Say It Anyway

James Ferrigno (00:00)
Hello, I'm James Farino and welcome to Say It Anyway. And our guest today is Sam Pond. Sam, welcome.

Sam Pond (00:04)
You

Hey, thank you. Say it anyway. That's a good lesson. I like that.

James Ferrigno (00:11)
yeah so

yeah yeah took a while to figure that one out Sam so we met a few years back

while ago. 10 years maybe. Hard to keep track. Yeah. So, but I know you've done, I think I was just saying before I started recording that you're the perfect guest for the show. You've had a lot of different things you've done and a lot of different paths and you know, I think if you could talk about that it might be helpful for some people to see you know how do you...

Sam Pond (00:30)
Somewhere as our self-discovery our self-discovery paths were doing this so

James Ferrigno (00:56)
How did you, how did all that happen? know, how did you do that? So, ⁓

Sam Pond (01:01)
Right, and

if I come up with any answers to secrets, that would be a bonus.

James Ferrigno (01:04)
Yeah.

So maybe just going through and remembering ⁓ what your experiences were will shed some light on it. ⁓ So yeah, you've had several different lives, I guess, stages in your life. And ⁓ why don't you start at the beginning? Start where it's... ⁓

Sam Pond (01:18)
Okay.

Yeah.

James Ferrigno (01:33)
Tell us where it started.

Sam Pond (01:34)
Yeah, it's interesting too. And I just realized that in telling, you know, whatever ⁓ depth of the story this is, is that there is a through line. There is a through line. And that's interesting to me. ⁓ Because I started out after ⁓ college, I thought, you know, it was kind of a say it anyway, which was I want to be a professional actor. I'd done a bunch of stuff on stage and I thought

People said you got to go to acting school like Yale or Juilliard I thought I think acting is the one thing you can learn while on stage if you're doing it you're learning how to do it As opposed to learning how to play the violin which is take study Acting as a different is a different type of art and so I just threw myself out there and started auditioning for professional stages and one thing led to another led to another and I started working and I worked

pretty solidly for three or four years before I ⁓ decided to really branch out and like, if I went to New York? So I went to New York, had to wait a lot of tables, attend a lot of bars, but I got some shows in New York. that was that. ⁓ It was one of these things where I realized that I didn't have a lot of, I didn't need a lot of technical training, because technically I had a voice, I knew how to move and acting is so much about

James Ferrigno (02:47)
Mm.

Sam Pond (03:02)
this quality, are you watchable? Do people want to watch you? Do people believe in you? ⁓ So it's an interesting quality to have. ⁓ And which is, and you know, the actors that I worked with back then, a lot of them became quite famous and they are the two things that they had, which I didn't have, which is patience. Like patience, like you're always waiting as an actor, you're waiting for the phone to ring, you're waiting to go on stage, you're waiting for

James Ferrigno (03:06)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sam Pond (03:32)
versus sorry, just waiting around, which didn't, I didn't, I was too impatient. But the other thing they had was like this factor, this watchability factor, which I don't think I truly had, you know, this like, who, like I can't take your eyes off of them. I don't know if you remember Kyle McLaughlin, he was a friend of mine back then and he became quite well known. But he had this thing, he had this thing which was like,

James Ferrigno (03:34)
Yep.

Mm. Mm.

Yeah, twin peaks.

Sam Pond (04:02)
what's going on inside of his head.

James Ferrigno (04:06)
the it factor.

Sam Pond (04:08)
Yeah, yeah, it's quite real. It is really real. And you don't have to have the it factor. Well, no, I'm sure the it factor is possible in all art forms. But there's a balance of technique. I know actors that just came out the street and got on stage and went, holy shit. Just teach them where stage left and stage right is. And they got something.

James Ferrigno (04:21)
Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah, some people are naturals.

Sam Pond (04:39)
So that was the

acting thing. ⁓ then because it was a lot of waiting around, I always was writing something, short fiction or sketch. I was just always writing something which led to ⁓ me also, did a lot of voice work, like voiceover work and commercials. I met a lot of people in advertising and then I thought, you know, I'm a pretty good writer and these people are advertising. I'm kind of like them, kind of.

smart alecky and clever.

don't give a shit, really counter culture. And so I took about nine months through the year to put together a portfolio that proved I understand what an idea is. Like what is an advertising idea? And it's something you can learn. It's not really practiced in advertising now because now they're just showing you pictures of nice looking people and.

James Ferrigno (05:19)
Yeah.

Sam Pond (05:43)
But we really had to work to get people's attention. I, 20, 25 years as a writer, creative director.

won a bunch of awards. yeah, it was, it was, was, it was just naturally good at it in a way that I wasn't as naturally good as being an actor. ⁓

James Ferrigno (05:55)
that's a while.

Sam Pond (06:14)
Yeah, which actually, which when it came to, I never really loved being in advertising. I never really loved it. I mean, I knew people who just like, yeah, I'm an ad guy. We're ad guys. Let's go out. We're ad guys. We're to drink. And I was like, don't think I'm an ad guy. I like creating these little things and putting them into the world and getting noticed.

James Ferrigno (06:24)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (06:40)
I knew a guy, he had a license plate on his Porsche and it said, AdGuy 2. AdGuy 2. And the joke was that I'm sure he tried to get the car, AdGuy 1, or AdGuy, but he wanted AdGuy so badly as his license plate that he settled for AdGuy number 2. That's how I surrounded myself.

James Ferrigno (07:03)
Ha ha ha ha.

⁓ That says something. That's interesting. What you're saying here about your kind of path, about finding something that you seemed appropriate to you, is that there could be something that you love.

Sam Pond (07:10)
it.

James Ferrigno (07:24)
but maybe aren't exploring, but in this case it's something that you really didn't love, but you were really good at it. Essentially. So...

Sam Pond (07:32)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I didn't, ⁓ and really one of the great lessons in life is where are the people who are like you? Sometimes it doesn't matter what you do, but if you're surrounded by people who share this vibe with you, then any job can be really, really fun. And I never felt that with actors. I was like, ⁓ they're the actress and I'm just me. But I never felt like, this is actually a deeper subject is,

James Ferrigno (07:53)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Sam Pond (08:05)
where I fit in communities because I didn't feel like I was really an actor. I didn't really feel like I was an ad guy.

James Ferrigno (08:08)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (08:14)
did we meet through Johnny Soporno? You know, Johnny, I don't know how he met. He's a coach and he has this, he had this great, he had this great thing he called, ⁓ Aloha Males in a world where there are alpha males. People have to betas who need a leader to follow. They are interdependent. One cannot exist without the other. And he came up the idea of Aloha Males.

James Ferrigno (08:24)
No, no, I don't know.

Sam Pond (08:43)
which is, I'm completely independent. If you wanna follow me, great. If I wanna follow you, I'll do it for a little while. But I am an aloha male, neither alpha or beta. I always love that.

James Ferrigno (08:55)
Yeah, that's great. I've never heard that before. I really like that myself.

Sam Pond (09:02)
So, yeah.

James Ferrigno (09:04)
So.

Sam Pond (09:09)
It's funny looking back on the advertising stuff because, ⁓ you know, I, how I got out of it is interesting, James, that I was in the middle of a project. at this point I had my own production company. was, ⁓ producing a lot of ⁓ comedy stuff and, ⁓ and humor TV and radio seemed to be the niche that I found. And I'm in middle of this big project and I thought, why am I still, stopped. I remember thinking, why am I still doing this?

