Superhumanize - Montel Williams

Ariane Sommer: Welcome to another episode of the SUPERHUMANIZE podcast. Today, I am thrilled to be joined by a longtime friend of mine. Montel Williams is an Emmy award winning television personality, a decorated former Naval officer, a New York times bestselling author, inspirational speaker and entrepreneur and Montel is what I consider a true superhuman. From mastering major challenges in his own life like his decades, long fight against multiple sclerosis and surviving a stroke to dedicating his time to being in service to others as a passionate advocate for veterans, medical cannabis education on health. Montel is a leader by example, he currently hosts the hip Lifetime TV show Military Makeover With Montel. And in addition to TV, he hosts two podcasts. Free Thinking and Let's Be Blunt with Montel.

Ariane Sommer: Thank you so much for being on the SUPERHUMANIZE podcast.

Montel Williams: Thank you so much for having me Ariane, I am honored that I'm with a superhuman also, you’re a superhuman.

Ariane Sommer: Well, you're most kind. That's very, very nice of you to say. So I am just so excited to have you here. And, um, ever since you hit the TV screens with the Montel Williams show, which aired for 17 years, you are a household name in America.

And since we also have European listeners today, I'd like to speak a little bit about your background. So most of my European friends know your name and know you as a media personality, your show was syndicated, but what not so many of them know is that you actually come from a military background.

You served in the U S Marine Corps and the US Navy for 22 years. How did you transition from a decorated military career into becoming one of America's most famous talk show hosts?

Montel Williams: That's kind of crazy. I'm a child of the sixties. I was born in 1956 and you know, I grew up in one of the poorest areas of America for the first six years of my life.

One of the biggest ghettos of America, which was a place called Cherry Hill, Baltimore. And then my parents worked very, very hard to get us out of that ghetto setting and into a suburb. Um, and I literally spent my early formative years being back then we had busses in America. I was bussed to schools.

And grew up at a time when the military wasn't very popular. As a matter of fact, you know, there were protests against the Vietnam War. There were protests in my school against people who wore uniforms. And you know, I graduated from high school. I did very, very well in high school.

Um, I was a president of my class at my junior year. I was a student who was assigned to board of education in my senior year. I worked in state and regional student government associations, and really never thought about going into military until, you know, it was time for me to graduate. And I realized that, you know, I, uh, was getting ready to have to lean on a family that had already, I was the youngest of four and my oldest siblings, you know, and already kind of, you know, dug into my parents, you know, bank accounts to go to college. And I knew that they were really in a tough behind, and it would be tough to send me, so, you know, I reached the military and reached out to military because I thought I'll go for four years, get the GI bill and then when I get out, I can go to college and move on.

And that was what my idea was. But then once I got in, in the Marine Corps, I very quickly almost decided to make the Military my full career. I enjoyed it so much. And, you know, even though it wasn't popular to be in the military back then, it taught me the discipline and some things that I needed in life at the time.

And while on active duty, you know, I had some issues and maybe we'll talk about it later, but right before I graduated from the Naval Academy, because I enlisted in the Marine Corps first, I was an enlisted man. Achieved the rank of E4, I transitioned from the Marine Corps into the Navy, by going to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, where I got my degree.

But because, and back then it was unbeknownst to me. I didn't know that I suffered my first bout of MS while at the Naval Academy and neither did the military know that. Nobody knew that because I was misdiagnosed for having MS, they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I went ahead and served out because the only commission I could get was in the Navy.

I went ahead and went into the Navy and served my active duty time out in the Navy and right before, you know, and I was what they call back then a special duty intelligence officer. I, um, you know, studied like you're studying right now. I studied back then Mandarin Chinese is my language at the Naval Academy and then left the Naval Academy and then studied Russian at the defense language Institute.

And I became what was called back then a special duty intelligent officer. A cryptologic direct support officer and I served what was considered back then, black ops and highly sensitive top secret operations for my entire active duty time in the Navy. And right before this was 1988, I got asked by a very close friend of mine to participate in a conference, um, and speak at a conference on leadership.

And there's a 1988 and I said, okay, I'll do it for you without a doubt. I had to take my own leave time to do so. And I did, and I got such a reaction from that presentation that I did. That that prompted me to start speaking in schools on my leave time, across the country. And, you know, it was something that just kind of happened, but, uh, I will tell you that it became a media event.

I was going into schools back at a time when no one was going into schools and schools weren't allowing people to come in to speak. I was going into a lot of inner city and, you know, low-income schools, and talking to kids about the negative youth trends that they were involved in from sexing out, to drug me out, to dropping out of school. And I did start from 1988 to 1991, and that really became the Genesis of my transition from the military into public life and in the television, because what was happening was I was doing presentations in schools and every local television station would show up and say ‘how could this one guy stand in front of all these kids and hold their attention for an hour to two hours’ you know?

