Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the

leadership lessons from the great books podcast, episode

number 122.

With our book today, written by an author who epitomizes

the idea, the concept, the

genre of high science fiction, his

writing in the mid-twentieth century set the gold

standard, for how literature and genre could overlap each

other and how a genre of writing could transform from being mere quote

unquote kids stuff to being something approaching

high art by the way, along the way

through transforming a genre, he also wrote screenplays,

poems, and many, many other works

along with Isaac Asimov Robert Heinlein and

the ever cigarette smoking rebel writer,

Philip K Dick. This writer's works will be

read long after the genre of science fiction

transmutes as it is doing in our own time. And

before our very eyes into the reality of science,

fact, through the alchemy of imagination,

deep in the recesses of engineering minds.

I'm almost right. Like a sentence, this author might write today on

the podcast to kick off our late summer and early fall

tour of the genre of science fiction. We will be

stubborn and addressing for leaders, The themes inherent

in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray

Bradbury. We'll

be joined on this March into the literary fire,

such as it worked with our returning guest host for episode number 98,

where we cover True Grit by Charles Portis,

John Hill, AKA "Small Mountain."

How you doing, John? Welcome back. Thanks for having me back, man.

I am so excited to talk about this book

and because, I don't know if you're gonna talk about this, but you put out

the list of books you wanted to cover. And I said, I wanna do this

one. Mhmm. Yep. Right? And we're gonna talk we're gonna talk about why

here in a little bit because, yeah, I'm just excited to be back. It

is it is a book that I have read

probably at least 2 or 3

times, in my life. And

reading it now, the stage of life that I'm at with all of the

current shenanigans we have going on in the world, in the

West in general, in the United States in particular. And when we're recording

this, we are coming off of a second set of

shots fired in presidential candidates.

We are living in perilous times. And while I am a person

who believes that we will come out of it on the other

side, I do believe that coming out of it on the other side of it

is going to be a close run thing. And this book,

is about, at least in my mind, this book is about what

happens if you if you don't come out on the other side of it.

So we're going to start with Fahrenheit 451

by, by Ray Bradbury. Now the version

that I have is the Simon and Schuster version,

published, oh gosh, back in, probably

1995. And while,

normally, I don't read directly from copy written books on the podcast,

you know, particularly ones like this, I don't think Ray Bradbury's estate would have a

problem with this, actually. I think they would

want people to read this book out loud.

So for Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, chapter 1, the hearth

and the salamander. I'm gonna open up quickly.

It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things

eaten, to see things blackened and changed. But the brass nozzle in

his fists with this great Python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood

pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing

all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal

ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet, numbered

451 on his solid head and his eyes all orange flame was the

thought of what came next. He flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in

a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow

and black. They strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted

above all, like the old joke to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the

furnace while the flapping pigeon wing books died on the porch and

lawn of the house. While the books went up

in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with

burning. Montauk grinned the

fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by

flame. He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might

wink at himself. A minstrel man burnt corked in the

mirror later going to sleep. He would feel

the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles in the

dark and never went away. That smile. It

never, ever went away. As long as he

remembered.

And that's how we open Fahrenheit 4 51,

the temperature, by the way, at which books

burn. As usual, we are going

to talk, right away. We're going to gonna delve

right away into the literary life of Ray Bradbury

because this guy was a hell of a guy who

was actually born. And you can tell this by reading his biography on Wikipedia.

He was born at exactly the right place at exactly the

right time in exactly the right century to be a

writer. And I would not call that luck.

I would call that providence. He was born

to well, write the things that he wrote and he

turned his talents to exactly

where they needed to be. Ray Douglas

Bradbury or an August 22, 1920 died June

5th, 2012 was born in Waukegan, Illinois to

Esther Bradbury, a Swedish immigrant and Leonard

Spalding Bradbury, a power and telephone Lineman

of English ancestry.

Bradbury, attended Los Angeles high school after his parents

moved around a bit and was active there in the drama club.

He often roller skated through Hollywood in hopes of meeting celebrities

among the creative people he met while roller skating through Hollywood were

special effects pioneer, Ray Harryhausen and radio star

George Burns. Bradbury's first pay as a writer at age

14 was for a joke he sold to George Burns to use on the

Burns and Allen radio show. And I'm a big fan, by the way, just as

a pause, of old time radio. That's one of the things I very rarely talk

about, but I will listen to old time radio shows. And then the

Burns and Allen show was was a really good one. The Charlie McCarthy show was

a really good one back in the day. People forget that,

drama, comedy, detective stories, science

fiction, film noir. Radio was the first place for a lot

of these genres that then transformed or transmuted to television.

By the way, the basic the biggest example of this of a show that made

the leap from radio to television was the show

Dragnet, which everyone forgets about, by the way.

By the way no. Not by the way. But, this is the memory that Bradbury

has, or or was quoted about in an interview

about selling that joke to Burns and Allen.

He says, I suppose the most important memory he has is of mister Electric Joe.

On Labor Day weekend, 1932, when I was 12 years old, he came to my

hometown with the Dill Brothers. He was a performer sitting in an electric

chair and a stage hand pulled a switch and he was charged with 50,000 volts

of pure electric. Lightning flash in his eyes as hair stood on

end. I sat below in the front row and he reached down with a flaming

sword full of electricity. And he tapped me on both shoulders and the 2 of

my nose, and he cried live forever. And I thought, God, that's

wonderful. How do you do that? So when I left the carnival that day,

I stood by the carousel and I watched the horses running around and around to

the music of beautiful Ohio. And I cried Tears

streamed down my cheeks because I knew something important had

happened to me that day because of mister electrical. I felt changed.

And so I went home and within days I started to write

and I've never stopped.

Bradbury cited, Vern's Jules, Vern, and.

