[Music]
the book that I
published last year was Hotel Scarface
where cocaine Cowboys partied and
plotted to control Miami I was raised in
Miami and let me tell you doing a book
on cocaine and the heyday of Miami and
Miami Vice and Scarface and all the
crazy things that went down in late 70s
and early 80s naturally you know in the
course of your investigative reportage
these former dopers and DEA people and
hit men and women of the night turn
around it’s like wait a minute why am I
telling you all this how old were you
what what’s up what do you know about
cocaine well I’m gonna tell you what I
know about cocaine this is the extent of
my dalliance with cocaine in Miami I was
a good school I was a good student
stayed in school drink milk say no to
drugs the Nancy Reagan mold but on or
about the second season of Miami Vice my
cousin Holly and I were fishing at her
house in North Miami and we saw a kilo
of tightly packed cocaine float up and I
immediately reflexively said quick Holly
go call the channel 7 news truck if you
see news in the making seven seven ten
of news that she’s like whoa you know
she’s older than me she was taking care
of me she goes and calls seven seven
News and as I’m holding this gaff and
net up against the wall I have all these
visions dancing in my head like wow
Nancy Reagan’s gonna come down and give
me the key to the city and mrs. Virginia
boon our high school principal was going
to throw me a parade and give me a
citation I might end up on a special
episode of Miami Vice or at the very
worst of you know a special episode of
Diff’rent Strokes and it was you know I
felt like my arm was gonna come off and
everything but the glory like wow I can
become big-time and I’m in elementary
school and I can become famous and
finally after about 40 minutes I look
out of the corner of my eye and I see
the news van with a you know swirly
antenna and these two guys get out with
big cameras and I was like what was
going on so the kid said he found
cocaine it’s like here get it get it get
it he pulls me out I feel like my life
coming back to my blood rushing back
into my body pulls it up it’s a mini
[Applause]
yeah but my intentions were great I was
gonna save Miami from that incremental
kilo the Miami of cocaine’s heyday and
the narcotics explosion of Miami of my
early childhood in Miami abounded with
the surreal and the WTF let me give you
an example McDonald’s which is based
outside of Chicago is getting all these
tip offs from franchisees in South
Florida we’re running out of the tiny
spoon tipped coffee stirrers what’s up
like kids in high school are hoarding
them people are coming in and taken out
like cleaning out the inventory it turns
out they were perfect for portioning out
cocaine and sniffing cocaine people
would wear them as necklaces they became
kind of a counterculture icon
up-and-coming drug dealers would get
them bronzed and gold-plated and would
wear them for the longest time and after
that they became paddles if you’ll
notice the little stirs from McDonald’s
the Florida Power & Light Company our
utility let’s talk about marijuana for a
minute
there’s also reefer madness in the late
70s and early 80s so much pop was being
seized they actually called them square
groupers these bales that would wash up
you’d be at the beach would be at the
marina
they’re always there these massive bales
of marijuana so much marijuana was
getting seized that our utility Florida
Power and Light figured out how to run
its turbines on marijuana 730 pounds of
marijuana replaced a barrel of oil in an
oil crisis if you guys remember 1980-81
the Federal Reserve branch of Miami was
so overrun with hot narcotics money
which one university estimated
represented 30 percent of the economy
that by the turn of the decade it posted
a five billion dollar cash surplus that
is more than all of the other Federal
Reserve Bank’s combined everybody was
selling out of luxury cars of condos of
anything I mean thoroughbred horses
there were coin-operated banks that were
called on Brickell Avenue that you would
go in and while banks were paying a lot
of people at a time of inflation 15% you
would pay them 15% to launder money for
you it was crazy
but it wasn’t all sunshine and Crockett
and Tubbs in a Ferrari
obviously the flip side of this ledger
is that Miami by 1980-81 became the
murder capital of the world its murder
rate was the highest in the world
so this hundred-year-old City barely
this terminus of the Sun Belt had
effectively become a failed state you
had a hundred and twenty-five thousand
Cuban refugees Fidel Castro says I am
flushing my harbors of the scum of the
enemies of the revolution they show up
in Miami in the matter of six months we
had race riots that torched the city had
you flown into Miami International
Airport in nineteen eighty you just see
columns upon columns of smoke Jimmy
Carter didn’t know do I send in the
National Guard no it is an election year
Florida is that swing state how this
