#2532 - Tim Robbins

The Joe Rogan Experience

Tim Robbins discusses his iconic role in 'The Shawshank Redemption,' Stephen King’s turbulent creative process, the real-life underground city of Derinkuyu, and the power of saying no to corrupt opportunities. He reflect

Key takeaways

• Saying no to bad roles can redirect your career positively

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Joe Rogan podcast, checking out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. Jamie's very geeked out. I want to let you know. He didn't want to say it. Shawshank, because it's an all-time favorite movie. So he was kind of freaking out when he met you. Thanks, Jamie. Thank you. It's all-time. I mean, you're a part of one of, like, easily one of the greatest movies in the history of people. I know. It's such a gift. I mean, when people come up and say something about it, that it usually is coming from a pretty deep place, you know? Yeah. If you didn't like that movie, there's something, you should go to a doctor. There's something you need medication. There's something wrong with you. That's an amazing movie. And weird that it's a Stephen King movie, too. You know, he's, that guy is arguably one of the most prolific guys in the history of fiction. Yeah. And in the same novella, there was Stand By Me, too. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. That's amazing. It's so weird. He writes stuff varies so much. He had to do like a pseudonym at one point time. Remember? He did Richard Bachman. Yeah, yeah. Because he was turning out so many books. They're like, hey, we can't keep selling these fucking Stephen King books. And he's like, well, how would I come out with another name? Like, give me a fake name. He just started killing it under a fake name. Just got to get it. Yeah. Wild, wild guy. Yeah. Just a very unusual human. You know, they exist. Yeah. Only met him once. Really? Yeah. Did you meet him like when you were filmed the movie? Around the premiere time, yeah. Yeah, so he's out there, man. Yeah. You know, during his early days, I'm fascinated by his early days because his early days, he was off the rails with cocaine and alcohol. And some of the best shit that he made, he doesn't even remember writing it. Wow. I think Kuch, I think is one of the books his wife took out of the garbage because he threw it away. He's like, fuck this book. This book sucks. It was Coochow or one of the classics. Yeah. And she was like, are you out of your fucking mind? Like, this is incredible. And he was literally going to throw it out because he was just out of his mind. He wrote The Shining, right? Yeah. So what? Was it Carrie? Yeah. He threw Carrie away? Yeah. No way. Crazy. That's crazy. Yeah. Shining was a big movie from a big book for me. I was, you know, working in a nine to five job and, you know, in between colleges. and it really like woke me up to all kinds of great possibilities in writing. Well, he hated the movie, which is so crazy, because he felt like Jack Nicholson got insane too quickly. Really? Yeah, because in the book, you know, I read the book too. It's very different, similar, but it's more of a drawn-out process of him becoming possessed by the property. A slower rollout. Yeah, like Jack Nicholson was kind of kooky already, like, right? away which you know it's Jack Nicholson like it's also Stanley Kubrick it's like he's got to do his interpretation of it you just got to accept that course yeah that's some scary shit in that fuck man his books are insane yeah it's like what is going on inside that guy's or was going on inside that guy's mind when he was writing that god knows i think once he got clean he kind of changed and straightened out and different different human now but boy i'm i'm fascinated by the off the rails days because the books were so nuts was was shawshank during that time i don't know it must have been it must have been because i i don't think he got sober until it was decades after his career began wow some of the great stuff like i think all the stand i think all that stuff he was out of his mind he was writing all those but in the midst of all that madness there's a tenderness Oh, yeah. Oh, great humanity to it all. Yeah. Yeah. But also just a true understanding of the darkest nature of humans and how they're influenced. And then, of course, you know, demonic possession and Salem's Lot and all that other crazy shit. It was like he was just so good. But then the idea that a library can be the, you know, in Shawshank that the library can be the liberation. Yeah. Yeah. No, it was an amazing, amazing movie. We were talking about your new show, Silo, which I just, not new. It's been around for three seasons. I just started watching it, so it's new to me. I watched the first two episodes last night. It was fucking great and very original and interesting. And I was telling you before that it made me think of this place that they discovered fairly recently in Turkey called Darren Kuyu. And Darren Kuyu is this underground city that's massive. I think it could hold 20,000 people. Wow. Something nutty like that. I've seen pictures of it. It found completely by accident. Yeah. So some guy lost one of his chickens, went through a hole in the wall and never came back. And he was trying to figure out where this fucking chicken went. So he broke down the wall to see what was going on. And then they realized that there's this insane underground city. Oh, my God. Yeah. Underneath this town. in Turkey and it's massive, just absolutely massive. They have no idea who made it. There's no historical record of it. Any idea of