It's been 20 years, why am doing this? And had an answer in my head, which was, your reputation. You have a good reputation, you need to keep your reputation going. And at that moment I realized, that's the fucking stupidest reason to do anything, my ego.

James Ferrigno (09:46)
Yeah.

Sam Pond (09:59)
And curiously enough, the phone stopped ringing. Just stopped ringing. Everything dried up. That's when I realized, ⁓ someone's listening.

James Ferrigno (09:59)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, that's kind of back to what you were saying about community. It's like you realize you were doing it to fit into a community that maybe you didn't really fit into.

Sam Pond (10:22)
Yeah, and I think that's a theme in my life. I really, you know, where... Sorry, I've just got a call. I'm gonna turn this off. ⁓ Yeah, where do I fit in? Do I have a community? Or am I just like where was in high school? I just could get along with everybody and never really felt I was part of anything.

James Ferrigno (10:24)
That's interesting.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Interesting.

I've had a similar path. was looking at it a little bit different perspective as joiners and not joiners. And I like, just wasn't a joiner. I could join something and do it for a couple of years and then, but I didn't feel like I noticed with other people, would be doing these things. So many communities I've been part of. And I'm like, for these people,

Sam Pond (11:05)
Yeah.

James Ferrigno (11:19)
This is their beginning, their end, their alpha, their omega. This is their, they discovered it and it's everything for them. A to Z, they're never gonna leave it. And for me it was like, yeah this is great but I'm gonna go on to the next great thing after this so I'm gonna do this forever.

Sam Pond (11:34)
Yeah. Yeah. So we create our own

community of people who aren't members of communities. Which isn't a community at all. It isn't a community at all.

James Ferrigno (11:42)
Yeah.

That's interesting. I like this idea of community as being ⁓ a path to which community and maybe the community is no community.

Sam Pond (11:53)
It's always been a mystery to me. I ⁓ feel like in my life, because I've always been like, well, wait a who am I like? I'm kind of like them, kind of like them. Now I'm in the world of music. I'm nothing like them. I'm nothing like musicians. Am I like coaches? Probably. Probably a little more like coaches. I feel pretty comfortable. I went to a thing last night where there were a bunch of coaches and we just fell into this.

James Ferrigno (11:58)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (12:23)
into this, you know, about things, you know, we talk about curiosity about life and what is real and all that. So that's kind of fun conversations. Yeah, right.

James Ferrigno (12:31)
Yeah.

Hmm.

Yeah, yeah, what is real? Yeah, that can take you all kinds of places.

Sam Pond (12:44)
the is there's no such thing as real.

James Ferrigno (12:45)
It's all, it?

Well, yeah, guess it depends on you.

This reality is a subcategory of a larger reality so it doesn't encompass all the different aspects of the true reality so it's... it can seem unreal since it's limited. ⁓

Sam Pond (13:04)
Something like that, exactly. Yeah.

James Ferrigno (13:11)
So people will think it's a computer simulation or something. Because they're able to see.

the kind of design behind it and they're able to see that it can't be random when it needs to be random and how things maybe these laws of physics don't really apply to everything and that there's something missing. Because there is.

Sam Pond (13:39)
Yeah.

Yeah, nothing is missing at all. I the longer I hang on this earth.

James Ferrigno (13:48)
from a

yes, that is true as well.

Sam Pond (13:51)
is that life

gets very interesting when you start to realize, or at least open to the possibility that not just the thought of it, but the feeling of it that you are actually the universe that you are, have dropped into this world, whatever this is, to experience everything you could possibly experience. Because vast

Everythingness of time and space is kind of boring. So you drop in and go, this is what it's like to be heartbroken. This is what it's like to be hit by a bus. This is what it's like. This is what it's like. And then you experience that and you go back up and you come back down infinite number of times. I guess that's what they call asthaletics and karma and shit, I guess. But the thing I love about this way of thinking is then I created everything. I created everything.

James Ferrigno (14:26)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sam Pond (14:48)
I create everything. And if I create it even as getting hit by a bus...

That's it. That's really interesting. Then I have responsibility. Look, now I can change my reaction getting hit by a bus. If I created it, if I didn't create it, have no power.

James Ferrigno (15:02)
Yeah. ⁓ It's interesting.

The way I see it is like you don't necessarily create every single nut and bolt, you know, of it, but you choose it all. And your choices, you chose the first one to be born and you choose the big things that happen to you and then throughout your life you're given further choices and you make them and that leads you to what it leads you.

Sam Pond (15:20)
Yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah, well, maybe the choices are the in response to what

we already create. I mean, like, ⁓ I did this.

James Ferrigno (15:39)
Yeah, well, necessarily, think. Yeah, I believe that there's, well, believe. I've seen the, yeah, whatever that means. ⁓ I really don't have a meaning for that word anymore. maybe, well, maybe the meaning for believe is kind of just devotion, love, support. Yeah, faith, yeah. It's like when you believe in someone. ⁓

Sam Pond (15:45)
I believe.

You

faith.

James Ferrigno (16:08)
That makes sense to me, but believing in...

astrophysics or aliens is not sequitur to me.

Sam Pond (16:16)
Yeah. Yeah.

James Ferrigno (16:19)
you've got them in your reality, it's kind of like Robert Anton Wilson talks about reality tunnels and how you know each person has their own reality tunnel and you come to a major decision and it splits off and then you've got another timeline going and then there's two lives and then you keep multiplying all these timelines with all the lots of views and you chose all of them.

Sam Pond (16:36)
Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Yeah. It makes life really fun. You have to put your victimhood completely aside if you even start to entertain that because even then you say, I'm being a victim here. Wow, I just chose being a victim. Then you can experience it, digest it, breathe through it, and go on to the next thing. It's kind of fun.

James Ferrigno (16:49)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Alright.

Yeah, and you need to go through it. mean, I certainly went through my victim stage of, know, ⁓ blame. And then with victim comes judgment, blame, criticism, correction, all that stuff. Retaliation, revenge, you know, all of it comes from that, you know. And, ⁓

Sam Pond (17:16)
Yeah.

You know, after my divorce

and I, to this point, I remember, because there was a lot of bitterness and ⁓ blame and lack of forgiveness. And I kept hearing people saying, you know, you really have to learn how to forgive someone. I'm like, how the fuck do you just choose to do that? I mean, it doesn't make, it made no sense. But then I had this epiphany one day, which was like, whoa, I was doing my best with what I knew.

James Ferrigno (17:45)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (17:54)
She was doing her best, what I knew. What if I stop blaming us? And as soon as I stop blaming us, me, individually, her individually, us as a couple, like forgiveness is just kind of like.

James Ferrigno (18:02)
Yeah.

Sam Pond (18:12)
A little bit of forgiveness just kind of landed and increased more and more as I realized. We can only do what we know, so...

James Ferrigno (18:23)
Yeah, the, I kind of learned that at a young age because ⁓ it's in an episode of MASH. Hawkeye says it at one point, that someone has done something bad and someone's blaming them and saying, well, they should have done better. He said, well, they did their best. He said, well, they should have done better. said, well, best is best, you know? And it just extrapolated out that everyone is always doing their best. There is nothing else.

