 You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications bell so you are notified for when my next podcast goes live. Here's the crazy thing, I had some amazing brilliant friends on death row. I still consider Craig Murphy the closest dude I ever had a friendship with and he had killed 10 people. I looked and he had like something in his head so I looked again and he had a screwdriver sticking out of his head. So I walked in the cell I said dude hold on I'm gonna go get the guard alright and he looked at me said am I gonna die and I said no man I promise you I'm gonna go get the officer and then when I turned around the ground he slumped over so I fucking lied to that kid told me he was gonna be okay. I grieved for my little brother dying in my parents basement and I wondered if I could actually handle freedom. I've been around and today's guest we've got a very interesting character, Nick Yaris. How about you? James, thank you. This means so much. We've been in touch since I landed and I knew it would come about. Mad story that you've had a kind of tortured life no disrespect in any way but you put on Joe Rogan told your story, the biggest platform on the planet, a man who was death row nearly 25 years wrongly convicted. Now you're out telling a tale they've made documentaries about it yeah they've wrote books about you. You've actually wrote the books but we'll plug the books straight away because they're very interesting. Okay so this book was written called the kindness approach right after we had the Sid's death in our lives. So I tried to use everything that I could to help people with the biggest sorrows and you know what it's like to come back from just the depths of just despair and hurt and pain right. So I had a real honor and blessing that Robin Sharma wrote the four word for the book and I started out and the other cool thing is that's actually what I was telling you. That's Ilchester England where we used to live which was a prison town. The Romans at one point had all of the inhabitants in prison and then I got back to England and I'm living in a former prison. So it was really beautiful and then while I was with Laura I wrote this latest book which is monsters and mad men. Now this story was too big to tell when I wrote Seven Days to Live because it would have messed up how I developed and educated myself because they put me in a three year experiment. I was next to the guy that was the real Buffalo Bill. I was tortured by a guard who just wanted to drive me into the ground you know what I mean. So I kept all of that aside and these are the last two books that I wrote and then here I am I just came back to England and it's so strange. We weren't even supposed to meet and everything starts unfolding right. So for those of you who are frequent viewers of James's podcast. My name is Nick Yarris and I'm a former death row prisoner who spent 23 years in solitary confinement waiting to be executed. In 1985 I escaped from death row and I was on the FBI's most one of this for 25 days. I turned myself back in and went back to prison in Pennsylvania and I became the very first man in America to seek DNA testing to prove my innocence in 1988. There was no exonerations back then and it was really difficult because there weren't even really innocence projects or these groups now that help people right. There was only a few. I had to do all of my own legal work most of the time. I got saddled with lawyers who didn't make it easy for me. So it took me 15 years for that DNA to come through and set me free in 2004. An enormous journey I went through and all of that right. And then when I got out I realized this had to be bigger than me. So I was sitting in my parents basement in 2004 and I decided I was going to use my education given to myself in prison to come to England, to Sweden, Italy and to France. All of the big trade partners of Pennsylvania and asked them to ask Pennsylvania to get rid of their death penalty. I came here and I went on this morning with Phillips Gofield and I talked about being the first ever death row exoneree to go and address Parliament because I had a great honor of addressing a combined session of the Lower House. I never believed I would that moment come back and live here. And when I did, like I was telling you one of the greatest joys I had was like there's so many unique things. I went up to the Fringe Festival and performed for a week one time, rode a motorbike from Watford, England all the way up to Edinburgh and it was like the biggest amazing journey to go that far along an island and change countries. I remember there was a sign the last English petrol station and I just had to stay like a couple hours early in the morning because it was shut and there was another motorcyclist waiting to get petrol with me and we started talking about the journey, you know. Now you're out, brother. Man. I try to relive this time but before we get into everything, Nick, I always like to go back to the start of my guests, get an understanding of them, the stuff they've been through and just, I don't know, you've got a very interesting story. I think we're going to go deep into it today but I always like to go back to the start where you've got them, how it all began. Sure, so I was raised in Philadelphia and I went through the error that was all of the civil rights and upheaval. In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. got assassinated. I mean, there was so much going on where the cities were on fire and all that and that was the same year I got attacked as a seven-year-old boy and had my head beat in by a man that sexually assaulted me. So my life went chaotically wrong, you know what I mean? I had to develop need for eyeglasses. I became that kid in class that wouldn't settle, but just tear away, you know what I mean? And then by the age of 10, I started drinking. So my entire childhood from the age of 10 until I was 17, 18 was just drugs, just drinking drugs every day, man. What about parents? My mom and dad worked and I had five siblings and in a big city like Philadelphia, I was just another kid, you know what I mean? So I kept everything to myself, I internalized with it. I did all the mistakes you can do, man. When a kid has something like that happen to him and he doesn't get a chance to tell someone and he becomes married to the lie that it didn't happen, it destroys you. It really hurts you inside because you feel dirty no matter what. See, I've had a lot of survivors on people who's been abused back in the day and you know yourself, when it's one with trauma or pain, you get two options, either become a villain or a hero. It's like every criminal interview as well. You see the sadness in them because they've either been bullied or abused or they're younger. You kind of see that connection. Did you ever deal with being abused? Did you ever deal with that in prison or after prison? Or did you deal with it beforehand that fueled you with anger or anything? Yeah, so I had a really horrible experience where I was put through the juvenile detention system in Pennsylvania for petty crimes. And I learned how to become a boxer with trainers from the old Joe Frazier Jim who worked as counselors in the facility I was housed. I met my attacker when I was 19 years old. I had just gotten out of the juvenile system and I was fully grown. Now this person in my childhood, I was always bigger-than-life person, was only in real life five foot nine and he weighed about 165 pounds. By the time I was 19, I was six foot two and I weighed over 200 pounds. I was much bigger than him and I had an incidence where I was down by a creekside and I saw him coming off of some train steps and down the side of a trestle, it's called. And as he got near me, he recognized for the first time ever we were alone and it wasn't him scaring me and it was due date on his ass whooping, you know what I mean? As he came closer and closer to me, I got really at first nervous and I got really angry thinking, this is my chance, you know. And the crazy thing is he walked up before me and he started capitulating and going, look Nick, I have a lot of problems, please understand, I'm really sorry. He started weeping in front of me and the monster in my head started breaking down and in that moment it made me realize I had become so much like him, aggressive, nasty, couldn't care about anyone. That moment just blew my mind. I didn't even hurt the dude. I literally re-cold and horror so much from what I witnessed. I told him to get away from me. And then I shortly right after that I stole a car and I drove all the way to Miami and I ended up destroying a hotel room and I was put in a mental institution. That's how badly it messed me up. It's funny because I had a man on call, Jeff Thompson. He's one of the highest ranked karate expert or martial arts experts in the world. He can kill you instantly. He's a native Dan. So Jeff used to be a bouncer at a nightclub. Do you know what a bouncer is here in UK? He had to stand at the doors and he ended up training himself to kill. He was abused by his teacher when he was like 12 or 13. Jeff called it a parasite. The parasite was in him. He was speaking about it. It's hard. You're young. You're confused. You don't really know then as a kid. He says the parasite get bigger and bigger which filled him with rage. He then nearly killed a man working on the doors. And what happened is he just trained himself. He wanted to quieten the mind. So he mixed martial arts like 8th Dan. One of the highest ranked in the world. He met his abuser in the cafe. Jeff's seen him. Now this man can kill anybody. He's unbelievable. Unbelievable man. I'll actually put you in contact with this man. He got by a good connection. Wrote countless books as well. One called The Bouncer. Unbelievable. But he's seen his abuser in the restaurant. At the cafe. What happened is Jeff throws. 