I'm Hillary Clinton, and this is you and me both. A few months ago, I published a piece in the Atlantic magazine on what I called the weaponization of loneliness. The piece was inspired by some really important and alarming studies put out by the United States Surgeon General, doctor Vivek Murphy.
He writes about.
How loneliness and social isolation are having a profoundly negative effect not only on our mental health, but also on our physical health. In fact, he says those negative impacts have reached epidemic proportions. So I argue in my article that this crisis of loneliness also has political consequences. We know that social isolation makes people, and especially disaffected young men, easy targets for those who want to sew division within
our society using conspiracy theories and hateful rhetoric. As I see it, loneliness is actually helping to erode our democracy. I've been so impressed and appreciative of the work doctor Murphy is doing to tackle the loneliness epidemic head on that I wanted to talk with him and hear what he's doing and what each of us can do. But you know, there are lots of ways we can overcome
our isolation. One of my favorite ways is by going to the theater or to the movies, you know, going places where we can laugh or cry or be moved to think about things in new ways together. That's why I also invited John Leguizamo to be on my show today. John is an amazing actor, writer, producer, and comedian. But he's also doing great work to strengthen our democracy by making sure our vision of America is an inclusive one.
Everybody has a seat at the table, and he acknowledges and wants us to join him in recognizing the incredible contributions that Latinos have made to our country, literally from the very beginning.
So stick around.
I don't think you want to miss either of these conversations. First up, Doctor Vivek Murphy. Doctor Murphy has actually served as Surgeon General two times. He was first appointed by President Obama in twenty fourteen and then by President Biden in twenty twenty one. He's currently in the middle of what the Office of the Surgeon General is calling that
we are Made to Connect tour. He's visiting college campuses all over the country to talk with young people about how to recognize and address the harmful effects of loneliness. I am so grateful he was able to make time for us in the middle of his important tour.
Hello, how are.
You hi, I Secretary Clinton. I'm doing well. How are you?
I'm great and I'm so looking forward to talking with you. So let's dive right in. Let's start with something that you have helped to highlight, and that is the issue of loneliness. When did you first consider the possibility that we were facing a loneliness epidemic.
The truth is I saw loneliness a lot earlier in my own life, and but it took me many years to actually realize it was a broader public health issue. As a kid, I struggled a lot with a feeling of being lonely. I was a very shy, introverted kid growing up. I mean, my family had just moved to this country. I know, you know a lot of folks in my school who had a similar background or who was familiar with our traditions or anything. I felt so
I felt very different. You put all that together, and it was just it was tough to sort of break in and to make friends. And so many times growing up, I actually in elementary school faked having a stomachache so that my mom would let me stay home because I wasn't scared about test her teachers. I just didn't want to walk into cafeteria one more time and not have someone to sit next to, or be on the playground
and not have someone to play with two dings. I still have not told my mom to this day that I was faking those stomachaches. So but if she listens to this podcast, she will find out. But you know, I'll tell you. In later years, though, I came to see that many of the patients I was caring for in the hospital were struggling with loneliness. They wouldn't come
in for that. They would come in for a blood clot or pneumonia or heart attack, But when I would sit down and talk to them, these stories about being alone would come up, like most poignantly and heartbreakingly. It would be often when we needed to sit down and have a really tough conversation with them about a new diagnosis or about having to change treatment strategies because our
treatment wasn't working. I would often say, is there somebody that you want me to call to be here with you during this tough conversation, and so many of them would say, you know, I wish there was, but there's no one. I'll just do it alone. And that was
always heartbreaking to hear. But even despite all of that, it really took my experience in twenty fifteen, when I began my first into search in general, traveling around the country on a listening tour and hearing about what was going on in people's lives for me to realize that, wow, there is actually a much deeper challenge of loneliness that I hadn't appreciated. And people didn't come up to me
saying I'm lonely. They didn't say that, but they would be a college student who would say to me, you know, I'm surrounded by all these students on campus, but I don't really feel like anybody knows me. It was parents who would say, you know, I'm at work all days surrounded by people. Then I'm in my neighborhood surrounded by people, and I go to kids' birthday parties and I'm surrounded by people, but I don't know. I just feel like I'm having to carry all these burdens in my life
by myself. So in their own way, people were telling me that they felt invisible, that they feel like if they disappeared, people wouldn't notice. And it was when I dug into it that I realized two critical things. One is, loneliness is extraordinarily common, with one and two people adults struggling with loneliness, and even much higher numbers among kids. But the second thing, I realized just how consequential it was for our health, that loneliness is so much more
than a bad feeling, but it raises their risk. You know, together with isolation of us being more risk for depression, anxiety, and suicide, it increases our risk for physical illness like heart disease, premature death, dementia, and the list goes on.
Well, I think that's such an important connection that you have made. And you know, it's these physical effects that really caught your attention, didn't they.
That's right, and that's what made me realize that these are actually incredibly important public health issues. You know, I think so much about the history of our office, Secretary Clinton, and how we have spent time and effort and energy
focused on tobacco. We've spent a lot of time talking and thinking about obesity as a public health challenge, But what's interesting is when you look at the data on loneliness, what you find is it being socially disconnected is associated with a mortality effect, and that mortality effect is on par with smoking daily. It's even greater than the mortality
impact we see associated with obesity. And so to me, that's why loneliness and isolation are public health issues that should be on par with how we think about tobacco and obesity as concerns.