when? Well, you know, they make guesses based on stuff they find there, but it's when you carbon date an object, right? So you could go visit the pyramids today, right? And you could leave behind some stuff, right? And then everybody dies. Humanity dies out in a cataclysm. And then 100,000 years from now, people start looking through the, you know, the piles of some of these sites and the pyramids would probably still be there. And if there was any organic material left, like a book that you left or, you know, a leather-bound book or some piece of wood, they could carbon date that. And then that would say the time that you were there. But it wouldn't say the time that the actual structure was made. So who knows how long people. Show me some more pictures of that, please? I was looking up when it was made. Do they know? No, definitely don't know. They didn't even know it existed. I mean, when was it found? I feel like it was found in the 20th century. There must have been some kind of hostile force that they built it to... Exactly. Or something going on outside. And not just hostile, but environmental. So, 1963. Rediscovered in 1963. Wow. That's crazy. It's in his fucking house. Even today, only 10% of it is accessible to tourists. The rest is still being exposed. Lord. That's how nuts it is. So how many people do they think it held when it was operational? I think it's something like 20,000 people. I mean, that's how big this place is. That's amazing. That's amazing. So they don't know when or why, and depending on how, around 20,000 people. Plus livestock. Plus livestock and food stores. Really? How they farmed down there? Who fucking knows? I don't know. But they had grain storage. They had all kinds of stuff. down there. Oil presses? 18 levels reaching 85 meters. So 280 feet deep into the ground with ventilation shafts, wells, stables, wine and oil presses, storage rooms, chapels, and schoolrooms, plus a half-ton circular stone doors that could be rolled shut from the inside only. So they were obviously either fighting off some sort of an army or the outside air was hostile. There was something going on. Got too hot or something. Could have been. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's been many moments in the time that human beings were alive where there have been cataclysms. You know, there's this thing called the Younger Dry's Impact Theory that's around 11,800 years ago, there's all this evidence that there was massive asteroid impacts all over the Earth, common impacts. And they think that it was probably a reset of civilization. And so this could have been post that. It could have been how some people survived in these areas. human beings have an amazing ability to survive yeah i mean you know which is silo i mean it's it's really a mon silo is a modern version of darren coo yeah yeah and here i was you know uh in the middle of lockdown when i received those scripts and i was like oh this is this is actually talking about right now yeah this is about a controlled society where information is censored and where um compliance is necessary and if you don't comply you get sent out into the hostile environment it was all too familiar metaphorically for me perfect timing yeah perfect timing because you got to think that he must have written that before right yeah many years ago so it was just got lucky yeah yeah perfect here we go synchronicity yeah yeah I'm been blessed that way in my career yeah what do you think that's about do you ever wonder why you're so lucky obviously you're very talented but it's also, there's a lot of talented people that don't, nothing ever happens for them. I think it comes down to the ability to say no. Mm. At crucial times when I was facing down either, you know, you know, when I remember when I first had my first child and I was broke. And I got offered this comedy that was dumb and it was a million bucks and I needed the money. and I also had an opportunity if I waited Robert Altman was trying to put together the player So I threw caution in the wind and said No, I can't do that stupid comedy What was the stupid comedy? Do you remember? Yeah, it was called folks I remember flying out to L.A. to meet on it And I'm with Alan Arkin And he was the guy that was going to play my father in this thing. And he said, what the fuck are you doing this script for? I said, I need the money. He says, I don't know. I'm not sure I want to do this thing. I was like, thank you, Alan Arkin, for confirming what I was thinking. Wow. Yeah. And so I said no. And then the player came through and shifted my whole career. Yeah, it's a matter of following that voice in your head. instinct, the one that's telling you this is the right way to go. Yeah. Even though there's all sorts of influence that want to lead you into the other direction. There was a period of time about 10, 15 years ago when I got offered in the course of seven months, I got offered to play the head of the CIA three times. You should wonder what that's all about? I couldn't even imagine. I mean, for some reason, that was, I don't know. no idea. And then a couple years after that, and again, you know, you're looking down at your bills and your mortgages and stuff and you need the money and just I don't want to do that, right? Then a few years after, a couple years after that I got offered in the course of a couple months. One, to play the head of FIFA which is a corrupt organization, but in the movie it was, you know, they were the best people in the world, right? Propaganda. Not to mention that The head of FIFA was a Brazilian, and I had, you know, but they were offering a ton of money, and basically it was FIFA producing a movie about itself. Oh, wow. And after that, I got an offer to play the head of the Chilean mine that had just had this huge disaster. And it turns out the mining company was, they were really nice people, you know, according to the script. It wasn't bad management or anything that made the disaster happen. So I realized that the oligarchs are starting to make a movie about themselves. It's an oligarchical cinema. It's like they produce movies that make themselves look really good. And you can get away with it. Oh, hell yeah. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. And they think they can buy anybody. And they almost bought me. But I just, I have to, at times I just have to look, you know, face it down and say, listen, it's not right in my heart. I can't, I can't do it. Yeah. Well, that's great. You've got that North Star. great that I had the luxury to do that. Yeah. Oftentimes people don't have that luxury. Right. And one bad decision can pigeonhole you in a bad direction, and then you'll never get the ones that you really want. Right. Yeah. These movies about you playing CIA had, did they ever get made? Oh, yeah. Yeah. There were TV shows and movies. Yeah. Was any of it any good? No. No. I remember when we're doing movies like, you know, the Day of the Condor, you know, which was, like, critical of the CIA. And I think now we have the rogue CIA agents that are actually good guys. And, you know, listen, CIA, you know, whatever it does, nobody really knows the extent of what they do. But they do have a lot of good portrayals in the media. Well, I think there's good people that are in the CIA as well. And I think that it's necessary. I just think that they obviously have unchecked power, and they've done some really fucking shady shit. Yeah. You know, in the name of this is the right thing to do right now, including selling drugs. Yeah. You know? I remember that. I remember that. I remember that because I was, gosh, I guess I was either right out of high school. It was like in that area where the whole Oliver Stone thing was on television all the time. And it was just... Oliver North. Oliver North, excuse me. Oliver North and... Ronald Reagan. And there was this guy, Jimmy Tingle, hilarious Boston stand-up comedian who had a great joke about it. They're interviewing Ronald Reagan. And they say, Mr. President, did you ever sell arms to people who hate us? And he's like, I don't remember. He goes, well, in the future, if you sell arms to people who hate us, jot it down. Make a note of it. He goes, put a post it on. He goes, put a post it on. your refrigerator. Today, I sold arms to Iran. I remember that it was in the 80s. I did a play about it. I wrote a play about it. We performed it with the actors gang, yeah. There was a meme that was on social media recently that was, it showed all over North during the whole Iran concert trials when, you know, they got caught selling drugs in Los Angeles to fund the contras versus the San Dinas, Nicaragua. And then he goes to jail. And then, then, And then the same guy you see later on Fox News as like a war analyst. And it's like this hilarious meme. Like if you told me, if you told me in 1980, whatever the fuck it was, where, you know, he got in trouble that he would eventually be the guy that they call upon for expert advice on what's going on overseas. Yeah. It's a deep connection that goes back years. All the people that get it wrong, they got, particularly Iraq War, they got, anyone that got it wrong got promotions. Yeah, and no one got in trouble. No one got fired, you know, people in the media as well. You know, they promoted it. They got, you know, better jobs. Well, this is kind of the only time in our lifetimes where there's actual real independent media, you know, where there's independent journalists that are not connected to any major corporations that are operating either on substack or online or on YouTube or on X. It's fascinating because they, they're the ones that are exposing all these connections. that the media and central intelligence agency and all these other government organizations have had where they've all been working together forever, spinning narratives on TV. And so like any time something like the Iraq war happens where they go, oh, we've got weapons of mass destruction, we gotta go in there. No weapons of mass destruction. No one goes away. No one gets in trouble. And the same people are on TV telling you about some new thing that you have to pay attention to. It's like, this is nuts. This episode is brought to by Chime. 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And there's never any apologies. I did. I did. I, you know, I risked, you know, a lot to do it and, you know, wound up being right, but no one ever said, hey, you were right, you know, and we're sorry. This was during the Iraq War? Yeah. What did you say? I was one of maybe five people that were famous that came out against that. Well, went on, you know, in various television shows and made a couple speeches. I got my appearance at the, you know, the Baseball Hall of Fame for Bull Durham, 15th anniversary or something like, canceled by the head of the baseball Hall of Fame. Wow. Real, you know, it was funny because I was doing a show at the time, and I heard about it, and I was started writing a response, but it was already printed by the time I had my response, right? So the next day I got a bunch of people contacting me. I hired a crisis PR person for the first time of my life and wound up getting my letter to Dale Petroski, the