Sam Pond (18:32)
Hmm.

Yeah.

Right,

yeah, and you even separate yourself. Exactly, yeah, and even replace the word with, replace the word best with what they can. It's not even best or better or worse, it's just, I'm just doing what, in the 12 steps, it's...

James Ferrigno (18:51)
Because if they woulda, if they woulda, they coulda, if they coulda, they woulda. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sam Pond (19:12)
And now that I know better, I do better. I think it was something like that. It just makes a lot of sense.

James Ferrigno (19:18)
Yeah.

Yeah, my revelation with forgiveness was that you're not forgiving the other person. It's not a gift that you give to someone else. It's a gift you give to yourself. It's releasing yourself from basically a torment, a kind of little hell that you've put yourself in.

Sam Pond (19:29)
Right. Yeah.

which you created. Which you created. And I created that marriage and I created my ex-wife and I so, I don't know, I was really into this. Like wow, I'm so fucking powerful, can create a marriage that ended badly.

James Ferrigno (19:44)
which you created. Oh yeah, hell is definitely the creation of each person.

Yeah.

Sam Pond (20:03)
so I can feel everything, which is one of the blessings coming out of it.

James Ferrigno (20:03)
Yeah.

so you were in advertising. then you told us how it ended, but how did, then what happened? Then where'd you go?

Sam Pond (20:16)
I was,

⁓ again, I was lost and all I remember doing is like, if I just do something every day and look for omens, I probably just read that book about the alchemist. I probably just read the alchemist or something. And ⁓ so I just started, I thought, okay, I'm a writer. So I just started writing. I wrote screenplays. wrote.

James Ferrigno (20:35)
the Alchemist. Okay. Great book.

Sam Pond (20:45)
play, which I produced, I wrote pilots, they bounced around Los Angeles. ⁓ And then I started realizing like, wait a minute, I don't want to be part of the entertainment machine. I don't want to move to LA. I don't want to create a screenplay and then have someone buy it for $50,000 and then put other people, other writers on it. That's what I loved about advertising. Like this is mine. I have clients. Yeah, they can have their say. This is mine. I'm going to see this through.

James Ferrigno (21:12)
Yeah.

Sam Pond (21:14)
I wrote it, I'm producing it, directing it, I've posted it, it's mine. And you don't have that power. So I thought, I think that would be a sign of misery for me. I think it's I'm kind of a control freak.

James Ferrigno (21:30)
I had the same thing with Hollywood. Maybe 10 years writing scripts and like putting together packages and deals and attaching actors and directors and you know, and all these things. And then they, you know, the whole house of cards falls apart at the last minute because somebody's going to get a better offer somewhere. And then, and I was very careful to like take care of my stuff. And at first, you know, mailing it to myself, copywriting the things. And then

Sam Pond (21:33)
Yeah.

Well...

Alright.

James Ferrigno (21:57)
They just, and then I had this ⁓ one production company, they just stole it. I didn't find out until like, was in a ⁓ video store like seven years later and I pull out and I'm like, same title. This is my movie, there it is.

Sam Pond (22:01)
Yep.

You

fuck. Yeah. Yeah, that must be part of that.

It's worse than ever.

James Ferrigno (22:19)
Yeah, and I had already, I think, left. Yeah, it was about 10 years of... And in the end, it was like, no, these people are crazy. the... Just the studios and networks drove me insane. The people at the top. Just their method of thinking was...

Sam Pond (22:31)
Yeah.

James Ferrigno (22:37)
Something that always baffled me was they were all exactly the same.

There's hundreds of them I met that said the same things. Yeah, they said the same things. They had the same stupid ideas. Yeah, same idiotic ideas that were wrong. It was like, God. Yeah.

Sam Pond (22:44)
They're all exactly the same, right? All living in fear. Yeah, yeah.

I

don't know.

James Ferrigno (22:59)
Yeah, they believed something could only be successful if it had already been successful. And then they mislabeled which parts of it were the reason that it was successful. They oversimplified things because they weren't very bright. like at one point in Hollywood, they decided that two movies about Mars had not succeeded. So they decided, people don't like movies about Mars. We're not going to make anymore. Like as an industry. It's like...

Sam Pond (23:03)
That's right.

James Ferrigno (23:28)
No, you're missing the point, those just weren't good movies. They have anything to do with Mars. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Pond (23:30)
Yeah, it's all fear based. It's all fear, fear, fear, fear, fear, fear, a lot of money attached

and the unknowingness, the unknowability of what an audience will react to. It's a recipe for a kind of a mess.

James Ferrigno (23:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, they're gambling, but they kinda want a sure thing. They want their gambles to be a sure thing.

Sam Pond (23:53)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So I did all that and then I started creating my own little things. I created a thing called the Fab Football Show. I about this. I figured out how to sign. This was like 10, 12 years ago, 10 years ago. Technology wasn't quite caught up with it, but I thought I'm going to, for a Thursday Night Football game, create my own announcers that people could tune in.

James Ferrigno (24:00)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah?

Yeah.

Sam Pond (24:26)
turn off the sound on the football and hear a funny version of the same game. And I called it Fab Football because I hired four gay comedians to, and my only instruction is to say, you guys say whatever you want, just be mystified by the whole thing, the less you know, the better. It was fucking hilarious. was hilarious. Talking, yeah, it was online, but I could not.

James Ferrigno (24:52)
And it was online or how did?

Sam Pond (24:56)
I couldn't figure out the technology wasn't right there for a true simulcast. There was too much of delay to make it, certainly comedy work. So comedy doesn't work if there's a delay. So I did that and created all these things.

James Ferrigno (24:56)
Mmm.

Hmm.

Sam Pond (25:14)
I a cartoon which was, what if periods and commas and exclamation points and colons could talk? They're stuck in these sentences and they have no power. So I created a bunch of these. They're kind of funny. I don't even know where they are now. So I had a mind that just needed to be, you know.

James Ferrigno (25:33)
Yeah.

Wow.

Sam Pond (25:45)
I have to learn how to relax is what I needed to do.

James Ferrigno (25:46)
something.

Okay, so that was kind of this form of processing for you? Something to do or distraction from your...

Sam Pond (25:58)
I was flailing. I was flailing,

yeah. was doing lives, writing short stories, was writing everything. And I have a certain skill at certain things, but I never really, nothing quite suited me. And it wasn't until I got the divorce, came out of it wondering who the hell I was and what life was about, and I started looking into...

James Ferrigno (26:05)
⁓

Sam Pond (26:24)
all kinds of self-development ways of thinking and being, whether it's spiritual or coaching. And I think the through line to everything, even to what I'm doing now, which is just a fascination with human behavior and having a feeling for why people do what they do and say what they say. that's how I got into coaching. It was like, oh, this makes sense to me. I can read somebody. I can give them little adjustment, feel them out, maybe say something intelligent.

So did that. I did that for seven years. Yeah. Yeah.

James Ferrigno (27:02)
Yeah, interesting.

So that's the coaching you did for seven years.

Sam Pond (27:06)
Yeah,

yeah, as a coach.

James Ferrigno (27:09)
Okay.