My agent G Wells as his primary science fiction influences. He identified

with Vern saying, quote, he believes the human being is in a strange situation

in a very strange world. And he believes that we can triumph by

behaving morally. It's

very important, by the way, to remember about Bradbury's

writing more so than Asimov who was sort of

neutral on morality in his writing or even Heinlein

or Philip K. Dek who was more bitter and cynical and

sarcastic. Bradbury was a mid

century moralist. He still believed in Christian

morality. He still believed that you could actually find

good in people and that we had a responsibility to

dig that out. In regard to his education,

however, Bradbury said, and this relates directly to Fahrenheit, 4 51

quote, libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and

universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any

money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the depression and we

had no money. I couldn't go to college. So I went to the

library 3 days a week for 10 years. So I graduated

from the library when I was 28 years old.

I, you know,

when I read about guys like Ray Bradbury and when I read

about how impactful

things like the depression and world war 2, and Philip K. Dick was

very impressed by the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and

Nagasaki. So was Heinlein, quite frankly,

as was Isaac Asimov. Most of the folks who

wound up being science fiction writers at the end or the mid parts of

the end of 20th century, they were

seeking a way to, I think,

merge science and morality together while also

recognizing that the human condition is fraught with danger.

And Bradbury, I think, got closest

to touching on the positive aspects of that. And even

in Fahrenheit 451, a book that is about not positive

things, he it's not a

happy ending, but the ending is definitely hopeful. Let's

just say that. So, again, you know, I'd

like to welcome John to the podcast. I've rambled long enough as I usually

do. So I'm gonna open up the floor to him. And by the way, I'm

in my new podcast studio, so in case you're watching this on video. No. I

did not just graduate into a black room, such as a red shirted man in

a black room. I actually have a new podcast studio, on location

in, in the town in which I live, and we'll have a little more details

about that. It's subsequent to podcast, but this is the this is

the beginning. This is the grand opening. This is the

gala event such as it were, for our, for our

recording today. So we're gonna work out some technical things, and

we invited John along to, to help us out with that as well as talk

about the book. But, let me open up the question here for

John. I know that you were very, very excited

to read this book. So talk about Ray Bradbury, talk about Fahrenheit

451 and its impact, specifically on your worldview,

as a I consider you to be a sales leader, but think about yourself

in in the role in which you're in. Talk about the impact of

this book. So,

man, I love that you're talking about Heinlein

Asimov, Philip k Dick. Right? Because I

was in I think I was in 8th grade whenever a woman, a

girl at the time that I was in school with, her name is Laura Franek.

She works for, I think,

like, Industrial Light and Magic is who she works for now. Right? So she's done

some some very cool things. But she comes to me, and she goes, hey. You

need to read this book. And I and I had a crush on

her, and I was like, oh, okay. Cool. I'll read the book, but we're also

friends. You know? So I read this book, and, I'd already read

Heinlein. Right? A lot of Heinlein. You know? Strange in a

strange land, Job, you know, number of the beast. You know?

I'd read lots of Geralt. Right? And I like what you're

talking about here because I didn't really appreciate it until I was rereading it this

this next time. He's actually trying to keep it

very artful. Mhmm. Yeah. Not just like a story filled with a

bunch of, like, numbers and a theoretical way of thinking about a

scientific thing that they're excited to show off. It's not it's not really the place

for, like, nerds to go get lost and, and to do this thing. It is

very much a bridge between, you know, very science

fiction, very much in the future, but it's still

prose. It's still very much a piece of writing.

And hitting this now, I, you know, I was probably

13 or 14 when I read this. I think I probably read it again at

some point in high school, and then I I don't think I've read it since

then. You know?

And reading it now as an adult, I've been having this

weird season of really appreciating how

much being a self motivated reader

has led me to the place that I'm at right now. Mhmm.

You know? Like, I don't really think about how much I read

and how much I ingest and how that shows up in my in my

coaching and my working with clients and stuff like that, but, like, we both live

in small towns in Texas, man. Like, I'm like, I live I live

in a suburb called white settlement, which is, like, what a name.

Right? Can you imagine going back 25 years ago when there is no

Internet and the only source of news that you have is what the local

paper creator wants to put in front of you or the news and everything?

Like, that seems such a foreign concept now. Even though we're getting

a new version through, you know, AI prompts and and

search results and, you know, you know, reinforcing our own biases, but that's a whole

other conversation. That's a whole that's a whole wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.

Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.

Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. We may get to some of that today, but that's a

whole other thing. But this idea of, you know, like, I've been thinking about

this for a couple of weeks. How different would I be had I not read

Heinlein at 9 years old and David Garrold, who like,

I remember my brother coming to me with a stack of 5 books,

and number of the beast was one of them. Job was one of them. And

then David Gerold, which was you know, he's a gay man writing about alien

invasion on the planet of Earth. Mhmm. And and he goes, don't

tell mom you're reading these books. That was the only thing he saw that's the

only thing he told me. Right? So now I'm reading these books that are way

too old for me, and I'm getting introduced to these ideas, like,

probably way before most other people are.

You know? How does that impact me? Right? And then my thing

now is anything that where I think I'm deficient and I need to go

improvement, 1st place, I'm gonna go buy some books.

We're doing a customer service project for one of our clients and first thing is

like, I have a lot of opinions about service, but let me go see what

pros are talking about so that way I don't have to recreate the wheel or

start all the way over. Mhmm. And now it's this first step. It's this first

pivot. I'm gonna go look I'm gonna go see the other books that other people

are talking about. I'm gonna go dive into those books, not to completely learn the

whole thing because I do have some positions and perspectives on it because I've been

doing this for a while, but why would I try to start all the way

at 0? You know? And I think for I think

when we're young and we're, like, new in leadership and entrepreneurship, however you

wanna package that, it's very easy to be like, well, my stuff is not like

anybody else's. Right? And we create this island for us to hang out on that

doesn't really serve us. Right? Because, you know, while it's not the

same, variations on a theme start to apply. You know?

