: If you want. Do your stand-up routine.
Scotty McNab: Probably we’ll just let things flow naturally.
Matt Ready: Yeah?
Scotty McNab: Yeah.
Matt Ready: Do you talk about religion?
Scotty McNab: I might jump in and out of most subjects, so yeah, that’s on there. A little bit of religion, a little bit of frustrations, you know, it’s a good place to let frustrations out every once in a while, and ironically they’re both to do with traffic.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Is that what your stand-up is mostly about? Your two frustrations?
Scotty McNab: No, no. I like to wing it too sometimes and other people. It’s like you’re a little ventriloquist puppet.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: I really need a producer. Today we’re doing extra complicated, because we’re on YouNow, which is where young people are doing video.
Scotty McNab: No wonder I’ve never done video there.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Yeah [laughs].
Scotty McNab: That’s why they’re actually showing up, it’s like, “Yeah, we’ve been on this.” So has this forced you to learn a whole lot as far as this kind of broadcasting?
Matt Ready: Oh yeah. You’ve got to learn a bunch to do this right.
Scotty McNab: It’s cool.
Matt Ready: Okay. [Types] …watch on Facebook live or blah blah blah… Okay, I’m going to share this on Facebook. Consider my work done there.
Scotty McNab: I’m going to take a picture of you sharing it, if I’m fast enough. Oh, that’s amazing.
Matt Ready: What’s that?
Scotty McNab: Back of the head shot, you know, all the things you want in your composition.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Back of the head, somebody posing on the phone like, “Hello?” and then somebody pointing at a monitor. Can you do that? Can you like — no.
Matt Ready: What do you want? I’ll do whatever you want.
Scotty McNab: No, I’m just kidding.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: It’s like, “Wow, you just didn’t even try, did you? Good job!”
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: “You just went there, took three photos and came back. What am I supposed to do with this?” you know.
Matt Ready: Okay, almost there.
Scotty McNab: Cool. I’m going to see if I can get that link and forward it since we’re not officially started.
Matt Ready: Yeah. I mean we can’t start early. I mean we can like have a pre-show early, but we said 1 o’clock.
Scotty McNab: What is this word? Earrr? [Laughs] So I’m pretty impressed with this community going on here, it’s pretty cool.
Matt Ready: Oh, yeah?
Scotty McNab: It was certainly not here when I left three years ago, and it’s nice to see something so progressive in a place that holds those values [crosstalk].
Matt Ready: Bam! That one went down.
Scotty McNab: Okay. Or whatever.
Matt Ready: Okay, now I’ve got to decide what’s more important, YouNow, I guess you know it YouTube, you’re just out of luck. No one ever watches on YouTube anyways. We’ve got a bunch of other cameras going. You want to see — I’m going to start this one. You want to see what I did last night?
Scotty McNab: Yeah.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: That sounds like a movie, yes.
Matt Ready: It’s this, up here on this screen. You’re ready?
Scotty McNab: Uh-huh. I think only like Brits and Welshmen, because he’s British, right?
Matt Ready: Yeah.
Scotty McNab: Could pull that shirt off.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Of course I’m wearing this [British accent].
[Laughter] [Video plays]Scotty McNab: Pretty cool, man.
Matt Ready: Basically, each episode had musical part and I just put those together.
Scotty McNab: Yeah, it’s badass. I can’t use that again. Scratch!
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: It’s off the list. Nothing else is badass.
Matt Ready: Fine camera.
Scotty McNab: Yeah, yeah. That’s the one they’re going to send me actually from Full Sail.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: No, no Full Sail, they’re not actually going to send me that one. I’m trying to get to that link.
Matt Ready: The Facebook link?
Scotty McNab: Yeah. My phone has been ringing.
Matt Ready: That’s my favourite.
Scotty McNab: Yeah, that’s good!
Matt Ready: I want you to see what you’re up against when we do the musical intro. We don’t actually play music at the beginning. You just dance.
Scotty McNab: Oh, you just dance, okay.
Matt Ready: Yes [laughs].
Scotty McNab: Okay. That’s some good mix in there. [Unclear 00:13:30].
Matt Ready: 12: 56. We’re getting closer here.
Scotty McNab: Yeah.
Matt Ready: All right. Let’s see. If somebody does join the Zoom broadcast, then I’ll hit record, but I’m not going to start recording ‘cos it will record the actual Zoom video conference, so we’ve got to remember that. If someone jumps in here and actually start talking to us, then I’ll turn around and hit record on it. Although we will record them technically, from all these other cameras.
Scotty McNab: Cool. Okay.
Matt Ready: Let’s see. Facebook can kind of see us and YouNow can kind of see us. It says one person watching, so someone, one of those people is still actually watching, and one person’s watching on Facebook. I don’t know which on it is, it could be Carmen, Diana, Aaron. Did you share the link? Did you figure out how to do that?
Scotty McNab: I think I know how to do it, but it’s not being very nice to me right now as far as even coming up, so I’m not going to name the type of phone coverage that I have, but it rhymes with Sprint.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Okay, it’s Zint, so apparently in this location right here, this very space —
[Bell rings]Matt Ready: That means someone jumped into our video.
Scotty McNab: Awesome! Welcome!
Matt Ready: Hey! Whoever jumped it’s a Dave Mik. Is that —
Scotty McNab: That’s my brother!
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Yeah! All right, cool!
Matt Ready: Are you actually going to join the show Dave? Or are you just going to listen? I wonder if he can hear us? That would be a good thing to know. Can you hear us Dave? Can you like chat or something so we can tell? That would be great to know. Well, the microphone says it’s getting stuck, so —
[Sudden noise]Scotty McNab: Oop! There’s something. What a coincidence. I know him! I know this guy!
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: I’m pretty sure! Hey! There he is.
Matt Ready: How’s it going Dave? Are you going to share our video?
David McNab: How are you guys? [Loud noise] No, I’m just going to [loud noise].
Matt Ready: You have a great microphone there.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Okay.
Scotty McNab: It’s good for listening.
Matt Ready: You’re going to listen in. Are you watching on Facebook?
David McNab: On Zoom.
Matt Ready: Well, okay. Oh, on Zoom?
Scotty McNab: He’s such a young guy.
Matt Ready: All right, so you’re actually watching on Zoom, I’ll turn on the zoom camera then for you.
David McNab: Yeah.
Matt Ready: Let’s see, camera —
Scotty McNab: Is it behind us?
Matt Ready: No, it is —
Scotty McNab: Okay, good. I was like [laughs] —
Matt Ready: It is right here unfortunately though. It’s not going to be the greatest angle for him [laughs] but if you go on to Facebook, you can actually watch the video if you could find the Facebook [inaudible].
David McNab: Okay. Thanks guys!
Matt Ready: All right. I’ll just mute you, okay? But you can like text-chat or something if you want to say something to us.
Scotty McNab: Yeah! That would be cool.
Matt Ready: Is that cool?
David McNab: Yeah! That’s cool.
Matt Ready: Or I could leave you un-muted, and you can just interrupt us if you want.
David McNab: No, I don’t want to do that. I’ll just be on mute. That’s cool.
Scotty McNab: I know him.
Matt Ready: One o’clock!
Scotty McNab: [Laughs] I know that guy.
Matt Ready: Okay. Let me just double check here. We’ve got camera, camera, we’re recording, we’ve got the microphone’s even on. Okay, ready?
Scotty McNab: Yeah.
Matt Ready: A moment of Zen here, getting ready.
Scotty McNab: Okay. Are we going to dance next?