And not cause mayhem, we literally had kids walking out, you know, applauding and standing ovations and doing things for this guy who's in a uniform. Nobody could understand it. And that became a program for me. I called it Reach The American dream and literally from 1988 to 1991, I ended up speaking in close to 1500 high schools across America to about a million and a half kids.

I'm talking to them about, again, those negative youth trends from dropping out the dragging out and sexing out and, you know, I would do a presentation. And then at the end of that presentation, I would orchestrate kind of like this little live talk show where I get some kids from the audit to come up on the stage and then I'd ask them questions.

And then the kids would ask the questions about how they could stay away from all those negative things. Lots of media companies covered it. You know, then the next thing you know, I was live on the local five news, live on local six news.

Back in 1989 I started doing some special programming presentations. One of wish I won an Emmy for, which was a program that I did in Denver, Colorado, that was called The Fourth R: Kids Rap About Racism. We did that special presentation. I won this Emmy and so people in Hollywood heard about it.

And I sent that out to some people in Hollywood and said, look, I'm doing this thing. And I think it would really reverberate really well if I had my own talk show and I went out to Hollywood and I'll never forget this. I went out there, you know, uh, the day before Christmas, 1990. And I met with, most people will know him by the name of Freddy Fields, who said, you know, I really think that there's something about you that would really click, like we did a talk show.

Well, you know, I'm looking into it. That sounds good. Why don't we try to do this? And so I met with him on Christmas Eve, 1990 and by January 15th, 1991 I was in conversations with almost every major syndication group in the country. Uh, signed the contract in April, literally flew to LA on May 8th. Our May 1st, 1991 shot about three practice shows, one of which was my first show that aired on May 8th and never looked back.

The show got picked up and, um, the show created whole platforms and whole ways that they were actually distributing shows because it was called, uh, they created something called a slow rollout with my show, but I went on the air in May of 1991.

And I went on before the plethora of talk shows began in 19 in September of 1991. So I was on with Oprah, Sally, Geraldo and Donahue. Matter of fact, Regis and Kathie Lee show wasn't even considered a daytime talk show back then. Ariane Sommer: You were one of the trailblazers. You are a TV legend. You are literally in every American living room.

I remember so well as a little girl sitting there and watching your show. All of a sudden everybody knew who Montel Williams was, what he stood for as like you were one of the best friends you could see every day in your living room, and you won an Emmy also for the Montel Williams Show that ran for 17 years in the US. And you touched on this before, so the military career, the amazing transition, what you just described now into the entertainment world, but you touched upon something when you talk about your military career, that already, then you had, um, bouts of what later you would come to know was flare ups of multiple sclerosis. So when you realized, when you got the diagnosis, you have MS that was actually when you were in the media. Everybody knew you and you're on top of the world. The world is your oyster and then bam. All of a sudden you get hit with this diagnosis. How would you deal with something like that?

Montel Williams: It was tough Ariane. And I want to tell you something. One of the things that's very interesting is that my show was not only on in the United States, but I was syndicated around the world.

I was on a lot of sky television in Europe. Um, I was on the London, I think for a little while. I may have got picked up in Germany, but then only lasted for a little bit. And I was on in Scotland, Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, you know, I was on in the Middle East. Um, and so, you know, you're right when I was finally diagnosed with MS and this is all after 20 years of being misdiagnosed, going back and forth to doctors, they got what the devil's going on with me. Nobody could explain it because if you look back in time, when I had my first episode, which was probably in 1980.

If you read most of the doctors literature back then MS was a disease that was characterized as a disease of Caucasian women, of Northern European descent. Matter of fact, you know, most of the literature back then looked at Scotland, you know, Ireland, England, Denmark, Sweden, Sweden had one of the highest ratios of people with MS back then. And as a matter of fact when I got diagnosed, I was, uh, you know, raising money for a lot of research that was done. And I actually, you know, uh, did a lot of donations to, and raise a lot of money for some research being done at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, that ended up having doctors there actually, you know, identify a gene that they consider MS to be a Viking disease.

So back in time, almost everywhere, around our planet where Vikings went, MS went. So I, when I finally got diagnosed, it literally smacked me on the head, like a brick. My first diagnosis was based on some of my symptoms and I had gone through a separate battle episode in 1999 that sent me to a doctor. And that episode was extreme neuropathic pain in my feet and lower extremities. I had extreme pain in my side and pain in my face. I had some left side weakness, and this is after being, you know, an athlete all my entire life. But when I got that diagnosis, I will tell you the first thing after, uh, you know, suffering through some pretty severe bouts of depression. From being diagnosed with something like this and understanding that back then doctors had nothing. There was nothing they could say to you. They would say, you got to, you have MS. We don't have a cure. Here's a little bit of medication that we were working on, but you know, you're on your own pretty much.