As you know, our lifespan is going down in the United States, and there are some who have described the increase in fatality therefore lowering of our life expectancy as deaths of despair overdoses, gun violence, suicide. Is that how you also think about it?
Doctor, You know, I.
Do think that there's a deeper despair that's driving a lot of these negative health outcomes, mental and physical that we're worried about. You know, what's striking to me is that when people feel hopeful about the future, it turns out there's actually a fair amount of adversity that they're able to contend with and to overcome. But when we lose that hope, and very importantly, when we feel like
we're up against all of these obstacles by ourselves. Then even what seemed like normal everyday adversity can be absolutely overwhelming, and I worry in particular that that's what so many people in our country are experiencing right now. One of the things that I've talked about in the past is that how emotional pain and physical pain actually feel and
are interpreted very similarly in our brain. And if you think about loneliness as a deep source of emotional pain, it is not surprising that so many people may look for things to help really that pain. And it's why I think that we actually have to see loneliness is so much more than a health issue, but as a broader societal issue, because when we struggle with loneliness and communities,
we know it impacts us well beyond health. The connected communities actually have lower rates of violence, They tend to have higher rates of economic prosperity, They tend to be more resilient in the face of adverse events like a hurricane or a tornado. But they also tend to be more insulated against polarization. It is so much easier to come in and to divide people and turn them against each other when they don't have connections with one another when they're feeling lonely and isolated.
Well, inspired by your work, I wrote an article in The Atlantic magazine talking just about that the weaponization of loneliness, because it's not only how people themselves feel, but how those feelings can be manipulated and exacerbated by hateful rhetoric,
by finger pointing and scapegoating. And it does seem as though the pandemic, with the amount of isolation that people lived, with their children out of school, with people working from home, with every kind of civic and social activity being canceled or maybe moved online but not having the same in person impact, that this problem became even more acute.
Yeah, that's a student observation. And by the way, I so appreciated you writing about loneliness in your Atlantic piece. I heard so much feedback from people who read that article and who had not previously realized just how big a challenge loneliness was. But I think you're exactly right about COVID. It poured fuel on a fire that was burning long before, of a fire of loneliness and isolation
and despair. But I'll tell you I spend a lot of time with young people when I travel around the country, and I remember being in a school in Chicago and a young man in high school telling me, he said, you know, I know, it's been a while since, you know, we were all staying at home and not in school. He's like, but I feel like I'm still learning how to socializing it. A young woman in his class actually raised her hand and she said, yeah, I see that
all around me. She's like, it's like we all forgot how to be with each other. And their feedback, it
turns out, is actually very common. University chaplains who I've been speaking with also, who have been charged with looking out for the health and well being of students, they too say that they feel has become much much harder in the last few years for young people to actually have conversations with one another, especially if they're worried that they may disagree with someone or have a differensive opinion. And so I do think the pandemic made things worse,
and we're still recovering from that. And I think Felmin is for older people who look at that, they're like, you know, I went through the pandemic. It was rough, but now I'm fine. Now like, why are these young people having such a hard time? And I think one thing that's really important for folks out there to understand is that young people are not just younger older people, and they're fundamentally at a different phase of development of
brain development, of social development. Like you miss a year in middle school, that's a year of critical social development. You're building skills, you're learning how to deal with conflict, you're learning how to start a conversation, how to negotiate differences of opinion.
Well, it's also a bigger percentage of their life than it was for somebody like me. I mean a year, a year and a half, two years out of a fourteen year old's life is enormous. I know that you're currently on a tour of college campuses to talk to young people about connecting with each other.
How did you make that decision?
Because I can imagine with the many things that the Surgeon General has to worry about, going on a college campus tour to talk about loneliness mental health may have struck some people as well. It's a nice thing to do, but is it really important? Whereas I think what you're doing is critical.
Well, thank you for that and here's why we decided to do it. For me, the issue of youth mental health rose to the top because I think of our mental health as a fuel that allows us to do everything else we do in our life, to show up for our families in school, at work, and for our communities.
And what that fuel tank is running low, as it is for so many people, especially young people in our country, everything else becomes harder, and then we start to ask, well, how come young people aren't doing more of this and more of that. Well, it turns out that there is actually, I think, a common root cause here, and so that's why I wanted to focus on the issue and the tour.
Our college tour is a way of actually going directly to young people and not just talking to them about this issue why it's important, but really harnessing their ideas, motivating them to help build the broader movement I think we need in our country to address this deeper youth mental health crisis, because to do it right, we've got
to work on multiple fronts. Yes, we have to expand access to treatment, but we've also got to rest the deeper root causes of what's driving this crisis, whether it's how we're using social media and how it's designed, whether it's issues related to trauma and violence, with gun violence now becoming the number one cause of death among children, which is appalling. But these deeper root causes have to
be addressed. And there's a cultural piece here too that we've got to address, which is where young people come in, which is we have to fundamentally change not only how we think about mental health and well being and our willingness to talk about it, but we also have to ask ourselves, I think a much more fundamental question as young people and as parents, which is, are we asking
our kids to chase the right things in life? The achievement culture that we have right now, I worry has tilted in a direction that has actually become counterproductive and harmful. And I hear this directly from young people who call it hustle culture. They say, we're being asked to chase, chase, chase all of these things, fancy jobs, fancy internships, like the top gp of getting into fancy schools. Is this
really going to lead us to happiness, to fulfillment? So changing all of this requires a shift in consciousness, a broader movement that we build a call for a different way of life, and that's something that I think young people are uniquely poised to do. The greatest movements in
history have been led and built by young people. And that's one of the reasons I'm going to college campus is it's to talk to them directly about these issues and to help them understand that to do any of this world requires us to build community and connection to sustain and support us through the challenges ahead.