Sam Pond (27:10)
Eventually joined the group called Fearless. And do you know Fearless guys? Brian Biggin and all that. And joined them and, oh yeah, great. Yeah, Brian's great. And yeah, and ran workshops with them in LA and parts of the United States and Europe for about three years.

James Ferrigno (27:13)
I know. Yeah.

Yeah, I interviewed Brian.

Sam Pond (27:35)
Helping guys connect with women. It was really rewarding. Yeah, it was very rewarding. Occasionally you'd get a guy who would really, you could just see him, the veil lift or the lens shift. And you had to deal with a lot of these guys that a lot of, as we all do, lot of repressed stuff inside.

James Ferrigno (27:36)
Wow, how was that?

So that must be rewarding, right? I did some of that.

Sam Pond (28:02)
especially in men when we repress stuff and then we just go straight to our head to solve the world. I'm just like, okay, I'll solve it by being up here, because we don't want to feel what's down here. So a lot of the workshops were just about opening this up.

James Ferrigno (28:18)
Yeah.

Sam Pond (28:21)
and we'd have women in the workshops and they'd be eye gazing with women and we'd help them somatically through touch or suggestion or permission to say what they want to say. I got into this microscope of two people. It's fascinating work. Tears, rage, saw everything.

James Ferrigno (28:22)
Mmm, yeah, that's

Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (28:46)
slipping off.

James Ferrigno (28:47)
Yeah,

that is, I did quite a bit of that myself. So yeah, that's really powerful. I think what I learned from that is that people don't really connect.

Sam Pond (29:00)
You could see it. You got after doing it, after running enough eye gazing sessions, you could actually see they'd be 18 inches apart, 20 inches apart, 24 inches apart. And you could actually see the man's gaze droop, start to droop energetically, not reach her like it just stops. And I'd ask the girl, she said, it's like he disappeared.

James Ferrigno (29:11)
Hmm?

Sam Pond (29:30)
It's like he disappeared. So we did all kinds of things like, can you narrow your gaze? Can you punch in? Yeah, can you hide? Like I remember putting my thumb on the guy's forehead and having him fight to punch, to punch through. That was fascinating. Yeah, so he had to fight against my hand and almost lean into, if I took my hand away, he would go flying into her. That's how hard he'd push. It was really interesting.

James Ferrigno (29:35)
hiding.

Mm-hmm.

you couldn't punch through, yeah.

wow.

Sam Pond (29:58)
They were just spacing out, the static

James Ferrigno (29:59)
Yeah, that is, that is, that's fascinating.

Sam Pond (30:01)
in their head. just sit there and, I'm looking at her. Yeah, but you're not, I'm doing it right now. Yeah, hi. I'm not really, not really here. I'm smiling. I don't look that different, but energetically I'm not really here. Cause I'm also holding my breath. Like, deer in the headlights.

James Ferrigno (30:12)
Just this blank.

You know, yeah, not really here.

You just.

Yeah, that's a lot of the physical manifestation of the fear. also not the relaxation, think, and grounding is the first part, but it's that connection that I eventually got so that if two people are standing there, I can watch the energy from their chakras connect. can see, it's a sense, can't, it's not a bright light, but I can see it, I know exactly where it is, you know, and I can see the heart one coming out.

Sam Pond (30:32)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, cool.

James Ferrigno (30:57)
I can see like the second chakra coming out and connecting, like the sexual connection. And I can see the one coming out of the eyes. And you could just watch them. And I remember reviewing some of these with Brian on tape. You know, they do that at some of the workshops. And you could see it on the video. So I found that interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Pond (31:13)
Yeah, yeah, we videotape all of them because they're really interesting, Yeah, it's not something you can see and it's something you can just

feel. And women really feel it. Women are so much more sensitive than we are.

James Ferrigno (31:23)
Yeah.

Sam Pond (31:28)
And you know, I could be working with the guys, it's almost normal. I could be looking at a guy and go, I think he kind of shifted. And the woman would look at me and she goes, oh fuck, he just showed up. Whoa, really? I guess he did.

James Ferrigno (31:29)
Yeah, for them it's normal.

Sam Pond (31:44)
So we think we're fooling women with pick-up lines and being smooth. They can see right through us. All of our bullshit.

James Ferrigno (31:46)
Yeah, one thing-

Mm-hmm.

A lot of it, although what I've seen is most women are connected to this, can connect to people and can do this, if they don't have the training, it's just the water they swim in. So they're aware of their emotions, they're aware of a heart connection, they're aware when somebody's there, they have their own different terminology for describing it, but they can become connected, they can tell when they're connected, they can tell how they're connected.

Sam Pond (32:08)
Yeah.

James Ferrigno (32:23)
And the piece of information that I found most women are missing is they don't know that guys can't. They don't know that the guys aren't. And so this is something that I have worked with women on before and I know, I'd like to do something larger with it to help women just because for that, all they need is one piece of information. Guys can't do what you can do. They can't feel their own emotions, so they can't feel yours.

Sam Pond (32:30)
That's true.

James Ferrigno (32:53)
So they can't connect with you and they're not grounded and they can't connect with your heart. So when you feel that they're not emotionally available, it's not a choice most of the time with them. It's just, they just don't know how to do it. Yeah, it's not personal. They just don't know how to do it. If it ever happens, it's random and accidental. Yeah.

Sam Pond (32:55)
Right.

Yeah, it's telling it's not personal. So yeah

And what women

are challenged by now, because the feminine is on guard, has a certain guard up, a healthy guard up, and if you add ⁓ trauma to that, like excessive trauma, now their guard is really up. And a guy saying hello to them, all of sudden that's like the whistles are going off, sirens are going off in the woman's head.

James Ferrigno (33:26)
Yeah. Rightly. Yeah.

Sam Pond (33:43)
So they sometimes can't see somebody, but never since the Me Too movement, which of course, believe her and Me Too, of course, it's necessary. As a political movement, it's necessary. But it really fucked up a lot of relationships. Really fucked up a lot of connection.

James Ferrigno (33:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I think I saw with that movement anyway, isn't always talked about, or never here talked about, is that a lot of people's lives were destroyed or changed or whatever, were punished because, but you had this movement that came out of academia and out of the feminist movement, but then the actual punishment was implemented by corporations.

Sam Pond (34:31)
Hmm. Yeah.

James Ferrigno (34:31)
who took this

on just out of fear of lawsuits. The same way Hollywood reacted with the Hays Code to the Catholic Church in the 30s or 40s, right? It's like there's just some small voting block that's really active politically and they just don't wanna mess with it, so they're just gonna fire, get rid of anybody who there's even an inkling of. And I think that's where the real tragedy and just problem.

came in. And it's interesting because you see the men blaming the women, the women blaming the men when it's actually these companies.

Sam Pond (35:01)
Well, yeah.

Yeah, and women have this powerful nuclear tool which is which they have discovered which is calling a man out publicly as a creep which is goes into the deepest most insecure part of most men who are not narcissists.

James Ferrigno (35:12)
you

Sam Pond (35:33)
So women are defenseless against, mean, they are in danger from, as Louis C.K. once said, the most dangerous thing a woman can do is go out on a date with a man. But they have this nuclear power, is, fuck, if he fucks with me in public, I'm gonna call him a creep. I'm gonna make sure everybody, that's where the corporations come in, so they become complicit in the shaming.