I was fortunately blessed with a doctor who said, look, I heard that, you know, if you really pay attention to diet and your, um, exercise. You might be able to impact this onus. And so I started reading as much as I possibly could back then and try to educate myself as well as I could about anything I could do to help reduce inflammation, because inflammation is our analysis and that's probably, you know, what led you down the path that you're on, not because of the illness, but because you know, you understand inflammation is what is the root cause of almost all diseases that, you know, Humans have and reduce that inflammation, I set myself on a journey similar in some ways to yours back in 2001, 2002, from 2002 to 2004, I was a vegetarian and I kind of, you know, babbled a little bit in the pescatarian lane kind of where I was only eating fish and only eating vegetable or plant- based diet or regimen. And then I tried to be a vegan for quite a period of time.

And then shifted back out of that and kind of shifted over to a Mediterranean diet, but I recognize that it did impact how I felt with MS.

Ariane Sommer: So there you are. Life throws, something really awful at you from your perspective then, and also your perspective now, what advice can you give people who are right now dealing with things that shake them to the core?

How can you stand up and face these types of events?

Montel Williams: Well, you know, what's really crazy is that, you know, the doctor who first diagnosed me basically told me, go home and die. I mean, literally he didn't use those words. But he basically said you have, MS, there is nothing you can do about it. And you know, you're an African-American male and you're in the worst category there is….So, you know, you're probably going to be in a wheelchair in about three or four years. And I looked at that guy and wanted to smack him upside his head because it's like, how dare you try to be a, have a crystal ball. And I don't say it to dispense doctors, but the truth of the matter is. You know, we look at Doctors like they are Gods.

Well, if they were Gods, none of us would be sick. So the truth of the matter is they're not gods. And they are just like us. They learn, they study, they learn, they, they, they hone their craft through their study, but some of them stopped studying after that for, you know, five, six years of education in college, they have all kinds of continuing medical education courses that they refuse to take sometimes.

It hit me that, you know, this guy gave basically gave me the prognosis of go home and die. And I said, no, I want to go home and get busy living. And the only way I can get busy living is to get as much knowledge as I can about my illness and what I can do to impact it. I started just like, you know, I think the advice I know you give is, you know, I try to figure out what little things can I do first, it can be one little thing that I can do that will impact the way I feel. Well, one, I had left side weakness. I had a pain in my feet. I recognize that if I exercise and continue to exercise and didn't exercise the same way, but if I continue to exercise I felt a little bit better. And so then I took that to an extreme, let me exercise harder and I'll feel even more better, and guess what that worked.

And then I said, you know, this doctor told me that, you know, if you pay attention to your diet, well, what does that mean? I started digging in and looking at the books and realized that, you know, nature gave us natural anti-inflammatories, they were called plants and vegetables and fruits and vegetables.

And so if I try to get as much fruit and vegetable in my body, as I possibly can maybe I can impact the inflammation in my body. And that's what sent me on this course to figure out ways to get as much in as I possibly can. And that's what started me down a path of creating green fruit smoothies.

Well, I mean, geez, my jaw started hurting, trying to eat as many vegetables as I needed to chew, but I could drink as many vegetables and I wanted to drink. And so, you know, I literally set up upon a course of figuring out, okay, I need to get me out. You know, something that can grind up and grind up fruits and vegetables.

So I started looking into high-speed blenders and realized these things cost so much. It's ridiculous. So I reached out to a company and said, can you help me manufacture one that's more affordable, not just for me, but for everybody. And so I created the motto Living Well Blender, which was a high speed blender that caused under $200 that, you know, cause of the blenders that were out there at the time that it could actually emulsify vegetables the way I wanted to emulsify them were extremely expensive.

Ariane Sommer: Oh, yes, 500 to $700 easily. And you know what? You were actually the one who put me onto juicing all these years ago. You are directly one of the people who have been most influential on my own health and wellness journey. And what's so remarkable about you. What you were just sharing with us is. You are a warrior through and through.

So life smacked you with something really, really hard, but instead of being, or becoming a victim, you fought it head on, you took radical responsibility for your own wellbeing and for your own story, something that's also really interesting about you is that you've been an absolute trailblazer with regards to medical marijuana.

You actually started treating your MS close to 20 years ago. And from what I recall, what you shared with me, it was, um, because one of your doctors recommended it to you under the radar was far from being legal because the opioid you were taking were literally killing

Montel Williams: Absolutely. When I first got diagnosed again, I was suffering under such extreme pain that nothing seemed to mitigate that pain.