Well, that's exactly right. You know.
I talked with a group of young women, fifteen sixteen year old girls in high school about the article I wrote about the study that you had done, and you've done several you know, you've talked about the impact of screen life on kids, and it was so fascinating for me to hear what they had to say. You know, they said, look, that is our community. We're on our phones because that's where our community is. I said, yeah,
but it's like not the real life community. And they looked at me like, well, yeah, it is our real life. And I found it fascinating to try to talk about how all the research shows that, you know, too much screen time can lead to bad feelings about yourself, It can lead to greater anxiety and depression. It can lead to young people being you know, more and more alienated. And their pushback was, yeah, but there are no places
for us to go. As teenagers, they lived in a place where there were no safe opportunities for them to gather at night, to have fun and just be themselves. They said they found it very difficult to talk to their teachers and their counselors because they just didn't seem to understand even their parents. So the sense of both isolation from the larger world and the creation of what I consider to be a kind of, you know, faux community online is something that they they are not unconscious about.
They understand there's a trade off. They just don't know how to do the other and they don't feel like the adults in their lives are able to connect with them either. Does this sound familiar to you.
It sounds really familiar. Yeah, And that's really powerful feedback because I think what those young kids were teaching you and teaching me and teaching all of us is that these two things. I think one is that young people do have a remarkable amount of insight into what they're experiencing. But it's also the complexity of solving that. I think that one of the things you're absolutely right that we've lost are these third spaces, these places for people to
actually encounter each other and gather. And one of the things I think that happens the more you lose opportunities for in person interactions is that the skills and comfort that you have interacting with people also starts to deteriorate. I'll tell you interestingly interesting happened to me during the pandemic. You know, in the first year of the pandemic, I was a private say, and I was out there like everyone else, just largely trying to protect my family, you know,
my own health, et cetera. But I had much less social interaction. And even for me, it took me a while to actually come back and to get comfortable with it. I remember the first time we had parents over from our kids' school to our house, and it was as I was like, wow, this is like taking a lot of energy to like interact with everybody, you know, like it was like a muscle that I had to build
back up again. But if you're really young and you're living in an environment where you've actually never been able to truly build that muscle. Because you're in an environment that's been primarily online, then you run into a real challenge in terms of comfort and the skill set itself. And I only say this because I think we both have to create those spaces in our communities and our schools, but we also have to help people develop the comfort
and skills. And so I think if we just throw a bunch of people in a room together and say, get to know each other, interact, you know, it may or may not happen. But if we create opportunities for them with a little bit of structur and a little bit of time to actually get to know one another, to learn about each other, and then we give them more time to interact, that can make a world of difference.
And that's what I see actually happening in various schools across the country, where young people are starting to build programs where they bring peers together to actually learn about one another, to actually do activities together, sometimes their service projects and engagements, and that kind of in person interaction can actually help people to get more comfortable with in person interaction.
We're taking a quick break. Stay with us.
On your tour, your college campus tour. You are putting for something called the five for five Challenge.
What is that, doctor, Yes, So, one of the things we want to do on the college campus Tour, which we call our We Are Made to Connect Tour, is we want to give young people to experience connection. Let's just talk about it and given the experience of it. So we designed something called our five for five Challenge where we're asking people for five days to take five actions, one action each day that will give them the experience of connection. It could come on one of three forms.
You can either express gratitude to someone, you can extend support to someone, or you can ask for help. We do the first one actually with everyone like in the auditorium or the sting that we're in, and what we do is certainly very simple. We ask them to pull out their phone and to compose an email or a text to someone in their life who they're grateful for. It could be for something very simple. Maybe it was someone who a few years ago showed up for you
when you were having a really hard day. Maybe it's somebody who knew that you got a big disappointment that maybe you've got a bad grade on a test, or you didn't get picked for the team that you tried out for and they just showed up to listen to you. Whatever it was like, what they made you grateful for them. We asked people to reflect on that and then to
send them a short message. The whole thing takes about ninety seconds, and at the end of that we ask everyone who has sent a message of gratitude to turn the flashlight on on their phone and to hold it up and we dim the lights in the auditorium and what you see is so beautiful. It's light after light to sort of pop up and just fill the entire auditorium. You look around you and you realize, wow, there are all of these rays of hope that have just gone
out into the world. People are going to receive those messages that people just sent, They're going to feel appreciated, They're going to feel connected, and it's going to feel good to know that you helped create that feeling. So we ask people to do something like this, an active connection over five days, and then to share with us how they're feeling. This is something that anyone can do.
The people listening to our conversation today could do. And I guarantee you at the end of those five days, it will feel better, you'll feel more whole.
Oh I love that.
And I know that there's a lot of literature, research disciplines of all kinds that you really are calling on as you talk about that, because you know, gratitude is an attitude, and if you make yourself do it, and you force yourself to say, Okay, what am I grateful for despite how hard the day was, it changes your brain chemistry, doesn't it.
