(soft music) - Hello and welcome to the Brain Trust.

My name is Peter Byck.

I'm a documentary filmmaker and a very curious person.

This show is to enable me to ask anyone anything starting with Van Jones.

Van and I have known each other since 2007 when he was in a documentary I directed called Carbon Nation.

Van has started many organizations like Green for All and Yes We Code.

He was part of the Obama Administration in 2009 as the Green Jobs czar, but he had to leave that job too soon.

He's a best-selling author, he's got his own show on CNN, and he's my first guest, Van Jones.

- As it should be.

- As it should be.

How are you, man?

- Very good, good to see you, brother.

- What was the first time you were on TV?

Do you remember?

- You know, that's a very good question.

I think back in the 1990's, when I was a young attorney working to challenge police abuses in the Bay Area.

They had these little local crap late night cable TV when they were just happy to have any guests and then you know, I started leading campaigns against bad cops or bad practices and then I would wind up set to doing press conferences or speaking out at your police commission meeting or city council meeting and then my face got on the local news that way.

- So when you were out there campaigning against bad cops.

- Yeah.

- Were you ever out for dinner one night and there's one of the cops you've been talking about?

- No.

- Did you ever run into them on a social level or?

- You know, not really, not really.

There was a really heated campaign in 1997 where we got rid of a police officer named Marc Andaya and he had shot an unarmed African American man, unloaded his weapon firing into the guy, reloaded and shot him three more times including once in the head that killed him.

He was still on the police force when he then later beat and stomped and pepper-sprayed to death another unarmed African American man, but at the height of that campaign, when I would go to the Hall of Justice or City Hall, I would sometimes see some of those officers and it wasn't a friendly experience.

- I bet.

- But you know, I was young and crazy and just didn't care and I wish I had not been as dumb and crazy.

- Okay.

- Crazy maybe.

But the dumb part, just not knowing how things worked.

- Right.

Well, how would you know otherwise?

- Maybe I could've listened to somebody who was trying to tell me.

- Ah.

- You know what I mean?

It's not like there weren't people constantly saying you know, young man, you might be more effective if you settled with a little bit less anger in your voice or you know, maybe every time you talk to the mayor, you should be doing a sit-in in his office.

I mean you know, so but ah, screw you.

You know, so.

- Yeah.

But here you are in Oakland, California 1997.

You grew up in a little town, or fairly a little town in Tennessee, Jackson.

- Very little.

Jackson, Tennessee.

- And your dad's a principal, school principal?

- Yup, had become that.

- [Peter] And your mom?

- A school teacher.

- School teacher.

Were you raised to be the man you are?

(Van sighs) Or did you surprise them?

- That's a good question.

I think my parents raised me to work hard and to be honest.

My mom said I'm not visiting nobody in prison.

If you go to jail, you go by yourself.

I'm not visiting nobody in prison.

- Had you been doing anything that she would actually say?

- No, I was a big nerd reading comic books and writing poems and crying listening to weird music, so.

- When I met you, your mom was having some health issues and your dad was having some real health issues.

You and I met in 2007.

Do I have it remembered correctly that I was the first white person in you all's house?

- Probably.

There may have been a white person before, but you were number one or number two.

- Okay.

Was I welcome?

Were you guys like okay with me coming in?

- Oh yeah.

- Or were you like what the?

- No, no.

I mean it's just, it's the rural south and there's a term called mixing and mingling.

Mixing and mingling which is a very friendly and very fraught term for social interaction among blacks and whites.

- Yup.

I like blacks.

Now we don't mix and mingle, but I like 'em, I like 'em.

You know, so that's still a lot of what goes on.

Less so now, but definitely when I was growing up.

- Did you have white kid friends when you were in school?

- [Van] I did.

- Did you go to a school that was integrated?

- Yeah, yeah.

You know, our generation really was you know, maybe the only generation that was integrated because before everything was segregated and then they integrated and then people started fleeing to these private schools.

- Yup.

I was good friends with a kid who his parents pulled him out of school when forced busing started in Kentucky.

- Yeah, yeah.

And also you know, I did well enough in school that I was in some of the advanced classes and there was also a thing that tended to happen where if you were a white kid, even if you were of average intelligence, you were put in the advanced classes.

If you were a black kid of average intelligence, you were put in the average or even remedial.

- No kidding.

You saw that, you saw that kind of?

- Oh yeah.

There was a way that the buildings were still segregated and sometimes even the classrooms.

When I was in elementary school, you go in a classroom and all the black kids were on this side.

They're slow learners.

All the white kids are on this side, they're accelerated and there's some kids in the middle.