8th Dan throws. He didn't know what to do. He had those feelings that you had. Rage, anger, freeze. And he stood up. Went towards his abuser. He's abuser. Done the exact same panic. Jeff kind of panicked as well. Since that day, the parasite died. That's when it became a better individual. Yeah, but see, I was so young at the time that it happened. I hated myself so much for what I'd become. I went on a drunk bitch. And after I did all these drugs and ran away. I was so enraged. I couldn't take it out on anybody. I physically destroyed a hotel room and snapped out. So. It's ironic you. I didn't learn martial arts to have. A sport. I literally had to become an assassin and death row to fight assassins. So everything is instant. Jeff will tell you this. There's no Queensbury's rules. You don't get that chance. You're going to go at it. And it's always that fast. You know, I've been stabbed. I've been slashed. It's just instant. And what I. I got from all of this was. Everything I went through James set me up to survive. If you think about it. All of my childhood friends are dead. Both my brothers are dead. The only way I survived is that God sent me to death row to save me from my neighborhood. What was the man owns the church like. I was put basically the first three months in a cell protective cells. So I couldn't harm myself. And then I was sent back to Pennsylvania. At the age of 20. So I went back and for the first time in my childhood, I was actually sober. And I was living at my parents house and I got a job in Philadelphia at like a little gift shop. I had a girl. I was happy. And then it started to torment me again, torment me again. And right before Christmas, I got high again. So I had this one brief, good, stable part. And then I started shooting meth again, man. Why do you think it is when life's going great? I relapsed so many times in my life after feeling amazing. It's fucking feeling amazing. Better relationship, my kids, parents, family members, friends. I wasn't stealing. I wasn't lying. And then something would come over me. I still get those urges to gamble or take drugs or drink at all the time. I just don't act on it anymore. I've got the power back. That's why when I go to meetings, when I went to meetings, I didn't like the saying I am an alcoholic or I am a gambler. I didn't like that because I'm not in recovery. I am recovered. And that's the way I was there. But what do you think that is when life is going good, when we jeopardize it? So your ego's a nasty bitch. That's what it is if you think about it. Look, what's the most precious thing you own? Your anger. Because your anger can erase every possession you have, every relationship you just talked about. Your anger, you could throw it out the window. And what's driving your anger? Your ego. So a lot of times our ego will tell us, come on, man, you fucked up before. But I know you love this shit. You can do this. And you're not even hearing this. The next thing you know, you're scoring and you're trying to get high. I went through that. But the great thing about it, I also learned now. I haven't had a drink of alcohol in 42 years. Well done. Yeah, because the last time was so horrific, I didn't need another time to be a drunk. And I realized something too. Every seven years of your life, every molecule about you gets erased. Just why you don't look the same as seven that you did at 14 and 21 and 28, right? If you stay sober seven years in a row, that person and those cravings are gone. Yeah. Think about it. That whole person that was a drunk has been erased physiologically and even mentally because every part of your body is brand new seven years on. All right. So when I realized by the time I hit 2011 and I hadn't had a drink seven years since I've been released and then another seven years in 2018 since I've been free 19 years, I haven't been a drunk because that person's gone, man. I don't have that craving or that need. And I don't have that internal thing that makes me dislike myself. That's where a lot of it comes from. Ain't it? We get to that point where we'll say easily, you're an idiot and that shit then goes deep because words really do mean. You know what I mean? Yeah. Words are powerful. So the night that all happened in what age were you when you ended up getting that? You got it. Went to prison for petty stuff though. Yeah. What age were you? What's the running of that night? All right. So I started going. I went to prison for these crimes at the age of 20. Before that, I had petty crimes, you know, in and out, just theft, car theft and things like that. I went to prison at the age of 20. I got sentenced to die at the age of 21. And then I spent the next 8,057 days in solitary confinement on death row for a woman I never even met and her murder and rape. So it was really profound how I had to go and develop a friendship with myself to get me out of there. I literally took away all the photographs of beaches and cars and titties and I put a photograph of myself on the wall and I asked that person to help me get out. Like I started speaking beautifully to that person because they were going to put me to death. And the way I spoke when I came from Philadelphia was an embarrassment. I didn't have patience to learn anything in school but I'm sitting there on death row and I'm thinking I got to make an effort to speak for myself so that when they put me to death, at least I won't embarrass myself. That's it. Like I didn't think I was going to get out. I thought they were going to execute me. So I started to educate myself. Simple things. I wrote a dictionary in every word that I didn't understand. I wrote the spelling down ten times. I wrote its definition down ten times. And then I used it in a different sentence ten different times and committed that word to memory. And so I just built this huge vernacular and then I practiced all of these educational booklets, study courses. And I began reading and my first five books were amazing. The Prophet by Khalil Gabran. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas. A 1933 medical encyclopedic that taught me all about medicine and how to care for myself. The Dictionary and the General Education Development booklet. That was one of my five first books. The Count of Monte Cristo's brilliant book. Dante's Edward Dante's. Yeah, so I am a lot like his character. Think about this. Edmund Dante's. Edmund. Yeah, he goes to prison for something he doesn't do. He meets an old man, Dufiel, who's going to lead him to a treasure. But the old man dies in prison. He gets out, he goes and gets the treasure. And he comes back and no one recognizes him because he's been away for so long. Sound like me. My treasure was in gold. The treasure was the education I gave myself so that in 2010, I mean, 2004, 10 months after my release, I performed at the Colosseum in Rome before 20,000 people in a beautiful suit. Do you see what I mean? Like I gave myself this treasure of who I could be. And I went around the world with this wonderful thing called neuroplasticity healing where I can get people to stop being lost to drugs or hating themselves. Imagine that you go to prison and suffer but God gives you a real gift at the end of that. Then they make it worth it. Yeah, of course. If you try to do the greater good from it, if you can learn from it, you know yourself, you'd have seen it. But being in so long, people would break in prison even though you probably thought they were the strongest. What evidence did they have against you for a conviction? So it was an inmate named Charles Catalino who burglarized a prosecutor's home who was convicted of a jury of these crimes that they used to say that I confessed to him. No evidence, no witnesses, no murder weapon. No DNA? No, they didn't have DNA in 1981. Oh, yeah. But this is crazy. The murderer had B positive blood type. They knew that from the serology test. This was later saved my life because of those evidence that was later found. I'm B positive. When they said that all of the evidence was thrown away, I went through my trial transcripts and I kept saying to myself, B positive. And then I found a sidebar where the prosecutor and the district attorney, I mean, the defense attorney and the judge will go to the side and speak. That's called sidebar. It's on a different transcript than your trial. I read all those sidebar transcripts and I realized they had the evidence and I began my efforts to seek DNA testing to prove my innocence. What you thinking when you got charged for rape and murder of a woman? I was so humiliated because in the county jail everybody was going to treat me like I was a psycho, went out and stalked a woman. I wasn't getting no breaks and people were trying to collect a bounty that was on me. I got stabbed in the face with a sharpened broom. I got beat in the back of the head with a pull stick a couple of times. A lot of attacks. I got stabbed up in Homsburg prison in Philadelphia and if it wasn't for another prisoner picking up a wooden stool and hitting this guy he would've took him out. Were you in protection? No. Just nonmoving? I was on death row. Whenever there was movement from me in the county it was open season so you have to... Sit and duck? Yeah, but then it even got worse. They made me gladiator against other prisoners on death row. What's gladiator? Two guards are coming to your cell and tell you to come out. Then they take you and put you in an exercise cage that's 10 feet wide, 20 feet long and then they bring another inmate out and then there's four guards standing out there with clubs. If you two don't fight they're coming in and beating both of you for five minutes. Yeah, the prisoners are from the 60s, 70s, 80s, like... Yeah. Even in the U.K. You hear some of their stories but not compared to some of the shit that you're... Death row block with 245 guys, man. Is everybody out at the same time for lunch or is it separate wings? Every one of us were on three tiers. The block was so long that it was like 75 cells long and three tiers high and men would just jump off the top tier and kill themselves after a while. It was the worst prison... I was in Huntington State Prison. You