It really does. And you know one thing is it's very difficult to be grateful and to be angry at the same time.
Exactly, and sadly, there are people in our politics today who want to get you angry and keep you angry. So I have to ask you, as you've traveled around, as you've talked about these studies and reports that you've issued, are you feeling more or less hopeful than you did before?
Oh?
My gosh, I'm feeling so much more hopeful. Of all the public health issues that I've worked on over the last however many years, there is no issue that I have found has resonated more strongly with the public than this issue of loneliness and social connection. And I think it's because so many people have been feeling it. When I go into a room, I'll ask people how many of you know someone in your life who's struggling with loneliness. I'd say ninety five plus percent of the hands go up.
Wo.
So it is so commonly and deeply felt, but rarely talked about. And I think the opportunity to actually get at the heart of what is causing and driving so much as despair, I think it is one that people are embracing, so one that makes me feel hopeful. But the second thing that's happened as we've had these conversations is I've found people, especially young people, starting to take
action in their own communities to build connection. And that is actually the great thing about rebuilding the social fabric of our country is that it's something that we can each start doing, Like we don't have to wait for an Act of Congress.
Literally or figuratively.
We can start taking action in our day to day lives and we can feel the results of it within short order. It's why I just I feel compelled to want to do everything I can to build a broader movement around social connection. And this is partly about the practices you know of connecting and building those skills, exercising that muscle and creating spaces for people to connect at
a really deeper level. Like to me, this is also about, I would say, the deeper values that we want to be reflected, like in our lives and in our communities. What worries me is hearing so often from people who say to me, Vivik, you know, it feels like it's become more important to be right than to be kind,
more important to be powerful than to be just. I hear that again and again and again, and I think for many people they've come to wonder, like, what are the values that are driving us but in our hearts? Like when I sit down and talk to people about people know like what values they fundamentally want to be reflected in their child's lives. People, I think, still, despite the cynicism that we may you know, encounter and see,
people still do think it's important to serve others. They think it's important to be considerate and to be kind. They think that relationships and our friendships are important and worth investing in. I think we have the opportunity to bring those kind of values back to the forefront, to a place where they actually inform how we shape our lives, and they can do so, in fact, by helping us
build stronger connections. And when we do that, those values can not just affect how we interact with other people, but they can start to impact how we think about the programs we support, the issues we advocate for, the leaders we choose, the workplaces we structure, the curricula that
we build for our kids. Because I'll tell you this at I and feel it strongly now as a parent, I think it's just as important for our kids to learn how to understand their emotions, how to build healthy relationships, how to manage conflict, how to have real conversations, especially when we disagree, but do so respectfully. It just is important for them to build those skills, I believe, as it is for them to learn how to read and to write, and to learn about history and economics.
Oh amen, Amen, doctor Murphy, that is music to my heart. Thank you so much for spending time talking to me about these profoundly important issues, and I just wish you the very very best as you continue to try to talk about this, make connections and especially reach out to our young people.
Well, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation. I'm so glad that we had this time together, and thank you again for all your focus and concern on this issue of social connection and loneliness. It's so important, so I'm grateful for you.
If you want to take up the five for five Connection Challenge, and really I think every one of us should, you can find more information about it online. As I mentioned earlier, When I'm feeling low and perhaps even feeling oh kind of despairing about the state of the world, there's nothing I like better than catching a live theater performance to lift my spirits.
And my next guest has.
Taken audiences on so many amazing theatrical journeys. John Leguizamo had his first breakout performance in nineteen ninety one with a one man show called Mambo Mouth. Since then, he's written, produced,
and performed in multiple Broadway shows. He's starred in a bunch of films like Chef and maybe you heard his voice in Disney's in Canto, or perhaps you caught him on his fantastic MSNBC TV series Leguizamo Does America, where he travels across the country, bringing viewers inside some of America's thriving Latino communities places like Miami, Chicago, and of course LA But honestly, what I know John best for is the way he shows up for his Latino brothers
and sisters over and over again. He mobilizes them to make their voices heard. He pushes the entertainment industry to represent them, and he celebrates the contributions they've made to our country and the many ways they come together in community. It was such a personal delight to speak with him for the show.
Hi, John, Hillary, how are you so good to see you?
It is great to see you. Thank you for doing this, and I'm glad you got the Knicks cap on.
You're ready, ready for the season. This will be the one, John, This is This does like the one.
I mean, I thought it was going to be for the Mets as well, but it was not.
The Cats were such a disappointment, crazy disappointment, and the Yankees were also disappointing. So yeah, I mean, well, I'm going to get started because I'm so excited to talk to you.
Welcome the show, John.
It is such a pleasure for me to have this chance to talk with you. You know, earlier in this episode, I talked with Surgeon General Murphy, who has really zeroed in on what he calls an epidemic of loneliness and isolation in the country, and he has some ideas about how to get ourselves out.
Of it and what we individually can do.
But I thought you'd be a great person to talk to because your work serves as an antidote to a lot of those feelings. And you also are a person who wants to create community and connections wherever you go. So let's get into it now. You were born in Bogota, Colombias, but moved to New York City when you were four. How is that immigrant experience for you and your family?
Wild?