- In the same classroom.

- Literally in the class.

I remember that and my mother, I remember two years in a row, my mother came and told the teachers to move me over to the-- - 'cause she knew.

Was she in the same school?

- She wasn't in the same school, but she knew the deal.

- Knew what was going on.

Do your kids go to public school, private school?

- My kids go to private school in Los Angeles.

- Do you have the feeling that I have when I drop my kids off everyday?

I hope nothing happens today.

Do you get that gut feeling?

- No, I probably should.

- No, it's not fun.

I just never expected to feel that way, you know.

Like when we first dropped our kids off like you know, preschool, it hurt.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Why does that hurt?

I don't know why it hurts.

It's like, it's a joyous thing too.

I don't know.

- Well the kids are, I mean the relationship between parents and kids is the only relationship of its kind in the following respect: when I first met you, I didn't know anything about you and over the years, I've gotten to know you more and more and more and I suspect that when I die, I'll know more about you than I do right now.

- I hope.

- Kids are the opposite.

(Peter laughs) When you first meet them, you know everything about them.

You know when they pooped last, you know what they ate, what this little expression means, why he's making this noise, blah, blah, blah.

And then the entire process of them growing up is them becoming more and more of a stranger, right?

- Oh my god.

- So at some point, you have no idea where they are on Earth.

Like right now, my mom.

- Right.

- Doesn't know if I'm in Berlin or Phoenix or the Bay Area or New York.

- Right.

- No idea.

The idea that at some point, I will literally not know where these little people are.

- Yeah.

- It's shocking, but it's true and if that day never comes, that means I'm a terrible parent.

- Right, right 'cause you just didn't let them do their thing.

When I met you, I thought you were gonna run for office.

- Oh god, I thought you liked me.

- No I do like you.

That's, I was, there's people I wish would run for office 'cause I like them.

- Oh I see, okay.

- And I want them to do a good job.

- And you're a sadist toward your friends?

- For my friends, yeah, but I did think you were going to be you know, Mayor of Oakland and then Governor of California.

That's what I thought.

You could ask my wife.

I said those things about you and I said it out of respect.

- I appreciate that.

- Then when the things went south with the White House, from my perspective, tell me if I'm right or wrong, that you had called for a boycott of Glenn Beck's show, you picked a fight with Glenn Beck.

- No I didn't.

The Color of Change, an organization I started, and I've started many organizations.

- Yes you have.

- Decided to pick a fight with Glenn Beck.

- Okay.

And he picked you.

- And then, he decided to you know, pick on me.

All they knew was Glenn Beck had called President Obama racist and they wanted him off the air and here's the thing.

When it first started, I was like this is annoying and stupid on the part of my friends, but who cares?

Advertiser boycotts never work.

- Right.

- [Van] It's just screaming in the wind.

- Right.

- And this winds up being being the most successful advertiser boycott in the history of American media.

- Up 'til that point.

- Yeah up 'til that point.

- Yeah, yeah.

- It literally drove him off the air.

- [Peter] Right.

- And but on the way out.

- On the way.

- He's exactly, he's coming after me with guns blazing.

But when Obama became President, all the rules changed.

- But you were put into the White House to create jobs for people to help make buildings more energy efficient and to get solar panels on.

Really dangerous stuff.

- Well, honestly it is.

Koch Industries, not Coca Cola which we drink, but Koch Industries which does major gas and oil and kind of a dirty energy giant, they saw the green jobs agenda as a very big threat.

- Did they?

- Yeah and so they gave millions of dollars to Americans for Prosperity, which then created.

- Their political action committee.

- Political action committee and they created a big dossier on me and they handed it to Glenn Beck and he just started going after me on air.

- No kidding.

- That was a deliberate, the attack on me was financed by dirty energy and and I say not as a conspiracy theorist, you know, here's the thing about conspiracies.

They're a secret, okay?

They, Koch Industries, Heritage Foundation said openly we're going to end the myth of green jobs.

That was on the website.

- Got it.

- Of the Heritage Foundation.

They went after it and they I think did a lot of damage to the idea.

I'm at a stage in my life now where I feel like I'm finally getting a chance to live plan A.

- This is it.

- This is it.

- So your dream is having your own show.

- Yup.

- Getting on TV whenever you feel like it.

- Yup.

And being able to be a part of running the Dream Corps.

For me, the Dream Corps is an attempt to solve the problem around division.

Our mission is to close prison doors and open doors of opportunity.

- [Peter] Okay.

- That's our mission.

- That's a simple mission.

- Simple mission.

- You can branch out from there.

- Exactly.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So we got a simple mission.