could look it up. The only prison in America history condemned by the United Nations for its active practices of torture. The average rate of survival for a prisoner on that block was five years. I did 12. I got there in 83 and I left in 95. Did everybody know everybody's challenges? Of course. They're all in the law books plus they're in the newspaper. So... Yeah, you're not trying to get straight, are we then? Yeah, so it was weird. The worst time was going to the showers. Six at a time. Naked with 12 guards, escorting six. It's always two on one. And once they shut that gate and start running the water, that's your most vulnerable time to get stabbed. Guys will bring weapons in their underwear or in their mouths, have a mouth full of toothpaste and a small weapon. Spit the toothpaste in your eyes and then attack you. See, when you were going through your court, you were going through your trial. It was only a three-day trial. And then you got convicted. What's going through your mind then when you get convicted? What was the conviction? What did you get? So I had a three-day trial in June of 1982 in Delaware County, Pennsylvania. Right after they showed the jury these horrifying photographs of the victim, the courthouse got hit by a giant bolt of lightning and knocked the power out. Crazy. They took me upstairs and put me in this big cell. And then after they got all of the emergency lighting going and security back, they brought me back down. And the jury went to the wagon wheel restaurant and they had dinner while they deliberated. Because it was the 4th of July holiday weekend and nobody wanted to get stuck there. So they found me guilty over dinner. Then they had the cheek to place their orders for dessert to be held up and left in that room where they were deliberating because they were going to read out my verdict and immediately have the death penalty phase and they were going to come back and decide my death or life. So I just wanted somebody to look me in the eye because everybody was ashamed of what they were doing to me. I was a 21 year old kid and I was the only one that had the courage to look around the room. I couldn't understand it, man. So after they sentenced me to die the judge got angry at me because I told him he couldn't look me in the eye and he added 60 more years to my sentence. So even if I didn't get executed in the electric chair they were going to have a life sentence plus 60 years to make sure that I would never get out. What you thinking you're fascinating yourselves? Man, I was just so lost to my anger. I was humiliated. James, I didn't understand a lot of the words in the courtroom that put me on death row, man. It hurt when you're ignorant and people have power over you. It's humiliating, man. It really hurts you. For somebody who was in the mental institute on suicide watch all the time did you ever think about ending it straight away as soon as you went there? Why stay alive? I made that mistake early on when the trial the inmates were torturing me. The biker gang was told that I was an informant so for a week they thought it was real they were trying to kill me so I hung myself and a guard caught me and he cut me down and said that I wasn't allowed to cheat the state of Pennsylvania out of my punishment. They put me in restraints in a hospital and my mom came to visit me and I'll never forget how she told me Nikki, I don't care what they do to you don't kill yourself come home to me if you can't come home to me don't give up so I really didn't like the fact that while she was sitting in a plastic chair next to my hospital room ignorant asshole prisoners were shouting all kind of disgusting things at her so I promised her on the spot no matter what I gotta do I'll come home to you and I tried. What was the first prison you were in? The first prison I was in was Broad Meadow Prison in Delaware County and then I got taken to the State Penitentiary in Huntington and I wasn't allowed to speak in my cell for the first two years in that prison. Why? Because they used it as a form of torture if you stabbed a prisoner in another part of the state if you assaulted staff or you did something like try to escape they sent you to this place called Bee Block in Huntington Prison, Pennsylvania to break you not to correct you not to make you do time that block was designed to break the hardest prisoner in Pennsylvania How many people were in that prison? At the time I landed there in 82 83 there was 800 people and then when I left there was 2700 and that was after the riot What's the longest prison you were in? That one, Huntington Then I went to Pittsburgh for three years for which I had to hold back the story about being actually a death row experiment so in 1995 they had to shut Huntington Prison and let the men into a less restrictive housing unit so they could come out of their cell for up to eight hours a day Get it? The administration said fuck that not with the cannibals not with the serial killers not with the psychos so guess who got picked with 47 other men Yeah? And they put me five stories up with prison guards who have had the most infractions against them treating us and they told all the guards every one of these guys is a violent nut job, don't trust them they're crazy How do you think we got treated, man? So this one asshole inmate stole a photograph from this one guard's work folder of his granddaughter and sold it to a pedo He told the pedo, no matter what I'll give you a huge gift if you just do me one favor if they catch you tell them Nick gave it to you not me This guard found out about because the fucking photograph got stolen from his work folder they searched the whole unit they found it in the pedos and then Nick gave it to me so this guard starts using different inmates to kill me I was taking a shower remote control presses the button lets the dude out with a blade and he comes in the shower we get wrapped up in the plastic sheet I have to fight him off before I hyperventilate and they come in and spray us all with gas it's crazy so for three years he tried to break me in the end he crushed my hand in the metal door my hand was so blown up they couldn't put handcuffs on me to go see my lawyers for a visit I didn't say nothing I couldn't say anything because if you ride on him he's going to get you worse so my lawyers couldn't see me because my hands too swollen so they had an investigation to find out what happened in my hand they took me out of that prison and put me in green county supermax to save me from him when I went to green county supermax I found out that I had a fatal strain of hepatitis C and then the men that had it with me started dying around me and the first guy that really profoundly affected me was a guy named Dale Carter convicted of rape and murder just like me and when he was dying of hepatitis C the nurses would taunt him about asking him if he wanted an aspirin in a very facetious voice and I knew that was how I was going to die James impacted bowels hepatitis C it was the worst thing you could think of for a prisoner because you're going to die in agony of not being able to pass your own shit so I went and signed up for the treatments I got seven months worth of medications of interferon and riboviron and I was so sick that they actually doubled my medication by accident and toxified my system and blinded me and my cell and I'm like come on man I did 20 years of this madness and now they blinded me so soon as my eyesight came back I sat down and asked to be executed what happens if you ask them to be executed that's your right as a dead man ain't it so if you're in death row and asked for them to execute you they've got to do it yeah so you could go get 100 years, 200 years because a sentence is an American mad so if you're in there one day and says execute me it's done if you have a sentence of time you have no power but if they sentence you to death and you're tired of the game you can volunteer and within 60 days get your wish how many people do that well the first one that did it was my neighbor and a good friend of mine named Keith Settlemyre and then the real Buffalo Bill did it Gary Hyde Nick abducted six black women and put them in a pit under his house and fed one of them to the others he's the real silence to the lambs yeah that's the real Buffalo Bill man he was my next door neighbor for two and a half years I'm laughing because it's fucked up it is fucked up you try to talk to this guy his fucking eyes are out like this what was he like Buffalo Bill yeah so he was really fucked up in the head man he really was on this see they don't do that in justice in the movie but he was a Charles Manson wannabe creating a master race with black women so he went around Philadelphia in a 1978 Rolls Royce with a Cadillac engine in it that he bought because while he was incarcerated for raping a black woman he did good on stock market and made all this money and got out with like half a million dollars and then went praying on all these black women in Philly so he bought a house in Philadelphia had a Rolls Royce went around picking up hookers and put them in a pit and fucking torturing them and he wanted to create and he was saying all this shit right this motherfucker was nuts look when we lost power he would put on a performance about killing the ladies sick like that's why they had him in the movie like dressed up like a woman but he wasn't doing that he was performing this ritual of killing these women for us man so man a lot of black dudes whipped fucking ass you hear me? I'm sorry but you can't do that in a predominantly black prison system and get away with that so every once in a while somebody would just light them up and then he'd go hiding himself some more I had a girl on just a couple of weeks ago and she got an IPP here which is you don't even know when you're getting out you can serve 99 years for something silly but she was in next to a serial killer her husbands are free her boyfriends killed the dog but she was in that friends with her she