I mean, I was put on a regimen of opioids that, you know, I took them all. I'm not going to name the brands, but I took everything that you can think of it's out there. And some of them that should not have ever been, have recommended or prescribed to me. And, you know, unfortunately as a celebrity, you know, I got the doctor shop. You know, I could get, you know, 50 from this one, a hundred from this one and 50 from this one. And, you know, there was a point in time when I was taking four and five, six and seven pills a day where, you know, they weren't recommended for more than maybe two to three of them a day, you know, long before they created oxycodone.

I was taking the equivalent of that, that we had. Taking seven, eight, nine of them in a day. And getting to a point that they had no effect other than help me go drool in a corner. You know, I'm one of those people who has an aversion to opioids. And so they don't affect me the way they affect other people.

And yes, I could become addicted, but their benefit is really almost non-consequential. And what lot of people don't even know is that opioids would never create it to be a longterm fix. They were only created to be a very short term remedy, primarily they were invented initially, so that you got a really large dose at the beginning of what your issue was and then taper off immediately. Because what we wanted to do is not block the pain because opioids don't block pain, they don't affect pain receptors, opioids just lock your brain's ability to process it or it's processing something else, but it never stopped the pain. Well, you know, because I had been seeing one of my doctors and literally basically prescription shopping, you know, he found out about it from several other doctors that were writing the prescriptions.

And I went in to see him one day and he said, let me tell you, I'm done with you. I'm not writing you any more prescriptions for these opioids that I've been giving you. And he said to me, look, I'm going to tell something, but I'm never going to say that I recommend this to you. I will never tell because it puts my, my career in jeopardy.

But I heard about people like you with your type of MS who have gotten some relief from cannabis. And this was back in 2001. He said, I don't even know what I'm telling you what I'm talking about, but there's a particular type of cannabis. You know, one that has more of one particular Canaveral in it than another one it's called out of some CB, something, CB something.

He didn't even know what he was talking about, but I'm going to tell you that I think you ought to go and look into it. You're a smart guy, research it yourself. You'll figure it out. And when you do, I think that might give you some relief. I literally back in 2001 long before, you know, CBD was vogue long before cannabis was vogue.

I did the research and started digging in and realized that wait a minute, the federal government of the United States filed for a patent in 1999 for this product that's called CBD. Because they recognized that it was a neuroprotectant, they recognized that it was an anti- inflammatory. They recognize that it had effect when it came to diseases like MS.

They had filed for patent back in 1999, gave themselves a patent in 2002. Well, it was good enough for the federal government…why wasn't it good enough for me? I started digging in and digging in and when I realized the benefits of cannabis, I started telling those benefits to everybody I possibly could. I started working on advocating for Cannabis to be made legal for medical purposes back in 2001. I'm telling you long before anybody was working on it. Ariane Sommer: You were an absolute trailblazer in that movement. And I credit a lot of the things that have happened in the United States, legalization in so many states with your activism, you even spoken in front of Congress. Part of your activism today is also to really get people a deep dive. You host the podcast Let's Be Blunt With Montel. Love it. I've subscribed to it. Please tell our audience what they can learn in your podcast.

Montel Williams: What I try to do with this podcast is to go below the surfaces. And I, I use that title because it's catchy and people understand it.

You know, people roll blinds, but I want you to be blunt about what cannabis does. We have everybody on from patients to some of the world's leading doctors. Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been a Guest on Let's Be Blunt With Montel. Dr. Oz has been a guest on, Let's Be Bold With Montel. I've had some of the world leaders, thought leaders who have come to the table and sat down and had a really good conversation about why cannabis is a good alternative to other medications. And then not only do I want to just talk about it, you know, at the 30,000 foot level, I want to talk about it down at the ground level. We try to give people the scientific research and data that they need to be able to make good choices for themselves and their families.

That's, what's really important to me, you know, I don't want to just be able to say, Oh, let's go out and use cannabis because it's going to make you feel better. Yeah. If we break it down to a scientific level, I want people to understand that, you know, as a vertebrate animal on this planet and as a mammal, all mammals and birds have something in their system that's something called the endocannabinoid system.

That is for lack of better term, a secondary sympathetic nervous system that we have inside of our nervous system that we are born with. We create and make cannabinoids in our body. And those cannabinoids, lots of science now say that it's attributed to our cellular homeostasis, which means making all of our cells operate at optimum efficiency at the mitochondrial level, which is those little bacteria that are within our cells and help clean up the inside of our cells and make sure that they work 100% efficiently.

Well, we produced two Cannabinoids that whether you ever smoked cannabis marijuana in your life, whether you ever used it in your life, you have cannabinoids in your body that your body makes and your body makes them because they actually run shotgun over our cells and keep them operating in 100% efficiency.