Close prison doors, open doors of opportunity and so we've got a couple initiatives.

We have Cut 50 which is our campaign to reduce the prison population.

Working with Democrats and Republicans.

- [Peter] Sure.

- Including Koch Industries that came after me so hard when I was in the White House.

I work with them everyday on prison.

- Okay.

- Okay?

- So you're finding common ground.

- Common ground on the prison stuff and proud of that.

But also doors of opportunity.

So Yes We Code, which I started with friends works to get urban youth, for lack of a better term, jobs in Silicon Valley and that's been an incredible journey and then Green for All is still alive, still kicking, trying to get solar jobs in the hood as well.

You know, we're not issue-oriented.

One problem that we have is you ask well what issue do you work on?

That's like racism, sexism, climate change, whatever.

Ask them what solution are you working for?

- [Peter] Yeah, yeah.

- And that gets tough.

You can answer the question.

You know, talking about soils and secular circulation.

- Yeah.

- But most people, you ask what solution are you working for, right now, what do you want?

They can't tell you.

And so the Dream Corps, everything is solution-oriented and about bridge building and then I get to be on TV.

- Right.

- And my colleagues in this business, they don't see their job as then once they get off set, turn around and go lobby in Congress or turn around and go lead a protest or turn around and go hire a staff, but for me, I wouldn't feel as grounded on air if I weren't doing some of this work off air.

- But you got on air because you were doing that work.

- Yes.

- So your being on air was because you've been doing this ground work.

- That's also why like, I don't take every cheap shot against every Republican I can on air.

A lot of liberals get mad at me.

Oh Van Jones is too soft, he's too soft.

Guys.

- You wanna work with them.

- Look, if you're saying stuff that's just blatantly stupid on air, Republican or Democrat, I'm gonna take a shot at you because you just can't be on the air just saying dumb stuff.

But if you're making a case that's arguably in the bounds of common sense and I just don't agree with you, then I'm gonna say listen, I see it differently.

Let me tell you how I see it.

I'm not gonna say you're an idiot if you're not saying idiotic stuff.

We've now turned politics into this bloodsport where if you don't agree with somebody, they're your enemy.

You're supposed to try to decapitate them and humiliate them on air so you could get your moment, your viral moment.

Van Jones takes down Peter Byck, blah, blah, blah.

- Yeah, brutal.

- And then that's.

I don't wanna do that stuff because when I walk off the set, I'm gonna be on my phone calling some conservative at some place trying to get something done and I don't wanna be two different people on air pitching like I hate all Republicans and then literally working with them on legislation the next day.

- The work you've been doing especially at the end of the presidential campaign really hit a sweet spot for me 'cause as I've been out with Carbon Nation for three years and coming out here at ASU and being now showing my films about agriculture and soil health and all those things, I'm in a lot of conservative areas.

- That's good.

- And I love that.

I don't think we're a polarized country.

I don't.

When I talk to people, one on one, I don't feel the polarization.

When I watch TV, I feel the polarization.

When I listen to politicians, I feel the polarization and I think a lot of people are acting as if because they're believing what they're hearing on television, but when I have these one-on-one conversations with people, we're in agreement 60, 70% of the time on how to run things.

That's a landslide in this country.

If you ran for President, you won't with 60% of the votes, Reagan didn't win with 60.

He ran with 58, won with 58.

I can see by your body language you disagree with me.

- I think that we're polarized, but I think the polarization's also inflamed unnecessarily.

In other words, I do think, listen, most people have enough at home, unless you're a sociopath, when you're sitting and talking to somebody, your tendency is to try and find common ground and get along unless you're a complete psycho.

- [Peter] Right.

- And so I think we can overgeneralize from the media that it's horrible and overgeneralize from individual conversations that it's better than it is.

I think we've got some pretty big division in the country, but that doesn't worry me as much as the way we're handling them.

- Okay.

- We're handling them, you know, in a way that is, you know, if you cut yourself, that's an injury and that's a problem.

Once it gets inflamed and infected and you know.

- It's well beyond that.

- Now you've got a whole other problem.

- You've got a system problem.

- Exactly.

Now you've got a whole set of systemic infections you've got to deal with and that's where my concern, listen.

The fact that some people really don't think that women should have the right to have an abortion and some people do, that's a real division.

- Right, that's a division.

- Now there are some common ground issues.

- But the fact that that becomes the only thing you care about is the crazy part and what I'm saying is there's someone out there who disagrees with me on abortion.

- Right.

- But we're gonna agree on a lot of different things.

- Yes.

- And I wanna make sure we get to all those other things too.

- I agree with you 100% on that.