Matt Ready: Yeah. First thing’s intro music. And cue the imaginary intro music.
Scotty McNab: [Laughs] Oh yeah!
[Matt and Scott sing and dance without music]Scotty McNab: Uh-huh, uh-huh. I’m riding a horse.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Doing the sprinkler.
Scotty McNab: Sprinkler.
Matt Ready: All right, great! Thank you. Welcome to another episode of the Mindful Activist podcast. This is episode 8. My guest today is Sir Scotty McNab, a very famous comedian and film student, and twin brother, father, master chef.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Sculptor, bodybuilder…
Scotty McNab: Yeah, I built this over time, yeah. It takes a lot, I’ve got to feed it to keep it, and I like to say I’m single by choice but it’s sometimes by profile, so I mean I have to be real about that.
Matt Ready: All right, all right. Let’s see, oh! I should finish my intro here. My name is Matt Ready, I’m the host of this podcast and I’m also the Founder of The Global Consensus Project, the developer of the hive1.net, activist social media platform and I’m also an elected politician, I am a elected Hospital Commissioner for East Jefferson County, Washington State, a county of about 30,000 people. All right, on to the show. Did I give a thorough enough introduction? Is there anything else you would like to tell the world about, when is your next bodybuilding performance?
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Yeah, I build bodies in my garage. No. I am a lot of things. I’m a Port Townsend person, whatever that means.
Matt Ready: Well, for those who don’t know what Port Townsend is, this is a global podcast, some people may not have heard. What would you say is the defining characteristic of Port Townsend, Washington State?
Scotty McNab: I’ll just say that when you turn about 13, there’s this granola lady that pops out of nowhere, and she throws the granola and she’s like, “All right! Groovy! Cashews! Oh, a raisin. Okay! So, you have some really chill parents, that’s great! You’re going to go places in life and — oh, what I am seeing here? You’re going to join the military for 20 years —
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: — and stay in there, but you’re going to live,” and I was like, oh, that sounds crazy, but…
Matt Ready: Is this like a magical granola woman?
Scotty McNab: Yeah! That’s what she told me, at least, so then I just had to do those things.
Matt Ready: It was like a prophecy?
Scotty McNab: No, yeah, kind of like that.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: She was reading the granola. So she read the granola and that’s kind of what happened to me. I went to college for a year, I had a basketball and theatre scholarship. I went to school for that, and —
Matt Ready: Theater like acting? You’re an actor.
Scotty McNab: Yes.
Matt Ready: I should have introduced you as actor Scotty McNabb. Did you do Shakespeare?
Scotty McNab: Actually yes, but I was Haberdasher in The Taming of the Shrew I believe.
Matt Ready: Could you give as a little line from that?
Scotty McNab: I don’t think I had a line for that.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Let him stand here and haberdasher.
Scotty McNab: Who needs a hat? Or whatever, something like that. I think that’s what he wrote. It’s on the scrap floor stuff, you know. I did join the Air force after coming back from college. I ran away from my beautiful hometown to do that.
Matt Ready: Why did you do that?
Scotty McNab: Right.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: What were you thinking?
Scotty McNab: So anyone who grew up here —
Matt Ready: You were trying to escape a troubled home or something?
Scotty McNab: No. My home was great. Our both parents were awesome and still are.
Matt Ready: Did your brother pick on you a lot?
Scotty McNab: He’s a little bigger than me, taller that is, stronger, but no, he didn’t pick on me, although he did hold me down and spit in my eye once, after telling me he would and I didn’t believe him, and then, oh man! I was wrestling for my life. We played basketball a lot, you know, the scholarship and all, and we should have wrestled, I’m just going to say that, we should’ve wrestled.
Matt Ready: You mean on a wrestling team?
Scotty McNab: Yeah.
Matt Ready: I’m sure you wrestled each other playing.
Scotty McNab: Yeah, constantly.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: And he held me down and literally spat in my eye, which I deserved because I didn’t believe him that he could do it.
Matt Ready: Right, if someone threatens you and you don’t believe them you deserve the threat to be carried out [laughs].
Scotty McNab: And I was always a little more sneaky with fighting than he was, so I probably deserved it. I’m just going to say that. I’m getting off topic.
Matt Ready: So that drove you, the bullying of your brother drove you to 20 years in the Air force.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: No, no, no.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: No. I left here because many people from Port Townsend know that there’s not always a lot of opportunity for someone who’s say 19-20 years old in Port Townsend. It’s a beautiful place, wonderful vibe and wonderful place —
Matt Ready: About a population of about 10,000.
Scotty McNab: Sure, right. My boss at the time was a retired Navy Senior Chief and I know I didn’t want to join the Army or the Marine Corps of the Navy, so I chose the Air Force because I didn’t want to go work at the Mill. No offense to the mill workers because they got to stay here, and I feel like I missed out on a lot. Sometimes I regret that choice, but overall I started out as a loadmaster on C-141 and flew around the world with those, and then I had my —
Matt Ready: Those C141. Those are beautiful planes? Is that a plane?
Scotty McNab: [Laughs] They’re planes, yes. I was the cargo guy, I wasn’t a pilot, so I got to wear the flight suit and pretend that I was flying something, the whole time I would be like — no I’m just kidding.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: I wish I was a pilot.
Scotty McNab: Yeah, although we did trick the army one time —
Matt Ready: Let’s do a little, let’s just fly.
[Matt and Scott pretend they are piloting]Scotty McNab: Yeah. 2-9-9-2 pilot.
Matt Ready: Oh, going over a big turn.
Scotty McNab: Oh boy, this is a lot of turning, this is really dangerous!
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: It’s little, yeah. Then I had my [unclear 00:24:50] and I joined, I cross-trained into what’s called public affairs and I was a military journalists for the last about 14 years.
Matt Ready: Military journalist.
Scotty McNab: Uh-huh. A photo journalist, editor, and I did the landing design for newspapers, that kind of thing.
Matt Ready: As a military journalist, did the military have to approve what you wrote?
Scotty McNab: It’s internal news.
Matt Ready: I mean it’s military news.
Scotty McNab: It’s not going to be investigative reporting, but just telling the story of your mission and trying to show it in a nice light for the most part. There’s a lot of good things and good people in the military. It was hard going in with values that were different than most military people. I didn’t become a Republican, and I didn’t stop thinking about the people that were involved in our conflicts, but I did my job writing stories and telling the story of the people that were involved. There’s a balance there, and I think that when you have different morals and values than a lot of people that are doing the same thing as you, it’s easy to just push them away, but I couldn’t let myself do that because they mean a lot to me.
Matt Ready: The people that you worked with, the other members of the Air Force.
Scotty McNab: Right. A lot of people tend to have kind of a right-wing feel to them after being in the military, but wouldn’t it make sense if you’re in the military to vote for somebody that doesn’t want to fight a war? Or that isn’t backing major corporations that support war? Doesn’t it make sense that you’re — when a Democrat gives a 2% raise and the Republican gives a 3% raise, that that $20 you get each paycheck doesn’t by your vote, you still have the people back home that you grew up with, and the morals that you grew up with. Doesn’t it make sense to stay who you are?
Matt Ready: Does that actually resonate with people in the military that — do they have the impression that Republicans want to pay them more?
Scotty McNab: Yes, you hear that a lot, and it’s true, but it’s not very much. I mean if there’s a 10% raise across the board and an airman is getting or E1 is getting $20, and a General is getting $200 more of paycheck, then, come on! [Laughs]
Matt Ready: Is your sense that — my feeling is that there’s a lot of dissatisfaction with post-military careers, like maybe the VA and there’s a lot of homeless vets and stuff. Is there a feeling that Democrats or Republicans, one of them, you know, cares more about like military post-career or is it more like — or do they not really think that?
