Speaker 1: How are you doing, George?
Speaker 2: Just great?
Speaker 1: How are you absolutely fantastic? And so excited to share
a conversation with you because I love the way that
you invest so much energy in being creative, and a
book like this is needed right now to bring us
forward instead of always taking these darn political steps backwards.
Speaker 2: It is looking forward, but at the same time it's
reminding us of our backward. Look we can go back,
I mean at today or the history goes in cycles,
and we are again coming into another dark cycles with
a klingon in the White House.
Speaker 1: A laugh, you know. But the thing about it is
is that I live a life about it, living in
the presence of everything right now. Now. Now I look
at that as saying, Okay, we're dealing with the now.
But is that an invitation of repeating history. If I
am stuck in my now?
Speaker 2: Well, our history goes in a cycle. It's sick the whole.
I mean, as a child, I was put behind American
Barbois fence simply because we looked like this. We had
absolutely nothing to do with Pearl Harbor, and yet they
plucked out a category from thin air, categorize all of us,
my grandparents, my parents, and five year old me and
our baby sister, a baby as enemy aliens. I was
an enemy of America at five years old, and an
alien to Booth, which was totally made up. They use
that term enemy alien back in nineteen forty two, but
it sounds very familiar today, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: Well in so many different ways, because even the same
relationship marriages are under attack as well, and they're being
treated like enemies of the nation, and that is so.
Speaker 2: Wrong, so wrong. But now we've achieved marriage equality, and
we celebrated Brad and our equality in our well at
our wedding, which we held in the democracy form of
the theater, I mean the museum that we founded called
the Japanese American National Museum. And we love the word
of democracy because that's what made our marriage possible. Democracy form,
and we we wanted to carry on the Star Trek Ethos.
We had that acronym ITDIC on Star Trek I dic
for infinite diversity in infinite combinations. And my Star Trek
colleagues became dear friends of mine. And I asked Walter Kanan,
who played Chekhov Russian character. This was in the middle
of the Cold War with Russia. I asked him to
be our best man. He agreed, and we asked Michelle Nichols,
African American woman who played Uhura, to be our matron
of honor. But Michelle said, I am not a matron.
If Walter can be the best man, why can't I
be the best lady? Yes, I said, of course, you
are our best lady. But at the same time I
was thinking the opposite of best man was best woman.
She just gave herself an upgrade to lady. But they
were part of our wedding party, the best man and
the best lady, and we had where Buddhists, and our
ceremony was a Buddhist ceremony. We had a Buddhist minister
who was a Mexican American as our officient. So we
had that infinite diversity in infinite combinations theme going in
our wedding, our marriage equality wedding, and Brad and I
are probably married since two thousand and eight when it
became the legal in California.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with George Takai coming
up next. Hey, thanks for coming back to the show.
We're spending some time today with actor, author, and activist
George to Kai, I'm very proud to say that I'm
so in love with you guys. Being in love your
love story has been such an amazing thing to hear
on Howard Stern. You write about it, you're open with it,
and it's almost like it's a ticket saying you two
can love, Just do it.
Speaker 2: Do it. And Howard is a man who's first of
all decent and outspoken, but he also believes in humanity
and this was a major advance in American society and
he wanted to celebrate that with us. Howard has been
a real change maker in our lives and in the
gay liberation movement.
Speaker 1: Would you say that writing this book is a reminder
of we know what we did to get here, but
I need to write this book so that when we
move there that we need to know what happened here.
Did I say that right?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, we need to know our history and the struggles
that we go through and what we've achieved. But at
the same time, the importance of knowing that history is
the lesson of history can beat itself. And the cycle
goes on and on, and we are now entering another
dark period when we have a kling on in the
White House, Georgia.
Speaker 1: You've got to come back to this show anytime in
the future. I love sharing conversations with you because you
are a story sharer, not just a teller, a sharer.
Speaker 2: I believe in sharing.
Speaker 1: Yes, will you be brilliant and be very beautiful today?
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you very much, Live long and prosper