But those same cannabinoids are antagonized or are, you know, stimulated by plant-based here we go plant-based. The cannabinoids that are made inside the marijuana plant, and there are cannabinoids that are made inside of other plants also that we're just now starting to understand and get the research done on.

People are starting to understand that, you know, we can find particular Cannabinoids inside other plants. And so we all the plant-based diet, but that's part of the reason why it works so well because we were made genetically to consume that plant.

Ariane Sommer: Nature has put these plants on this planet with a purpose and it is to help us. And now the science is getting behind it. We now have an administration coming in that really puts a strong focus on science. When do you think in your personal view and with your experience, will we see a legalization on federal level?

Montel Williams: Well, I've got to tell you something I'm, I'm really kinda, I'm disappointed in some ways with the new administration, as much as I am excited about the new administration, unfortunately though, they do believe in science.

Some of the science that Joe Biden has been given is 20 year old, outdated science, same thing with Kamala Harris. They are still living off a 20 year old science they need to get into and get people in that administration that are willing to tell them the truth. Start talking to them about the fact that, you know, Joe's been a member of our politics for over 40 years.

For over 40 years, our government has funded some of the best research on cannabis around the world, outside of the United States. We've done so with every single budget that we've signed in the last 40 plus years, we now know, that there are properties to cannabis that are anti cancerous, anti tumor, anti viral.

They are newer protected. We need to give them, and then that scientific research and that he can make a good decision to not just decriminalize Cannabis, because that's still leaves it in a, under a stigma, but it's now time to completely legalize these schedule and put it in a position that doctors can recommend and use in their quiver as they use any other pharmaceutical drug.

I mean, Germany just recently approved medical cannabis.

Ariane Sommer: Yes, it’s very limited though. You have to jump through a lot of hoops. So it's coming together much quicker than I expected in Germany. I have friends in Germany who were very much on top of that subject. So I'm thrilled. I would have not have expected this to come to pass maybe four or five years down the road, but it's still has a stigma much more so in Germany than it may have here.

I think here a large part of the population is now getting behind it. And you know, there's some fun facts about cannabis too. For example, I just read that actually the first item ever sold on the internet before Amazon or eBay. So in 1972 students from Stanford University and California and the MIT and Massachusetts, they conducted the first transaction and they sold a small amount of marijuana.

So now that's the past and that's interesting. The future. The medical cannabis sector is projected to become worth $97 billion by the end of 2026, according to fortune business insights. So that's mindblowing.

Montel Williams: Let me take you back even further than that, Ariane. I mean, the truth of the matter is what people don't want to remember and recognize is that if it were not for cannabis, we would not have, what's considered the new world. Back in the 16 hundreds, back in the 15 hundreds, we use cannabis hemp at the time, and we use those hemp fibers and made all the sales for all of our big sail ships, almost every rope that was on a ship back in the 1500, 1600, 1700 were made from a hemp. We clothed the entire revolutionary army of the United States in hemp uniforms.

The word cannabis comes from cannabis. So all those wagons that were covered in canvas back in the day were covered in cannabis. And believe me back in the late 16 hundreds, early 17 hundreds, where first off, all of our forefathers grew hemp, sold hemp, marketed hemp, took it across the world and sold it all around the planet.

But believe me, all those same forefathers were smoking it. Let's remember that when they finally took a look at Benjamin Franklin’s pipe that they had had in the Smithsonian Institute for hundreds of years, they scraped the inside of his pipe and realized that he was smoking hemp.

Ariane Sommer: Good old Benjamin Franklin.

Montel Williams: Benjamin Franklin, and people from all, you know, snuff back in the day had hemp ground in it, it wasn't just tobacco.

Hemp has been a part of our Pharmacopia for medication for over 2000 years, we've utilized hemp intentions and hemp in ways to reduce inflammation back before we even knew that that's what we were doing with it. You know, back in the late 16 hundreds and early 17 hundreds sailors ate hemp seed protein in porridge.

When they went across the oceans. So it's been a part of the fabric of our lives and we consumed it at great length. I mean, again, in a porridges for hundreds of years. So when we take a look at the fact that, you know, since we've been an industrialized civilization for the last hundred years, and we banned hemp, And hemp sales worldwide in 1937 with something called the marijuana tax act in America.

And then this guy Anslinger worked for 30 years to get the world assigned freebies back in 1961 62 to ban hemp from being distributed around the world. The rest of the world consumed hemp. So it angers me that, you know, now that lots of countries, not just like Germany, Spain and others are finally pulling away from that treaty.

We're starting to recognize that what's old is new.

Ariane Sommer: Yes. Hemp has been deeply interwoven literally, and figuratively with, um, uh, you know, human history for so, so long as I have other plants and plant medicines. So I would like to hear about your take on the explosion of psychedelics.