You know, I'm only just now being able to unpack it and tease it out, because you can't in the moment understand the huge impacts on your family and mental health and everything. You know, just until now recently, I just realized the PTSD my parents suffered. You know, I had no idea until I was old enough, and and and thousands of hours in therapy to understand that they left everything they knew, all their friends, all their family, their language, their culture, came into a world they knew
nothing nothing. Uh so they had that you know, but with landed in jackson I's Queens because you know, every friend says, yeah friends, you know, some Colombians said, you know, it is the place that come and there are more people like us, and everybody speaks Spanish from this or they came here. We lived in a one apartment that was so small. The furniture was painted on the walls,
you know, the chairs were painted. There were no chairs, and we had a murphy bed, you know those things that it goes up in the morning, so you have a living room, it comes down.
Yeah, it puts it against the wall exactly.
And you put a tablecloth on it for dinner. And then if you take the tablecloth in, it's dead time. And then my parents were hard working. The next year we were all we all slept, all four of us slept there with my brother. And then the following year my parents got a place where they had their own room. And then they kept working hard and hard, and then eventually my father bought a house in Queen's and rented all the rooms. So I grew up with strangers all
my life, five different strangers. I learned how to higiene like in seconds flat to get into that bathroom because I shared a bathroom with five different strangers.
Yeah.
Yeah, but boy, that's an incredible story of hard work and determination of your parents. When did you decide that? You know, hey, I kind of like this acting. Was it when you were dodging the strangers of the house? I mean, where did that come from?
I was kind of like this class clown. I was, you know, my parents said your betty hype it. That was for like you know what they called adhd back then. So I had a lot of energy and couldn't be still and I had to entertain and do voices and characters. And I grew up in Jackson Heights, which is the most diverse place in the world.
It is.
People don't know that Queens is the most diverse county in the United States and one of the most diverse places in the world.
And Jackson Heights truly is.
Yeah, it's incredible. So I grew up, you know where the nice Jewish family that lived the cross the steper most and what abut us for it? For say, and then the Jamaican people are be coming out to enjoying the black parties and everything be great blood clot.
Lots of Indian food, too.
He has wonderful Indian food everywhere. I loved it, everything but wonderful. And you know, every Latin diaspora is there. Chile and Sargentines, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, Colombians, Ecuadorians, Peruvians were all there. And so I had all this access to accents and voices, and I would act out in class, always wanted to be the class clown, and it was very competitive. In my school. There was this lunch table that if you crack the best jokes you got to
sit at. But if you adn't crack a good joke, you couldn't sit at that table.
So savage.
That was savage. So I learned to start writing. That's when I started writing my jokes. I would prepare att I could win so I could be at that table. And that's when I started writing.
Were there people you started to look up to when you began to talk about, Hey, you know, I might try to do this for a living. I might, you know, take my jokes and leave the high school cafeteria and go somewhere with them.
You know, my math teaching misuzufa. You know, I'm a big believer in mentors. And that's why I try to be a mentor myself. I think when you come from the hood and underprivileged, you need that person that comes to you and puts their hand on your shoulder and says you're worthwhile. You have something to offer the world, because you don't know that. You just all the time, especially being a Latin man in America, where you don't
see yourself reflected anywhere, positively or otherwise. You're not in the history classes, you're not in the literature classes, you're not in the math classes. It's no one that looks like you in the books you're reading anywhere. You know, Latin children are the least pictured aracters in children's books, So it starts there. You know, you're more likely to see an animal than you see a Latin face as
a child. And then John Hopkins did a study and found out that eighty seven percent of our contributions, Latin people's contributions to the making of America are not in history textbooks, and the thirteen percent that is there gets like less than five sentences. So how do you build yourself for it? You know? And so this math teach Misusufa says to me, you know, you miss no Soila,
squeeze Moe. You can never say money, mister Miller Grisomo, mister peptibismo, you have the attention span of a sperm. If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, we can do something with you. And he suggested I take acting classes, you know, and I yes. And it takes that, you know, it takes a lot of people telling you you're worthwhile, that you have something, and then then the coin dropped in, you know, the proverbial coin.
Aha, yeah, yeah, you know.
Live theater is an art form that literally brings people together to share an experience for a certain amount of time, and it's one of the reasons why I love it so much. And I know you started in live theater and a breakout moment for your career was your solo play Mombo Mouth, where you played a whole bunch of characters, and I think we got just a little taste of how quickly you can move from you know, using your
voice to create different characters. Can you describe that play for our listeners and how it came about?
Oh? Sure, sure, So here I was at NYU going to college, right, and I'm paying the same as everybody, and I'm getting a's actually, and I'm with dB Sweeney and Edwin McCarthy and They're going to five editions a day and I'm going to one every five months. And the cast breakdown was like Jim Crow was like white actor, white lead, white romantic lead, white doctor, white lawyer, you know, and they wouldn't see you because you're Latin whatever anyway,
So I knew my chances were different. So I went to the performance arts pace, comedy space wherever they would let me, basically, and so I started creating these characters in these performance art spaces downtown that were thriving. All the creativity of New York City was downtown East Village and there are all these great clubs, Gusta House, a Dixon Place as one two, the kitchen knitting factory, Home
La Cucaraate. It was all these places where you could test out crazy material, political material, you could be naked, you could do whatever you wanted, but it had to
be art. So I started doing my characters there and then eventually I had like ten and I put them together with the help of Win Handman, who had put together Eric Pogosian's work, and I had seen Lily Tomlin's masterful piece and will be Goldberg's life changing piece for me, and I wanted to do something, make it different in making my own, and so I did mamble Mouth and got a brave review from the Times, which back then the Times could make you a break. And then in my theater.