liked her because when you're in there she didn't see the crime she just seen some fucking nutcase just having conversation so how does that how you get through your day you have to talk what else can you do here's the crazy thing I had some amazing brilliant friends on death row I still consider Craig Murphy the closest dude I ever had a friendship with and he had killed 10 people but he was part of the junior black mafia and look it was like that you know what I mean but Murphy had all this wisdom and I loved hanging out with him because he was just super bright and I met people yeah I know they did some horrific shit but they lived the pious life to him when someone's living a pious life why kick them in the face if they're respectful and they're sorrowful and they didn't ever want to be that person maybe they did it while they were out of their mind on drugs or whatever but the person the man before me was humbled and he didn't want to ever be aggressive and he was so sorry for what he did how could I not embrace him man who was the man this person you came across fucking Jay Schrader who's that is a guy abducted a girl no he killed his girlfriend she grew up in meatballs and then fed her to her parents fuck going to house for dinner that motherfucker was crazy I know I tormented him and I tormented him and I tormented him until he tried to have me killed for three years and then he got stomach cancer how about that for revenge and he died of stomach cancer in Huntington state prison with the nurses laughing at him so UK there's not really any psychopaths here you get the oddballs here I think doctor who killed loads of people but there's not that many I don't know what the population is obviously lower but America seems to have absolute nutcases that do you see the difference between the UK and America yeah so it's a frontier nation people keep forgetting this just like Brazil or Australia it's a frontier nation there's something that goes on when you're far from away from law and society and it does seem to produce a higher number in America especially of absolute driven mentally off sexual predators or power junkies you know most sexual crimes are about power right so it's strange how these men pick out the weakest person in society be it a child or a girl or a woman so that they can dominate them you know what I mean but when they go to jail nobody's giving them any breaks they're in there paying protection or they're in lock up you understand somebody's milking them for the rest of their sentence and if they don't pay up or they're unlucky they get the Jeffrey Dahmer beat down to death they beat his head flat man so yeah it's really horrifying how many people in America are ultra violent man you see I can't understand going in and killing 9 year old children in the school what the fuck's wrong with you man and yet I remember when I was growing up you had to be really cool or know somebody to get a hold of a gun nobody trusted just anybody with a gun now anybody can get a gun they don't even want to do background checks on mental health issues like that last shooter who clearly had mental health issues I think the shame of it America loves an identity America needs to have a boshi aggressive we're bigger and better than everyone identity and part of that's guns yeah it's mad like I say there's a lot of bad shit Harold Chipman his name was he killed so many people he was a doctor but America just seems to have serial killers and everything some of these people are adored Manson was adored the guy that made the Netflix documentary about you there adored people loved them brought people getting more pussy and fucking we were death row then people in society people have a madman what do you think that attraction is it's like people who are into goth or people who are into role plays or whatever it's just a segment of society it's going to be weirdly at them you remember Richard Ramirez the night stalker in California right this guy terrorized Los Angeles and then got caught when the whole neighborhood chased his bitch down the street and the cops had to save him women were in the courthouse and in the visiting center fighting over him there's this weird phenomenon it takes place where mentally off women glorify and glamorize these men as if they're sexual it's deep dark shit you know what I mean if you look at Netflix I do love the true crime stuff I love the mad shit it's interesting when people get into prisons and speak to them it's the biggest on Netflix it's true crime people love the dark mad shit that people I haven't watched one episode of one show I can't watch any of it you've lived it though for people who's never lived it don't experience it it's intriguing do you see that why people are so intrigued by mad stuff I honestly believe that when you get caught up watching it as entertainment you're trading off a part of your humanity to feel for people like after a while the screams won't even bother most people I remember some of the adverts back in the day for crime and investigation and they were doing the adverts for Christmas it's a bloody mayhem Christmas on the crime and investigation channel dying with us with guts galore I'm like what the fuck really like I'm not bashing crime and investigation I want to sell you this brand new TV series that I wrote and I love you and thank you for letting me do advertisements for I'm a murderer so I actually love them but it's strange how it's a glorification of a genre of television that people can't turn away from what was the biggest TV series documentary style in the last few years that Tiger King about the attempted murder of yeah and then the possible murder of that woman's husband he's alive I see that I thought last year so it came out and it came back really yeah what he's buying I left and that woman was a dirty murderer and he shook this off he's back he's still alive because they made it look like he was dead yeah and she was a murderer and the Tiger King was the nutcase yeah and joke but do you see what I mean crime and crazy lives are like car wrecks we can't stop looking I don't care how fast you're going down the motorway everyone slows down to see the wreck yeah that's why the traffic has a lot of traffic as people slow down yeah because they need to look you know what I find fascinating about society in prison the three things that will get you killed right away is if you speak about a man's family why he's in that prison or about his religion if you attack a man in prison about one of those three things he's going to kill you if that's the rule of the land right out here in society the first thing they attack you for is why you're here your family and what you believe isn't that sad it's very strange yeah because when I grew up in Philly you had to be really cool to stand next to the older boys and get their opinion they guarded their opinions you weren't allowed to know what they thought they pressed that was precious you know what I mean you had to be really cool to know someone's opinion now everyone splashes it everyone's a judge everyone has to have a perspective that's why I thought in that movie Vengeance that BJ Novak just wrote it was a brilliant end that Ashton Kushcher stated about our current society where he admits that he helped the girl overdose and just be drug out into the but it doesn't matter that he admits it because at the end of the day someone's going to look at what he said he's not guilty she's guilty and that will undo this whole thing and it's true somewhere along the line no matter what someone's going to say something contrary to everyone else because everybody's got an opinion how many different gangs were in the prison system in America the big ones are like the Pagans motorcycle gang the Aryan Nation Junior Black Mafia other black gangs so the Latin Kings are the biggest Spanish organization in America and they overall are the biggest organized gang in America so all of the Spanish Americans combined make up the Latin Kings so you have Mexican Puerto Rican Honduras it don't matter but they run the prison system and the prison system is run I mean the streets are run by the prisons did you get offered to join the gang? now back in the 70s we had to have a gang for protection because everything was street corners and they would come by in flatbed trucks and converted vans and jump out with baseball bats attack us and stuff who did you join? 74th Street was the only gang I could join because that was where I lived so basically you hung out where you lived right at the pizza power on my corner where was your boss staying in prison? I walked past the cell and the curtain moved and there was a white kid sitting on his bed you're not allowed to look in the cells James you can get really attacked that way but I looked and he had something in his head so I looked again and he had a screwdriver sticking out of his head so I walked in the cell and I said dude hold on I'm going to go get the guard and he looked at me and said am I going to die? and I said no man I promise you I'm going to go get the officer and then when I turned around the ground he slumped over I fucking lied to that kid told me he was going to be okay and always bothered me I never told anybody that because I felt so horrified that I was only 20 21 years old and I'm waiting to go to Huntington and I see this kid and somebody stabbed him in the head for like some packs of cigarettes that was the worst day for me because it wasn't about me and proving my innocence or something I just I don't know man it really bothered me for a long time how did you end up escaping Nick? I was being transported for a new trial and I was happy to go to court but it was the coldest night of the year in February of 1985 and we stopped to use the restroom and when I came out of the cubicle the officer standing there holding the door for me had to take a piss so bad he let me go back to the car by myself so the dude standing at the car smoking a cigarette turned around and saw me coming at him