So I've been I've been reading this book and on some

level kind of frustrated because I do read so much for just business and for

Mhmm. And for improvement. Like, come on. Can we

get through, like, the fancy art prose stuff and, like, let's just get to the

meat of it and everything? And so I had this kinda weirdoality of, like, I

needed to kinda, like, find the right gear to actually, like, you

know, work through the book. So that took me a couple of

days. But the whole time, I'm just, like, appreciating it of, like,

kinda, I would be fundamentally a different person if it not for all the

reading that I do. And I wouldn't be able

to charge the rates that I charge if I didn't feel like I could find

my way to the answer, but it's always through books and literature. It's interesting

that you say that because that's part of the reason why we do this podcast.

Right? Mhmm. Exactly. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Business books were

great. I'm not knocking business books. That's fine. But

there's a whole 400 and I

mean, so book technology, and we can talk a little about this too. Book

technology in and of itself is a 500 year old approaching 600 year old

technology. Business books,

books exclusively focused on sales, marketing, finance,

operations, my area, psychology.

Well, this is in those quote unquote business specific areas that only really started

to ramp up within the last 100, 100 and 50 to

a 100 years of, of book technology. The

vast majority, 4 5ths of book technology, 80%,

well over 80%, 90% of books. Before that, we're focused

on everything else other than business. And that's one of the points of this

podcast is if you're just reading business books, you're

missing out on, like, 90% of everything else in the world.

And I don't I I I mean, I've said it before. You

can learn more about emotional intelligence from reading a Jane Austen novel. Just discipline

yourself to read pride and prejudice. Don't go read another Daniel Goleman book. And I

don't have a problem with Goldman by the way. I've read emotional intelligence. I've read

it many times. It's dog eared. I've got it. But

Goldman can only tell you the mechanical, and this is where the science fiction piece

comes in. He He can only tell you the mechanical stuff of how it clicks

together and why, but he can't tell you the what of the wisdom of

the meaning underneath that. So you need both of those together. That's why we do

this podcast. But then the other thing I love that you said, I

talked about how you started off with, like, you know, Heinlein

and Garwalt and all these guys, right, early. Right?

Weirdly enough, I started off with Isaac Asimov. That's

where I I mean, I read we're gonna do I, Robot, later

on a little bit this month. I started out with that book and going back

and rereading that has been kind of a

little bit trippy. Yeah. Because I started off with that's the place I

started off with. And so Asimov is definitely less of a

moralist and more and less focused on the poetry and more

focused on the the reportage of science

fiction. And I didn't get to Heinlein until I was in high school,

and I was already sort of, I don't

know, warped in my cynicism about humanity. I mean, I already seen Blade Runner, so

it already affected me.

But I also had a good bit of, like, Star

Trek the next generation underneath me. Absolutely. And so I

came to Heinlein with this mid century

moralism, and Heinlein sort of was like Yeah. Not

yeah. You can take all that gonna help us. To vote out. We're talking about

everything outside of that container, if you will.

Right? Space travel and time travel and, you

know, some crazy stuff.

Right? Like Right.

Okay. Well, then you got Philip k. Dick asking, asking a great question, which

again, we're gonna read Dick's short stories here on the podcast to this podcast.

You know, do androids dream of electric sheep? Like the first time I heard

that title, and this is just after I, yeah, just after

I seen Blade Runner. So I saw the movie first, and then I went back

and read the book. And I was like, what who comes up with that? Who

even thinks like that? That's not Ray Bradbury. Right? Ray

Bradbury would have looked at that and been like, yeah. He's

got talent, but I have no idea what's going on over there. Yeah. It's, like,

it's it's I think Bradbury is is sci fi

for people who don't who have not made the decision that they love sci fi

yet. Right? Yep. I know. Especially towards the

end when he's going again talking about the Beatles and and, like,

like, I'm, like, like,

in the, you know, I'm in the wrap up phase phase phase of the book.

Right? And I'm not gonna give away any spoilers, but, you know, he's talking about

the Beatles and, you know, the hound and all of this stuff. And I was

like, god. Like, can we stop being so artsy? Can we just call it what

it is and everything? And then I'm like, wait a minute. Like, shut up, idiot.

Like, this is art. Like, you wouldn't want someone else coming over your art and

doing all this stuff. So just shut up and enjoy it, you know? And it

was I demand work. Book, if you will, you know?

Don't cook. Right? As kids say these days. It it was because, like, I had

the same kind of situation a little bit with TrueGrid of, like, god, like, this

part wait a minute. It's a story, dude. You know? Like, I'm

so captain literal that sometimes I'm like, this would never really have. Oh, wait.

We're kind of living through a version of this potentially right now. That's very odd

and interesting. And, my wife who works on my

team, she worked at Half Price Books for 15 years before she started to work

with me. Okay. Price is known for, like, pushing back

against banned books and everything. Mhmm. This has been a topic we've talked

about, and we talk about a lot of just, like, you know, we're not gonna

limit the flow of information and everything. I'm

curious. Are your kids

readers? Oh, yeah. Yeah?

Oh, yeah. How much do you police what they read?

So I always get asked this question, and I think it's a

parent's job to know what a child is reading. And I also

think it's a parent's job to just like they would with a television show

or movie to understand that

individual child's emotional temperament and how that book is going to

impact that emotional temperament. And so

my mom was very much free range because she was, she's a baby

boomer. She was very much free range. She wasn't really, I'm not going to say

she wasn't paying too close attention, but she believed

in the freedom of availability to information and how, what could,

how could a book harm you? It was just a set of ideas. Right? Yeah.

I come at it from a different perspective because I'm on the bottom end of

gen X. Right. And so I come at it from the perspective

of, yeah, there's ideas in these books, but if your

emotional temperament doesn't match your ability to sort of deal with these

things, then I'm giving you a loaded bomb. Like I would never read,

let me pick something. I would not give

Fahrenheit 451 to my he's

he's 7 now. So when he turns 9, I probably wouldn't give it to my

9 year old just because I know his temperament. Right? Mhmm. It would it would

deeply upset him. Like, something with seismic would move inside of him

that quite frankly I'm not ready for it to move inside of him. You

know, and then that's and I get it. That's that's my comfort zone.