Was Arthur Miller, the Arthur Miller.
I shook his hand, Sam Shephard, Cow Pacinos, Oh, come on, Oh Julia. The list goes on and on. It was incredible, and I learned to run outside quickly before they could all escape because I knew that the magnitude of these people, and I wanted to shake every single one of their hands.
Wow. I love that story.
And you then followed up Mambo Mouth with five other solo pieces on stage, and most recently, the highly acclaimed Latin History for Morons.
First of all, I love the title, Oh God. Every time I look at.
It or rehear it or read it, I start laughing. So is that a way kind of using your humor and your creativity to kind of make the point like, Hey, people, we've been here a long time, and we've done a bunch of stuff, and I'm going to give you the short version.
Yeah, you know, definitely, I mean, obviously Latin history morons. I was a moron because I was like, wait a minute, I didn't know all these incredible facts about our contributions to the making of America. We built America alongside Afro Americans, but in the Southwest and the West. You know, we built the railroads when our Chinese brothers and sisters were kicked out. We built all the infrastructure bridges of everything
in the Southwest and the West. From the eighteen hundreds, you know, were the only minority to have fought in every single war America has ever had. And I'm talking about the American Revolution. Ten thousand unknown Latino patriots fought. And then I did the math. I was like, because I'm a rain man of Latin facts, and I was like, wait a minute. How many tot troops were in the American Revolution? Typed it out? Eighty thousand. We were one in eight. So we are the sons and daughters of
the American Revolution. Juan Mete I is from Cuba, raised two million dollars for his bromance George Washington from Cuba, Mexico and Spain. These facts started becoming available to me and it changed me my chromosomes, my DNA and everyone who saw it. And I made it funny because even though.
These facts are serious, but yeah.
They change you. I have to seduce an audience, even a Latin audience, I have to seduce them to wanting to know these facts, you know. So yeah, I love that challenge.
But you know, through that challenge, you're doing a couple of things. Not only you know, successfully performing in front of audiences that keep coming back for more, but you're also you're expanding the definition of America for people who don't understand the contributions of everybody who came before. I mean, we talk about community, we talk about connection, we can
also about country. And you know, I've always loved the idea that America was this place where people came from everywhere, made their stake, worked hard, you know, got things done, raised their kids, kept going. And you know that it's frightening to some people in America today if they don't look like you and worship like you, and think like you and vote like you, and you in a I would say somewhat kind of quiet and very subversive way
are expanding that definition. I mean, what is somebody going to say when you say, hey, did you know there was this Latin guy who knew George Washington and he went off and raised money for the Revolutionary Army?
Hey, what do you think about that?
It just scrambles their brain and maybe it opens up a little space so that they can see that we all are part of this great American community. You know, one unique performance you gave was of your play Ghetto Clown, and you performed it at Rikers Island. And for listeners who aren't familiar with New York City, that's New York City's biggest jail.
You know.
Anybody who gets arrested, if they're going to be remanded, they go to a Rikers Island, which is a really, really tough place. Why why was it important to bring your comedy to that venue in person?
And how did it go? How were you received?
It was fascinating because you know, I know that the majority of the population there is Latino and black mm hmm, you know, and that's the community I grew up in, so I know they're ignored. I've been part of GOSO Get Out, Stay Out for ten years. Mark Goldsmith, this man who should be a national treasurer has run it for thirty years, you know, raises the money himself, and it's a high school at Rikers and gives these kids a chance to study and make something of themselves, and
they do. Ninety nine percent of them never return back to the system. So I felt like I had to go in there and bring something to them. And I didn't know how I was going to be received. You know, I thought they might think I'm corny now because I've been you know, I'm no longer in the hood, and so I didn't know. I didn't know how They're going to take my humor who I am, But they were. They were. They were a captive audience. They laughed. All
these kids laughed, the guards laughed. They were all really digging. I don't even think there was my jokes. They were enjoying. It was enjoying that somebody came in to give them something. That's what they were digging. And obviously the little gravy that you know, they heard cultural things, a little code switching and you know, little things that light up in their heads. Go, oh, that's that's how I grew up. That's how my mom talks, that's how my uncle talks.
But you know what else I really like about this is that you went into a place that you didn't have to go. There was nobody saying, Hey, for your career, John, you should go to Rikers and do you know a performance for the inmates. You did it because you sense that connection. You know, as you said, these these were like the kids you grew up with. It's that kind of reaching out. You know, always tell people when they are saying they don't know what to do. You know,
they feel like their life doesn't have any meaning. We'll go out and help somebody, go out and do something for somebody else. It's amazing how that rebounds to you. I mean, that's so obvious, But it takes doing it for people to feel it, doesn't it.
Yeah? I mean, yeah, you know you said it's so right, Hillary. I felt like them, you know, I felt like I could have been them, and I felt I had to go in there and give them some hope. I just felt I needed to do that.
Yeah.