Scotty McNab: I think to generalize, to be safe and to not be very, very, very specific on this, I think that most vets feel like Republicans are there to take care of them more, but that’s not necessarily the case when you really step back and look at it. I think people in office want to take care of their constituents, regardless, and —
Matt Ready: Well…
Scotty McNab: — they know how important —
[Laughter]Matt Ready: I don’t know about that.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: I don’t know about that.
Scotty McNab: Depending on the level [Laughs].
Matt Ready: I think people in office want to be in office. That’s the first thing they want, ‘cos you have to want to be in office to go through the horrible experience of running for office, having people pick through your past, and write about you, and make you go to debates and stuff. You have to have a reason to do that. Anyways, let’s jump forward here a little bit. When did you get into comedy and why did you do that?
Scotty McNab: Right. For me, comedy was always something that was a part of my life because my dad is really funny, Frank McNabb those of you know him, he’s very funny, and my mom loves to laugh and she’s very funny, and being a twin, and my sister loves to laugh, and my brother and I basically, our fun that we have, whether it’s over the phone or in person, a lot of times it’s pretty much sketch comedy, you know, it just flows for us. I learnt pretty quickly that sketch is not the same as stand-up, and you have to approach them differently and do a little more thinking with stand-up ahead of time. As far as when I started, I wanted to start for so long and I’ll tell everyone not just with comedy but for anything, if you really feel it, and you really want to go do something, you should do it and start it, and do it now, do it right now, start planning, because —
Matt Ready: Like really right this second [crosstalk] saying some jokes, ‘cos your first time it’s like, not to cut you off, but it’s like 90% of accomplishing anything is just do it. You can do it badly. That’s my whole attitude with this podcast is do it badly, it’s still 90% victory just to have it done.
Scotty McNab: Yes, absolutely, just to start doing it, and people start looking at you differently like, “Hey! You do podcasts! Or city comedy!”
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: I’m not always good, I’m not always great, and sometimes I’m really, really great. No, I was kidding.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: No, sometimes I’m terrible, you know, and I’m still mastering that, I’m still mastering hosting, those things come over time, but just start it. I was in San Antonio and I’ve heard about this open mic and it was at Laugh Out Loud Comedy Club in San Antonio, and I started out there and I’ll tell you, I went inside myself like you seen in the movies, I was like, oh I was so scared, and they told me I was going out first.
Matt Ready: First! You opened in this —
Scotty McNab: Yeah, and I love people, I love being loud and crazy and stuff, but it was like, “Oh, no I’m starting first!” So I felt myself go inside of myself, and the sound kind of was like [makes muffled sound] like you hear in the moves, and my vision started to tunnel a little bit, and I started speaking without hearing the words coming out of my mouth, and then I got that first laugh and it was like, woosh! and it went away. It was amazing! It was like, holy crap! And from then on I loved it.
Matt Ready: Interesting. It’s like you retreated into the little alien that sits inside your skull, and he was in there like, “What am I doing driving this thing?”
Scotty McNab: “Usually it works!”
Matt Ready: “Are they going to laugh?” It’s like your speaking like through a straw, like “This is my joke! Is anyone going to laugh?”
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Exactly, and I heard that first burst of laughter and it was like, “Oh, yeah!” but there are definitely times where you drive away going, “Ha ha! I’m funny!” and then other times where you drive away going, “I’m funny damn it!”
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: You know, looking in the mirror, you’re like, “I am –” sort of pointing out at yourself, “I am funny! People will say I’m funny!” You know.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: That is interesting to me. What does it mean to be funny? What the heck is laughter? Could you explain that to me?
Scotty McNab: I would say that laughter would be an unsuppressed or something you can’t suppress, I mean if it’s — sometimes it’s about challenging the audience. When people — you’ll see comedians go up and say, “Hey, jerks!” you know, or whatever, and people look a little bit uncomfortable, and they’ll laugh, but as long as you don’t keep pounding them into the ground, they kind of like it. They think it’s kind of funny, you know, so there’s different types of funny.
Matt Ready: I thought about this once like 15 years ago for a few minutes, and I was thinking something to do with surprise. It’s like laughter, I mean the very, very root of it is some sort of surprise, it could be a shock, negative, it could be positive, a pun, you know, it’s something that surprises your brain. Still, if it really surprises you and it’s on the border between like being scared or being upset, or being whatever, it sort of hits that magic spot, but then we laugh, you know, and then it’s like the whole brain is like firing and I think it’s a really powerful magical therapeutic thing.
Scotty McNab: It’s storytelling. That’s what it is. You learn about storytelling in school, in college or whatever, and you —
Matt Ready: You do?
Scotty McNab: Well, maybe in politics?
[Laughter]Matt Ready: I guess you learn about storytelling in life.
Scotty McNab: Say you’re writing and you start with a new story, you have your lead to pull them in and then you have your netgraph to say, this is what we’re going to talk about.
Matt Ready: What did you say?
Scotty McNab: It’s called a netgraph. [Laughter]
Matt Ready: Is it a journalistic term or a military term?
Scotty McNab: Yes, well, I don’t know anymore. I don’t know what’s what anymore. It’s journalistic, but it’s a netgraph, and then it says, this is kind of the stuff we’re going to cover, and then you go ahead and cover it. Then you follow up with it’s a lead back, it’s a tie back ending basically, where you like, remember when I said this?
Matt Ready: I guess you mean standup comedy routine like have a pretty good joke at the beginning and then [muffled sound] at the very end it’s like, bam! And sometimes it doesn’t work at all, but it’s like “I’m going to go back to that joke at the beginning and…” it’s a punchline and they’re like, “Well, thank you,” and you know.
Scotty McNab: It’s a callback, basically you go in along a path but you’re going this way along it, and then you come back, it’s like, “Here we are again!”
Matt Ready: Awesome. Okay. I’m going to ask you the question I have to ask every guest. I want to keep going on the humor route. Do you consider yourself an activist?
Scotty McNab: I do in several ways. I consider myself an activist in that I was able to navigate a military career and still hold my values about treating people with respect, about loving others, about not believe in hype, and I consider myself an activist as a parent because I discipline my children without hurting them or anything, and a lot of parents don’t discipline their children anymore, and I think there needs to be, the parents need to lead their children and they want their parents to lead them, so that they don’t have to make it up as they go. To me that’s a form of activism as far as being a solid role model for your parents. They never have to doubt, and I’m not like, “I’m in control!” but they never have to doubt that I’m going in a direction — I’m going to tell them if I’m going to change directions, just to let them know, and then we’ll go down that path.
When they were young, if they were acting out it was like, “Alright, you need to go off to your room, and when you’re ready to come back to our little society of we’re doing here and have peace, then that’s cool. Don’t mess with my peace.” [Laughs] So they would come back and they were fine. I do that with coaching basketball, “Please go sit with your parents until you’re ready to come play ball, and when you’re ready, you’re welcome back.” There’s no yelling, there’s no arguing —
Matt Ready: No grudges.
Scotty McNab: Yeah, no grudges, you just keep going, and you’re back, you’re plugged in and you keep going. Some other things that I’ve really felt in my life where I spent 20 years in the business of war, and I am spending the rest of my life with a business of peace. To me that starts with love. There is no question that can’t be answered with love, and I was just in traffic on the way up here, and I had a hard time finding love for somebody that was right in my butt all the way up here on Chimacum Valley Road [laughs] and it was like, “I don’t love this person.”