percolated over the next year when that
combusted with cocaine and the crazy
riches of cocaine if you consider you
could get a kilo if you were an
enterprising drug dealer in me Andes for
somewhere on the order of a thousand two
thousand three thousand dollars you
bring it to Miami you cut it with baby
laxative or powdered milk and you keep
cutting it and they say stepping on it
stepping on it stepping on it the street
value ultimately could be upward of five
hundred thousand dollars multiply that
times thousands of kilos sluicing into
the harbors of South Florida and all
these people who were dirt poor for
years turns out at least ten thousand of
those people ejected from Cuba were
criminals many of them were violent
criminals that had their weapons of
choice tattooed on the inside of their
lips all these people for hire whether
you want a speedboat person a hitman and
odd-jobs person so you can quickly see
how all of this came together and the
partying and the fun and the sex and
everything combusted into this orgy of
murder Dade County brakes the murder
record in 1980 and we ended up on Time
magazine as Paradise Lost November 1981
effectively calling Miami a failed state
the Chamber of Commerce the tourism
board everybody had a serious problem on
their hands and one more what WTF stat
for you the homicide rate was so
overwhelming that the county morgue had
to lease a refrigerated truck from the
Burger King Corp
raishin which was right there in miami
the medical examiner was beside himself
see my friends documentary cocaine
Cowboys he says at some point you stop
counting the bullets in people our
biggest mall in 1979 was shot up there
were shootouts on the freeway people
were showing up cadavers in canals
bobbing everywhere it had to stop
somehow now I’m not here actually to
talk about my book and when I’m about to
share with you is a it’s it’s a risk for
me it’s a risk personally professionally
maybe reputationally in my culture we
don’t tend to over share despite what
TEDx and LinkedIn and all these guys
tell you to do I go back to the question
why you Robin
you were four when all of this happened
I came to this country 40 years ago from
Iran my aunt was in medical school we
feel feared for our lives my father made
the executive decision flee before it
gets even worse
forty years ago almost to the week and
that is me in 1980 and I had to travel
this journey and published this book and
reopened 1980 and actually travel here
today to tell you that I have to do this
it was almost my manifest destiny
let me explain those first few years
here I just remember in addition to the
cacophony of everything that was going
on in Miami I’d stay up with my parents
and watch Nightline they let me stay up
past 11 o’clock because it covered the
hostage crisis and part of us I guess we
were hoping that we could return to Iran
that this would blow over it didn’t it
sounds crazy to let a four or five year
old stay up past 11:00 11:30 but we were
all just huddling and trying to figure
things out my father was a doctor in
Iran and he was never able to get a high
enough TOEFL score to have reciprocity
on his medical degree here so he was
constantly hustling and going to Kaplan
and trying to learn English and trying
to be better and all I remember for
those first few years my mom sobbing on
the realization that we’ve lost our
country and everything and just
to pack it in a bag and come and you
know within a few days notice she had to
go to beauty school she was pregnant
with my little brother then and the
important thing that I want to share
with you today and to get off my chest
and to own is that that was a period of
constant terror for me that’s me in my
first preschool photo and 1980 every
morning was a nightmare for me dad would
get me in his car it was a Cutlass coupe
I remember the smell of the imitation
vinyl to this day I remember the Old
Spice Cologne that he would wear and
every morning was seemingly impending
annihilation for me I didn’t speak the
language he would take me to preschool
we’d walk down this corridor and two
teachers would have to peel me off of
his leg every morning and I didn’t know
if my dad was going to come back and get
me I didn’t know how to tell these
teachers that I needed to use the
bathroom all I could hang on to after
they pried me off my dad was the smell
of his gaberdine pants and his cologne
and this terror that I had to carry as a
four-year-old and in 20/20 hindsight the
sky the air outside always smelled like
smoke when we had free play and
playground time of which I was terrified
and crouched to the side and didn’t
speak the language
turns out the city was burning down this
is my shared trauma with the city of
Miami and let me tell you I’m a very
high-functioning refugee only after 35
years past
and let me tell you about those 35 years
is I ran away from this I mean put it
put it this way I ran from Iran and my
family coming from Iran how did I do it