freaked out grabbed his pistol and fired a shot at me no warning just bang him so off we went like Tom Hardy said in the Peaky Blinders here we go so yeah I start running and I did the crazy Philly thing so like I ran through yards another hundred yards right another hundred yards right and I was right back behind the cop car and I just got out of so while they were screaming at each other getting on the radio telling each other the stories they're going to tell and getting their shit together I was about 30 35 yards away from them laying down on my belly watching them because they're not coming back to the cop car where I escaped you get it so I looked up and there was a flag for an immiscible building which was a police station and I went and hid there and I got frozen cold and I came out of there and then oh my god the helicopter came so the craziest thing was I was running at one point and I had the blades down on me and as I was coming up to this big fence I'm like oh no over a ten foot fence but a snowplow had pushed the fence back so far that as I was getting right to it I went right down a big hill and slid and the helicopter was pushing so much snow over me he had to come back and circle and I went down on this ravine and got on these railroad tracks and got out of there five and a half hours he chased me with a helicopter man he had to refuel the infrared wasn't working I split my calves my quads my feet broke open my face was all torn up from running through the trees without carrying I was just so exhausted I walked for five miles and I found the 1965 Green Mustang and I drove that to New York City How long were you on the run for? 25 days and then yeah it's crazy look I meet this girl in Fort Lauderdale good looking little young girl I go back to her mom had a little real estate office in one of those strip malls we get busy in there have some fun she invites me to her house the next night to pick her up when I come to the house she meant come in for dinner dude I'm in somebody's house while I'm on the FBI's 10 most wanted list and her mom is charmed by me and likes me so much so that when they found me and found her phone number on my pocket they called her and my mom got on the phone and said well you're gonna have to excuse me but he's still the nicest boy she ever brought home death row dating right? did she know anything about you? little girl man I just I was standing it was spring break I'm 24 years old I just been in solitary confinement for 3 years there's girls everywhere James you know what I mean? and check this out the reason I didn't even look like myself when I was in New York City I had all these scratches and cuts all over me from running through the forest getting away from that chopper right I mean I was scratched bad I knew I looked weird and shit so I was walking through the village and there was two gay gentlemen in his hair salon and in the flash it just came to me I burst in the door and pretended that my boyfriend had beat the shit out of me look what he's done to me they took me and sat me in a chair and permed my hair dyed it black and then they put makeup all over my face and covered everything up from all the frienditers who was the optometrist got me new glasses made I was like I came out of there 2 hours later I'm like dude I had a perm I got the prison picture from I looked like the dude from what's the actor from Limitless remember the movie American Hustle that's my character with that hair like oh my god Limitless was a great film great film Bradley Cooper I love Brad listen man he's an Eagles fan he's sober as well I know I'd love to meet him I really would it was a big honor get him to play your part no get him to help me with I have a brand new TV series about the American judicial system it's going to be the next Breaking Bad it's fictionalized storytelling 101 about the judicial system in a way it's never been told before and it's going to be a hit I believe that I know I really have so much belief in myself I wrote a children's book called Animal Kind I wrote a stage play called Big House Voices a musical beautiful I love using whatever time I get knocked down that's when I turn to my art Ferepe I don't want to die both ways I don't want to die mentally even if I'm dying emotionally see when you were on the run how did you get caught I turned myself in man because I couldn't outrun everybody and I was going to get my brother killed or something like I had to go back the worst time of it was I was sitting on the 101 in Florida looking out at the ocean and I was so exhausted and so worried that as soon as they saw me they were just going to shoot me there was an army navy shop and I was going to go get the big yellow raft fill it up with all my favorite foods then I was going to paddle out in the ocean as far as I could go then I was going to have one sunset dinner in that raft out in the shipping lane then I was going to cut my arms and make the sharks come around then I was going to stab the raft and then shoot myself in the head and never be seen again I couldn't go I couldn't keep putting my family through this if I was dead then they would never be bothered that's what I was thinking then nah eventually at one point I got caught in a stolen car and I had bail money and I was going to bail out and everything was like set to go I walked over and picked up the phone and called my dad and I said dad you got to call the FBI right now and tell him to come get me and he did death row live sentence your phone button held yourself in how many years aren't your sentence so I got another 35 years for that try to do a good ton I ended up 105 years of sentences plus the death penalty and you know what I did I went back to Pennsylvania and rolled in university I said I'm going to die here so I'm going to grow up and I started reading thousands of books I stopped counting at 9400 books is that a book out there? three yes I was able to knock out like a 225 page fiction novel in two and a half hours and then I would go and take a break and do something else and then pick out a different book and then read half of that one and then read half of another one and then finish off the evening by switching back and fish those two off so sometimes a week would go by and I would knock off 14 to 16 books and be so proud of myself see all that stuff that escapes that all over the news and papers yeah so see when you go back to prison Buffalo Bull must have been thinking you silly cunt what was the prisoner saying that you held yourself in it's weird how you're just to nobody in there I don't give a shit what you did outside every man's got his misery you and the crazy thing is when you're innocent you can't even say that shit I'm going to tell a death row prisoner who's butchered a family and held them for hostage for fast food that I'm innocent he's going to laugh in my face or he's going to victimize me you get it so I had to be harder to them yeah look I don't care what the next man was did I was going to give him home to my mom she made me promise to come home to her so I wasn't trying to be the hardest man I was trying to get out you know what I mean what was that appeal system like in America especially in the 70s and 80s were you fighting for appeal straight away or something you just accepted I've ruined my appeals with the escape and so if it wasn't for DNA I was dead my appeals were done I had no legal chance to overcome what they did to me in fact here's a true story no person in America actually has any Miranda rights because of a case called Salinas versus Texas in 2014 where they said the supreme court of America said quoting Nicholas Yaris versus the commonwealth of Pennsylvania that it's called the utterance law if a police walks up to you and says hello and you answer him you've waived your rights to silence that's what they're saying now so they used my case in which I am innocent to strip every American of the Miranda rights under a case called Salinas Salinas versus Texas when you start to go when you've no appeal then how did things start to progress for you to then try and get out how many years later so I kept fighting for DNA testing and DNA testing and DNA testing I just I did a lot of my own work I was blessed with a lawyer named Peter Goldberger who is a professor of law from Haverford University I had the federal defenders come on at one point I was married to a woman while I was in prison at one point for nine years and she did a lot of help on the outside trying to help me it was a lot James I didn't think I was going to make it a lot of time so I just kept trying to find happiness and how did you find your happiness while your life in prison waiting to die I was a donut magnet I got donuts from the guys I did legal work for and got them off death row and then I got into this thing about being really grateful to be alive I circumnavigated the planet while I was on death row by sending my hair to different people all over if I had a pen pal in Peru or I had a pen pal in Australia or New Zealand I would send them a little bit of my hair from their barber and they would put my hair in the ocean because I knew about DNA testing I was so clever that while I was on death row I circumnavigated the planet Did you give people your hair just in case you ever passed away that they could still do the test after your death? No this was just one thing I wanted to set me free in some way as far as I could send me Was there any celebrities in prison when you were there? Yeah there's Walter Ogrod in 2020 that I met he was convicted of taking a little child and killing her and putting it in a TV box on the street and I knew he was innocent and I got him out Why is there so many wrongly convictions in America? It's the fourth biggest industry in America Too much money? No too many people If the justice system says we get it wrong only 3% of the time Right 97% of the time 3% of 2 million people is 60,000 people How much does the state have to get paid each year for each inmate? 