I absolutely am acknowledging that. But with that being said,

my 14 year old and my 19 year old have both read Fahrenheit 451 and

we've talked about it. And they read it when they were I mean,

my 14 year old read when she was 12. My 19 year old read it

when she was, like, 16. And they both had different opinions about the book.

My 16 year old was She was kind of okay with it. She was like,

okay, well, whatever. Because she's, you know, they're they're Gen Z or so like,

okay. Yeah. I don't read books anyway. I'm just Okay. What are we doing here?

Why do I need a book when I have this? They're like, they're not even

seeing that that this is easier to limit and show what the books are. Well,

and we and we limit and I love it. We're gonna talk about the screens

and everything. We limit the screens. So we're we're biblio

files. Like one of the challenges in our home

that we now moved into. And one of the challenges I

see in a lot of homes is there's no bookshelves. We've got so many books.

We have more books than we have furniture. We did

this the other day. You know, multiple genres. Oh my oh,

gosh. All kinds of things. Right? And it's like, where do where do I put

all this? Like, what are we what are we doing here? And my wife is

even like, you gotta give away some of these books. Like, I gotta read it.

My we moved into this house a year ago and we have a rather large

book collection. And even within that family book collection, there's

different book collections. There's the books that Melissa displays on the

now we have a wall of shelves, which is really, really nice. Very like,

maybe the coolest thing I've ever done. And now, like, I'm just used to it.

And then as other people come over, they're like, oh, like, it's it's super

nice. And then I have my library. And my library is the non

public facing books. Right? So it's all the kung fu books and the philosophy

and the all this stuff. Like, if you know me really well, I feel like

you can look at my library, my my personal library, and be like,

oh, well, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Me.

But, we were moving in here, and my wife was like, I don't think we

need to hire movers. And I was like, oh, you don't think we need to

hire movers? And she's like, yeah. No. No. I think we can do it. I

was like, cool. Let's pack the books first, and then we'll make that

decision. Right? So let her go with it for a while. And then we've

it's 26 boxes of books. Right? Yep. And I'm

like, how do you feel now? She's like, oh, yeah. Movers. Oh, yeah. You were

hiring people. Yeah. And it was so funny because, like, just over the

weekend, my daughter who's really getting into writing and her own

book collection, like, she's buying copies of books that that

Melissa and I own because she wants her own copy for her own. And she

goes, you know, like, I I have a I have a pretty small book collection,

but she has, like, 200 books, which is, like, not a small

book collection. Book collection. Because, like, I think it's I

think you're I think you're a 1 percenter if you have more than, like, 50

books. We right. Weird. Yo. Well, yeah.

I'll tell you about about the finish finish your your circle because I'm gonna tell

you something that, like, frustrates me. Go ahead. Like, it it's it's crazy to

me just,

like, like, the curse of knowledge. Right? Right.

How can we get to be our agent only have, like,

25 or 50 books that you

wanna have an ongoing relationship with. You know you know what I'm saying? Like like,

my grandmother used to say this thing, and she's the one who really unlocked reading

with with me and and everybody in my family is that these were her

friends. You know what I'm saying? And I can't

like, there there are so many impactful books on my shelves that have

fundamentally, like, changed and given me perspective and everything. And,

like, only having 25 like, that seems

crazy. There was an article I read in or even might have

been the headline. I don't remember specifically. And I think it was in the Atlantic.

It had to be one of those like mid

tier, and yes, I'm going to slam the Atlantic here, mid tier,

midwit journals. It is. It's a journal for people who think they're

smart, but they're really not. Because there's not really good ideas in

there. But anyway, whatever. Point is, I read the headline or it might have been

an article, something about how, like, and this was back maybe

in 2020 or 2021, about

how if you were reading to your child,

that was a sign of white privilege.

And I just thought

libraries literally are almost on every street

corner Bookstores. You talk about your wife. We're getting half price books. You

can walk into bookstores and they will not kick you out for reading a book.

They will not. They will not. They're there. They're just happy. You're there.

You have Amazon say what you want about Jeff Bezos may have started

with books Mhmm. Because they were the one piece of

technology. And by the way, this is the apocryphal story.

He packed up everything in his car with his wife and drove across the country

and they had to figure out what they were going to put on this online

thing because he saw this internet thing happening and the book is the thing to

be picked because it's not fruit and it's not pets. It's not weird

shapes, everybody knows what it is, it's easy to,

okay. Books, fundamentally books.

Even in the poorest neighborhoods in America, you can

literally go 2 streets over and there's a library. I

know I've lived in some of the poorest areas of the country.

Books are not closed to anyone in our society and

culture unless you wanna close that door. So

to tie it into number 1, I'm offended because as an

African American person,

books are agnostic from my perspective anyway. Certain

books are agnostic. Other books are not. I'll I'll grant you that. Yep. But for

the most part, authors just wanna tell a story. They're not really

they just want to tell a story. They want to tell the best story they

possibly can to the widest number of people they possibly can with a 500 year

old technology that everybody understands. That's number 1. Number 2, when

I told this to a young couple who was in my church,

oh gosh, years ago when they were having their first kids and they were like,

how do you, how did you raise your kids to be like, how to speak

so clearly and to be articulate and that. And I'm like, because

we read to them, Like I even read to my

7 year old, we're reading the Chronicles of Narnia right now.

My 7 year old is loving that. Now, you know, it's me

and his older sister and his mom reading it. Like we're in sort of

this weird rotation because just how the schedule work and all that in our house.

And so depending on who he can get, you know, he'll have them read

There's times I have no idea what's going on in the voyage of the Dawn

Treader. Like, I don't know where I'm at. I'm just like, dude, I'm just reading

this. I have no clue what's happening, dude. And he's like, don't worry, daddy.

Just read it. Exactly. No. No. It's literally This is not you.

Exactly. He pats my cheek. Just just just read the book, daddy.

It's like, okay. That's fine. I will read the words. I have no idea what's

happening in the story, and you know. Mhmm. And he is blown

away by this. Yeah. It's opening up again,

opening up doors in his head. Now say what you want about CS Lewis,

by the way, I would not read the screw tape letters or mere Christianity to

him.