by achieving by making my parents proud
by always bringing that straight a
report card by being the most easy with
with language I remember my dad at my
5th birthday got me to stand up and say
the Pledge of Allegiance and he was so
proud as an immigrant for me to have
arrived for me reading 141 books in the
first grade and winning the reading
competition
for me being the problem-solving guru
and talented and gifted for me getting
into the college of my dreams for me
getting the fellowship of my dreams for
me writing cover after cover for
Business Week for doing things on the
New York Times for my dad to be able to
brag to people that my son was on MSNBC
or he was on CNN or listen to him on NPR
and I functioned on that until the very
beginning of 2010 when my son arrived my
first child six weeks early yeah we were
speeding down the interstate my wife was
scared we were all scared I had not
planned for it we’d just been to a real
birth class that day and he came out and
he was crying and they had to go and
isolate him and give him some shots and
I just remember turning to him and it
was a true turning point the access of
my earth had shifted and I said baby boy
I missed you I missed you I look back at
that video all the time and it was a new
inception of my life and I went and
watched him in the isolation room as
they gave him these shots and my wife
was being taken care of and my heart
broke for him that his mom was a
neighbor to hold him and bond with him
at that point and I get an email from my
editor on the blackberry your cover
story is happening this week man it’s
full speed ahead and I ran on those
fumes for a few days and whatnot until
maybe later that week to relieve my wife
in the morning because he was weak and
he wasn’t feeding and she was up all
night with him I held him and his nails
on the couch pierced my eyebrow I that
when I handed him off to her I went on
the bus and hopped on the train to Grand
Central and I wanted that to sting I
wanted that to hurt because I was in
crisis I had completely figured out 1980
I’d completely run away from that I
created this construct this persona this
person that you saw in the news we’re so
proud of him my mom so proud of me my
kindergarten teacher would write me
truth is I was heartbroken and my son’s
weakness put my own
weakness of 1980 back in sharp relief
and all I wanted was for my dad to come
up and hold me while I held my son and I
had no desire anymore to write cover
stories I had no desire to pitch TV
producers all I wanted to do was be with
my son and only I think when my son was
three-and-a-half years old and I was in
this crisis thinking how am I going to
become a creative again how am I going
to produce again did I finally at my
wife’s best have the conversation with
my father said dad do you know how
horrific 1980 was for me do you know how
much I fear for my son because of the
condition I was in my dad who’s always
provided for me he’s been nothing but
incredible and warm and generous and we
were provided for and we prioritized
accomplishment and love and whatnot
he said but do you know how hard it was
for me do you know how I too was running
I was running away you know at one low
point in the mid-eighties my dad had to
sell sneakers at a Kmart
he was doctor in Iran he resisted
anti-semitism he did all these things to
build himself up and his Empire
collapsed I had to build an empire to
with my child and I feared for him and I
learned that that inception that fear is
no way to kind of motivate yourself in
doing these you can’t fear what’s gonna
happen if you don’t have a cover story
this calendar you can’t fear what’s
gonna happen if MSNBC doesn’t book you
or if you’re not on that Booker’s good
side it brought this realization that if
I want to reconstitute from this there’s
almost like a Maslow vien hierarchy I
want to build something authentic if
this weight of the world with my father
is now off my shoulders how am I going
to rebuild this authentically and the
first statement of that was my book
hotel scarface came out last year and I
tell you in my old iteration it would
have been a very different investigative
journalist like I’d be more of a gotcha
person like oh you were a coke dealer
where I found out this dad I found out
this dad I’m gonna you know milk them
one directionally for this story because
the deliverable was all that mattered
instead i steeped myself in 1980
the pivot was I could have the last say
in 1980 I could be vulnerable with
people I could let these people be
vulnerable with me one of my sources
shared a six-page suicide letter with me
thank God she didn’t consummate the
thought but I wasn’t gonna go there and
just got just feel the story from her
another source was this master smuggler
of the early 80s he has this reputation
in Miami devastated that he have to go
to his daughter’s funeral in shackles
and his other daughter’s wedding in
shackles this wasn’t all glitz and