[Laughter]Matt Ready: I – don’t – love – you.
Scotty McNab: The truth is, it’s so much harder and you’re being a warrior when you love someone, because it’s so much harder to love than it is to hate them or feel anger, and anger isn’t a bad thing necessarily but you have to recognize what it can do; does it does it push you forward into more anger or does it solve the problem? It usually pushes you forward into more anger, and if you hold on to that then you keep it inside, but as soon as you start letting that go and start taking a deep breath and letting love in, and saying, “You know what? Maybe she’s in a hurry, maybe I’m doing something wrong, maybe whatever.” Then you start opening the door to finding a little piece and a little bit of love that you didn’t have for that person. That’s a human being in that vehicle. That’s a human being with people that love her, and she’s valuable to all of us in so many ways, and so for me that’s — does that make sense?
Matt Ready: Oh, yeah! I’m just reflecting back for myself ‘cos I’ve personally gone on a very interesting journey to get here in my life, and I totally agree with you about the love thing —
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Love thing [sings]. We should dance again.
[Matt and Scott dance]Matt Ready: But — not but, I don’t want to follow that with —
[Text message appears on screen]Matt Ready: That’s just a text message from my wife.
Scotty McNab: Cool.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Let’s clear that off.
Scotty McNab: I just thought maybe somebody was talking to us.
Matt Ready: No one has said anything, but there are two people watching there, and there’s one person. I think Sherry joined us.
Scotty McNab: Awesome.
Matt Ready: Okay. This is what I wanted to say — all the sounds, like what’s happening around us?
[Laughter]Matt Ready: We’ll come back to what I want to say. I want to ask you about something that I asked a few other guests. How do you react when someone uses a violent communication towards you? If ever. You’re a pretty big guy, so it might — maybe in the military, I’m sure you had but someone like raises their voice to you with clear emotion to tell you to do something or to stop doing something.
Scotty McNab: I’ve never been in a fight in my life. Probably part of it is because I was in the Air Force, okay, but that’s not to say there’s not warriors in the Air Force. There are. People don’t necessarily want to fight a 6.2 guy. I mean you’re pretty tall, and I don’t look for a confrontation. I look for finding ways to have peaceful navigation through things. When someone yells at me, there are parts of me that shut down, because that’s not what works for me, it doesn’t help the situation, it makes me feel like they’re debasing their own value by coming at me in a way that’s angry and based in power, it’s a power play.
I’ve tried to learn in the last 15 years that I get to choose how I react to anyone in any situation when they talk to me, or when they come to me with whatever emotion they have. I get to actually take a step back and decide how I react, and it’s a lesson that I’m still learning and I’m working on, but as far as answering the question specifically, I feel like I usually try to get past the yelling and listen to what they’re trying to say, because there’s a message there. They wouldn’t say it with such urgency unless they’re either a dickhead or [laughs] they really mean it. They could just be a dickhead, but if they are, they still might have something to say.
I hate to get back to the politics on this, but to me in politics, I wish that people would at least listen to what the messages the other person has to say, because there could be something that could add to their message going forward that they could pull from somebody that has a completely different viewpoint, and so many times you see, if you’re breeding dogs, if you breed a certain dog family too much, then they’re going to lose things like the ability to fight off diseases, or to even —
Matt Ready: Are you talking about in-breeding ideas?
Scotty McNab: Exactly!
Matt Ready: If people just have their idea clusters and they only talk to people that agree with them, it’s a type of inbreeding.
Scotty McNab: It is a type of inbreeding.
Matt Ready: That’s a really good — I haven’t used that [unclear 00:42:46].
Scotty McNab: The truth is, that’s what’s happening right now on a lot of Facebook groups, a lot of — we’re being fractured right.
Matt Ready: Don’t inbreed your ideas.
Scotty McNab: Don’t! Yeah. Let somebody come in and tell you you’re an idiot.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Well, not necessarily in those words.
Matt Ready: No. I do a lot of interacting with people that disagree with me, ‘cos I’m in politics and I’m in the campaign, and I was an Occupy facilitator and I find it incredibly stimulating and helpful and positive. When I had TV, I used to love watching Fox News. I loved listening to people that have passion behind their ideas and are trying to make an argument for what they believe in, making some real effort. Fox News if probably one of the most biased news organizations in the world —
Scotty McNab: It’s news?
[Laughter]Matt Ready: — but they would bring on some like liberal or left-wing, they try to bring on someone that wasn’t too good skilled [crosstalk] and that was amusing to watch, they try to find someone who doesn’t know how to — but that’s an example of just watching the power at play, watching how someone who has an agenda, who has like they want to accomplish this, they’re trying to beat someone, they’re trying to make someone look bad, and just watching them do that, for me it’s like watching the NFL. People use their power and they’re trying to use the power of ideas mixed with the power of everything that you can do when you’re talking. You can talk over someone, you can use intimidation, you can use humor. Humor is the very, you know…
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Humor I think is, and this is why I want to come back to humor with you, humor I think is starting to make a real transformation on our society, and I don’t know if you see this too, but with Jon Stewart and The Daily Show; five years ago, 20 years before he retired, he was THE left-wing comic for the media, but he’s like sprouted children, and he’s got John Oliver, and Stephen Colbert on David Letterman, and even the other talk shows are doing news commentary. It’s like everywhere we have satirical, but meaningful satirical criticism of our society going on.
Scotty McNab: But that’s a lot to do with social media, because social media is pushing to the point where everyone can make fun of everyone, everyone can have an opinion, and those are good things, but we have to be open even if you’re far-left or far-right, or in between somewhere, we have to be open to be made fun of, and a lot of people take themselves so seriously. It’s great, but when you see a politician, for instance, on a show and they make fun of them on a show, or on SNL they use their voice, that kind of thing, usually it’s endearing to that person because it breaks down that big huge barrier that they put between you and them. They’re still human beings, they’re human beings and they’re in position where they can’t let their guard down very often, and when they’re being made fun of and they just joke and laugh with it, you start feeling like, “Hey!” —
Matt Ready: You mean if the politician’s actually on the show, like participating?
Scotty McNab: Yes, yes. When you hear about Dana Carvey going to talk to George Bush, to me it’s an example of seeing the person that’s actually there, just a little glimpse of the person that’s there, and I think it’s a good thing. So humor I think solves a lot of things because what comedians are allowed to do that most people can’t, besides rappers, is say what they think. I think that’s why rap is so important because they don’t hold back at all, not at all. The same thing for comedians. Some comedians go over-the-top, some comedians break the rules a little bit, but as long as it’s funny it’s okay. For anyone that’s starting comedy, as long as it’s funny it’s okay.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: That’s the rule!
Matt Ready: You mean as long as one person in the room is laughing.
Scotty McNab: No, no, as long as the majority. Hold on now.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: I wouldn’t even say the majority.
Scotty McNab: Depends on your audience, obviously.
Matt Ready: I mean if you look at George Carlin. I like watching some of his old stuff. He’s barely a comic. He’s just up there just saying like, “The Government hates you guys, thinks you’re all stupid, the government has no interest in your education.” He just rants.
Scotty McNab: He would, he was special.
Matt Ready: He was a unique.