Or the abolition of man. That's not appropriate for a 7

year old. Sorry. But hold on.

Like, and my my amazing wife would

have this, like, fit all the time about,

yeah, it's a science

fiction, but not young adult. Right? And, like, how do you cut the onion and

how do you group things? Like like, it's very interesting because, you know, I

think, you know, we're gonna punish authors for trying to cover more

more more content as opposed to staying in one line so that way it's easy

to shelve in the bookstore. That's a little absurd. Right? Speaking as

someone who's, you know, written a business book and is now currently trying

to write a narrative, like, screw you, buddy. I'm gonna I'm gonna write what I

wanna write. You know? Yeah. Like, I I would love to have

seen Cinderella brought to you by James Baldwin.

I'd have read that, but I don't know that I had my 9 year old

would have been interested in that. My 9 year old would have looked at that

and been like, I think I'll

pass. You know? So there's this line that I used to

hate. Right? And it's if the if

the book is bad and you can't read it, it's the author's fault.

And I was like, I kinda hate that. You know?

But, you know, the longer I live,

you know, as an author, the more I'm like

right? Well well ownership. It's my fault if you didn't finish it. You

ain't? Well, but I think so I'm a person who has written 3 books, and

I'm working on a 4th one. I'm grinding out a 4th one. Right? It'll

You sound very excited about it. It did. I'm grinding out a 4th one. It's

turned into a whole slot thing.

And This is not what you wanted to talk about today. Not what I wanted

to talk about. Digging into it. You're welcome. It's fine. We're digging in. We're digging

in. We're going in. We're going in the mine. We're gonna get some gold out

of here. But I

write on purpose difficult books.

That's what I'm doing here. I'm choosing to make it difficult. Right. Because I'm a

complicated guy and I'm in an era

where I am fighting uphill. And I've said this before on the podcast. I think

I've said it with you on interviews that we've done, conversations we've had.

I'm fighting uphill against short attention spans. You know, the

62nd, 32nd, hummingbird, TikTok generation

mindset, whatever. Mhmm. I'm also fighting

uphill against a flood of quote, unquote content. And by the way, I agree with

Martin Scorsese. Movies are not content. Movies are movies. Books are

not content. Books are books. Like but but again, everything's been dumped to that

content bucket and swirled around. That way we can bring it to its lowest

common denominator. So I'm fighting against this. The opposite. And the opposite is you.

To me, and sorry to like but I don't think that this is an

I like I had to stop thinking about books as books and

movies as movies and songs as songs. Right? And really just like

shove them all together and understand that it's

about the story was the thing that I that I ended up kinda going with.

Right? A great song has got a story inside of it. Right? Well, and where

I come from is the medium can be part of the message. So

Oh, 100%. Right? When I look at when I look at when I look at

for Fahrenheit 4 51, and then I look at the the movie that, like,

Michael b Jordan was in a couple years ago on HBO Max. I did not

watch that. I thought about it, and then I was like, like, maybe after

the interview, because I don't wanna you know, I'm I'm just so used to the

movie being a letdown. But it's content, John. It's fine.

It's it's just content. Hey. Right? And you're while you are

correct, the greatness that makes this so good,

I think, comes from the format that it was in originally. And I think that

this is where people, like, screw up. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, the book did good,

but if we wanna reach more people, let's turn it into a movie. Like, I

get this I get this stuff from people all the time. Well, John, your stuff

is too deep. You need to make it easier for people to consume it. And

I'm like, God, if we just chase that far enough, it's going to be

single word dogma. Like, that's going to work out great for us. Right?

Just sell. One one word haikus. Exactly.

Right. You know? Like, in like, if anything, that's what I'm trying to push back

from of of stupid, outdated, dogmatic beliefs around

sales that no longer serves us and probably never served us at at

all. But in order to do that effectively, I don't

think you can water down ideas. And that's really what I put fundamentally at the

end of the day. That's what I push up, I push up against. I don't

want to, if I'm in a world where the long tail is the thing, and

I am in a world where the long tail is a thing now, the long

tail wasn't a thing in the mid-twentieth century. Like, it was mass and okay,

fine. You had to appeal to the largest number of people and the greatest common

denominator. Cool. Now I don't have to. I need to sell 2 books a

month to 2 people that want to hear my voice and everybody else, not to

a too fine a point on it, but can go to hell. Like if the

idea is too complicated for you, or if the argument's too long, or

the sentences are too rambling, or the paragraphs don't link together in the way that

you want, or you, you can't hear my voice in your

head. And so you're reading the words on the page. You don't.

I'm not for you and that's okay. Go away. I'll go find the 2 people

that are for me and I'll sell 2 books a month and I'll make 4

bucks in royalties and I'll move on with the rest of my life. Now,

most people will push back on that and they'll go, well, you know, you spent

$5,000 to make $4. Yeah. So

Well, I think that that comes down to what to what the intention behind the

book is. Right? Correct. Right. It was so funny because whenever

we decided that we were gonna launch the book, Melissa was already working on my

team with me. And, she was like, okay. Can I

tell you the the concern? And and I'm like, yeah. What's up? And she's like,

I have seen these people. Right? They they wrote a business book. It was

gonna be the game changer. And then they show up to half price books

with, like, 7 boxes of the same book because

it didn't work. And I was like, okay. You know, interesting.

And I had a very John moment. Why are you telling me that?

She goes she goes, well, I'm concerned that, you know, you

might do something similar. Okay.

Heard. Like, okay. You know? This is why our wives exist to provide

goal posts and and 100 times along the way. But

I was like, okay. I appreciate you bringing this

up. Let's acknowledge that I am who I am, and that I've already

told myself that this book changes absolutely nothing the next

day and that I still have to work to put it out.