glamour this was a lot of trauma but you
know what
I am grateful I am grateful for the fact
that even though it took 35 years even
though it took this circuitous route of
me coming from shiraz iran Miami New
York bangbang bangbang Western North
Carolina to tell you this it feels like
it’s finally an arrival even though I
literally arrived in this country 40
years ago so I now emanate from this in
a position where I’m no longer doing
things out of fear I have this voracious
appetite to go and do projects on my own
terms to engage people to actually look
in the whites of their eyes and and see
what motivates them to be the true ENFP
that I am on the myers-briggs and
knowing that and as I tell this to you
which would have terrified me just a few
years ago to show up on a stage and tell
these tens of thousands of people in
front of us you know it’s extremely
liberating to me and I don’t know if
there is a neat TEDx take away on this
frankly but if this resounds maybe with
two of you 10 of you one of you if
somebody on the video the TEDx video
goes up to the you know bargain bin
clearance section of LinkedIn and looks
for you know scroll down for B list
thought leadership I would say the
closest thing to the takeaway to you is
find your inception don’t run away from
it so many of us are carrying traumas so
many of us are still devastated over a
parents divorce clearly over abuse over
a misunderstanding over a bully and we
construct I think these these coping
mechanisms to kind of make ourselves
look better especially in the world
of Instagram and Facebook I’m much more
interested in the kind of a non
partially hydrogenated traumas and
demons that we carry and helping other
people actually doing things like this
to look people in the eye I mean that’s
my agenda I’m not here to sell a book
I’m not here to sell a philosophy or a
diet I’m here to connect with you and to
actually enlist you in helping me take
an enormous burden off my shoulders I am
so psyched to take on the next chapter
of my life because there’s an informed
authenticity to it I don’t have to sleep
at night anymore
and the first thing I think of when I
close my eyes is that morning terror and
the smell of my dad’s gabardine pants
throughout all the accomplishment for 35
years that’s what I took to bed every
night that went away so I leave you with
a quote from not a serf a lyric actually
which seems to sum up my situation
maybe this weight was a gift thank you
[Applause] [Music]
the book that I
published last year was Hotel Scarface
where cocaine Cowboys partied and
plotted to control Miami I was raised in
Miami and let me tell you doing a book
on cocaine and the heyday of Miami and
Miami Vice and Scarface and all the
crazy things that went down in late 70s
and early 80s naturally you know in the
course of your investigative reportage
these former dopers and DEA people and
hit men and women of the night turn
around it’s like wait a minute why am I
telling you all this how old were you
what what’s up what do you know about
cocaine well I’m gonna tell you what I
know about cocaine this is the extent of
my dalliance with cocaine in Miami I was
a good school I was a good student
stayed in school drink milk say no to
drugs the Nancy Reagan mold but on or
about the second season of Miami Vice my
cousin Holly and I were fishing at her
house in North Miami and we saw a kilo
of tightly packed cocaine float up and I
immediately reflexively said quick Holly
go call the channel 7 news truck if you
see news in the making seven seven ten
of news that she’s like whoa you know
she’s older than me she was taking care
of me she goes and calls seven seven
News and as I’m holding this gaff and
net up against the wall I have all these
visions dancing in my head like wow
Nancy Reagan’s gonna come down and give
me the key to the city and mrs. Virginia
boon our high school principal was going
to throw me a parade and give me a
citation I might end up on a special
episode of Miami Vice or at the very
worst of you know a special episode of
Diff’rent Strokes and it was you know I
felt like my arm was gonna come off and
everything but the glory like wow I can
become big-time and I’m in elementary
school and I can become famous and
finally after about 40 minutes I look
out of the corner of my eye and I see
the news van with a you know swirly
antenna and these two guys get out with
big cameras and I was like what was
going on so the kid said he found
cocaine it’s like here get it get it get
it he pulls me out I feel like my life
coming back to my blood rushing back
into my body pulls it up it’s a mini
[Applause]
yeah but my intentions were great I was
gonna save Miami from that incremental
kilo the Miami of cocaine’s heyday and
the narcotics explosion of Miami of my
early childhood in Miami abounded with
the surreal and the WTF let me give you
an example McDonald’s which is based
outside of Chicago is getting all these
tip offs from franchisees in South