head of the Hall of Fame, out there with the press release. They were basically ambushed, trying to call me a traitor and all this stuff. Wow. And so I pushed back and the publicist that I had hired was very smart. He said, we're going to send this to all the sports writers. And it was the sports writers that wrote the articles defending. freedom of speech. Wow. At the time. So it was... What year was this? This was right after 9-11? This was white when we were cooking up the war, 2003. So, and I remember, you know, and I also wrote a piece about that called Embedded that we've performed for the first time three weeks after Bush landed on that aircraft carrier with a mission accomplished thing. So that wound up playing it across the country. We, toured it and played in New York Public Theater and played in London. But it was attacked when we went to New York. You know, they sent someone from, there wasn't a theater critic while we were still in previews and published this thing in, I think it was the New Republic, basically calling me a conspiracy theorist, anti-Semite, all this stuff to try to discredit this play that was playing at the public theater. How do they connect anti-Semite? You know, it doesn't matter. That's what they throw out. There was nothing anti-Semitic about the play. Of course. It was just, it's one of the things they used to discredit people. What did you know about, so what made you compelled to come out against the war? I was reading foreign press. I was reading stuff from Europe and what they were writing about the weapons of mass destruction and that there wasn't any evidence. And it wasn't being covered like it was here. was more open, more transparent, the reporting. And so I was trusting that and trusting sources that I had trusted in the past. And I realized that when I did question, the attacks were vociferous. So usually as a tell, like in poker, that's like a, it usually means you're on to something. You're over the mark. If they, if you're, if they, when I came out against that first war in Iraq in 91, I remember the elderly. But Alder Bush said, well, you know, this is a democracy. People have the right to oppose it. And that was their response. But this one was like your traitor, your Saddam supporter, terrorist sympathizer, all that stuff. They really attacked. And that told me that it's probably over the target, you know. Yeah. That had to be a very disturbing moment because, look, it turns out you were right and not only were you right, but now today in 2026 is universally accepted. that there were no weapons mass destruction. That was a terrible war, and it was not something that should have ever happened. Yeah. Universally. Yeah. If you said it today, it's not even remotely controversial. Yeah. Well, that's the way it works. They finally admit the truth later, you know. I think they're doing that now with COVID. You know, the Fauci's going to do his thing tomorrow. I'm very curious to see what happens with that. Well, they don't give you a universal pardon for 10 years. if you didn't do something. I mean, you don't campaign for that if there's not some smoke. Yeah, that was a very scary time. You know, it was, you know, to come out, when people, when the media's attacking you, it's a very scary thing. But the great good fortune I had in 2003, so I was living in New York at the time, right? So I would have to walk my kids to school. And I remember thinking, oh my God, what's going to happen, you know? Are there going to be people yelling at me, etc. And that wasn't the truth. The truth was that people, if anything, said, you know, way to go. Right. Thanks for speaking for us. And if they disagreed, they said, you know, you have the right to do it. That's the way generally people are in this country. And should be. And I usually would take, every year I would take my kids to the final four. And that year it was in San Antonio. And I remember thinking, oh, my God, I'm going down to Texas and they're going to yell at me down there. And no one said a damn thing. So the reality on the ground was a lot different than the reality they were creating. The reality they were creating was to intimidate other people in silence. It wasn't based on any kind of real reality of people being angry at me. It was more them trying to intimidate others. And so that same thing kind of happened. I recognize that same smell when. COVID was happening when people came out and started asking questions and were deplatformed or marginalized or canceled. And, you know, I followed what you were going through with the ivermectin, which was a drug that I had taken. And, you know, I had lost my sense of smell. And a day later, it was back. So I knew there was something going on with that. And, you know, in an emergency, why not find whatever you can treat until your magic potion arrives, you know? It wasn't just that. It was like the completely disingenuous characterization of it as a veterinary drug and calling it horse paste or horse dewormer, which is crazy. Yeah. It's crazy to what, because maybe that would have worked in 1980, where people would have to go to the encyclopedia to find out what Ivermectin really was. But when you're trying to do that in 2020, it's just too easy to look up, oh, look, it got a Nobel Prize for use in human beings. Oh, it's great for a yellow fever and dange fever and river blindness. And, oh, this has been used billions of times. Oh, it's one of the safest. Oh, wait a minute. It's in the World Health Organization's Essential Medicines list. Yeah. This is crazy. Yeah. But yet on television, it's horse