Using the comedy central welcome right here is an amazing audience. I'm giving you guys are made can I just say I mean I've. I've known you for a few years, but it's always weird speaking to you, post West world, because there are moments when I'm not sure, if you are you, and I'm sure you get this for many people you are so good playing that ruled, like has just becomes something that you accept. Now is people waiting to see if you twitch, I do glitch from time to time, given myself away actually as well have a little bit of metal in this me now. So I think-

kind of an upgrade. On my oh, my almost like me so antimony surgery. About a month ago, we had a fix in old, ACL injury, but all saw that that's where you went away. Ok we seem to show they take you away, they repay you and then you can get it. I get it, but you here for very different reasons, and I guess, on a timely day, you know in the New United States, people are remembering veterans. You fought in in world. Will one and your document we we're not done yet is in a big part about people who have survived fighting a war. You know veterans who suffer PTSD, it's it's a powerful story and what you do you you connect all of them to us and to each other using sits and poems. How did you even stop this process? Has its a good?

question. I you know overtime. I guess I kind of grew up and became a little more aware and a little more appreciative of the men and women who serve any one of them is stakes that was made after Vietnam was that some of us conflated the politics of that war with the people who answered the call- and I think that would be a huge mistake right now. So I just my respect based on relationships that I developed with people who were veterans basin and inexperienced in Sierra Leone, going over there in two thousand

during the war, peace, a cease fire at the time, but the first war zone that I'd ever experienced and it changes your thinking. Those things that you once took for granted like security, you no longer take for granted. You don't take for granted that when the order falls away, somebody has to work to restore it. So they were number experiences overtime that that increased. My respect- and I was doing a group of of readings called Theatre of war as a guiding Brian Tories, who uses the great tragedies as a platform for conversation about the consequences of war and does it in military communities. Even does it in inner city community designer around gun violence he he, for example, argues that Ajax story, that's an examination of what we might contemporary call PTSD and so was doing those, and I went down to the sea for one of these readings, and I happen to be some people from the Pentagon there

and I asked hey- is there any way I can get more closely involved and in fact, a couple of weeks before that I had been out in Colorado at an airport rural airport, with my kids coming home from vacation ski, and there was a guy sitting in a wheelchair. We all along the decorations there and he was triple amputee any recognize me and I went over and I said hello, we talked and he talked about the people from my line of work who had visited him at Walter. Reed had been hit by a mortar shell in Afghanistan and it just like moroccan outlawing man. What am I doing my time that I can at least go down in and see if I can be useful to so when I did this reading in DC met these folks and opinion

I said: hey, you know what can I do? They call me back somehow. I pass the voting process where the Pentagon and introduced me to a woman named seem a razor who runs a writing workshop veterans who are working through their trauma through poetry, and one of them had the idea to put on a staged reading of collective poems that they had written and now was asked what I come down in the dirt indirect them so well, I don T know I never served, but you know I know something about the theatre, so I came down and it was a life changing sperience working with them. It's interesting that you say there are certain things we take for granted such a security. A lot of America's military and lava troops have been politicized because of who is in power and when.

How one thing that is apparent is that America seems to discard many of its troops when these people come home. You see so many people did. You know that a loaded and applauded when there are out fighting, but when people come on their struggle to find jobs, they struggle to find their place in society in time and time again, we see these conversations where people are saying is America doing enough for the troops who are no longer active? Is it as important? What did you find when you spoke to the human beings behind the uniform geared to that question is no, and I think one of the things that I'm proud about about this film is that it gives voice to those men and women who know best those many women who put themselves on the line, and these are veterans who experience PTSD from combat, but also sexual assault related to their military experience. But we don't hear from them, and we hear from the politicians and the blow hards who actually use the,

men, women, to divide us, so we have a conversation about police brutality and all of a sudden, the troops are brought into that conversation. Conversation about immigration, all of a sudden we're deploying troops down there we're going to sit and do what fire on women and children. We can you imagine the optics something like that. Can you imagine the act itself so, but we we hear the troops manipulated in the vets manipulated for political agendas, but we don't hear from them and those very issues that are used as as political tools are not addressed, so you still have twenty that's per day, a dying from suicide. We heard a lot about that during the campaign, not so much anymore, but the rates are still the same rights. It's a powerful programme that you put together

it's great in watching this documentary. Is you see the human side and all these people come out. You know, for so long people have looked at them, has only troops. Always we simply was, and I thank you for your services, and that becomes a thing. It's it's. It's an architect. The people. Hold up right, but the human comes out on the other side, why was poetry so powerful? Why do you think the arts was something that helped a lot of these veterans? Well, because I think they have stories and maybe as a result of the military culture stories, around vulnerability, ease and stories around injuries that they can communicate within that space, but there is a need to communicate it. Otherwise, as they describe it, will kill them right. So they need to get it out. They need to purge themselves of the shame of what they might not have been able to do. Perhaps the shame of what they did-

The US, the the injury as a result of losses that they experienced sexual assault as well. They have things that they need to release in order to freedom. Cells of these demons and they need to be heard so that one they can perhaps be validated and perhaps be seen without judgment, but also what they describe is the they want to speak as a show of leadership for others who are like them right, because there are thousands like them in the week

what we do at veterans Day is wonderful to honor the vets. Of course, we honor the men and women women who put themselves in harm's way on our behalf, but I think at the same time, what we do perhaps too much is we impose our sense of who they are on to them, because there was a bit of a really stunning moment when we were working together in this piece and we show it in the film in which one of the vets is reading a poem words that he's written and he comes to the word heroic and it can't say, because he does, it he's conflicted right about what his heroism, what that were means for him, and so rather than listen to them, and here that they may be in pain, they may have shame they just me, perhaps

are confused or whatever their emotions are around this. It's not what what we perceive them to be. It's not so easy, and the thank you for that for your service is great, but they need a little more. The first need to be heard so that we can begin to understand them so I mean, I think, what we do. Is we either kind of claim them as our own? We missed Stand them or we ignore them and the problems that they are facing: generational homelessness, suicide, and, if we're going to solve those problems, we're not going to solve them by talking ourselves, we call them first by acknowledging them by hearing them listening to them

and not making assumptions based on our own misperceptions. Thank you. So much documented you're, not gonna deregulation, feel any debate about to streamline HBO now and each we'll go. You really want to watch a jiffy right anyway. Daily shall determine our ears at it. Wants unavailing, show weak nights at eleven ten central on Tommy, central and calmly, simple watch episodes. Videos at the daily show that follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. An subscribed to the daily show on you to exclusive caused in him This has been a comedy central podcast.