Florida we’re running out of the tiny
spoon tipped coffee stirrers what’s up
like kids in high school are hoarding
them people are coming in and taken out
like cleaning out the inventory it turns
out they were perfect for portioning out
cocaine and sniffing cocaine people
would wear them as necklaces they became
kind of a counterculture icon
up-and-coming drug dealers would get
them bronzed and gold-plated and would
wear them for the longest time and after
that they became paddles if you’ll
notice the little stirs from McDonald’s
the Florida Power & Light Company our
utility let’s talk about marijuana for a
minute
there’s also reefer madness in the late
70s and early 80s so much pop was being
seized they actually called them square
groupers these bales that would wash up
you’d be at the beach would be at the
marina
they’re always there these massive bales
of marijuana so much marijuana was
getting seized that our utility Florida
Power and Light figured out how to run
its turbines on marijuana 730 pounds of
marijuana replaced a barrel of oil in an
oil crisis if you guys remember 1980-81
the Federal Reserve branch of Miami was
so overrun with hot narcotics money
which one university estimated
represented 30 percent of the economy
that by the turn of the decade it posted
a five billion dollar cash surplus that
is more than all of the other Federal
Reserve Bank’s combined everybody was
selling out of luxury cars of condos of
anything I mean thoroughbred horses
there were coin-operated banks that were
called on Brickell Avenue that you would
go in and while banks were paying a lot
of people at a time of inflation 15% you
would pay them 15% to launder money for
you it was crazy
but it wasn’t all sunshine and Crockett
and Tubbs in a Ferrari
obviously the flip side of this ledger
is that Miami by 1980-81 became the
murder capital of the world its murder
rate was the highest in the world
so this hundred-year-old City barely
this terminus of the Sun Belt had
effectively become a failed state you
had a hundred and twenty-five thousand
Cuban refugees Fidel Castro says I am
flushing my harbors of the scum of the
enemies of the revolution they show up
in Miami in the matter of six months we
had race riots that torched the city had
you flown into Miami International
Airport in nineteen eighty you just see
columns upon columns of smoke Jimmy
Carter didn’t know do I send in the
National Guard no it is an election year
Florida is that swing state how this
percolated over the next year when that
combusted with cocaine and the crazy
riches of cocaine if you consider you
could get a kilo if you were an
enterprising drug dealer in me Andes for
somewhere on the order of a thousand two
thousand three thousand dollars you
bring it to Miami you cut it with baby
laxative or powdered milk and you keep
cutting it and they say stepping on it
stepping on it stepping on it the street
value ultimately could be upward of five
hundred thousand dollars multiply that
times thousands of kilos sluicing into
the harbors of South Florida and all
these people who were dirt poor for
years turns out at least ten thousand of
those people ejected from Cuba were
criminals many of them were violent
criminals that had their weapons of
choice tattooed on the inside of their
lips all these people for hire whether
you want a speedboat person a hitman and
odd-jobs person so you can quickly see
how all of this came together and the
partying and the fun and the sex and
everything combusted into this orgy of
murder Dade County brakes the murder
record in 1980 and we ended up on Time
magazine as Paradise Lost November 1981
effectively calling Miami a failed state
the Chamber of Commerce the tourism
board everybody had a serious problem on
their hands and one more what WTF stat
for you the homicide rate was so
overwhelming that the county morgue had
to lease a refrigerated truck from the
Burger King Corp
raishin which was right there in miami
the medical examiner was beside himself
see my friends documentary cocaine
Cowboys he says at some point you stop
counting the bullets in people our
biggest mall in 1979 was shot up there
were shootouts on the freeway people
were showing up cadavers in canals
bobbing everywhere it had to stop
somehow now I’m not here actually to
talk about my book and when I’m about to
share with you is a it’s it’s a risk for
me it’s a risk personally professionally
maybe reputationally in my culture we
don’t tend to over share despite what
TEDx and LinkedIn and all these guys
tell you to do I go back to the question
why you Robin
you were four when all of this happened
I came to this country 40 years ago from
Iran my aunt was in medical school we
feel feared for our lives my father made
the executive decision flee before it
gets even worse
forty years ago almost to the week and
that is me in 1980 and I had to travel
this journey and published this book and
reopened 1980 and actually travel here
today to tell you that I have to do this
