See website for details.

Can you talk about that? Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

Pretty much everything that traumatizes us is connected to fear.

And then there's in the tools that we're given.

Okay.

I remember one time I was speaking to a I think it was in East St. Louis.

That's a good teaching.

Hmm

... and tell themselves they're good people.

No, you're fucking not.

You're the same people that looked up in those lynching photos and smiled, right? That's what this country was built off of.

L- like now folks, see yourselves, right? And you have the, the opportunity to do something about it, but at least-The bandage is being ripped off.

We're seeing what's really evident in society and I would've loved for the, the people to just not have allowed that to happen to this man, you know? And there's that one woman that, that snatched that thing off and, and, uh, of course I talk about, you know, you know, and famously you know the reference of the snakes with Ali's story.

Muhammad Ali when he talks about, you know, "10,000 snakes, you know, [laughs] come down to kill me, only 1,000 are good.

... to ever get that award

[laughs]

They see me as one of them.

As one of them.

Right? Yeah.

So but the, so throughout my career- Mm-hmm ...

I really haven't been challenged very much.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

You know, off Broadway.

And I was with, like, like, Tony Award winners, all that kinda stuff.

And so that was my trajectory.

I was an actor, right? And I was doing theater, and I was doing all that kinda stuff, and landing stuff before going out to LA.

But, you know, in these streets and, you know, it's...

The energy and the fact that I was in it for the, the, the art of it.

Mm.

He could play flicks.

But, but, but, but yeah, so we, we grew up, like, in the same area, right? So but anyway, like, I, I was, I looked like a man early on, and I was, like, fighting in tournaments and I, and I was on my own at 14, really.

And because my mother is, you know, bless her heart and, you know, rest in peace, she was a sweet, church-going woman from the South.

She was, she w- w- was the type of person that would say that, "Those kids are out there shooting that marijuana." I'm like, "You don't shoot marijuana.

What are you talking about?" [laughs]

Yeah.

So, you know, with Jon Jones, man, and, and, uh, Rampage Jackson, all these people who had championships- I'm s- I'm here like, yeah, l- let's build.

Let's, let's work on this 'cause, you know, you a elite fighter, now I can work on my elite stuff with you.

When you talk about the people in the region, are you talking about the people who work and live on campus? Or is there an area outside of campus that would be beneficial to people who live in that area?

Yeah, no, that's a key question.

And this is about regional impact.

So UBC with the 17,000 or so employees and the 60,000 students, the data's had about $12 billion of economic impact across the region.

And you think about the connections between UBC and other research hubs, between employment centers, between hospitals.

Mike Harcourt likes to call the extension to UBC the brain train.

And it is about driving the economy and connecting all these important hubs along the corridor.

What is it exactly and how have they responded?

Oh.

So I focused on a lot of kids who were very much like me, and I still do that.

In a way, I consider that my real job.

Whenever I'm off from work on a movie or whatever, I go into the inner cities, I go into community centers.

I de- devote my time, 'cause there's nothing that I could do-... there's no better spending of time than something like that, because I, I was luckily, luckily saved.

I had just at the right times in my life, just different seeds planted.

And so I'm, I'm confident that if those seeds were not planted, I would not be here.

And you have a full stomach.

Right.

And everybody's under the same delusion.

And you could be in that room and they could be like on something like, you know, "The clouds are red and, and the, you know, the water's pink." Yeah, go along with it.

I'm like, no. [laughs] I'm not gonna do...

Like, it's, it's just this weird thing where that's why it's like when people have a lot of praise, for me, I go, I just look at it as, okay, you're, you're conditioned to think that way.

That may not be the reality.

Because I seen a lot of very famous people who are dealing with an alternate world, and everybody's kissing their ass, and they don't see the truth anymore.

Right.