Scotty McNab: He was able to do it with wit and humor as punchlines. Not everybody can do that. It’s hard to find this, that’s why there’s not just a bunch of George Carlins. There’s probably a bunch that followed in his footsteps, but there’s only one George Carlin. The same for Zach Galifianakis, and all those other guys. I saw a comedian when I was in San Antonio lose his mind, because somebody told him he wasn’t funny. He threw his mic stand at the guy in the front row, and he just lost it! I was up next, and I was like, “Oh, my God! What do it do?” I told the kitten joke about like licking milk out of a bowl or some stupid thing like that.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: I actually put milk, not milk, but a little food thing down and then I acted like a kitten. People — it was horrible.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: I thought you were going to say, “People were dying with laughter,” [crosstalk] —
Scotty McNab: They were!
Matt Ready: But they were dying like, “This is horrible.”
Scotty McNab: They were dying inside!
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Brought to you by Scotty, kind of thing but you’re welcome everyone in San Antonio! Yeah, so sorry, I think humor is important, I think humor can change things and progress things when you look at humor, all the humor type channels on YouTube, it’s covering so much more, there’s so much more things that are covered by amateurs that didn’t used to be covered, and so the availability of getting messages out is exponentially bigger, but also you could have your message lost, and that’s where if you’re funny, if it actually is funny, then it works.
Matt Ready: I’ve got this is crazy theory about funny that I want to bounce off you as a world-renowned professional comedian.
Scotty McNab: I am not world renown.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: A world traveled professional comedian [laughs].
Scotty McNab: Olympia, Seattle…
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Okay. This is my theory. It’s not just about being a comedian, it’s just about having fun with people and your friends. I see the world and I think there’s like a fun zone in the world. It’s like an energy zone and comedians are like addicted to this fun zone. In the fun zone you’re laughing, when you get to the fun zone it doesn’t have to be funny anymore to make you laugh, you know, you get on a roll with someone or a group of people and it’s like it doesn’t matter, it’s like, “Oh, she dropped the plate!” or whatever [crosstalk] and you’re dying and you’re like, tears of laughter, ‘cos you’re in the fun zone, and people just love to be there, and they don’t know how to get there always, and a comedian job is, they’re like, “I’m going to pull you into the fun zone with me,” and they’re trying to — I sort of feel like, at least a part of every comedian knows, once you get them there it gets so much easier, they’re with you and you’re just like, bam, bam, and then you’re more comfortable, it’s like — but if you can’t get them there, you get very frustrated. Like at a party, someone likes to tell a lot of jokes at parties, likes to get a lot of attention, like they’d tell a joke and people are looking at him like I’m not going to… “Come on! Come in the fun zone with me!” It’s like, “I want to be in the fun zone! Come on! I’m funny! I’m funny damn it!” [Laughs]
Scotty McNab: Yeah, exactly, “I’m funny damn it”, but not today. Not today. That’s true, and I’ve done a set at the 907 over in Renton area and I just bombed, I just bombed! Next day I went to a place in Seattle and I crushed it with the same set, so sometimes the same stuff doesn’t work with different groups and dynamics of that. What’s funny at the moment can be funny, but there’s all-time funny stuff, and comedians that get to those places are able to take long pauses, they’re able to just take their time, they’re not in a hurry. Newer comedians like me, I’ve only done it for like 5 years now or so, but newer comedians like me who might have 20 minutes on the show or 15 minutes on the show, if the crowd’s not laughing, inside we’re going, “Oh, oh no!” and we’re forgetting jokes, and things like that, and so you try to hurry, and try to rush, and you forget jokes, and forget your punchline or you get ahead of it, so the fun zone is important, it also can have to do with who is in front of you, or who is behind you.
Matt Ready: I don’t know. It’s interesting that you mention the comedians that you silence. I mean that is just like, I get the feeling like the best comedians, the best performers, the best singers are like — it’s the same thing with like singing and dancing, it’s like, “I’m going into this the music zone,” and it’s like, you’re like, “I’m going in there, you can come with me or not. I’m going to have a great time,” and the comedians that can hold silence, I mean I’ve heard of comedians who start with silence, they just go up there and like take the mic.
Scotty McNab: Yes, yes.
Matt Ready: But if you can like say a joke and just like ride the silence ‘cos you’re in your own place and you like I’m going on my beat, forces everyone — hit my heartbeat, you know, it’s incredible!
Scotty McNab: Right, absolutely. And what does that have to say though for speaking to others in non humorous ways, letting that statement be made, you get your message across, and letting there be silence like when you think about — I was in a class where they were specifically talking about that with the “I Have a Dream” speech. There was a pause behind every single one of the things that Martin Luther King said, and it was just so gripping and so amazing, beautiful, and it just gives me chills thinking about it. It’s the power of silence I think that has something to do that.
Matt Ready: Oh yeah, and it’s my primary mode of communication, you know, especially in politics, I am very silent during these political meetings. I will say my piece and sometimes people will like [makes ranting sounds] rant back but I’m done. I just say it and then I ride the silence the rest of the way.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Right. Man this sounds nice you know.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: I liked what I said, I’m just going to ride that.
Scotty McNab: [Crosstalk] Remember the thing I said? Man, I was on it.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: I’m going to think about it for a while. I am so silent right now.
Matt Ready: Did anyone just say anything? ‘Cos it doesn’t really matter.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Exactly. I don’t know what they talked about. I’m sorry, I have no idea what they were talking about. I wasn’t listening, I was in my own silence after I said that thing.
Matt Ready: I’m still enjoying what I said, and they’re still talking.
Scotty McNab: I have a question for you. Are you an activist?
Matt Ready: Yes, absolutely.
Scotty McNab: And how so.
Matt Ready: Well, I first became an activist during the Occupy Movement. I was a cynic up until that point. I believed our government was corrupt and controlled by money, and I didn’t care. I was just going to live my own life, enjoy my own life, but something clicked when I started seeing the Occupy activists coming out to the streets and I heard what they were saying. It was all the resonating things I’ve been saying my whole life, and I was like, I didn’t realize there was anyone else that really was riled up about the corruption of our government, and then I saw how they were organizing. They were using consensus, and using general assemblies.
I was a group facilitator and I started to study how they were doing group facilitation, and it just clicked with me as the most beautiful breakthrough method of group power. It was not electing leaders, it wasn’t a movement following leaders. It was a movement that was learning how to use consensus in as perfect equality as you could for power, and I was like, I love it, I wanted to learn how to do it, I was like I can facilitate like that, I can learn that, so I just went over to Occupy Seattle, I met people there, and I had to decide whether or not I would try to do some Occupy stuff here in Port Townsend, or whether I would just leave and go somewhere.
I decided to help organize here and once I got into it, once I started meeting other activists, I was like, oh my gosh! They were like some of the most exciting, fun, you know, authentic people I’ve ever met in my life. If I had known how cool activists were [laughs] 15-20 years ago when I first came to Port Townsend and it really was a struggle to like make friends, I would have just become an activist just for the socializing. Just to meet the cool authentic inspired people. Not that they’re all, you know, there’s a lot of pretty different type of people that are activists, but the energy of an activist gathering, I love.
And I loved what we were doing, I loved what we were protesting against, and watching another person. [Unclear 00:58:03] big protest in Port Townsend at the Bank of America, and there was definitely a risk of arrest there, and to be with another person and watching them risk themselves for something they believe in, that you believe in, some of them were elderly women, you know, and women with children, and young men, and everything just blows your mind when you see people willing to sacrifice their well-being for what they believe in.
Scotty McNab: Right, right. Are there times where you drive away saying, “I’m equal damn it!” or ‘I was so equal today!”