Look, but most of the people that throw rocks at me these days are liberals.

- Okay.

- Because I'm trying to work with conservatives to get stuff done.

- Right.

- So I have liberals who'll come, who'll say how can you possibly work with those people and these people this, and those people that.

I'm like look, I'm an African American.

I know what that is.

- Uh duh.

- That's dehumanization.

- Yeah, yeah.

- These people in the inner cities and these people or those people.

Look, I don't want any of that stuff.

For me, where we disagree, we're supposed to fight.

That's called democracy.

- Mmhmm.

- Dictatorship, you gotta agree.

- [Peter] Right.

- Democracy, you get to disagree.

That's the whole point.

- Right.

- It's called freedom.

- Yeah.

- So but when you disagree, you're supposed to disagree in a way that shows some sense of common courtesy and decency because you're.

- It's respect.

- It's respect.

- Yeah.

- So you should be passionate and work hard where you disagree and you should be equally passionate and work equally as hard where you agree.

- [Peter] Yeah.

- And to the point you're making, I agree with.

- [Peter] Yeah.

- There are real points of agreement.

Addiction, huge issue.

- Yup.

- Criminal justice, prisons, huge issue.

Jobs of tomorrow, including clean energy, a lot of overlap, but we never get to those issues because we wanna fight about all the dumb stuff.

That said, I do think there's a tendency for people to say well we're all the same, we all get along, we all want the same things.

- I'm not saying we're all the same.

I'm not going Kumbayah on you here.

- [Van] Yeah, gotcha.

- I'm just saying if we agree on 60% or 51%.

- Let's work on it.

- Let's work on that stuff and that's why I like the work you're doing.

I mean that's why I love the work you're doing because I know you're living in that spot.

- [Van] Yeah.

- And so when I say we're not a polarized country, I guess everyone thinks that we disagree on everything all the time and that's not true.

We've got the clowns in Congress who are playing that game 'cause that's how they're getting their votes, I guess?

- And their donations.

- And their donations.

See that's the thing, that's the thing that's really a conundrum to me.

'cause I deal with, you know, I have a lot of friends and colleagues who are in environmental groups and things like that and you know, I have my agreements, my disagreements, but man they raise a lot of money with folks who are fighting them.

Like the more scared people are, the more checks they write.

- Yeah.

- And that's a shame to me.

I don't know, so there's the argument that divisiveness is productive.

- Yeah.

- Right?

- Well look there's a business model out there.

Listen, I wrote a book last year called Beyond the Messy Truth, how we came apart and how we came together.

- Yup.

- Tough on Democrats, tough on Republicans.

Best seller for two weeks and then fell off.

My publishers and other people had suggested, hey listen, put out a book called Whitelash, the case against Donald Trump, right?

You don't even have to write anything.

It can be blank pages.

- Right.

- And just based on the title, you'll sell a million copies.

- [Peter] Right.

- I said-- - Did they come up with that title?

Is that a joke?

Whitelash?

- No I mean, whitelash is a comment on election night with Donald Trump.

I said this is a whitelash, in part.

- So that was from you.

- Yeah I said it, I stand by it.

I said it was a whitelash in part, that you know, 'cause look, we've been on TV and we had talked about the polling and we talked about everything in the world.

Nobody was willing to talk about race.

- Right.

- This is the election of Donald Trump who whatever you think about him, is not a racial unifier.

- Correct.

- Then people assumed oh well Van wants to be Mr.

Whitelash and he's just gonna be the person that's bringing a racial justice attack against Donald Trump.

That's gonna be his business model.

- Right.

- He'll do a book and a documentary and I'll have a show.

- Tour.

- Yeah, and it'll be whitelash, whitelash, whitelash.

And that would be a great business model.

I would have a lot of money had I done that because.

- Yeah.

- Everybody knows how to plug that in and play that and then these people hate you, these people love you and the more they hate you, the more these ones love ya and you become legitimate, why?

Because you got the right enemies.

- Right.

- Not 'cause you got the right friends.

- [Peter] Right.

- So the other day I passed up a lot of money, refusing to go down the road of being more destructive and more divisive, much more lucrative.

But long run, my wealth is in my children and if somewhere back down the chain, you know, my dad as he did, set a positive example, if I can pass that on, and that keeps going, that's worth more than a million bucks.

- [Peter] Yeah.

- Not worth more than a billion, but worth more than a million.

Worth more than a million.

- But that's a theme for you.

So there, you've just made that decision.

You have made a financial decision that you didn't make nearly as much money as you could have.

- Right, right.

- You know that, right?

And you went to Yale Law School and you, I asked your dad, I had this question, your dad had this question.