James Ferrigno (35:34)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (36:02)
So the shaming is intense.

James Ferrigno (36:04)
Yeah.

Sam Pond (36:07)
And men are, I've seen famous men, they've never recovered from being publicly shamed.

James Ferrigno (36:17)
No, it's kind of a blacklist. Not that people who have done really bad things should be stopped from doing those things. yeah, the shaming of the people that maybe made one mistake or a misstep or something or nothing. Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Pond (36:19)
Yeah, it sure is a blacklist.

Of course.

Or nothing or looked at somebody wrong or the wrong woman on the wrong day

in the wrong place. Scary. I've had men. I used to walk around with men helping him talk to girls. I remember two Indian guys and Indian guys have a lot of Indian male culture has a lot of shame built into it, which I learned about. It has to do with the Victorians and colonization and a stew, a bad stew. And they remember I was walking with two guys and they said,

James Ferrigno (36:54)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (37:09)
They stopped and they said, you know, we could be arrested for doing this right now. What? goes, talking to women in public, we could be arrested. This is after the first upsweep of Me Too came. I went, ⁓ fuck, this is fucking people up. Thinking that they could be arrested.

James Ferrigno (37:23)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Although I think that was even before me too. There were guys who thought that. Wait, I can't just, it just their fear of talking to a woman was so great that.

Sam Pond (37:40)
yeah. Yeah, but this was, it got bigger. It got bigger. It got much bigger. It became societal.

James Ferrigno (37:43)
There were guys too.

Yeah, yeah, it got much worse, yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think, yeah, you can make mistakes. It's a complex subject. I never let it change my behavior. But perhaps my behavior didn't need changing.

So yeah, that's a subject. ⁓ That's something I think really needs, the whole society needs to talk about that.

because there's a lot of problems there.

Sam Pond (38:24)
Well, you know, woke wokeness is a reaction

to to whatever the opposite. mean, if everything is it lives in polarity, as we see the ⁓ the blue wave of the elections yesterday, it's like, course, there is going to be a blue wave because we live in extremes. So it's going the pendulum is going to swing back and forth. And so the Me Too movement is going to soften and soften and then it's going to swing the other way.

James Ferrigno (38:42)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm.

Sam Pond (38:54)
and women will want to say, God, I don't want to be on guard all the time. I just like to be purely in my feminine and just let men lead. A version of that is happening all sorts of places.

James Ferrigno (38:55)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (39:12)
That leaves them open to danger too.

James Ferrigno (39:13)
Yeah, there's a certain evolution happening.

Yeah. And things, you know, things are always changing, obviously, but I think there's a lot of ⁓ oversimplification of things and people not really understanding what they're doing. Woke, for instance. It's a simple phrase that came about to describe a very esoteric and complex thing.

right? And it was clearly used in a form of spiritual bypass to just describe anything, you know, so it had no real meaning to it ⁓ because like what's it really trying to say? It's trying to say this person is spiritually advanced or something when

The concept of being spiritually advanced is the opposite of being spiritual. You know what mean? I mean that's where you get the cults and stuff. I'm in charge of spirit, you know? So having even that term is a problem already and it was just easy for nefarious organizations and sectors of society, yeah, so.

Sam Pond (40:33)
Yeah, to weaponize it. Yeah. So they

took the idea of ⁓ being awakened and turned it into woke and then flung it back like Antifa. Antifa is bad. Well, Antifa is anti-fascist. So how can that be bad? they, you know, words can... Maybe. They don't want to it.

James Ferrigno (40:45)
Yeah.

Because fascist is good. I mean, that's... Yeah.

The only result of that is... We don't like Antifa is because you're a fascist. Because there's really... Why else wouldn't you like it? Yeah.

Sam Pond (41:06)
Right, and those are the extremes we live in. So if I learned anything from my dad who was an

economist, he said, you know, everything's cyclical. said the stock market will go up and it'll go down. So I learned a lot of patience to sit on the outside and just go, where's all this going? If it's going here, then it has to go here. Stock market goes up, it got to come down. So that's being an aloha male, which is just watching. Everybody wants to get all upset. Great.

James Ferrigno (41:16)
Yeah, true enough.

It's...

Sam Pond (41:36)
you're actually creating the problem by being upset.

James Ferrigno (41:42)
Yeah, certainly when you're not grounded, you're outside of yourself, you don't love yourself, that's the problem right there, that's the core issue. So, work on that. If you're doing something else, work on that if you need to.

Sam Pond (41:48)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

James Ferrigno (42:03)
yeah a lot of outer focus

the blame and judgment, the blame game, all that stuff.

Sam Pond (42:08)
Yeah.

Yeah.

James Ferrigno (42:10)
So you...

did coaching for seven years and then now we're getting closer to ⁓ the present. And how did the coaching end?

Sam Pond (42:16)
Yeah.

Well,

the travel was getting to me. I had to go through all the COVID stuff for a while and we could travel to the towards the end of that. know, it was more of a personal thing for me, which is like I, I enjoyed being a coach. I loved working with the guys. But I realized that my growth was I had stopped kind of growing. I had.

And I wasn't expanding, there was no expansion for me. And so between that and the travel, which is burning me out, I thought, okay, I'll just go back to my one-on-one world. And that was, it was great for a while.

One of the things, one of the reasons I sort of stopped coaching because I realized that no matter how smart you are as a coach, how well studied, ⁓ what sort of methods you are aware of, that people don't grow unless they feel safe. And it's a bad habit for coaches to point things what's wrong. Okay, you know, what I see in you is that your heart's closed. you're not, you're not in your legs.

That doesn't fucking help people because that goes back to what was the the trauma that they had as a kid, dad or mom saying, you're not grounded. Your heart is closed. And it sounds like we know what we're talking about. So for the last year, I thought, OK, what if all I do because and then if you have like so and then I have them read a self-help book or here's a spiritual text, that doesn't fucking help either because they'll just go, oh, I read the power of now and now I understand presence.

James Ferrigno (43:58)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sam Pond (44:15)
No, you don't. You understand the idea of it. And so I realized I don't really know how to teach what I'm feeling. You know, we used to teach releasing, how to release emotions. But even that was a misnomer because we don't, if we release emotions, that means we're judging the emotion as something that needs to be gotten rid of. So for the last year of my coaching, just said, what if I just

James Ferrigno (44:16)
Great example. Great example. ⁓

Yeah.

Sam Pond (44:44)
acknowledged everything if I listened really well and believed in them 100 percent.

and just told them how much my clients, how much I admired them because there's a lot to admire in every human being. that gave, and you know, the crazy thing is that gave them, felt, started feeling so safe. They could feel more and they started changing. I mean, there's a certain masculine side too, where you have to say, okay, you're feeling this now. What's your inner guidance say? What are you going to do? Well, I don't know. Well, why don't you clean up your room? You know, give them some task. And so it's that combination started to really

So it really worked. was really much more fun to think, to stop thinking, I know more than you. I'm going to guide you. I don't know anything. I've just happened to be a few steps farther down the path. Maybe one step further down the path than you are.

So yeah, so I spent a year just telling people, you know how much, you know what I admire about you? You know what's great about you? Have you ever thought about how good you are, how great you are? There's a whole new style of coaching. I got a brand to this somehow.