Like my job is to put the book in the hands of the people who

need it through through my actions and activities. I'm not expecting for anyone

to find it because that's absurd entitled thinking,

in my in my opinion. Right? There's just too many marketplaces. There's too much messaging

going on to really think you're gonna, like, stand out unless you already have an

audience, and I and I don't. And so, like, the whole time I was writing

and and getting it published and doing the whole thing, it was like, you still

gotta sell, buddy. You still gotta sell. This changes nothing. If anything, it might

make your lift a little bit easier, and that's why I approached it. And that's

that's where it it was super helpful. But I had a coach whispering all

that stuff in my ear to kind of keep me grounded with my own expectations.

And I think that some people just don't have appropriate expectations when it comes to,

like, writing a book or putting it out or different things like that. We're lucky

the fact that the book feeds our business, so I don't need to make

money on the book. The fact that that we have books

gets us into some of the conversations that we're looking to be in. Right. Right.

And for me, the book so the reason the

4th book right now is a slog is because it's in a totally different genre

and I'm doing a totally different thing than I normally would have done. And it's

requiring a little bit more transparency on my part, than

I maybe previously have been comfortable with.

To drive the content. I

guess I'd say the word. To drive the content in. I don't wanna call

it that. I don't wanna call it that. No. Because you know what?

At a certain point, and and and I and I and this

is where Scorsese and I might disagree.

We have to figure out where

quality exists in books and songs

and movies. And what is the difference between Dreck

that's garbage? And by the way, during the mid 20th century, there were a lot

of science fiction writers who published in a lot of science fiction

note, what do you call it? Journals that were all over the place, that

were absolute direct. We've never heard of those guys. Yep. And it's only the big

four, Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, and and

Dick. Those 4 are the ones that are on the Mount Rushmore science

fiction and everybody else washed away. Would agree.

Now did everybody else wash away because there were, because

there was a mass of people that selected and curated. And I'm not talking

about publishers and agents. That's part of the process, but I'm talking about, there was

a mass of people that selected that this was good

versus now where everyone can say everything is good because it's

subjective. And there's a long enough tale to where if my mom buys a

book, I can say it's, it's good. Right.

And is that, and that's the word we're actually having is a war of quality.

We're not having a war of art. We're having a war of quality

and it's really tough to have a war of quality, particularly in

a world that is well kind of inside of the kind of

world that Bray Bradbury was decided, was describing in Fahrenheit 4

51, which we should get back to the book. Yeah, for sure.

So we're gonna skip forward a bunch of different

spots and, Yeah, you're

gonna, you're gonna like this book. You're gonna wanna pick it up.

And we're going to go to, well, Montag gets

sick and, he,

he has a conversation with the the second main character, the villain, I

guess, such as it were in this book, captain Beatty

and captain Beatty lays out basically

the entire game here in the chapter, the hearth

and the salamander back to Fahrenheit 4 51 by

Ray Bradbury.

Montag made sure the book was well hidden behind the pillow, climbed slowly back into

bed, arranged the covers over his knees and across his chest half sitting.

And after a while, Mildred moved and went out of the room and captain Beatty

strolled in his hands and his pockets, Shut the relatives up, said Beatty,

looking around everything except Montauk and his wife. This

time Mildred ran the yammering voices, stopped yelling in the parlor.

Captain Beatty sat down in the most comfortable chair with a peaceful look on his

ruddy face. He took time to repair and light his brass pipe and puff out

a great smoke cloud. Just thought I'd come by and see how the

sick man is. How'd you guess? Baby smiled his smile, which showed the

candy pinkness of his gums and the tiny candy whiteness of his teeth.

I've seen it all. You were going to call for a night off.

Montauk sat in bed. Well, said, baby, take the night off. He

examined his eternal matchbox, the lid of which said guaranteed 1,000,000 lates

in this igniter and began to strike the chemical match abstractedly, blowout,

strike, blowout, strike, speak a few words, blowout. He looked at the flame. He blew,

he looked at the smoke. When will you be well tomorrow?

The next day, maybe 1st of the week, baby puffed his

pipe. Every fireman sooner or

later hits this. They only need understanding

to know how the wheels run. He's know the history of our

profession. They don't feed it to the rookies. Like they used

to damn shame only fire chiefs. Remember it

now. I'll let you win on

it. Mildred fidgeted, but he took a full minute

to settle himself in and think back for what he wanted to say. When

did it all start? You asked this job of ours. How did it all come

about? Where and when I'd say it really got started around about a thing

called the civil war. Even though our rule book claims was

founded earlier. The fact is we didn't get along well until photography came

into its own. Then motion pictures in the early 20th century, radio, television,

things begin to have mass Montauk sat

in the bed, not moving. And because they had mass, they became simpler

said Beatty. Once books appeal to a few people here, there, everywhere, they could afford

to be different. The room world was roomy, but then the world

got full of eyes and elbows and elbows and mouths, double, triple, quadruple population

films, radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding

norm. Do you follow me? I think so.

Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put on in the air. Picture it.

19th century man and his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then in the 20th

century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condizations, digest, tabloids,

everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. Snap ending?

Mildred nodded. Classics cut to fit 15 minute

radio shows and cut again to fill a 2 minute book column winding up at

last as a 10 or 12 line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of

course. The dictionaries were for reference, but many were those who

sold knowledge of Hamlet. You know, the title, certainly Montag, it is probably

only a fake rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag, whose sole knowledge, as

I say of Hamlet was a 1 page digest in a book that claimed now,

alas, you can read all the classics. Keep up with your neighbors. Do you see

out of the nursery, into the college and back to the nursery? There's your

intellectual pattern for the past 5 centuries or more

Mildura rose and get to move around the room, picking up things and putting them

down. Beatty ignored her and continued speed the film up, Montag. Quick, click,

click, look, I flick now here, there, swift pace up, down, in, out. Why,

how, who, what, where, bang smack, walloping, bang bong, boom.

Digest, digest, digest, digest politics. 1 column, 2 sentences, a headline, then in

mid air all vanishes. World man's mind around so fast and into the pumping

hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters at the centrifuge flings off all

unnecessary time wasting thought.