We have universities like Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Stanford Medical. UCLA that are conducting research studies, for example, relative to PTSD with psilocybin and other compounds as well. What's your take on that?

Montel Williams: I gotta to tell you. It's just like with, when it comes to cannabis, we are just scratching the tip of an iceberg, trying to go back to what's old is new again. We need to do that. You know, what we did was we in the twenties and thirties, we let companies and people like, you know, Charles DuPont turn us into a textile and, you know, wood based planet and try to think that this industrial revolution is going to change all things to let's use chemicals, to see if we can replicate what nature gave us to begin with. So what we need to do is stop destroying nature. We know for a fact that we lose large chunks of rainforest all over the world. We are losing plants that we have not even looked at that may be the cure for every thing on this planet. You said it, those who believe in science and think Albert Einstein was one of the smartest people alive.

Well, Albert Einstein said for every action is an equal and opposite reaction. So for every disease, as an equal and opposite cure nature gave us what we need. We are now destroying it at such a rapid pace. We may destroy some of tomorrow's cures today.

Ariane Sommer: I love what you're saying about this, I could not agree more and are steps each and every one of us can take individually to stop this destruction from the way we consume to the way we eat.

I personally choose to eat plant-based that has a huge effect on impact on our environment. And this is something I've always loved about you. You are a person who thinks freely and independently, you're someone who forms your opinions on the basis of reasons. You love to talk about ideas, and this is also something you do in your other podcasts.

You just recently launched Free Thinking. So tell us about that.

Montel Williams: Absolutely. Free Thinking, I decided that, you know, that's one of the biggest problems that I think we are now facing as a society and as a race, as a human race, the human race has stopped talking. We're not talking to each other.

We're spending more time on, in an, in mediums like this. And then of course, because of the pandemic, this is the way we have to communicate these days. However, we don't have to build our brains around this. You got to stop and think about it. People stop thinking. If I need to answer a question, I just pick this thing up type in and I get the question and I don't even know what the answer.

Oh, I get the answer. I don't even know what the answer really means. I can just regurgitate what was written and think that I'm a smart person. I don't even take the time to think about the answer that I brought up and googled or use the internet to get to solve for me. Critical thinking is so important.

It's so important to us as human beings. It's what helps that gray matter up there function. We know that man probably only uses 10 to 20% of all of the brain cells that we have over our lifetime. There's another 80% that could be engaged if we just spent the time with ourselves and look inside rather than looking outside for answers.

I wanted to do a podcast that made people stop for a second, put down the devices, think, communicate, have a conversation. There's nothing wrong with me asking you a question. Are you asking me a question? There's nothing wrong with me wanting to learn something and put that inside this brain, rather than have to use some electronic device to give me the answer. I can dig inside of the files in his brain and find them myself. That's what being alive is all about. You know, it's the only difference between us and some of the other animals on the planet is our ability to freewill think, and we need to get back to that free will thinking, and then not only do it for ourselves, but share it with others, interact with others.

I mean, you look at how divided America has become. Why. We're so divided because we're not talking to each other. We're not communicating, we're not thinking with each other, you know, people, you, you see some of the interviews of some of these people at rallies for different parts of the sides of the fence. I saw this on this outlet.

I read this on the internet, shut up. Why don't you just go study this yourself, form an opinion, and then I'll listen to what you had to say. But so often they don't even form an opinion for themselves. They just regurgitating some false information that they heard from somebody else.

Ariane Sommer: I know, and I agree with you so much, I think, and you've touched upon something that I am thinking about every day.

We are presently experiencing such a huge division in America, political and racial divide. And you are a man of the world. You've traveled the world. You're a man of many different interests and endeavors. How have you envisioned, can we get on the path to becoming the United States of America again and overcome this division?

What can each and every one of us do aside from listening to your brilliant podcasts?

Montel Williams: I think what we should do is, is fight the three ravaging causes of racism. And to me, they are ignorance, hatred, and fear. That's it. We're ignorant. We don't know someone so therefore we judge them. If we took the time to learn, you know, there is value does think all the internet, because it does have so much information on it, but if you stop for a second and read it, you know, I spend my day, you know, I, I probably look up, I try to look up things that I don't know.

And see if I can, if I'm watching the news and somebody says something and I don't know what it is, I look it up then I don't just look up the one sentence answer. I try to read those three articles that are written about whatever that is that I don't know, see if I can educate myself. And as I'm reading those articles, I try to form opinions in my own brain based on my experience of what that information means.

You know, if I hear something about North Korea, I don't take somebody else's idea of what North Korea is. I look it up, find out, let's see if I can read a little bit of the history of North Korea when it became North Korea, why it became North Korea, why it became a communist country, and then try to understand what those people are going through.

