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Speaker 1: How are you doing, George?

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Speaker 2: Just great?

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Speaker 1: How are you absolutely fantastic? And so excited to share

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a conversation with you because I love the way that

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you invest so much energy in being creative, and a

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book like this is needed right now to bring us

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forward instead of always taking these darn political steps backwards.

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Speaker 2: It is looking forward, but at the same time it's

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reminding us of our backward. Look we can go back,

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I mean at today or the history goes in cycles,

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and we are again coming into another dark cycles with

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a klingon in the White House.

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Speaker 1: A laugh, you know. But the thing about it is

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is that I live a life about it, living in

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the presence of everything right now. Now. Now I look

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at that as saying, Okay, we're dealing with the now.

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But is that an invitation of repeating history. If I

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am stuck in my now?

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Speaker 2: Well, our history goes in a cycle. It's sick the whole.

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I mean, as a child, I was put behind American

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Barbois fence simply because we looked like this. We had

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absolutely nothing to do with Pearl Harbor, and yet they

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plucked out a category from thin air, categorize all of us,

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my grandparents, my parents, and five year old me and

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our baby sister, a baby as enemy aliens. I was

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an enemy of America at five years old, and an

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alien to Booth, which was totally made up. They use

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that term enemy alien back in nineteen forty two, but

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it sounds very familiar today, doesn't it.

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Speaker 1: Well in so many different ways, because even the same

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relationship marriages are under attack as well, and they're being

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treated like enemies of the nation, and that is so.

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Speaker 2: Wrong, so wrong. But now we've achieved marriage equality, and

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we celebrated Brad and our equality in our well at

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our wedding, which we held in the democracy form of

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the theater, I mean the museum that we founded called

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the Japanese American National Museum. And we love the word

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of democracy because that's what made our marriage possible. Democracy form,

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and we we wanted to carry on the Star Trek Ethos.

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We had that acronym ITDIC on Star Trek I dic

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for infinite diversity in infinite combinations. And my Star Trek

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colleagues became dear friends of mine. And I asked Walter Kanan,

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who played Chekhov Russian character. This was in the middle

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of the Cold War with Russia. I asked him to

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be our best man. He agreed, and we asked Michelle Nichols,

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African American woman who played Uhura, to be our matron

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of honor. But Michelle said, I am not a matron.

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If Walter can be the best man, why can't I

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be the best lady? Yes, I said, of course, you

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are our best lady. But at the same time I

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was thinking the opposite of best man was best woman.

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She just gave herself an upgrade to lady. But they

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were part of our wedding party, the best man and

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the best lady, and we had where Buddhists, and our

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ceremony was a Buddhist ceremony. We had a Buddhist minister

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who was a Mexican American as our officient. So we

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had that infinite diversity in infinite combinations theme going in

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our wedding, our marriage equality wedding, and Brad and I

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are probably married since two thousand and eight when it

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became the legal in California.

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Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with George Takai coming

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up next. Hey, thanks for coming back to the show.

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We're spending some time today with actor, author, and activist

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George to Kai, I'm very proud to say that I'm

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so in love with you guys. Being in love your

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love story has been such an amazing thing to hear

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on Howard Stern. You write about it, you're open with it,

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and it's almost like it's a ticket saying you two

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can love, Just do it.

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Speaker 2: Do it. And Howard is a man who's first of

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all decent and outspoken, but he also believes in humanity

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and this was a major advance in American society and

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he wanted to celebrate that with us. Howard has been

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a real change maker in our lives and in the

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gay liberation movement.

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Speaker 1: Would you say that writing this book is a reminder

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of we know what we did to get here, but

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I need to write this book so that when we

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move there that we need to know what happened here.

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Did I say that right?

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, we need to know our history and the struggles

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that we go through and what we've achieved. But at

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the same time, the importance of knowing that history is

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the lesson of history can beat itself. And the cycle

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goes on and on, and we are now entering another

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dark period when we have a kling on in the

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White House, Georgia.

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Speaker 1: You've got to come back to this show anytime in

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the future. I love sharing conversations with you because you

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are a story sharer, not just a teller, a sharer.

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Speaker 2: I believe in sharing.

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Speaker 1: Yes, will you be brilliant and be very beautiful today?

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Speaker 2: Okay, thank you very much, Live long and prosper