[Laughter]Matt Ready: No, it’s more like — well, I was a facilitator often, so I was taking responsibility for trying to make any assembly as equal as possible, so it was more learning about when things didn’t go well and working with other facilitators or the group and trying to figure out how to best manage situations when it’s not equal, ‘cos it can get unequal the minute someone grabs power, someone like decides to use violent language and attack someone in the room, you have to figure out a way to be the facilitator, the referee or whatever of that moment, so a lot of people are looking to you as a — I mean in those environments, a facilitator is the most powerful person in the room, and I don’t like power but I loved trying to use facilitator power to distribute power.
Scotty McNab: Right. What are some successes and or failures that you’ve had along the way that have helped you grow?
Matt Ready: Well, I’d say the entire Occupy Movement was both a success and a type of failure. I went to the occupy national gathering twice, two out of the three years that it took place, I helped facilitate the general assembly in one of those. The Occupy Movement was an incredible success in terms of changing the conversation in this country, and really calling the attention to the money in politics problem, I think like never before the whole language of the 99%, the 1%, I think it’s given birth to a generation of a new breed of politicians, and I’m like one of them.
I came right out of the Occupy Movement a movement, Kshama Sawant—I may not be saying the name right—the Seattle City Council member, she came out of the Occupy Movement and she’s doing incredible stuff and I’ve heard lots of stories of different of just activists, just people that even had no interest in going into politics, you know, getting inspired by the people sort of coming out of the woodworks to try to stir up politics.
Even the whole Bernie Sanders Revolution and maybe even to some extent the right-wing populist Trump Revolution. I think that was the discontent of the masses in this country with the incredible imbalance of the power. I think the Occupy Movement really helped to bring that to light and to stir that up, but it did stop. That actually could be a whole topic for a show; why Occupy Movement stopped, and what exactly stopped the momentum of it in the form it was taking, and what could they have done differently, ‘cos I think it’s probably going to happen again. There’s probably going to be another mass movement to really try to fix politics in this country, and every activist and every person that wants to be involved in that cares about it needs to think about, how do we do it correctly? How do we actually change power in this country?
Scotty McNab: What would you say to someone who hears the word activist and gets a little freaked out, first of all, and maybe has feelings like things do need to change, but doesn’t know how.
Matt Ready: Well, it’s interesting that people shy away from the word activist. I guess it has connotations and associations that some people don’t like, but if you look up the meaning of the word activist it’s basically just someone that wants to take action to change the world in a better way. Like you said, if you’re a really engaged parent you’re taking incredible action on a daily basis to try to change the world in a big way by molding these children and helping shape how they are in the world. Activism is just saying, my scope is not just my — societal activism is my scope, is not just my world, my microcosm, it’s like looking at the world at least in some level of broad scale, and saying, I would like to do something to make it better ‘cos there’s a lot of really horrible things happening right now, in our world, and everyone of us sitting in comfort, wherever we are, is allowing it to happen. Maybe that’s part of the [crosstalk] —
Scotty McNab: Is there a way that you’re not a “you’re guilty” sort of finger thing that, sorry —
Matt Ready: No, no. Are you saying that right there I just guilt-tripped people with —
Scotty McNab: No, I’m saying is there a way to say that we’re — it’s not necessarily like you’re not doing anything, but maybe you could be doing something? You know what I mean? To change the message, is that important?
Matt Ready: Yeah, I’m still reflecting on you. That was a beautiful little reflection saying, you know, — and that’s a new language for me, saying it that way it’s — I think to some extent it depends what type of audience you’re trying to reach. I have to reflect on that ‘cos that way I was saying it, I think I’m speaking a lot these days to the alpha dogs in our world, and sometimes —
Scotty McNab: I think a lot of people are waiting for someone to lead them. I think a lot of people are hoping things get better, and hoping is great, it’s good to have hope, but you also have to have action obviously and if they’re seeing it as, “How can I help?” sort of thing, I don’t know. I mentioned before that I feel like our people are fractured and I think that our people are also distracted, and we have these phones, we have these constant connections to a bunch of bullshit that happens and very little of it actually matters. I don’t care what you ate last night, I’m sorry, I just want to let you know that [laughs] —
Matt Ready: On Facebook [crosstalk].
Scotty McNab: Yeah. This is to my Facebook friends, I mean for you guys watching, of course I care what you ate last night, but I’m just saying, we get distracted, we’re being distracted and we need to come together for focus in my opinion, we need to have a rallying call that isn’t about what side of the political fence you are on, but to me at least, we need a rallying call that says, “I am an American human that likes to have my country flourishing and everyone being happy. How can we reach this?” you know, rather than, I’m left or I’m right. I think when you’re rabid, sometimes you can be wrong when—not you— but when we’re so focused on —
Matt Ready: You’d better not be talking about me.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: I don’t care what you [unclear 01:07:09]. Just kidding. I think when you’re so focused in on something, that you can’t listen to the message, in this kind of way I was talking about before, of someone else, then you’re losing a better message. I think that we need love, and I think we need to come together more, and I think we need to have a bipartisan like, this isn’t about politics sort of group, or gathering, or movement. We all need some help, we all need to get through this together, ‘cos we can’t do it by ourselves, and when we stand and we say we need to do this, and we don’t have another step planned out, that’s another thing, you know — I’m not saying you by any means, but those are the things I think about.
Matt Ready: I can tell you what my answer, I mean you asked a great question, I didn’t actually — I think I was just so in shock that you actually asked, “What do you think people should do?” It’s just such a beautiful question. I think basically it’s exactly what you said. I would just say, we are on a spaceship called Earth, all of us are here on this spaceship and we need to just own it, every single person on Earth, and we need to say, “What do we want to do? What do we want different?” and we don’t need to say, “Which of us is the best leader to go and do everything for us?” We need to say, “We own this, and what is going on, and everyone needs to take out their phones and do Facebook live anytime they see anything bad happening, any violence happening in the world, every country in the world where the most horrible stuff is happening, they should just start taking out your phones. Show everything that’s happening that’s horrible, police shootings, anything, because sunlight is sanitizing, it forces us to look at it, and then we need to talk about what can we do to improve this. We shouldn’t be electing people and saying, just do the right thing for a few years and then we’ll talk to you again and vote again, we should literally be saying, this is what we want. We want Universal Health Care in this country, and we should be having those dialogs at every level, figuring out what those solutions are, and not just leaving it to the leaders. The platform I built, the hive1 —
Scotty McNab: What is that?
Matt Ready: It is basically for that. Like I told you, I was a facilitator in the Occupy Movement where I could take a group of like 50 to 70 people, would be about the max, that I could do like a consensus meeting, where everyone was equal, and I could facilitate it in a meaningful way. With the hive software I can take that to millions. I can literally — and that’s why we’re broadcasting this live on every platform that I can get to, it’s really just a way to bring people to this platform where we can have this type of discussion of what do we want, like Standing Rock. I don’t know if you’re familiar with what’s going on in Standing Rock with the water fight and the Indian Reservations and activists going there, but that’s the type of thing that we could, as a country, we could be discussing it on a platform, outside of their little siloed, you know, groups, on a platform where everyone is equal, where it’s a safe space, trolling and violent language is less easy to do because you are asked to actually reveal who you are, you’re asked to log in with a Facebook account, which will — anonymity encourages people to show their worst and meanest self often.
So the idea of each of these episodes is that they are like a live video facilitated discussion, so we could eventually have 50 people live talking and taking turns here, talking and participating in the discussion and on the hive software, people can be like posting answers and questions, and chatting, and posting videos at the same time. Basically it’s like a massive human think tank.
Scotty McNab: I like that you call it hive, for one rather than a swarm ‘cos a swarm is going somewhere else, right? And a hive is staying in the place that they’re at, and making it better, right? And so they’re all working together at the same time to do this. A beekeeper for you.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: Beekeeping.