James Ferrigno (45:58)
That's great.

Yeah, what I started doing with coaching was I got down to like doing very little. Where I would just, and I did get help from some books that gave me the kind of the concept to do that. and just hold space and kind of connect with them. Maybe do eye contact, create the bubble and just keep them safe. And I just connect with them and keep them safe.

Sam Pond (46:09)
Yeah.

That's right.

James Ferrigno (46:34)
and just that so powerful so powerful then and you know that we want to talk about something yeah

Sam Pond (46:39)
Totally agree.

Yeah, now, I don't have any clients right now, but I just look at it as breath is love, presence is love. So if you have a doubt, a worry, a fear, a feeling, sadness, anger, fear, and those can be peppered throughout the day. It's like, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup. So you don't have to sit and go, I'm terrified.

No, you haven't. There's a hum of fear. There's a doubt. Should I talk to her? No, don't worry about it. Oh, should I feel if this avocado is ripe? No, someone might be watching. Should I say I shouldn't squeeze the avocados? Micro, micro, micro. And so you bring in this idea that what if I just breathe?

James Ferrigno (47:17)
Yeah.

Yeah, yes, yes, absolutely.

Sam Pond (47:38)
in a way that we stopped breathing when we were kids. the, when we had our greatest trauma, we stopped breathing. And we breathe this deep all of our lives. Why? So we don't feel anything. So the more you breathe, you're like, God, feel the sadness. And the fact that you are giving it some attention, presence, is a form of love.

You're not saying, this is bad. I don't want to feel sad. Because then you're getting in the world of bypass, spiritual bypass, drugs bypass, television bypass. Right.

When I, after my divorce, I had a nervous breakdown, a shokuboku actually, spiritual kick to the head. And that's a whole other story. Took me out and I remember going to this place in the mountains above Santa Fe and had to sort of put myself back together again because I realized I wasn't feeling anything. was just, I was a successful advertising guy with a family who put his head down and drank too much.

James Ferrigno (48:21)
Yeah, you don't want that.

Sam Pond (48:49)
and had to hammer, had to hammer it. And so this was an opportunity for me to, you know, wake up and I'll never forget the first night I'm in this strange place, I didn't know what I was doing or how I got here. And ⁓ the woman who ran the place, which was just about to double-wides in the forest, it was a well-known place ⁓ as a recovery center, not as a rehab, but post rehab for those people.

James Ferrigno (48:50)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (49:20)
Because she said, you know, the man who got you here is the man you are.

The man who got you here is the man you are. Whew. That is one of the most powerful things that ever someone ever told me.

And yeah, what were we about? talking about something that had another point, but I can't remember.

⁓ Yeah, breathing. yeah. no. About the thing. When we were traumatized as a kid, we stopped breathing. And also I learned there is that during that moment of trauma, when you when you're a kid, probably before you were seven, when you're all your subconscious is soaking everything up your head and your before that moment when you're born, your head and your heart are linked. They just work in harmony. Then something happens. Someone says it does something and they go. ⁓

James Ferrigno (49:50)
Yeah, there were several. ⁓

Mmm, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (50:19)
They disconnect and your heart gets buried away and you go into your head and you can live a very normal looking life living from your head and not feeling anything. People do it all the time. It's kind of a normal life. Yeah. So how do you tease your heart out and say, it's okay. You can, I think I'm still living.

James Ferrigno (50:32)
think that is a normal life. Men, especially.

Sam Pond (50:45)
I definitely am.

James Ferrigno (50:50)
Yeah, ⁓ and just loving your... I found that loving your own heart, like loving...

Sam Pond (50:56)
Yeah, or loving that part of you that can't love your heart.

It's very easy to tell a guy, look, just love yourself. What the fuck are you talking about? How do I do that?

James Ferrigno (51:10)
Fuck this, mean... Yeah, that used to drive me crazy when people said that. Self-love. What is that?

Sam Pond (51:13)
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's like dating coaches who just

say, just be yourself. Who the fuck am I? I don't know. Right? Terrible advice.

James Ferrigno (51:21)
⁓

Yeah, that drove me bananas too. That's the standard advice like if you're watching a film or reading a book or just... That's what people say. Just be yourself. How can you be yourself? My response to that, I remember in the middle of a workshop once I went, ⁓ I'm at this workshop to figure out who I am. You can't be yourself if you're not connected to yourself and don't know who yourself is.

Sam Pond (51:30)
Yep. That's what people say.

James Ferrigno (51:50)
And be yourself does not mean or would be ineffective if it meant.

be the false mental projection that you've created through disconnecting from your heart. I'm sure that's not what those people are intending to say, but that's the results of it.

Sam Pond (52:07)
Not at all.

Well, I remember like when

we would run, we would do field work with men, take them out to be social, talk with women. We gave them some things to say or do early on. And the biggest shifts came when men realized that they could say, they could confess to everything in that moment. It was beautiful. A guy came up, went up to a woman and said, excuse me.

I feel really nervous right now, but I really wanted to say hello to you and I feel like I'm going to fuck it up. Do you realize that gives the women the nurturing quality of the feminine to go, oh, oh, he's being really real here. And I've seen so many women just reach out and touch, touch them and she goes, oh no, you don't have to be, what do have to say? Good for you. It's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I remember, I remember I walked in up to a woman and said, I'm having a terrible day today.

James Ferrigno (53:00)
Mmm.

Well, being authentic, yeah.

Sam Pond (53:07)
I can't, I feel so sad, feel like crying. But I still wanted to talk to you. my God, we walked, we went and had coffee at a great time. She's just like, let me take care of him. He was brave enough, masculine enough to confess his insecurity.

James Ferrigno (53:28)
Yeah, and it's possible that with a lot of women, that's more attractive to them than being super confident.

Sam Pond (53:36)
Well, if it's phony confident, then you're going to get phony feminist, femininity and then they'll go live and they'll bang each other and they'll, they'll do whatever. There's a match for everybody. But if you really want to meet an openhearted woman, be openhearted. Yeah.

James Ferrigno (53:40)
⁓ yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

connect.

If you want to breed someone who's honest, be honest.

Sam Pond (53:59)
Yeah, exactly.

James Ferrigno (54:03)
But the first step to that is being able to know what it is you're feeling, knowing that you're feeling nervous.

Sam Pond (54:11)
Yeah, we used to give men cheat sheets of the nine basic emotions from grief, fear, know, all the way up and all the different ways of pressing fear, nervous, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we just have them reading go, well, I'm, I don't think I'm terrified, but I think I am shy. ⁓ yeah. I know what shy feels like. We just give them words to think about.

James Ferrigno (54:19)
yeah? Yeah.

Sam Pond (54:38)
You haven't carried around. Here's your words of all the ways to feel. And they would echo with one. It's pretty fun.

James Ferrigno (54:40)
Yeah, it's interesting because you'll ask.

Yeah, yeah, I remember asking clients like, is there any fear? I'm not afraid. No, I'm not afraid. I'm never afraid. ⁓ A little nervous sometimes maybe. ⁓ well, yeah. A little uncomfortable, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's fear. But it's just a matter of not wanting to admit that they're afraid. Because there's a big thing, men aren't supposed to be afraid. You're supposed to brave, somehow got to equal not afraid.