dewormer. Right. And even the Rolling Stone had an article where they showed people waiting in line. They said that people in Oklahoma were waiting in line at the emergency room with gunshot wounds because they couldn't get in there because so many people were overdosing from ivermectin. Right. Which is just fake. Yeah. And it's in the rolling stone. And you're like, what is going on? This is insane. Even the photograph was fake. The photograph showed people wearing winter coats because really the line was people waiting for a flu shot. That was the actual line. Right. And they were trying to say that these are people waiting in line to go to the emergency room. for gunshot. It was like, first of all, how many fucking people are getting shot in Oklahoma? Like, what's going on over there? Are you going to have a gunfights on the streets? Wild stuff going on at the time. You know, disinformation. Yeah. And just orchestrated propaganda. Orchestrated, organized, with big money behind it. Wild. Wild to watch. I suspect that that whole period of time was another way to divide us, you know, you know, the orchestrated chaos masquerading as a revolution, you know. It's, it's, it's, there's been so many of those things over the past five years, you know, you know, alliances that you're building and then all of a sudden there's a new crisis and now you don't like those people that you were building alliances with. And it's just one after the other. And ultimately at the end of the day, I think it's all about division. It's all about dividing us and making us argue with either. other not finding common ground and that's ultimately the strategy that's been used from time and memorial you know for the power to stay in power how do you get people fighting with each other right yeah people don't like to hear that but that's that's a strategy that's been used all throughout history yeah and it's a good one and it works yeah it works and especially in today's day and age when you have social media and then you have not just our government but many governments that have fake accounts. And these people just get outraged about things or attack things or, you know, have a narrative that they push. And you don't know if it's real people. You don't know what it is. Just a bunch of accounts. You go to the accounts, a guy's face. You know, it's a woman wearing a dress, holding a book. She seems normal. Meanwhile, it's a man somewhere with a bank of computers that are all connected to the Internet that's typing in these different responses with a bunch of different. Or now it's AI automated. Yeah. You know, you tell this bot to be a right-wing nationalist that's like attack. anything that's... Yeah, it's crazy, and it's on both sides. And it's nuts. I was over in London doing a project, and I noticed this was during their lockdown, and I noticed by my hotel there was this protest, and I went down to check it out, put my mask on. I was very compliant at the start of all this. And I noticed, you know, what they were portraying as national front right-wingers was actually hippies and homeopaths and free speech activists. And I talked to them. And I tweeted, hey, I don't think it's a right left thing here. And hundreds of attacks, whether they're bots or organized army of, you know, organized army of, you know, righteousness. I have no idea. But it was, I just at that point, I was like, fuck it. I'm not going to put my foot in this water. These people are nuts. This is a crazy, crazy time. Yeah, it was crazy not just from the propaganda perspective, but from actual people that I knew that were really terrified that got caught up in it all. And it was, you know, mass formation psychosis is what some people called it. Yeah. I think that's a good description. Robert Malone, I think, termed that or got that from somebody else. But that's really what it was. Like, everybody just kind of went nutty. And there was people that were doing the government's job for the government or the pharmaceutical drug company's job. job for them. They were the ones that were enforcing all these things. Yeah. And they were doing it because they wanted to be, they wanted a solution, they wanted to be correct. And unfortunately, there's a lot of people in this world that don't experience much real adversity. And when real adversity comes to them, they fall apart. And they don't know what to do. And they get scared. And they lump up together in teams. And then they reinforce each other and repeat the same things. And they all want to be a part of the right side of history or the right side of whatever it is. And also they're being led to believe that that's the virtuous thing to do. And, you know, so it's not like their, you know, their intentions are good. Right. And because of that, you know, I've had a similar experience where, you know, friends of mine and people I love that, you know, fell into that, as I did. I fell into it for a while, you know, that kind of fear-based kind of behavior. And I just, I've come to understand in my later years that one of the things that's truly liberating is the ability to say I don't know. Yeah. And I may have been wrong. These are two things that have led to such great discovery for me. It's, it's, I really don't trust any more. I don't trust virtuous experts. I don't, I don't think, I don't think experts are, or, or, you know, I don't think experts are, or, or, I don't believe in experts. I think if you consider yourself an expert, you're done learning. You're done speaking with others. You're done challenging yourself. And when we put our faith and trust in people