50,000, 100,000? They get about now probably about 70,000 dollars for each inmate that they're housing for their budget millions upon millions of dollars but they've turned it into an industry they have inmates working for 17 cents an hour shirts, t-shirts, socks and selling them online under the big house products brand Crazy Slavery? Yeah so it's legal slavery Did you see the flaws in the prison system when you started educating yourself and started understanding how it functions? Sure and then I realized that none of it had anything to do with me and that I was on a journey to either like you said turn towards the hero or the zero Who threw you under the bus? Did you have? Are you just a number to get into prison in? Because what happens here as well I've entered you had so many men who's done 20 years, 25 years in prison in Scotland and their cases got overturned but what happens is the police needed to get a conviction so now back then you needed two witnesses they could have gave money to to say I had to say that Joe Steele and T.C. Campbell James it was so bad that after I started asking for DNA testing they started destroy the evidence like this wasn't no heeded the trial shit, they deliberately started to destroy the DNA evidence and was cheating that woman out of justice That's what was infuriating me Wanna know the first thing I did when I got out of prison and got my health back? Message the family? No I got a bullhorn and went right to the courthouse there's a movie in America on the showtime network called After Innocence Phil Donahue Barry Shek, Peter Neufeld all these big people are in it I went to the courthouse every Monday and protested how they weren't trying to catch the real murderer this case is still not solved so you understand what it means to me that I the man sentenced to death for a woman I never met had to go back and fight them to get the DNA put into the system so that they can catch the killer I shouldn't have had to do that but I felt so bad for that woman do you know every Christmas I pray for her I want her to get justice I want them to find the real killer not for me for her how about that I shouldn't have to be the one calling the prosecutor's office I shouldn't have to be the one telling them how they should use that family DNA to catch that guy just like they caught the golden state killer recently right they should be doing that that poor woman got butchered man and I paid for that so I want that killer put in prison or his identity known did you ever know that woman I never met her in my life man she was working out in the mall in the state of Delaware where she got abducted 26 miles away from me and at that same day I paid a phone bill for my mother at 3.05 p.m. an hour before the attack there was no possible way I could have been out there and then been back at a store and at home at dinner like at 4.45 they said it was possible for me to have gone and do it I'm like no so the crazy thing is my mom knew she was feeding me at the time that I was supposed to have done the murder and that's what really broke her heart how could someone tell me that while I was feeding my son he was doing this horrible thing she'd say that's why she stood by me the whole ride do you think that was kept child life then young mom she made me make a promise when I first got out of prison to be a polite person a respectful person and to say yes ma'am and yes no to show respect for what was done to her family not just me it's hard because how can you show respect to people who are torturing you everyday because you have to feel sorry for them because if you think about it you got to be really fucked up to go into a prison and play with people and hurt them and so I developed this beautiful ability to have mercy and pity on them what else can you do man was it any good prison officers yeah man one saved my ass after the riot and one gave me my whole education by letting me go in this cell where a man had killed himself to start my get those books that I told you about there are good officers one of my best friends works right now in San Quentin prison in America and he and I have been friends for the last 5 years man at least 6-7 years his name is Sean he's a brilliant friend of mine but he's a prison guard in San Quentin right now man yeah it's mad bastard son San Quentin and so he's got to deal with that but who else could I build up a better relationship with someone who has to go to prison everyday so see when you think you're never getting out and you start educating yourself when did you find out about DNA 1988 what you're thinking then oh I got the keys I'm going straight away and then all of a sudden 6 months became a year 2 years, 3 years 5 years 9 years and then Jackie walked in and left me when they thought they had destroyed all the evidence so it went on for another 6 years after my wife left me and then finally in 2003 they got DNA results from the killer's gloves that were hidden at my trial they got DNA later on that year from the underwear the victim was wearing and none of it matched me they had 2 different DNA profiles from 2 different men and none of it matched me and I then decided oh fuck how are we going to let him out and it took him another 7 months to let me out so see when all the evidence comes put together and realizes you weren't there it wasn't your DNA what you're thinking that you've been set up to lose 20 or 30 years of your life now you don't do that to yourself this is what you do you realize you're getting a huge blessing but it's going to be a traumatic event you better man up because everything that you studied everything that you learned inside you're going to need it on the outside dude I did 8,057 days in solitary confinement man not in prison in a tiny cell 23 hours a day then they open the door and you can have anything that's a mental challenge man did they do any background checks mentally did they do any psychological checks on the mind psychologists no they don't care about you man you're getting out even though you've lived next to fucking buffalo bow and you've spent over 20 years in prison I made deals with buffalo bill I got commissary off of him and I sold him chocolate bars and shit patted him on his crazy head that kind of shit I played patty cakes with accountable ones what's that? I played patty cakes with accountable in the county jail they had this cannibal called the trailblazer and he was so out of his mind on drugs in the county jail I walked over and he was like this at the table because he was all doped up so I picked his hand up and it stayed up I was like that's cool so I picked both hands up and then I went patty cake patty cake baker's cake and the guard got on the PA system he said yeah stop playing with the cannibal yeah man is that how you get by his whale laughter? oh my god yes like this is the funniest place in the world man death row humor is the funniest shit ever I'd be a brilliant comedian I already know it because I know how the true value of making people laugh in the worst situation seeing you get married, how would you get married in prison? yeah I got married to a woman named Jackie while I was in handcuffs in 1988 when I first found out about DNA testing thinking bam bam bam I'm getting out so yeah and then how did you deal with that like King Delos yeah when someone kicks a chair out from under you and you're on death row that's marring up time I honestly this is the way I did it I loved her assiduously I wrote her a 10 page letter almost every day for 10 years and she left I am so grateful for what she gave me during those 9 years I can never hold an ill feeling for her for leaving me but I'm also able to not feel anything because she left see when she left was that because you weren't getting out yeah they destroyed all the evidence she thought and her mom just passed away and she met a guy named Bob and she wanted to go on and have a life can you understand that though yeah I can if she was not getting out then yeah I was beautifully sweet to her as best that I could so that she could go be happy I wrote her a very nice letter and I told her at least one of us can now be free go be happy but I had to stop any feeling about this after that you understand because it would have drove me nuts so see when you go through the process and then you get a green light that was a chance you get what's the feeling did you feel any emotion yeah of course man I was so regretful that I lost so much chances in my life to be a nice person and I grieved for my little brother dying in my parents basement and I wondered if I could actually handle freedom I'm a really strange character in that I've been trained to kill people I taught myself how to heal people and I've lived with people trying to murder me and do horrible things to me and somewhere in the balance the only answer I can keep coming back to is kindness and love it's the only thing kept me sane why do you think you've had so much torture and torment in your life do you ever feel as if you're cursed no I think that if you think about it in this terms I was given a beautiful message to help people heal but the only way that people would ever accept this message is if they saw me humbly suffer the worst things both in prison from childhood and then after prison so that now people will believe me when I tell them you can handle anything if you just listen to what I'm telling you about neuroplasticity so think about this I've paid all my dues and I don't question God if I had to go through being raped, stabbed sentenced to death a drug addict, humiliate myself and do all kinds of horrible things that have been done to me over and over I've had all of my relationships fall apart and yet here I am stoned in love with Laura Thompson I've already begun healing with her again and we just came back from the devastation of losing everything to COVID I'm about to be the happiest man in the world all I had to do was just crawl through a really long river of shit like my man in the Shawshank redemption did see when you