Sam Pond (54:54)
Yeah.

Yeah.

James Ferrigno (55:18)
which is really the opposite of the reality.

Sam Pond (55:21)
Yeah. Yeah, because in every movie, the heroes we root for are the ones who overcame fear. That's life.

James Ferrigno (55:31)
Yeah.

Sam Pond (55:35)
a movie where a guy has no fear and he just goes blasting through until he's dead or kills everybody. You would just go, well, there you go. Not really feel anything for this guy. I keep a list I'll share with you, is I keep, over the years, I put the list together called 50 Movies That Make Grown Men Cry. And it's like a blurb about it and a link to a trailer and.

James Ferrigno (55:36)
Yeah, that's the actual half, right?

And there's unfortunately a lot of those movies too. Yeah.

Sam Pond (56:04)
You can find slice what kind of, I mean, of course we have Rudy, which is about overcoming perseverance and open your heart and taking risks. Fantastic movies to, there's anyway, so I always kept that for them and say, watch one of these every once in a while. Cause they're about, they're stories of men who discovered something deeper inside of them that they didn't know was there, which is what.

James Ferrigno (56:11)
Yeah.

Sam Pond (56:31)
As you know, as a writer, that's the hero's journey, right?

Comedy and tragedy is people moving through life not knowing who they are and making the same mistakes over and over and over. If they die, it's a tragedy. If they keep living, it's a comedy. ⁓

James Ferrigno (56:53)
Yeah.

In the classic, classical sense,

Yeah, The Hero's Journey, that's the interesting things. Those are the great things. The great stories. There's stories the films have become the myths, you know, and which people really you need as a groundwork to be able to...

replace yourself in reality, know who you are. At least it's a start.

Sam Pond (57:15)
Yeah. Yeah.

James Ferrigno (57:23)
Yeah, the, what's that? Once and Future King, T.H. White. That's really, really amazing about, ⁓ King Arthur and... Yeah. Yeah, that's quite a, quite a book. I know it's been a while maybe, but, since you read it, but...

Sam Pond (57:27)
Hmm

Yeah, write that down. What's a future king? forgot about that.

James Ferrigno (57:45)
Yeah, it goes through all the levels of...

the male development, I guess we'll call it. it starts out with the might makes right, you know, and the guys just killing each other, and then he develops like the jousting through the middle ages so that, we can have a contest, and then the one with more skill, you know.

Yeah, that's interesting. He eventually comes up with the idea of justice.

Sam Pond (58:17)
Hmm.

James Ferrigno (58:18)
That was a big one. Big step forward. I like to talk about that too sometimes because justice is just one of those steps. It's not the last step. And to someone past that, it looks just as silly as might makes right.

something to think about. So yeah, so you would have something like, well, ⁓ if we look at it, say, in the jurisprudence sense, I guess, which is the most, I think, clear. ⁓ So now that you have people for justice, supposedly it means a group of people are gonna weigh the evidence and decide this thing, right? ⁓ And then punish you appropriately. ⁓

Sam Pond (58:39)
What's beyond justice then?

Harmony.

James Ferrigno (59:09)
You have something like the truth and reconciliation thing in South Africa where now people

the whole community is there and you admit your shames and everything and until you can reconnect with the community again and then that's not and no punishment is meted out. think that's the more...

⁓ can use the right word here

more heartfelt friendly version than justice. I think that is the traditional way in which people solve problems whether it was a dispute between a couple people or someone had committed a terrible crime or violent act is get the whole, this is what most tribes did, get the whole community to surround the people and talk to them and...

you know, talk it out and reconnect them because somebody does something certainly something violent because they're disconnected from their self and they're disconnected from the community so when you can reconnect the person back to the community they can reconnect back to themselves then you're actually solving the problem you're actually solving the issue rather than punishing somebody which i've always thought of this like this, I worked as a teacher for many years and it's like punishment

Sam Pond (1:00:29)
Yeah, I understand.

Right.

James Ferrigno (1:00:44)
doesn't work. It's like all the the evidence is in all the scientific evidence is in it does it's not effective. And that's from a completely amoral, just objective scientific perspective, it's ineffective. So ⁓ and then if we're heartfelt, then it's other things as well. But yeah, yeah, having something like that. There's I love that this I heard I think Caroline Casey say this story.

on KPFA that there's a tribe in Africa where people, give the people a song, right? And then each major event in your life, the tribe will get together and sing the song, right? The village will get together and sing your song for you. And things keep getting added on. So if it's your birthday or you get married or whatever and they add stuff out of the song. And if you're sad, they sing your song to you.

And if you do something bad, they sing your song to you to remind you of who you are and to remind you of what you're connected to. Yeah, so I always like.

Sam Pond (1:01:49)
That's not beautiful.

James Ferrigno (1:01:57)
And there's... these things are out there. know, these methods of going about things are right here.

And so, coaching. So now, we have to get into what happened after coaching.

Sam Pond (1:02:13)
Well, how I got into what I'm doing now is because of my coaching. I used to have a Monday night group, like a group coaching call, ⁓ and you know, accountability, light coaching, checking in type of thing. Simple, simple weekly call. And I guess I, a few times I brought into the call to saying, you know, what's up. I would bring my ukulele and sing an open mic. And I kept saying, you know, I keep running into people.

Cause I like to sing. I've always been a singer. like to play the ukulele act. I said, I heard people singing at writing songs. I kept asking people, how do you write a song? They said, just write a song. And I don't understand that. I guess I said that enough to my group where they stopped, turned coach on me and said, would you just fucking write a song? we don't have to listen to you wonder about it anymore. And so I wrote a song. It took me a couple of weeks. I had to go through a lot of emotional, like who am I to write a song?

James Ferrigno (1:03:02)
Yeah.

Sam Pond (1:03:11)
Embarrassing putting my feelings out there like this Thinking I know anything about music, but I wrote a song and I felt a click like oh This makes sense to me. I know how to do this. I This is I felt like all of my pasts came into one place Being a performer being a writer. I didn't know anything about music. I had to go find my guitar I had a guitar someplace. I had to go figure out how to play it again

songs I learned on playing guitar again. And so I just started writing them. The first songs were not terrible, not good, nothing memorable, but I just stuck with it. So, and I started performing. I just got this like, I'm going to fucking do this. So I go in and out of Nashville, learn and perform and figure out what my, what do I sound like? What am I supposed to sound like? What's my voice? What's my story? And

James Ferrigno (1:03:45)
Mm-hmm.

Mm, okay.

Sam Pond (1:04:09)
It's still, I still don't know the answer to that because it's been about three years. I've produced a bunch. I have a bunch of stuff streaming. I'm still producing and writing. Lots of writing these days. I be taking a break. So, And then we think about what's the through line to this mess of a life. And I think the mistakes I've made generally had to do with me just fucking.

James Ferrigno (1:04:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (1:04:38)
Just being impatient. It's not a mistake actually, it's just part of my personality. It's really good, so I have this, let's get this done. I'm gonna be the best at this. That was my thought. I'm gonna be famous for this. That was like in the back of my, I've never became famous for anything. Well here and there, some things became well known, I can laugh about myself now. But ⁓

James Ferrigno (1:04:50)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (1:05:04)
I think I got really good at listening to omens. Like, I'm going to pause and just let the universe, or my own universal wisdom, knowing this, just show me things.