Yeah, And I sat with them. I sat with them, We talked. They made me eat their food, which was disgusting, but they made me. They go, you got it, John, I go, No, don't make me dude, I gave me. I performed for two hours for you coming. No, you gotta eat it. I go all right, it was all great. It was cabbage, ham, potatoes in the gray water, flavorless. It was nasty.
And these are.
People who have not, let me stress, been convicted of anything.
Right.
This is not a prison.
This is a jail, and this is a jail where people are waiting to be tried, and we treat them like the most hardened, worst criminals in the universe.
It's disgusting, it is.
But Hillary, You're incredible. I mean, nobody else would have this understanding of the system, but you. I love that. I love that about you. How you have your bandwidth of knowledge is so intense.
Well, you know, I've spent a lot of time in my life trying to figure out how to fix things. And you know, a lot of things sort of defy fixing. But you got to keep thinking about it.
Yeah, you got it. You got to keep trying to fix it.
You can't give up.
You can't, No, you can't.
You know.
And it's also amazing to me how some kind of kindness, some kind of gesture of concern, goes such a long way, and that doesn't cost anybody anything. Like you're talking about your math teacher. He could have said to you, eh, you're not good in math, You're not going to be anything. No, Instead he said, hey, come on, I think I know where you could really excel. That was a kindness and you know, you pay it forward, you keep going, and uh, I just wish we could get back to that.
Yes, America is losing that. We've we were starting to lose our respect for each other with.
Our empathy, I mean.
Empathy, Uh, decency, These are values that no longer are important to Americans. So a lot of America's not to everybody. Everybody deep down wants that and.
We have, but we have to keep modeling it and showing it. Yeah, we'll be right back.
You know.
In addition to.
All this creative work that you have been doing, you've also been a really strong advocate for Latino representation in me in politics, in government, every walk of life. And you've made the point over and over again that although Latinos make up what approximately nineteen twenty percent now of the American population, there is such a tiny slice of that represented as main characters in movies and television. Among producers and directors. Why is this such a persistent problem.
There is an audience. We know there's an audience.
Yeah. Before I get into that, let me give you the numbers, because it's it's horrifying too and disgusting. With thirty percent of the US box office, four billion dollars in streaming in America, we just hit a milestone. We add three point two trillion dollars to the GDP annually. We have a buying power in America three point four trillion dollars.
Wow. Wow, We put all.
This money into America and we get nothing back. We are less than two percent of the leads and films, less than one percent of the stories being told, with less than zero point zero eight of the actors on Broadway. Even though we're equal to whites in New York City and population whites are thirty two percent of the population,
we're like thirty one percent and just invisible everywhere. Zero percent of this of the top executives in Hollywood, and I use Hollywood because it's easier to see, to see the exclusion, the invisibility, our lack of access. Because it's happening in the corporate world, banking, tech, and medicine, everywhere. I hear talk to Latin executives everywhere who say, I work three times as hard as everybody for a small salary, and I see everybody getting promoted around me except me,
and I experienced it in Hollywood. You know. I bring huge numbers, over a billion dollars worth of movies with ice age and conto, all the big hits that I've been in, and yet it's always still a struggle to get a role because you know, when they do mad Men, they didn't think Latin people existed. When they do All the Crown, you know, there's never a Latin person there. There's so many ways of excluding us until we get executives who look like us, you know, like Saysar Conde, chairman.
Of NBC, has that made a difference, huge difference.
I pitched this one show, The Guzama Does America for six years to everybody, everybody, you name it, the network, the studio. Nobody got it until Saysar Conde of NBC chairman, said let's do it. And my show is the number one hit for the last three years, original hit on MSNBC. Then we're going to season two.
Okay, tell everybody the name of the show.
Like Guizamo does America, like you know, Debbie does Dallas. I'm doing the same thing that Debbie did to Dallas to America.
Yeah.
Yeah, well you know part of that. I'm going to let that pass. I was thinking more like Anthony Bourdaine or you know, Stanley Tucci, or you know somebody like that.
Those are more my comparisons. Yeah.
I mean, you make such a great point, and I do think I don't want to overstate this point because there are many many reasons why people feel disconnected isolated.
But if you don't see people who.
Look like you, if you don't feel that you are welcomed into the larger community, that has an impact on how you think of yourself, and it starts to eat away at your self esteem and your confidence.
It's not only just important for the young person who's developing their self worth and projecting themselves into the future. It's also the way other people look at you and treat you when our facts incredible facts. You know that we were the most awarded and every single war America has ever had, twenty thousand US fought in a civil war. Five hundred thousands of US sacrificed our lives in World
War Two and the incredible heroes. Gil Bosquez, a diplomat, say, forty thousand Jews in this she France by renting two churches and putting twenty thousand Jews in each and then giving them asylum in Mexico. You know, if people knew these facts, then you you can respect a culture and an ethnic group and go, oh my god, you've contributed so much. They treat you differently. You treat it with more respect. You're you're given a seat at the table.
Without that, you're told what have you done for us? What have you done for us?
Where are you from? Where are you from from?
Go back to where you came from. Oh yeah, we've been here for five hundred years. You know, the first language spoken in the European language spoke in America is not English, the Spanish.
That's you got it right.
Well, that's one of the reasons why you're so committed to fighting for a national Latino Museum on the National Mall.
Where is that process?