Scotty McNab: I want to be part of a hive. I do. So does this mean that it’s for anyone and everyone across the world?
Matt Ready: Yes.
Scotty McNab: Wouldn’t it be nice if politicians were part of the hive? Wouldn’t it be nice if —
Matt Ready: I’m a politician. I’m the only one in the hive at the moment.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Hello? Who’s going to take care for these eggs? Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! Have to do those things with their mouth, dancing around. Do you dance? Do you do the [buzzing sound]. They dance little buzzes to tell them where the food is. So you have this empty hive right now. There’s place for growing bigger, that would be like where the queen lays the eggs or whatever. To me, this is just me thinking, a lot of politicians, every politician other than you has said to me, “Okay, what are your questions?” when I when I was a journalist, “What are your questions?” What should I expect? Or if I’m working for this person as a General or Colonel or something, we have to tell them, what kind of reporter that person is, whether we expect it to be a good or a negative interview, and then we center questions up to our headquarters for them to look at before we use the question. But the point is, most politicians don’t want to freelance questions, you know, they don’t want to just be like, “I’m going to gun it!” kind of thing, and they’re so used to being protected, they have a hard time coming out of their shells, and wouldn’t it be nice for them to be human beings along with us trying to make things better? And how do we do that? How do we get them involved?
Matt Ready: Well, I don’t know about politicians and the way our country, our government is structured. All I can do is invite them. I’m building a platform that is for empowering anybody to say what they have to say, and to collaborate, and to help stimulate group decisions so that in any political district — I mean, it’s a global platform but you can break off little hives for geographic regions, and so you could have in a Senator’s District, you could have like a hundred thousand people in this hive talking about things and basically advising that Senator on everything, you know? I think it would actually become like a resource. If it actually takes off. Right now you go on the TV, they use polls, like, “What do the people think?
[Interrupted connection]Matt Ready: A thousand people were asked, and they use that like data for who’s going to vote in a National Poll, like Hilary or Trump. Or they say, “What do they say on the twitter sphere,” and they read like 3 people’s comments. So the media, they all want maybe, they act like they want to know what everyone thinks but they have crappy ways of actually getting it. So if we create things that actually give like a fairly perfect real-time reflection of people’s sentiments, they could actually go to their computer and say, “Well, as of now the country is split exactly at this rate because 70% of the people actually are expressing themselves through the hive.” It’s not a pole. The sentiment of the country is reflected. Technology lets us do this right now on anything. It’s like polling on steroids having actually accurate information of what people believe and think, and everyone feeling empowered to speak and send up a little video post of what they believe in, so you have like 10,000 video posts on some event that happened yesterday, and people can watch them and vote on them and everything, and things percolate to the top.
Scotty McNab: Okay, so that’s how that flows. So it would be, somebody sends in a video, people can say they like it or don’t like it, or they agree or disagree, but when should we also show the bottom, I guess?
Matt Ready: Sure. There’s going to be all sorts of ways to look at it. This is just starting to happen on Facebook, even with Facebook live, but Facebook finally expanded from just “like” to “makes me angry, happy,” but they’re still doing it in a very, like sending out this power to people’s living rooms, “Do this with your friends!” but I want to do it with like huge discussions, and make it all public transparent this sentiment. They want to watch videos, what makes people angry, what make people laugh, what make people… what do people agree with.
Scotty McNab: So a savvy media relations person would be on that and seeing what the people are saying so that they could prepare their messages according to what the person’s saying, talk to their boss, whatever their boss may be, and say, “Hey, this is what everyone’s saying right now about this thing you just did, or this thing that is coming up,” or whatever.
Matt Ready: Sure. I look at it more as we should just be telling our politicians what to do.
Scotty McNab: I think we all feel that way.
Matt Ready: Yeah, just say, “This is what we want,” it’s like with Universal Healthcare. A lot of people actually want Universal Healthcare in this country.
Scotty McNab: On both sides of the [unclear 01:18:03]
Matt Ready: Yeah! It makes a lot of sense, and as I campaigned for Hospital Commissioner, I talked about single-payer healthcare. I made an issue because I believe you have to talk about it at every level. The way these issues are actually totally right and winning issues, and should be done or not done, is because our bureaucratic system is structured so that the discussion of it is contained in this little bubble, during a little sound bite, during a presidential election. It’s like, no, no, no, talk about it during local hospital commissioner election, talk about it during county commissioner elections, talk about it everywhere. Eventually, if we realize, “Oh, if we actually just all say what we want and it’s clear, and we’re electing politicians at every level in our County and City, and we’re telling them help advocate for this,” it starts to create this mass of pressure on the politicians that actually sitting in the legislature.
Scotty McNab: Right, because of the numbers. People are seeing thing that’s — okay. So if it’s springtime and they’re like, “Oh, this potholes are terrible!” They’re going to hear about.
Matt Ready: They’re going to hear about everything fast, things are going to bubble up really fast.
Scotty McNab: You hear me, New Jersey?
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Get that done!
Matt Ready: I actually thing something like this is inevitable. Technology is getting to a point, it’s just maybe in 10 years it’s going to be like so easy to have a medium out there that reflects this, ‘cos everyone will have a smartphone that will just ask them, Trump or Hillary? And we’ll just, you won’t even have to press a button, just say it and it’s out there and you’ll be able to instantly communicate with anyone on Earth instantly. I think some sort of medium like this is going to evolve. I’m just trying to think it through to make it, to really go for the egalitarian safe space, ‘cos that we don’t have. We don’t have safe space on the internet.
Scotty McNab: What is safe space to you?
Matt Ready: It’s a place that will discourage trolling, and hate speech, and just vicious attacks. The shadow side of humanity, the dark side of what we can say is incredibly powerful, and it’s intimidating, and it’s violence, and it shuts people down and oppresses people. I think you can create a safe space on the internet that’s as safe as face-to-face. You might have to make everyone face-to-face. You might have to say, if you want to come in here show your video of yourself, you can say whatever you want, but you have to be willing to the show yourself and say what you have to say, because it’s really much harder to be a jerk if you’re actually showing your face and you’re seeing the face of other people that are listening. Other than that, you can have whoever is like running the medium can have some — like when I’m facilitating, you can make some request, “We want this to be nonviolent. We don’t want name calling.” I think it’s reasonable to try to make boundaries there, but you can’t really control that. It’ll still happen, but if you force people to reveal their humanity a little bit before they speak, it helps making it a safer space.
Scotty McNab: So what do you want right now? What is success right now? What would you consider like, this is great, now we can go here?
Matt Ready: I have different issues that I push on. Single-payer healthcare, Universal Health Care in this country is a no-brainer and saves us incredible amounts of money and save incredible amounts of lives. As a Hospital Commissioner, I’m like working to organize other Hospital Commissioners to get their districts to pass resolutions for it, so we’re getting organized at that level. That’s one thing I’m doing. It would be a success to have Universal Healthcare here. The big reason we don’t have that is ‘cos power in this country is just held in the hand of the few, it’s not held in the hands of the many. It’s controlled by money, so that is what I am going after with the platform, and this show is just trying to invite people to come to a central place that we can build and mold into something that can become a true voice of the people, and a place where dialogue happens across the world.
Scotty McNab: Universal Healthcare being that if somebody’s sick, no matter what their income is, they can go and get the right care that they need 24/7, without having to pay anything or extra.
Matt Ready: Well, you would — the way it’s done in every other industrialized country is taxes.
Scotty McNab: Right, taxes.