James Ferrigno (1:05:20)
synchronicities.

Sam Pond (1:05:22)
Guess so. That's the one thing I would tell anybody is that if you don't know what to do, stop. Because human beings are the only creatures who when they get fearful, they start to run around. Most every other creature.

puts out the radar, saying what's going on first.

James Ferrigno (1:05:50)
It is true, people will get frantic.

Sam Pond (1:05:51)
but just that spinning in circles. ⁓

I meant that, of course, that's putting aside someone coming at me with a gun or a tiger running towards ⁓ a deer. But if a deer hears something in the bushes, they don't just take off, they stop. They put out their senses. They look at everything, smell everything.

That's, I think that's a thing. I'm in middle of that right now. I'm walking around breathing and just looking around like, what's, what might be next? I suspect.

James Ferrigno (1:06:28)
Are you doing live performances? you going to open mics? do you have your own place that you play?

Sam Pond (1:06:29)
Yeah. Yeah. I don't have a band.

I have ⁓ produced a show called The Circle where I invite other singer-songwriters and we go around the circle and perform to introduce the idea of songwriting to a more intimate, in a more intimate setting. Yeah, I test out things that open mics. I get a gig for the set every now and then.

James Ferrigno (1:06:37)
Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (1:06:59)
Things I

sing are pretty tender, tender-hearted. So I'm not a big performer. I'm more of a listening performer, because I guess I'm always more of a storyteller than.

James Ferrigno (1:07:05)
Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (1:07:14)
I mean, no one's coming to hear me rip on the guitar, that's for god damn sure. And I think my voice is good enough to get my, to get the emotion of the song across.

James Ferrigno (1:07:17)
So. ⁓

So more of a troubadour?

Hmm.

Sam Pond (1:07:34)
There's something that there's another thing around the corner. I don't know what it is right now. That's my my senses are like something's going on Maybe done with it

James Ferrigno (1:07:35)
So.

Yeah.

interesting you did mention you felt like allow you were prepared for this by all these different things but maybe this is another one of the things that's preparing you for the next thing

Sam Pond (1:07:53)
Yeah, definitely.

Exactly.

Yeah, it might just be another thing.

Yeah, so I'm trying to be as still as possible, breathe a lot. I spend a lot of time in mountains, traveling and doing hiking trips and that's helpful too. I know if it's helpful, but it certainly brings silence into my mind. Or introduces me to what a chaotic mess my mind is. I don't know if it's the right way to

James Ferrigno (1:08:26)
Yeah.

Hehehehehe

So, if you could give people some advice on how to find a path or what to do, or maybe just a first thing to do, what would it be?

Sam Pond (1:08:46)
Well, I think the first thing to do is put aside your idea of what is my destiny or what is my purpose or what is my mission. think it's a bunch of horse crap, frankly, because it just gets us, I'm going to write a mission statement. Really? And that's what you really believe and that's what you're going to check into. I've never seen that ever, ever, ever work. It just makes people feel bad that they're not fulfilling their mission statement.

It's interesting to look at, but it doesn't really change. So I'd say the thing I said earlier, which is find out where people are who are like you, who see the world like you. Like I remember after acting, thought I'll be a teacher. I'm smart. I'll be a teacher. Then I met a bunch of teachers, classes with teachers, and I realized I have nothing like these teachers. They're wonderful, but they're just like, I don't fit. That's when I got an advertising. I went, yeah.

James Ferrigno (1:09:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Hahaha

Sam Pond (1:09:45)
Here's where all the smart Alex are. This is more fun. So that was me. Well, over time, was an exact fit for long enough. then as I think maybe I just grew up and realized, wait a it's more of a life than being a smart ass. those are it. And then just waiting for omens. I think the omen thing is huge, is unplug.

James Ferrigno (1:09:49)
Yeah, so that was more of a fit but not exact. Okay

okay.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (1:10:14)
⁓ And you'll be amazed where you can find an omen on the side of a bus going by. Whether you believe in omens, whether they come from out, or they're just something in you that needs a trigger point that says that.

James Ferrigno (1:10:22)
Yeah.

Sam Pond (1:10:31)
So right now I scroll, I spend a little time scrolling through Instagram. I right now, the algorithm knows that I like videos about orphans being adopted by their foster parents. Makes me cry every time. Or athletes being kind to kids. Or people visiting cancer wards for kids. I thought, this is really getting me. And maybe there's a...

James Ferrigno (1:10:48)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Sam Pond (1:11:00)
something in there.

for me. pay attention to those things that make you feel something. And it could be so tiny that you miss it. And it could be in a world, in a context that says, I'm not an astrophysicist. Why should I go in? I like astrophysicists. that's not, the journey isn't saying become an astrophysicist. All it's saying is there's something that grabbed you.

Something captured your imagination or a feeling or lifted your heart.

James Ferrigno (1:11:35)
Yeah.

It's good, like... ⁓

Yeah, some part of it reached you. Maybe noticing what that part of...

Sam Pond (1:11:48)
some part of it. Right now, I'm totally geeking out

on ⁓ British naval history during the Napoleonic Wars. I don't know how I get so fascinated with it, but I'm just like, I don't know what it means.

James Ferrigno (1:11:58)
Wow. ⁓

Sam Pond (1:12:03)
But it's carrying me up. ⁓ It's not quite as strong as watching videos of children being hugged by people. Everything has a, you

James Ferrigno (1:12:11)
Huh.

Sam Pond (1:12:17)
And all it's doing is triggering something inside of you that wants to be heard or seen or felt.

James Ferrigno (1:12:25)
Yeah, yeah, I feel that I relate to that. I'm lately hearing other people's lives. And in some way I'm connecting to other people's lives as if it's...

Sam Pond (1:12:31)
Yeah.

James Ferrigno (1:12:40)
Like a path that I...

didn't travel or could have traveled or that a different part of me has traveled or like there's a oneness and I'm experiencing a different part of me is experiencing different lives or something. It's really moving.

Sam Pond (1:12:43)
you

Yeah.

That's great. Yeah,

I it is.

James Ferrigno (1:13:01)
Yeah, I watched a Paul Newman documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. was like, wow, this life. And it's like so many parallels. And it's interesting too, because I find the parallels of my life with almost everybody else's. They're just different parallels.

Sam Pond (1:13:15)
That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nothing's easy for anybody.

James Ferrigno (1:13:21)
Yeah, yeah. There's so much shit.

Sam Pond (1:13:23)
And I'd say, know, the other last thing I'll

say about is the tiniest things matter more than the big things. It's the dumbest thing, which is if you have something that you want to do, usually, like if I have a pile of bills on my desk, I look at it go, I can't, can't. Paperwork, I can't do all this paperwork because I can't do all this paperwork. I can't do paperwork. I can do a paper.

James Ferrigno (1:13:31)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Sam Pond (1:13:51)
So what I've done is I take a giant coffee table book, I put it over all the stuff on my desk and slip out the top piece and go, oh, this isn't a tax notice, this is just a reminder. So these little tiny things. Nothing's as hard as we think it is. So that's the thing I always have. Start with cleaning your room. It's amazing what cleaning your room will do for clarity of your mind.

James Ferrigno (1:13:51)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Chunk it down.