That helps me fight the ignorance, the lack of knowledge,

Ariane Sommer: Try on their life, even if it's just in thoughts.

Montel Williams: Correct. Because if, once I learn then I don't fear them. Get rid of the fear. Then there's no reason to hate. I hate something that I don't know anything about. So stop. Hate goes away when you gain knowledge. And if we can do that, if we can teach our children that if we can get back to the idea, I recently was just taken aback by the fact that again, people don't even want to spend a minute to learn about another person. Are we so fearful of the LGBT community? Why are we are BTQ community? Why are we so fearful of black people?

Why are we so fearful of white people? Because we don't know them. There's nothing wrong with me asking you Ariane, you know, tell me a little bit about Germany. You know, I know this is really crazy, but you know, every time somebody says something about Germany these days, they always say Hitler. Hitler has nothing to do with German people. German people are people.

Ask questions. Maybe I'll learn something new about them, but that's, that's really, I think the only way we're going to get ourselves out of this. And let me tell you, we better start getting ourselves out of this really soon, because if we don't….I think we're a teetering on a slippery slope. People often to say, this is very funny, but it's the truth.

This planet has been here for 10 billion years, whether it's 7 billion, 8 billion, nine or 10, I think 10, you know, I'm listening to that group of scientists. So let's say it's been over 10 billion years. If I took a piece of paper. And I took a ballpoint pen, and I drew a line across that piece of paper from one side to the other.

And I said, that's all 10 billion years. And then I try to find that point on that line that represents mankind that we know today. Now let's say the man that's been around today has been around for 10 to 12,000 years. I think we're going to find out. We probably have been around for close to 20 to 30,000.

Let's say this generation of man, not the one that was a cave man. But you know, this iteration of man that was communicating and had thought has been around here for back 10,000 years, I'm sorry, 20,000 years. If I made that align on that big line, we noticed that that line is barely a dot out of 10 billion years.

20,000 years was the only, there's a little dot over here. Well, when we start really thinking about it, that little dot could have been here billion years ago could have been here 3 billion years ago could have been here 4 billion years ago. And we had enough time in between to flatten it out to nothing and not even know that it existed.

Ariane Sommer: I actually think in my own head the same as you do. I think we have done this exercise so many times over. I am an optimist. I am so hopeful that maybe this time is the time we're getting it right. I know you are doing your darndest for making this a possibility for humanity. I am in my small way am also trying to do my darnedest to make this come true this time we're getting it right humanity.

Yay. So let's see, but we're all going to work on this together. Like you said, we need a change. We need a, you spoke about the dot on the line. We need to start connecting the dots. With each other and come together again and unite between a cause that we all can and must stand behind, which is not just our survival, but our thriving, our thrival on this planet. Montel Williams: I agree with you 1000000%. And I'm hoping that this is not that, you know, just another dot that ends up going away and having to wait for the next dot to try to wait for a hundred years to get it right. I mean, I think man gets to this point, and this is that pivotal point right now where we can say we accept science, we accept humanity.

We accept our differences. We know that we didn't all we get here individually. We all got here together or move forward together. And if we don't, then we'll just be another dot.

Ariane Sommer: Let’s not be another dot and it starts with each and everyone, ourselves with taking what I already mentioned before radical responsibility with mastering certain things in my life.

And Montel there is a question I ask all of the guests, I have the pleasure to speak with on this podcast. And that is what practice or practices have most profoundly, positively impacted your life.

Montel Williams: I think the idea of becoming more self-aware and meditating and thinking more about not just me individually, but what my impact is on the world.

The second I believe I started pondering those things greater than myself. I started recognizing, you know, how small I am, but how big I can be when it comes to my impact. I think that the more and more people start to recognize that we are here, not for self alone. We are here for the betterment of all man.

That's what made a difference in my life. I mean, at the end of the day, and I said, there's always, you know, if you stop and you think about it just really, really stop for one second. If everybody was listening to you today, stopped and thought about this. I want everybody listening to real quick thinking you name a hundred people in history from a hundred years ago. And I will guarantee you that 99.9% of the people that are listening today, can't come up with more than 15 names. I mean, if you really had to stop and think about what's your name a hundred people from a hundred years ago before…Jesus Gandhi, uh, uh, uh, right.

You can't. So what does that really tell you? There had been billions and people who have lived on this planet, billions. And you can only name five to 10. So that means was their impact as profound as it should have been. One guy's impact was, I'm not saying this from a religious standpoint, but you stop and think about it.

There was this guy by the name of Jesus Christ, whether you believe in God or not that man before there was an internet before there were newspapers, before there was telephones, before there was a wireless communication over the course of about 200 years, the whole world knew who he was. Back before there was an internet.