How come you didn't work for a corporation and make a lot of money after you got that degree?

You didn't do that then either.

You're helping folks who can't help themselves back in the '90s, the folks in Oakland who were getting abused by the police.

Now you're trying to magnify that.

Am I reading you right?

- Yeah, absolutely.

- Does that feel good?

- You know.

To me, it doesn't register as good or bad.

It doesn't feel like I have a lot of choice in the matter.

- Okay.

- If I see injustice it's hard for me to say well that's your bad karma.

- Do you have a memory of an early empathetic moment for you like where you saw something outside your family where you cared and it triggered something?

- Well look, I've always been too sensitive, you know, by most people's understanding.

We would drive down these country roads and if I saw a dog run over in the road or a stray dog looking hungry and I'd be crying and wanting my mom to do something and upset and so they started handed me books to read in the car so I just wouldn't be looking around and causing problems.

- Seeing the world.

- Yeah, like see a frog run over in the driveway and that kind of stuff and crying and wishing, wanting God to bring him back to life.

I mean reading comic books as a kid was my real refuge 'cause I was a bully magnet.

Even the kids that were getting bullied would bully me.

- Okay.

- 'Cause you know, the crab runs downhill.

- Yeah, yeah.

- People say I was the last one picked on a team.

I was never picked on a team.

They'd made me keep score, I was so bad.

So you know, it was rough, but that you know, serious.

That's a true story.

So I always have had a soft heart for the underdog.

- The last thing I wanted to talk about, creativity.

What's your source of creativity?

Do you have one?

Do you just do the work even when you're not feeling creative, knowing that you'll get there with your discipline?

How do you do it, how do you write a book?

- You know, deadlines help.

- Okay.

- That's for sure, but there's two very different types of creativity.

There's creativity and there's productivity.

- Hmm.

- They're not the same.

Productivity is just grinding it out, just you got a deadline.

- Yup.

- Creativity to me is a very different thing.

That's really where something comes out of nowhere.

I do this thing called conscious cardio where I'll get on the elliptical for like 30 minutes and I'll listen to something reflective and then I'll sit for 10, 15, 20 minutes and meditate.

If I do that for a couple weeks, really amazing stuff starts happening.

Then we just gotta have a practice where you can capture those creative insight someplace, a journal, you know, cards or whatever right next to you, whatever you can just hold onto them and then you've got to figure out a way on the productivity side to then return to that stuff.

- Yes.

- And make something happen.

- Yes.

- And that back and forth.

- That's the hardest part for me.

- Yeah that back and forth is really important and what I've discovered is is these two different energies you have to manage.

There's your ego which needs to be strong, but small like a tool, like a little knife.

So nobody's gonna mess with ya, but it's like a good handy tool so you want your ego to be small, but you want your soul to be big.

You want your soul to be a big expression of your commitment to other people.

So when you meet somebody that's got a strong small ego and a big soul, those are the people who make a huge difference and your ego needs motivation.

Productivity, productivity.

Your soul needs inspiration.

Creativity, connection, connection.

My whole life now is just a struggle to kind of balance those two energies, to blend them, to dovetail and to balance them, but you know, I've got a chance now.

Prince, strong ego, but not a big ego, but strong ego.

Huge soul.

Oprah Winfrey, gimme a break.

So I've got a chance to be in the presence of people who have somehow figured that out and now I turn 50 and I suddenly realize hey listen, I've got another 10, 20, 25 years if I'm lucky if you look at the actuary tables, that's not a lot of time.

- No.

- I finally have gotten to a place where I have the platform.

- [Peter] Mmhmm.

- Hard to get a platform.

- Yup.

- Got the platform.

- Yup.

- I've got the practices, I know what they are, but now I have to have the presence to do the practices, to use the platform.

That's what I'm doing.

- Yeah, so Van in 2007 when I got lucky enough to meet people to help me to start making Carbon Nation which was about solutions, solutions.

I'd never live my life where I was focused on solutions.

It changed my life.

- Yeah.

- And part of my journey was meeting you very early on in that process.

I, three weeks into filming was when I met you.

And so I want to thank you for helping me start that journey towards solutions.

I'm in it now.

- Mmhmm.

- And it just feels great.

- You're doing amazing stuff.

- I appreciate that and there's so much more to do and I just want to thank you for that, so and thank you for being the first guest on this show.

- Hey listen.

- Yeah.

- Hey, if I had not been the first guest, I would've been very mad at you.

I appreciate you.

- Thank you.

- We start out together, we stay together.

- Exactly, exactly.

So thanks for coming and well do another one soon.

(uplifting music)