that are deemed experts, ultimately, throughout my experience, it's led to bad things. The experts that talked about weapons of mass destruction, and the experts that talk about, you know, various things that have led us to violent altercations throughout the world. I don't trust them anymore. I trust the idea that there are many sides to a story and that there is very, there's a lot to be gained from having dialogue with people you disagree with. Absolutely. I mean, you know, there are experts in some fields and we do need them. It is important. Like if you want information about the large Hadron collider, you don't understand. Like, what are you guys doing over there? Like, you need to talk to someone who actually understands it who's an expert on particle colliders. You know, and it takes a long time to develop that sort of knowledge base and have an understanding of what they're actually trying to accomplish. What is the Higgs boson? What was this particle that is a part of that what? It's the earliest stages of the universe. Okay. You're going to measure it. I'll be in the bar. It exists for a quarter of a cell. or something like that? What? What are you guys doing? Yeah, but the problem is, like, to bring it back to COVID, one of the things that Fauci said that was so wild, he said, when you are criticizing Anthony Fauci, you're criticizing science. Yeah. Well, that is one, just the fact that he felt so confident that he could say that, that is such a crazy thing to say. And then science became like an object. Came a religion. Well, science is supposed to be data. It's supposed to be Measuring data and it's supposed to never be settled and it's always supposed to have a bunch of people from various positions of viewing down on this thing analyzing it with new studies new data new tests new hypothesis working out and communicating with each other. It's not supposed to be a brick like you know like this is a brick if you question the brick like no no this is a fucking fluid thing that exists only if you allow people to ask questions The moment you stop questioning data, and even real experts, like, guys from MIT and Harvard were getting deplatformed off of Twitter because they didn't believe it. They were saying, look, I don't think this lockdown idea is a good idea. I think it's bad for children. I think children are not even really susceptible to this disease. Like, why are we doing this? Like, what's going on? It became a faith. It became dogma. And if you questioned the dogma, you were a heretic. You were kicked out of the religion. It was a scary time, and it still is scary. You know, we deal, the actors gang, my nonprofit in Los Angeles, we have education programs. And we've been dealing with the ramifications of that lockdown for the last five years. You know, those kids that are, you know, had two years robbed of them from socialization and education. Imagine that was your senior year of high school, too. Oh, my God. You know. Fuck. And we're dealing with the after effects of that. And gratefully, the kind of work we do brings them out again and, you know, get some expressing emotions, making eye contact, having experiences with other children and that are productive. And, you know, the goodness is you can get out of that funk, but that was it was really scary to see those kids walk in to classes. after that lockdown because it wouldn't make eye contact looking at the floor you know it's kind of desocialized and traumatized and you know it was really scary critical development time absolutely yeah and all of a sudden they're wearing imagine being a toddler and all of a sudden everyone has a mask on and it's weird you don't want to wear the mask they keep trying to take it off and people yell at them put it back on and so it's like terror and anxiety and confusion also you're not reading people's faces, which is like an important part of the developmental process. You get to know people, you read faces, you see how people talk. All of a sudden, everyone's wearing a mask. Everyone's robbing a bank. Like, this is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I've tried to approach it all with just the openness and compassion for people that went through that. You know, I don't attach blame. I don't, you know, everyone, there was a pretty sophisticated propaganda machine. that was happening. And I have great compassion for people that fell into that. And I, I, I, you know, I just want us to not do it again. You know, I want us to have the knowledge and the consciousness to not fall for that again. Yeah, hopefully. It's just, it was very eye-opening that it was so easy to pull off, you know, that it was so easy to get people to just gang up like that. It said it said a lot about us. Yeah. Unfortunately. And, you know, I hold faith in humanity, but that was a, that was a tough one. I do as well. And I think it was a learning moment for a lot of people, whether they admit to it or not, whether they're public about it or not, because I know a lot of people that just weren't public about their dissent, but they really didn't like any of it. And they just didn't really have a position to talk about it. And, you know, they wanted to keep their job and wanted to keep their place in the community or whatever it was that they were trying to protect. And they kept their mouth shut. But you'd get a couple of drinks in them when they were alone. They would tell you. Well, that begs the larger question is, you know, is it freedom of speech if when you freely speak, your job is threatened? Right. Your future is threatened. Is that, are we living? in