Mildred smooth the bed closed. Montag felt his heart jump and jump again as she

patted his pillow. Right now, she was pulling at his shoulder, trying to get him

to move so she could take the pillow out and fix it nicely and put

it back and perhaps cry out and stare or simply reach down her hand and

say, what's this? And hold up the hidden book with touching

innocence. School is short and disciplined

relaxed. Philosophies, histories, languages dropped. English and spelling gradually,

gradually neglected. Finally, almost completely ignored. Life is immediate.

The job counts. Pleasure lies and all lies

all about after work. Why learn anything safe pressing buttons, pulling

switches, fixing nuts and bolts? Let me fix your pillows, said Mildred. No, whispered

Montauk. The zipper displaces the button, and man lacks just that much

time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour and thus a melancholy

hour. Mildred said here. Get away, said Montag.

Life's become life becomes one big pratfall. Montag, everything. Bang,

boff, and wow. God's sakes, let me

be, cried Montag passionately. Beatty opened his

eyes wide. Mildred's hands had frozen behind the pillow.

Her fingers were tracing the book's outline, and as the shape became familiar, her face

looked surprised. And then stunned, her mouth opened to ask a

question. Empty the theater, safe for clowns and

furnished the rooms, with glass walls and pretty colors running up and down the walls

like confetti or blood or sherry or sartereen.

You like baseball, don't you, Montag? Baseball is a fine game. Now

Betty was almost invisible, a voice somewhere behind a screen of smoke. What's this? That's

Mildred with almost with delight. Montauk heaved back against her

arms. What's this here? Sit down, Montauk shouted. She jumped

away, her hands empty. We're talking. Beatty went on as if

nothing had happened. You like bowling, don't you, Montauk? Bowling, gas, and

golf? Golf's a fine game. Base basketball? A fine game. Billiards pool, football?

Fine games, all of them. More sports for everyone. Group spirit fun, and you don't

have to think. Organize and organize and super organize, super, super

sports. More cartoons in books, more pictures. The mind drinks less and less

impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere.

The gasoline refugee. Towns turned into motels. People in nomadic

surges from place to place following the moon tide. Living tonight in the room where

you slept this noon and I the night before. Mildred went out of the room

and slammed the door. The parlor aunts began to laugh at the parlor uncles.

Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we?

Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers,

the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians,

2nd generation Chinese, Swedes, Baptists,

Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or

Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV

serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere.

The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy. Remember that?

All the minor minor minorities with all their navels to be kept clean.

Authors full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did.

Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca books, so the damned,

stoppage critics said were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said.

But the public, knowing what it wanted, spending happily let the

comic books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines,

of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the government

down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship to start with.

No technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried

the trick. Thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay

happy all the time. You are allowed to read comics, the good old confession,

or trade journals.

Yes. What about the firemen then? Asked Montag. Ah,

Bailey leaned forward in famous to smoke from his pipe. What more easily

explained than natural? With school turning out more runners, jumpers,

racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, flyers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics,

knowers, and imaginative creators, the word intellectual, of course, became the swear

word it deserved to be. You always dread

the unfamiliar. Surely, you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally,

quote, unquote, bright, did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like

so many Latin idols hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you

selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course, it was. We must all be

alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but

everyone made equal. Each man

the image of every other, then all are happy, for there are no mountains to

make them cower to judge themselves against. So a

book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take a shot

from the weapon. Breach man's minds. Who knows what might be the target of a

well read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. And so when

houses were finally fireproofed completely all over the world, you were

correcting your assumption the other night, there was no longer the need of firemen for

the old purposes. They were given a new job as custodians of our

peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of

being inferior, official censors, judges, and executors.

That's you Montag, and that's me.

That's a long bit there that I read. I read it on purpose

because you can't really break up captain baby speech into the little

tiny parts, particularly that bit, which hit

me right in the gut about the minorities and censorship

coming, not from the top down, the

totalitarianism from the bottom up.

Captain Beatty is the classic bureaucratic

leader trapped in a system. He understands almost

totally and completely because it works for him.

Montag, of course, stands in as the person who has woken up to manipulation of

the matrix, but he doesn't know what to do about it quite just yet at

this point in the book. He doesn't have a plan. He's just still in

shock. Captain Beatty and guys like captain

Beatty, and this is a warning for our time, they don't mind if you've been

awakened or awoken or whatever the term is you would

like. He just doesn't want you to take any action to disrupt the

system. Newspapers, music, radio, television,

cable news, and now, and Bradbury died in

2012, right on the cusp of this all hitting now,

social media and the internet are blamed for the tendency of

people to give up control of their minds to those who appear to be in

control of events. By the way,

the unnamed country in Fahrenheit 4 51 is in a state of perpetual

war, just as a side note, with every other country,

just as Oceania was in 1984 by George Orwell,

which we'll read in Q3 of next year.

If we're all still around to read it in Q3 of

next year, by the way, when I read this

book and I read about the firefighters, I thought of the

band Rage Against the Machine, and the great line that they

have in that song,

Bulls on Parade, They don't got to burn the books. They

just remove them.

John, there are many different flavors and types in our world today of getting

red pill to quote unquote or waking up or becoming woke.

And yet I sense

behind all of them. A lot of captain Beatty, but

maybe that's just my conspiratorial thinking.

How can we be more like Montag and less like captain Beatty?

So this is unique perspective on captain Beatty because

and I and I think we're gonna talk about this part a little later. There's

a there's an add on from another character that, like,

blew my mind about Beatty. Right? Now,

I don't know if I talked about this on the show, but I'm prior service.

I joined the military in, May of 2001.

And, obviously, in September of 2001, you know, we

it was no longer just a theoretical exercise. Right. And

there's so much of this

awakening that he goes through. Right? And part of me,

as I'm reading this, oh my god. The pacing of this is just so fast.

It doesn't happen this quick. It takes longer to wake up. It takes longer to

kinda fall out of the fold. It takes longer. But, man,

when I think about, you know, September 11th,

and this is no longer an exercise This is not a

drill. It's not a drill. You know?