found out you were getting out what was going through your mind all that years of suffering, pain misery then educating yourself trying to find love and peace and forgiveness your head must have been fucking all over the place because I know men who have been in prison after 20-odd years they've got a release date, killed themselves no, I was on a mission I decided that I started off in the basement of my parents house when my brother died of a drug overdose and I decided that all of this was going to have meaning so within the course of my release I had already organized a five country speaking opportunity to defend myself with eloquence and my education for what they did to me how were you treated when you got out like everybody thought I was crazy because I was on death row isn't that something I think everybody's got an element that crazy on them it doesn't matter against the backdrop of what would be them if they went to prison for 23 years for something they didn't do they kept expecting me to be diminished lesser of a man lesser of a person I'm like no I grew I was so beautifully alive I would stand in my cell and eloquently quote Walt Whitman beautiful works of poetry and art I was next level happy because I wasn't some street kid from Philly meanwhile they thought that I was nuts in the head but I had something they couldn't understand I had self respect and self love though fashion saying knowledge is power how true is that then it is absolutely true because at the age of 20 at the time of my trial it was used against me at the age of 29 I walked into a court and educated the court about DNA testing I was the smartest man in the room what was it like your first day out it started out odd everybody wanted to hug me I hadn't hugged other people at 10 o'clock I had to watch the news and freak out at looking at my image because I didn't know who that old guy was on TV I didn't have a mirror in myself for so long I didn't know what I looked like why? because you don't see pictures of yourself you don't know what you look like you don't see yourself in a mirror no it was a piece of metal that scratched up it was on the wall bolted to the wall and it had been scratched up so you don't get to see yourself you don't know who you are you don't see videos of yourself you don't see photographs of yourself and then my sister Anne Marie got all drunk and started a big fight at the end of the night because I wanted to wear a baseball cap to cover up my bald head and she said I looked like a dick and all this stuff and my dad for the first time ever told her to shut her mouth I was his son and you don't know what they did to this boy leave him alone so I got all upset because I can't be around yelling because in prison if someone yells someone's gonna die and I ended up out back pissing against the wall with my head pressed against the stones or the wall and I felt so ashamed and horrified that my whole family was dysfunctional and alcoholic that I had no hope living there see when you make changes in life and that's the heartbreaking thing you start seeing the dysfunction everywhere around you when I started becoming clean and sober I realised how fucked up I was that I accepted that life for so long I'm talking about mad men nothing to do with it but taking drugs is self-harming but we used to sit in the house for 3-4 days talking and we thought it was cool we thought it was cool who could stay up the longest who could snort the most gear and how much lying were you doing all of it was bullshit I know, oh my god so that's what I was living around to see that? my sister Sissy lured me to a bar a couple nights after I got out like 2 weeks after I got out come down here all these guys want to meet you come on down, I thought I'd throw her a grace turns out the dude sitting on a bar still next to her has some really good coke and she wanted $20 off me so my fuckin sister lured me into a bar knowing I'm a former alcoholic who just cut off a death row to get some money off me so she could buy some cocaine off this guy it was fucked up I had to get out of there man that's when I knew I had to get away from Philadelphia yeah, that's the sad thing it's not that people they don't let your sister play just the life she lives she's thought it's normal she doesn't realize the extent of it it's how dysfunctional it is so how did you end up chasing with everything you don't know in your life cause you've been married 3-4 times now yeah, so I married to Laura Thompson Yaris I just came back to the United Kingdom I just started a brand new speaking tour I have no housing I have no bank account as you know I have been surfing a sofa up in Lincolnshire and I'm absolutely happy man it's brilliant James like I love being the comeback kid I got the opportunity think about this to have a whirlwind reunited romance with my wife I get a chance to come back to England the place that I love and start it off as and my hope is to move to Ireland this summer and have a one man stage play in Dublin and that's where I want to end up in Ireland where my grandmother came from back to your roots yep back to my roots Hattie Shaw that was her name Harriet Hattie Shaw how's your trust issues you see me man I believe in everyone they I told you I don't let nobody talk shit about you and I stand up for friends I believe in that I believe in trust because someone steals your trust they're stealing a part of you and if anybody steals your kindness they're taking away from you who you are I heard Mike Tyson somebody was talking about Mike Tyson somebody says if anybody gave him shit this kid was saying he just cuts them off disconnects another speaker and Tyson says well they've won and he goes how so he says because they've changed you they've changed you people cutting them off and being ruthless I used to do that and he says well they've won they've changed you I used to fight to cling to who we are and that's a brilliant part to bring this to a conclusion because if you think about it James you're witnessing in real time how I've come back from all these things and I'm so hopeful most people would be bitter having lost your family living in the woods for the last three years having no money having no place to call your own a lot of people would freak out from all of those realities right? not me I'm happy as hell I'm here to see you I'm here to do this work because I know someone needs to hear this do you know what I mean there's a bigger purpose for me and you to sit down somebody before they heard this thought they had it shit and they aren't getting any messaging from anyone around them that they care about because like you said it's dysfunction right but me and you talking today gave them this beautiful chance to believe in themselves and come back man yeah people can watch this and listen to this story and think shit what have I got to mourn about everybody's got different levels of trauma and pain like you'd be spoke earlier either become the hero or you become the villain because it's your choice and that's the mad thing about life everybody comes down to choices but nothing changes unless you do but let's talk about the neuroplants neuroplasticity yeah so it's neuroplastic yeah is that because I'm a big fan of Joe Dispenser and he talks about neurons in the brain which fire together wire together so when you spoke about Ella writing the word down 10 times finding the meaning down 10 times neurons in the brain which fire together wire together create that memory and then creates different patterns for the subconscious mind so the brain does rewire I thought I would go over gambling I thought about gambling 24-7 but the consistency of it staying on the path day at a time at a time it was hard and then it just fizzles like you see you become a new person I ain't that person of the past a lot of people still see me as that person who don't know me now of the changes and that's okay that's on them because they've not changed but let's talk about that because a lot of people are stuck in a rut so how do you go about it right this is why I wrote the book the kindness approach basically you have a built in reward system in your brain the only way to trigger it is to be like in a gymnasium working with weights you can build your body up right being in society and using charm and charisma to be polite to people you erase all your own PTSD think about it while you're out being nice to Sally and Johnny and having that laugh and that talk and going at it like that especially in a business atmosphere you should use a business atmosphere I don't even care if it's McDonald's to get people to laugh because if you can get people to laugh you're sharing that laughter and joy with your brain and you're erasing your own PTSD it's that simple when I found out my mother's promise to her to be polite was the onset of beginning to have neuroclassicity healing it was like God wrote it in my sleeve and I love it that 19 years on I can really teach people how to get a new perspective and change all the things killing them I believe in this so much my wife and I are healing because we're actually beginning with respect we're beginning with politeness to work towards all the things we once had and it's hard after you've gone through trauma and separation and having to have her move back here and then me come back and yet every chance we're going to get we have to go back and use the very things that we used to begin with which was politeness and respect you can't have love without respect if you don't respect the person you can't love them because it'll break down so that's where I'm at I'm at this really cold part where I'm going around the world teaching people about neuroplasticity healing and in real time proven it works because I'm using it to save my own self and I'm dealing with CTE brain injury man because with all the stuff you've been through all the trauma, all the pain what was your darkest moment, Nick? Losing my daughter to SIDS finding her dead I was a horrific man she was only six