And there was cell phones. There was a bad guy and I'm just throwing them out there. But a guy named Hitler, the whole world knew who he was too. The entire world, knew who he was. So he did bad and impacted the whole world. This guy, Jesus Christ did good impact of the whole world. This guy, Gandhi, they good impacted the whole world. What do I have to do to impact the whole world? No, it's not because I think that much of me, whether it happens or not, doesn't matter, but wouldn't it be a good idea to live my life in a way to see if maybe I could be one of those people that is remembered a thousand years from now by everybody in the world right now.

Now, you know, I will end my days here and I probably be on a short list for a lot of people. However, I'm going to work real hard to be on that long list.

Ariane Sommer: Well Montana, you're a man with great, great purpose. You've always fought for others. You've always been off service for others. And for people who want to connect with you, they can of course, listen to your podcasts.

Let's Be Blunt with Montel and Free Thinking, but how else can they get in touch with?

Montel Williams: Well, they can go up on montelwilliams.com. They can go up on montelmedia.com and you know, I'm there. They can reach out. Ask a question too, and I'll make sure I try to get you an answer.

Ariane Sommer: Great. And you're already doing so many things.

It's so hard for me to keep up with you, but there, is there anything up next that we should be aware of?

Montel Williams: You know, I am still working really tirelessly if I can on initiatives around the cannabis space, hopefully real soon, I'll have, you know, really major announcement to make, as I'm trying to work with a couple with a company that I think is going to be a game changer in the entire industry worldwide.

So that's one thing. And, um, you know, um, I'm also working down on the ground level on a couple of initiatives right now on PTSD and traumatic brain injury, I'm working at a protocol that has been developed that now has been proven to be a cure for PTSD. Um, it's been recognized and written about by pure review documentation around the world.

And I'm trying my best to get that into the hands of as many people as I possibly can. Because one of the things that we're not thinking about Ariane right now, during this time of this pandemic, we're not keeping our eyes on the next pandemic. And the next pandemic is going to be a pandemic or mental health issues related to surviving this pandemic.

We have more first responders, more people suffering, more children suffering right now from mental illness based on the ravages of this COVID 19 pandemic. And so, yeah, we may get this virus under control and may stop the infection rate around the world. It'll never go away just like influenza. It's always going to be here, but how we deal with it mentally is going to be the next challenge that we have.

And there are so many first responders, so many doctors that are suffering right now. So many family members who were caregivers, who are suffering right now from the PTSD of this pandemic. And to know that there is a cure out there right now. That's not being touted by people, just because they've been able to create a cottage industry around PTSD and hoard all the funds because they would prefer to keep people safe because you know, there are protocols that have been out here now that don't have efficacy cases greater than 35% are being touted as the top protocols. Whereas we know that there is a protocol out here right now called RTM bed is 90% efficient in relieving all symptoms of PTSD, no matter whether it's combat PTSD, it's traumatic experience PTSD, it's PTSD from COVID. Yet we can't get this to break through and break above the din. Because there are people who are really consciously trying to keep this down because they'd rather be able to collect as much money as they can off of victims.

Ariane Sommer: It's absolutely awful and unforgivable. So this protocol you just mentioned as something that you're also involved with and trying to bring to light and give people access to.

Montel Williams: Yes, I'm trying to get this done as quickly as we can. There are studies being done in London right now. You know, there are studies being done all over the world.

They've already done 10 years of study. They've already validated the science it's already done. So I want to get this out there. That's one of the things I'm working on and that's one of the things I could use some help with. So, you know, it's called RTM so all people have to look it up.

Reconsolidation of traumatic memories. Is the name of the protocol and it is a cure for PTSD. Write your Congressman, write your Senator, tell them we need to get this funded. We need to get this out there and we need to make this available to as many people as we can.

Ariane Sommer: That's outstanding Montel. I'll make sure to get the information about all of this from your team and put it in the show notes. Again thank you so much for everything you do. You are one of my favorite superhumans. Thank you for being on the Superhumanize podcast today Montel.

Montel Williams: Thank you so much for having me Ariane and good luck to you. And I can't wait for your book to come out cause I'll be one of the first people to buy it. And I'm going to make sure people understand this lady is the real deal.

The real deal, she walks the walk, talks the talk appropriately, and I've known her now close to 20 years and she doesn't look like she aged a day in the entire time. I've noticed that she gotta be doing something right. We need to get on his bandwagon.

Ariane Sommer: Thank you so much Montel. You will be one of the first people I send the book to and let's keep in touch.

I can't wait to see you and your lovely wife, Tara again, and share a really good plant-based meal. Lots of love to you. Stay safe and healthy. And let's talk soon.

Montel Williams: Please let's do so. Say hey to Clay for me and you know, lots of love to you and your family. Thank you.