it was almost my manifest destiny
let me explain those first few years
here I just remember in addition to the
cacophony of everything that was going
on in Miami I’d stay up with my parents
and watch Nightline they let me stay up
past 11 o’clock because it covered the
hostage crisis and part of us I guess we
were hoping that we could return to Iran
that this would blow over it didn’t it
sounds crazy to let a four or five year
old stay up past 11:00 11:30 but we were
all just huddling and trying to figure
things out my father was a doctor in
Iran and he was never able to get a high
enough TOEFL score to have reciprocity
on his medical degree here so he was
constantly hustling and going to Kaplan
and trying to learn English and trying
to be better and all I remember for
those first few years my mom sobbing on
the realization that we’ve lost our
country and everything and just
to pack it in a bag and come and you
know within a few days notice she had to
go to beauty school she was pregnant
with my little brother then and the
important thing that I want to share
with you today and to get off my chest
and to own is that that was a period of
constant terror for me that’s me in my
first preschool photo and 1980 every
morning was a nightmare for me dad would
get me in his car it was a Cutlass coupe
I remember the smell of the imitation
vinyl to this day I remember the Old
Spice Cologne that he would wear and
every morning was seemingly impending
annihilation for me I didn’t speak the
language he would take me to preschool
we’d walk down this corridor and two
teachers would have to peel me off of
his leg every morning and I didn’t know
if my dad was going to come back and get
me I didn’t know how to tell these
teachers that I needed to use the
bathroom all I could hang on to after
they pried me off my dad was the smell
of his gaberdine pants and his cologne
and this terror that I had to carry as a
four-year-old and in 20/20 hindsight the
sky the air outside always smelled like
smoke when we had free play and
playground time of which I was terrified
and crouched to the side and didn’t
speak the language
turns out the city was burning down this
is my shared trauma with the city of
Miami and let me tell you I’m a very
high-functioning refugee only after 35
years past
and let me tell you about those 35 years
is I ran away from this I mean put it
put it this way I ran from Iran and my
family coming from Iran how did I do it
by achieving by making my parents proud
by always bringing that straight a
report card by being the most easy with
with language I remember my dad at my
5th birthday got me to stand up and say
the Pledge of Allegiance and he was so
proud as an immigrant for me to have
arrived for me reading 141 books in the
first grade and winning the reading
competition
for me being the problem-solving guru
and talented and gifted for me getting
into the college of my dreams for me
getting the fellowship of my dreams for
me writing cover after cover for
Business Week for doing things on the
New York Times for my dad to be able to
brag to people that my son was on MSNBC
or he was on CNN or listen to him on NPR
and I functioned on that until the very
beginning of 2010 when my son arrived my
first child six weeks early yeah we were
speeding down the interstate my wife was
scared we were all scared I had not
planned for it we’d just been to a real
birth class that day and he came out and
he was crying and they had to go and
isolate him and give him some shots and
I just remember turning to him and it
was a true turning point the access of
my earth had shifted and I said baby boy
I missed you I missed you I look back at
that video all the time and it was a new
inception of my life and I went and
watched him in the isolation room as
they gave him these shots and my wife
was being taken care of and my heart
broke for him that his mom was a
neighbor to hold him and bond with him
at that point and I get an email from my
editor on the blackberry your cover
story is happening this week man it’s
full speed ahead and I ran on those
fumes for a few days and whatnot until
maybe later that week to relieve my wife
in the morning because he was weak and
he wasn’t feeding and she was up all
night with him I held him and his nails
on the couch pierced my eyebrow I that
when I handed him off to her I went on
the bus and hopped on the train to Grand
Central and I wanted that to sting I
wanted that to hurt because I was in
crisis I had completely figured out 1980
I’d completely run away from that I
created this construct this persona this
person that you saw in the news we’re so
proud of him my mom so proud of me my
kindergarten teacher would write me
truth is I was heartbroken and my son’s
weakness put my own
weakness of 1980 back in sharp relief
and all I wanted was for my dad to come
up and hold me while I held my son and I
had no desire anymore to write cover
stories I had no desire to pitch TV