Matt Ready: Right now you’re paying taxes for Medicare and for Medicaid, and you are not actually receiving healthcare probably from either of those services, but you’re paying for them, and you’re also paying taxes for the veterans administration which takes care of Vet’s Healthcare.
Scotty McNab: So that’s where I’m trying to get to. The 20 years I’ve spent in the military, you and I and everyone else paid for my medical—thank you.
Matt Ready: You’re welcome.
Scotty McNab: And got my daughters when they were born, and it works. It was probably the best example of socialism working is the military. Most military people will be pissed off at me for saying that, but everyone that’s paid at the same level, for the same job no matter what to do, and then they go get healthcare whenever they need, based on tax-paying, it worked! It really worked.
Matt Ready: It works in every other industrialized country on Earth. It’s being attacked by corporate private interests to try to dismantle it even in other countries, but it saves a ton of money, it guarantees access to everyone.
Scotty McNab: That’s a good thing right now that you’re working on. What’s something in a two to five year range that you want to see, that would make you happy, feel like you’re getting some sort of progression that would feel like it’s worthwhile and therefore that you’re giving is paying off?
Matt Ready: Well, I mean I’ll feel excited just engaging more with the activist’s network. The Occupy Movement was like activist energy and this positive energy trying to transform the world, like came together and then it sort of dispersed. It sort of came together [unclear 01:25:04] with the Bernie Sanders thing and they’re trying to figure out exactly what to do, and there’s some energy there focused on trying to elect better people in the office, which is a good thing, but I’m still just trying to call that energy to a central point so we can talk about tactics. What tactics, where do we push. Really bring our minds together so that everyone that really wants to change this world and change the way power works in this world, if we bring our minds together in an environment where we really can have a powerful, healthy, dynamic dialogue, there are big things we can do; big powerful tactics we could do as a country, as a people, that would transform things.
Scotty McNab: Like what?
Matt Ready: Like a 24-hour crowdsourced live channel on the internet. Like this show could be one show, and it could be followed by other shows [unclear 01:26:20] on other topics, totally crowdsourced. I think this might be something that’s inevitable. Social media and the internet is starting to crack the power of mass media, but if we think about that, we can absolutely, we can turn that into a knife edge and just really rip open the power of media in this country.
So that’s one of the things, one of my many schemes that I’m starting to talk to other activists about, starting to talk to Zhaleh and we have some ideas of taking Theater Activism and doing a multi-city theater activist live event. Zhaleh and the Poet Justice Theater, they do pretty powerful in person activist theater events that are very powerful, but how do we learn to use technology to take that kind of power and hit the entire Earth with it, and hit other communities, and create dialogue like we’ve never seen before between groups and communities?
Internet has been promising this kind of connectivity and connection of humanity since it first came out, and people thought this is going to change the world, it’s going to like democratize the whole world, it’s going to change everything. It hasn’t done it yet but it’s not that the promise was wrong, it’s not that the possibility wasn’t true. It just hasn’t done it yet for, I think the reason is because the big companies that do social media, they’re big profit-driven companies; Facebook, Dig, YouTube, Twitter. I mean it’s like they are reaching for this dream of connectivity, but they stop right when they’re like, we’ve got enough connectivity to start milking it for money, and they’re just squeezing it for money and profit, instead of saying, “How can we take this connectivity and help people take ownership of the entire Earth, and decide what they want?”
Scotty McNab: Okay. It’s interesting. It is. [Crosstalk].
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: That’s interesting [yawns jokingly].
[Laughter]Matt Ready: I’m sitting here talking like, you know, is anyone following what I’m saying? [Laughs]
Scotty McNab: It is, I mean I think that’s a good thing to think about everyone working as a whole hive.
Matt Ready: A human-hive mind, that’s what I call it sometimes.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: Yeah. I wonder, you know, you’re going to have obviously opposition in some ways or another. Do you do this yourself or do you have a team. Are you going to save the world today?
Matt Ready: [Laughs] Yeah. This afternoon, at 4 o’clock. I’ve got to take a nap first.
Scotty McNab: Sure, yeah.
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: But I mean, most people need a team.
Matt Ready: Oh, I desperately need other people engaged and involved. In fact, that’s another reason why I’m doing this podcast. I’m just going to keep on interviewing people that I think have interesting energy and seeing what they are doing to try to change the world. I’ll say, this is what I’m going to change the world, want to be involved? Want to team up? Want to somehow combine our energies? I’ll just keep doing this podcast until a team energy comes around it and then I’ll have to figure out how to…
Scotty McNab: What are some things you’re looking for from potential team mates that maybe see this and think, “Yeah! I’d like to help in some way or another.” What would you want help with?
Matt Ready: People could host their own live shows and use the hive software to sort of like — I think it’s going to be a — if humanity is going to learn how to make mass egalitarian decisions together, it’s going to be a learning experience, and so just inviting people to come in and use it, and talk about it, and experiment with it, on whatever issue that you’re passionate about, it will help you organize people around whatever issue you want to talk about, whether it’s Standing Rock, or something else, or black lives matter, anything like that. Then I need help developing the software. I’m the only developer on it, so if people when they get into it and they see it, and they try it, and they want to get their hands dirty and mess with the code, then they can either help modify the software that’s on my servers or we could just declare it officially open source and they can install it on their own server and hack it up and we could collaborate that way.
Scotty McNab: Open source is pretty powerful.
Matt Ready: Yeah, yeah. And things like animations and to help people understand how to use the software and how to participate in a group discussion in a healthy way. I mean it’s really just connecting. Anyone that reaches out to me and says, “I like this!” and they want to have a conversation, some way that our energies come together, I probably can’t even predict all the different ways that that can work.
Scotty McNab: Well, you and I talked about it a couple of weeks ago. I would like to make a documentary, my first documentary, about this and I’m going to be new to it, so please bear with me, but I do plan to do that.
Matt Ready: And that is so exciting. That is going to be so cool and fun. I’m totally blown away and honored.
Scotty McNab: Might be a few years, folk!
[Laughter]Matt Ready: No! Next Port Townsend Film Festival!
Scotty McNab: We have goals!
Matt Ready: That means you got like eight months. [Unclear 01:32:44] rough cut of it out, you know, I don’t know. In any case, that would be totally fun to do, and it’s a powerful, powerful medium of communication.
Scotty McNab: Absolutely. Yeah, cool.
Matt Ready: Damn! We went way over. I think we went 20 minutes over. We did have a comment. Let me just check in on that. Another useful missing link, how to have fun as an activist and not take yourself so seriously. I love listening. Will check back and listen to the whole show. So yeah! Having fun as an activist is always important.
Scotty McNab: Definitely.
Matt Ready: All right, well we went way over so why don’t we wrap the show there?
[Laughter]Scotty McNab: That was good.
Matt Ready: That was awesome. Thank you so much for coming on.
Scotty McNab: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Matt Ready: I hope you’ll come back and do it again sometime.
Scotty McNab: Yeah! Yeah. Next week, the week after. [Laughs].
Matt Ready: Yeah. Every week.
Scotty McNab: Right [laughs].
Matt Ready: You could be a co-host. Awesome. Thank you anyone that dropped in to the live streams or is watching this on re-runs. Until next time. I’m Matt and I don’t really have to sign off.
Scotty McNab: So we dance again?
Matt Ready: Yeah, we’ll dance to the — although I can’t put music at the end of the thing.
Scotty McNab: Do this?
Matt Ready: Yeah. You’ve got moves!
Scotty McNab: Skillz make billz.
[Laughter]Matt Ready: All right, bye everyone!