Oh my god, you know it's been I just joined ten years ago, but they've been at it for forty years. It tasts forever. We got it through Congress, we got it from the Senate by partisan Now we just need to be on the We want to be on the mall. That's the big We want to be across from the beautiful African American music, which is stunning, and it's a small plot of lands. We have to build higher and deeper to get all our you know, we've been here for you know, with our because we've got to start
with our empires. Yeah, you know, Inca, Maya, Aztec, thousands of years been here. So yeah, that's that's our next fight. We're getting a little you know, pushback from certain representatives and we're working them. Chuck Schumer is helping us, Clobature
is helping us, Murkowski's helping us. We're getting a lot of help to forge the language that will make everyone happy, to allow us to have a place in the mall because I don't want to be twenty miles out because then you feel like like second rate, like a second class.
Yeah. Yeah, well I really wish you well on that because that's an important effort. And you know, as we close, I just want to ask you about the so called Latino vote. People talk about it all the time, and now we're heading into the twenty twenty four election cycle.
But you know, of course Latino voters have varied backgrounds, they have different priorities like any other large group. How do you see your.
Role now as an active and outspoken leader in a very diverse community.
Diverse, yes, but the largest voting block in America after whites. M fifty four percent of our registered voters voted. So we vote. But you have to talk to us. You have to reach out toactly. You have to have Latin consultants who tell you what to talk to us about. Because the Republicans were better at it than us. They got on what's app in Arizona and in Florida, they got in our Spanish radio stations and advertised and gave
the trigger words. You know, socialism. It triggers Cubans and Venezuelans, and now it's triggering Colombians because of what's happening in the neighbor country. Right, So they knew the right trigger words. We didn't know. We just ignored it. You know that Democrats paid no attention. Yeah, you know, there's a lot of very Christian Latinos who are you know, homophobic, anti abortion, you have they exist, but the majority of us are Democrats. But you still have to win us. You have to
win us. You have to court us, you have to knock on our doors, you have to pick up that home.
Percent, you know. And I always loved it. I always loved campaigning.
My very first job in politics was registering voters in South Texas in the you know, Rio Grande Valley. I mean I loved it. I mean, campaigning in and to communities in the large Latino vote arena is fun. And I would do the I would do the radio shows. Oh my god, They're hilarious, those radio shows.
I mean I had no.
Idea what anybody was saying before or after I got on, but we had so much fun and bells would be wrong and drums would be hit.
I mean, we we really.
It is one of my favorite, you know kinds of campaigning, even in New York City when I used to campaign, Oh my god, I mean, you know, going from community to community, playing dominoes and a Dominican housing complex, you know, going to Puerto Rican Day Parade, going to queens and meeting up with all of the Colombians and everybody else. Anyway, I highly recommend it to anybody who's running for office.
That's amazing. I mean, that's why you had the impact you had. I mean, because you are turned on by people.
I like it.
You are turned on by being amongst Americans.
And I guess that leads to you know, coming full circle in our conversation. There is all this variety and different patternss of assimilation, and you know it far better than I. But I think Latino communities in America have some unique and valuable traditions and lessons to teach the
rest of us about alleviating the epidemic of loneliness. I mean, if people are lonely, what can you tell them about the importance of connectivity and maybe some of the traditions or the joys that you have in your own community.
It's so funny to say that, because I've been looking at that, you know. I always say being a Latin is a superpower because we're the only culture in the world whose religion, language, and culture were destroyed in the conquest and here we are three point two trillion dollars adding it to the GDP. So it's a superpower. And what is that We are the most joyful people in the world. We enjoy everything you enjoy everyone. We enjoy every aspect of life, and we enjoyed in community, in groups.
We love bringing our family together. My grandfather had all his kids living with them, with their spouses and their grandkids. And yeah, we had to share a lot of bathrooms, but you shared a lot of stories.
And a lot of love and a lot of love.
And that was beautiful. I'll never forget that feeling of connectivity, community in one house, twenty people my Thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving it will be thirty people, or Indigenous Survival Day as I call it.
Well, and also the food, Let's not forget the food. It's really good. I mean so much variety of food. You know, John, I just love talking to you.
I'm so grateful to you for not just your creativity but the courage you have in getting yourself out there and being a not just a spokesperson and a role model and an activist, but someone who really cares about what happens in this country.
Well, thank you, Hillary. I mean, you're such a huge inspiration to me and to many many, many people, and seeing you just shows me what I can do with the rest of my life and to keep going and never quit and never give up, persevere, and you're that emblematic figure for me.
Oh, thank you so much.
When John and I spoke the SAG afterra Actors strike was still going on, so we couldn't really get into his TV series, Leguizamo Does America. But now that the strike is thankfully over, I want to give a huge shout out for this great series. It's smart, joyful, and of course very funny, just like John, so please check it out. It's on Peacock, which is the NBC streaming service, and on Hulu. I think you'll get at least a good laugh or two. You and Me Both is brought
to you by iHeart Podcasts. We're produced by Julie Subren, Kathleen Russo and Rob Russo, with help from Khuma Abadeen, Oscar Flores, Lindsay Hoffman, Sarah Horowitz, Laura Olin, Lona Valmorro and the Lily Weber. Our engineer is Zach McNeice and the original music is by Forest Gray. If you like You and Me Both, tell someone else about it. And if you're not already a subscriber, what are you waiting for?
You can subscribe to You and Me Both on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, Thanks for listening, and i'll see you next week.