Hey, this is the moment. I'm Brian Koppelman. Thanks for listening. My guest today is someone I have the great pleasure of working with in normal times for about half the year every year for the past five years.

Although I haven't seen you in quite a while.

This person is truly brilliant in so many different ways,

a remarkable actor and singer and thinker and writer,

and it's just a pleasure to have Candola Rashad on the show.

Thanks for doing this.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

I'm glad we finally got here.

We've been trying to get on this for a while.

We were just playing tag. Oh it was crazy. No it was a

there was a lot going into getting us to be able to do this and I had wanted of course to do it in person

since there's so many opportunities for us to sit down but at least now at least now it's it's happening and it's a it's a good time for it because I do find your presence in the world really inspiring right now because you're to me it seems and

tell me this is right I mean it seems you're a realist meaning you're able to take in

what's actually happening understand all the ramifications but then it seems to me you do try out of the sort of

the despair that you witness see feel you try to spin into a kind of

positivity and a galvanizing sort of force. Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I would say I'm a realistic optimist.

Yeah. Yeah for sure. I mean, I think it's just because I do believe that for change to occur, for me personally, even like, for example, even when it comes, comes okay I am a firm believer that you know

Change starts on the inside and then comes to the outside right so like when it comes to things that I even needed to change within myself and in periods of my life I needed to feel positivity in order to do that.

I needed to feel like there was something positive on the other side which moved me to that change.

So if it's just coming from, and everybody has their own right to express how they express, but if you're only feeling the weight,

...