producers all I wanted to do was be with
my son and only I think when my son was
three-and-a-half years old and I was in
this crisis thinking how am I going to
become a creative again how am I going
to produce again did I finally at my
wife’s best have the conversation with
my father said dad do you know how
horrific 1980 was for me do you know how
much I fear for my son because of the
condition I was in my dad who’s always
provided for me he’s been nothing but
incredible and warm and generous and we
were provided for and we prioritized
accomplishment and love and whatnot
he said but do you know how hard it was
for me do you know how I too was running
I was running away you know at one low
point in the mid-eighties my dad had to
sell sneakers at a Kmart
he was doctor in Iran he resisted
anti-semitism he did all these things to
build himself up and his Empire
collapsed I had to build an empire to
with my child and I feared for him and I
learned that that inception that fear is
no way to kind of motivate yourself in
doing these you can’t fear what’s gonna
happen if you don’t have a cover story
this calendar you can’t fear what’s
gonna happen if MSNBC doesn’t book you
or if you’re not on that Booker’s good
side it brought this realization that if
I want to reconstitute from this there’s
almost like a Maslow vien hierarchy I
want to build something authentic if
this weight of the world with my father
is now off my shoulders how am I going
to rebuild this authentically and the
first statement of that was my book
hotel scarface came out last year and I
tell you in my old iteration it would
have been a very different investigative
journalist like I’d be more of a gotcha
person like oh you were a coke dealer
where I found out this dad I found out
this dad I’m gonna you know milk them
one directionally for this story because
the deliverable was all that mattered
instead i steeped myself in 1980
the pivot was I could have the last say
in 1980 I could be vulnerable with
people I could let these people be
vulnerable with me one of my sources
shared a six-page suicide letter with me
thank God she didn’t consummate the
thought but I wasn’t gonna go there and
just got just feel the story from her
another source was this master smuggler
of the early 80s he has this reputation
in Miami devastated that he have to go
to his daughter’s funeral in shackles
and his other daughter’s wedding in
shackles this wasn’t all glitz and
glamour this was a lot of trauma but you
know what
I am grateful I am grateful for the fact
that even though it took 35 years even
though it took this circuitous route of
me coming from shiraz iran Miami New
York bangbang bangbang Western North
Carolina to tell you this it feels like
it’s finally an arrival even though I
literally arrived in this country 40
years ago so I now emanate from this in
a position where I’m no longer doing
things out of fear I have this voracious
appetite to go and do projects on my own
terms to engage people to actually look
in the whites of their eyes and and see
what motivates them to be the true ENFP
that I am on the myers-briggs and
knowing that and as I tell this to you
which would have terrified me just a few
years ago to show up on a stage and tell
these tens of thousands of people in
front of us you know it’s extremely
liberating to me and I don’t know if
there is a neat TEDx take away on this
frankly but if this resounds maybe with
two of you 10 of you one of you if
somebody on the video the TEDx video
goes up to the you know bargain bin
clearance section of LinkedIn and looks
for you know scroll down for B list
thought leadership I would say the
closest thing to the takeaway to you is
find your inception don’t run away from
it so many of us are carrying traumas so
many of us are still devastated over a
parents divorce clearly over abuse over
a misunderstanding over a bully and we
construct I think these these coping
mechanisms to kind of make ourselves
look better especially in the world
of Instagram and Facebook I’m much more
interested in the kind of a non
partially hydrogenated traumas and
demons that we carry and helping other
people actually doing things like this
to look people in the eye I mean that’s
my agenda I’m not here to sell a book
I’m not here to sell a philosophy or a
diet I’m here to connect with you and to
actually enlist you in helping me take
an enormous burden off my shoulders I am
so psyched to take on the next chapter
of my life because there’s an informed
authenticity to it I don’t have to sleep
at night anymore
and the first thing I think of when I
close my eyes is that morning terror and
the smell of my dad’s gabardine pants
throughout all the accomplishment for 35
years that’s what I took to bed every
night that went away so I leave you with
a quote from not a serf a lyric actually
which seems to sum up my situation
maybe this weight was a gift thank you
[Applause] [Music]
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