months old her name was Jamie Lee she was a beautiful little girl and she died in her crib and then the sinister fucking internet started picking at me and tormenting me I'm not even allowed to have a normal grieving situation like that there's always going to be that dark element out there it makes it like I did something you know so that was some real dark shit that I had to live with while I saw in real time how I could be an instrument of healing for Laura and the girls so I took the darkest part of my life forever and I decided to try and give it beauty that's all I can do man yeah fair play mate I thought I was a strong cat because I'd stopped addictions and stuff but from the cards you've been dealt from a young age to being abused to be normally convicted to be losing a child like and you're still here mate pushing the kindness and love mate it shows you your kind of character like why do you think you're giving those cards so I could teach people a message all of the greatest messages we've ever gotten in life that person had to suffer for him and I know it's a shitty feeling but I literally had to go through the worst things possible so that people could embrace my message otherwise no one would listen they made a documentary about your life as well yeah I made a documentary with a director named David Sington who reneged on the deal and it came out as the fear of 13 and it was on BBC4 here in England and Scotland and Wales and then it got released on Netflix for a long time but now it's like mainly you can only find it on YouTube or somewhere else but it's funny how I have a brand new series out called the life after death in which I drove across America visited my father one last time went to my mother's grave got filmed in the prison I got stabbed in and then came back to Los Angeles did a big podcast and then went back and gave all my stuff away I gave my RV to a family that has a handicapped daughter I gave my car to a friend of mine who was smoking meth while he was driving me to the airport so literally I just rolled over and went to sleep and my boy Chris was just puffing meth all the way up to I5 to take me up to Seattle it's crazy How was your organ Yeah so it was a weird experience because all the things around it that went sideways leading up to me but I got some brilliant messages out of the podcast that really impacted my life and I met a huge amount of cool people so it was one of those experiences where that was the first big podcast I ever did and it was the week after Elon Musk smoked that joint on the podcast Yeah he sat in the chair with some mad people but everything you've been through to still be here to tell the tale and still try to see the positives in life like I said it takes a beautiful salt to do all that it's mad to think that people have gone people think that story is unbelievable they don't even know the half of it I know in the last month and a half I broke my fingers three times broke it that night I was talking to you fell over and it went sideways again I've had my passport confiscated at the airport I have no documentation like I said all these things would drive most people crazy but I believe so much that I'm meant to be doing what I'm doing today only because of you only because I was coming to meet you today did I meet a man who just came back from Australia who went there at the age of 19 and the only reason I met him was because of jelly beans his father has a woman work for him that is a representative for the jelly belly company his son who I'm talking about also is a diabetic and at one point had his life saved by having jelly beans nearby so I met a man today that I'm going to help make a documentary about my friend with cancer whose dream is to come to Scotland because you brought me here today yeah so if that's all true how can I not believe how can I be bitter why waste it so no I'm going to grab onto this feeling that I'm living one of the best stories ever why be bitter about it do you believe in synchronicity I do I believe in God's grace is currency currency creates synchronicity synchronicity makes things happen do you ever hear of the Marley moment Bob Marley jumped on stage after getting two opposing sides to shake hands during the worst things and then he said yeah man and just as he clapped the bolt of lightning hit that's the Marley moment that's the synchronicity a beauty of humanity that can't be explained just like they believe that the fifth element is that energy has memory because you're so educated I think it's important to ask these sort of questions because I only ask a few people these questions but why do you think we're here Nick as a human being would you think your purpose is I ask myself that nearly every night like what the fuck are we here for why are we here who created us alright so if everything was created then the creator needs joy we're the only creatures capable of sustaining our garden and bringing all this joy to life I know we get it wrong I know we as a human race have a long way to go before we're deserving of this blessing but if the creator created all of this whatever that creator is must understand joy because they created joy so I think we're here like the gardeners of this beautiful earth and we better recognize that because we're gonna push her so hard she's gonna shake us off like a bad memory yeah plans for the future Nick yeah I want to go first big event at Cambridge speaking I want to go and I want to find a place to settle down and heal and I want to keep trying to get all these lads in the United Kingdom whether you're Welsh, Irish Scottish or English I want to give the effort back to these lads to not let them be fucked up on drugs kill themselves or abuse others and if I can do that then I feel like I've accomplished something from what they did to me yeah why do you think so many men are struggling just now because of what COVID did to us because of what happened to Brexit because of the queen dying because of so many factors in society right now people at university are killing themselves which is stupid it shouldn't be that way people are killing themselves in the United Kingdom when there shouldn't be this life is so precious people are forgetting that person after person after person fought through plagues and wars and everything to give us our chance today my grandparents and my great grandparents and those before them fought so hard to give me this gift how could I waste that yes I fall and pray to sorrow and I almost did it and I'm so apologetic about it but James if you think about it man we're so lucky that somebody fought their hardest to give us this chance man yeah that's the thing that was suicide centre in Scotland called Chrissie's house and we've had people come in with their rope burns round their neck and the first thing that happened when they hang themselves I don't want to die that's the first thought that comes into our mind they don't realise how it goes until it goes how beautiful it can be and it's sad society where we're in where people are taking their lives every few seconds but just hopefully things can change and men like yourselves speaking out it's also turned into a positive which is an amazing thing especially the life you've led if anybody that's maybe watching just now are listening and somebody's wanting to help you maybe offer you a job or whatever it is how can people get in contact with you usually the best thing to do for now is Instagram you have my contact details as well I set up a GoFundMe so that I could try and get housing set up because I'm trying to reunite with my wife and children but I have to start over so what? the cool thing is I really believe that today we'll get through to someone if there's anybody that's watching this podcast and you're struggling to feel like you have anything worthwhile to live for don't do that come back and be strong because you can actually be so strong you can keep the next person from killing themselves so instead of worrying about you being alive you could worry about making sure the next man's stronger and take that burden out of your heart when you do that you build me up and you build yourself up so please man talk to someone this is the worst thing people who invariably hurt themselves stop talking don't stop talking please I beg you where can people buy your books now? so these are on Amazon both of these books are now available on Amazon I don't have copies of 7 days to live right now but I'm sure I'll get that done and I want to go forward and really try and publish some new material soon too that would be really cool yeah I want to do fiction writing I have all these great stories from my life like I wrote a book called that's enough for me which is about a robbery that took place at the Philadelphia airport for 3 million dollars all true story and many members involved were members of my family mhmm Nick, lesson for coming on today it's an unbelievable story that you're achieving now I take my heart off to it's very inspirational for anybody that's watching, that's stuck in that struggle you've been there, that dark place you never thought there was a chance what advice would you give for those people who are in a dark place at the moment if you really don't want to suffer try and reach out to someone and try and help someone else if you can throw yourself in trying to help someone else you'll start feeling empty and if there's no one else to help try your best to reach out and talk to somebody, anybody even if it's on the internet because on your own you're not feeding your brain any healthy good you have to come out of your shell and try to talk to someone please reach out that's all I can say Nick, would you like to finish up on anything else? no, I really appreciate this James and I'm looking forward to seeing this podcast and for all my lovely bros in the United Kingdom thank you for making me feel so strong I love being back here Nick, God bless you and I look forward to seeing what you do for the future thank you sir