Instantly pushed me to the place of, like, I don't know that this is the

place I need to be. Mhmm. Right? Because, like, I was feeling

that before, but then we were having this conversation.

Right? And military is filled with stuff like this. Right? You

know, boot camp is an indoctrination process. Right? It's meant to break you down to

nothing and then designed to be that way. Person it needs to be. You know?

Yeah. And it's it's for the reasons that it's for. Right?

But, like, as I'm going through this and I'm and and I'm like, no. No.

No. It's not that quick. It's it can be that quick. And if you go

through the right experiences, have the right mentors around you, have the right environment for

it to show up, it can be a a blazingly quick process. Mhmm.

But, like, I just keep going back to that. You know, when the student is

ready, the teacher will appear. You know? And we

were sitting we were sitting in a room called the day room. Right? Anyone who's

been in the army understands what the day room is. It's like a it's like

a communal room in there, and there's a TV in there. Right? Mhmm. And so

we're in there, and I'm this kid from Texas, 20

I I my birthday is actually on 9:11, so I turned 21 the day that

that happened. I have a great story about telling a drill sergeant that I was

gonna get to go off post that weekend, and he told me, no. You're

not. And I I worry. You're not. We're in the day room,

and I'm having this very disconnected experience of, like, what have I

signed up for? What am I really going through? And I'm in

Georgia at the time. Right? And I'm there with guys from Philly

and New York and DC and people who are who are having a

profoundly different experience than what I'm going through as a as a kid from

Texas. And, man, there were

I think there's about 30 people in my in my cohort from my

class. Right? And we had the night class, and so we're talking about it either

that day or the next day. And everyone else is like, man, we just gotta

go turn it into a parking lot. Just go nuke it, turn it into

a parking lot. We don't have to deal with this anymore. And I'm like,

don't that make us the same? Don't that make us, like, not

any better than than the people that did this? Mhmm.

And the heat that, like, that

kind of commentary was getting in that space. You know?

Mhmm. So, like, reading this now as as a 44 year old guy

who's gone through that experience, has had to deload himself, right, had therapy

and, you know, working through it and everything, it can happen

that quick. Mhmm. You know? But

you also just have to be aware of, for lack

of better term, spend. Right? Because And that's what captain Beatty

delivers, by the way. That that that that's what that's exactly what Beatty delivers, by

the way. And it's so easy to get caught up in spin. Right? And

he's he's on one level, like, demonizing spin.

Mhmm. Right? We're not gonna have short,

multipurpose content, you know, that is just watered down to the lowest

forms. That way, you can be there. But the answer is not to

just take it all away, though. Right? You know, it's very much, well, this was

the problem, so this was our solution. And look how better we are. And, like,

if you're drinking the Kool Aid, I bet it tastes amazing

in that moment. Right? Like, backing up

in my military story, we first get to boot camp, and

we have a captain who's in charge of our of our, company.

And the drill sergeants were being really mean, like, really mean, yelling

at us, making us do lots of push ups, and making us, like, do all

this crazy stuff. And in the back of my head, I was like, you know

what? That captain, he wouldn't let them do

that to us if he knew what was really happening.

Right? And then a couple of days after that, I, you know, see the

captain being the person who's reinforcing the drill sergeants.

And I just, like, had this moment of, like, like, a shattered world

view of, like, of, like, oh, he's not gonna save us. And then, like,

duh, idiot. I'm the only one not on this page.

You know? And, I mean, we Well, it's a it's a hell of a thing

to be robbed of your preconceived notions.

Fair. Right? Or to be in a situation to where

like, this feels very military esque. Right? Like, these are the deep

brotherhood. They're they're they're they they spend a lot of time together.

He just shows up at his house because he knows he's gonna call in sick

after this environment. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's it's so

very much military. And in those situations,

when you're talking with someone, they're they're essentially telling you this is

how we think about it, and it's meant to be

push the other stuff away and continue with this way forward. You know? And

so it's weird to like, I've been in those in those conversations. I remember

having a conversation with drill sergeants about hand grenades and why I

shouldn't be nervous about throwing them. Why would I

not be nervous? You know? See, this is this is it's

interesting. So, you know, you you said your birthday is on September 11th.

Mhmm. And,

I turned 21, 13 days after September 11th.

And, both of our lives I would assert,

and this is one of the solutions I made on this podcast this year, which

is why I'm sort of approaching it in a different kind of way, particularly towards

the end of our, session today where I try

to, or end of our episode today where I try every episode now to talk

about what are solutions to problems. Because I'm just, I'm done

pulling apart problems 99% of the time, because all we've done

from my perspective for the last 20 years

is since that, since that day in Midtown Manhattan,

all we've done is, is chew over problems

and I'm done with it personally, professionally,

ecumenically, whatever you're the way you can possibly

think of that ends with why I'm done. I, we know what the problems are.

Number 1, we know how deep the problems are. Number 2, we can

identify what the cause of the problems is. Number 3, but no one has a

courage to talk about solutions to the problem. Like here's a big one.

Like you talk about captain Beatty and spin.

The solution to the captain babies of the world.

And is the destruction of bureaucratic systems. That's that

that's that's that's the solution, like, right. And everybody makes that sound right

there. Everybody makes that sound right there because what you're laughing at is not

the solution I'm proposing. What you're laughing at is the inevitable

consequence that you can go forward with for when that that

bureaucratic system is destroyed. And by the way, I'm not talking about destroying people's

lives, physical lives. What I'm talking about is taking you out of the system.

So here's very simple one. Let's take the list of all the

captain batings that are in the Pentagon. Let's line them up

alphabetically and let's just fire every other one of them alphabetical order. And then we

cut the Pentagon's budget by 15%. And now we're done. And don't tell

me that you can't find people who wouldn't be willing to do this. Rand, Paul,

Ron, Paul, there's plenty of people floating around who'd be willing to do this. Jim

Jordan, you may not agree with them politically, but we'll put that aside for just

a second. There are plenty of people who would be willing to do this. That's

that is the solution, but we'd laugh because of the consequence

on the other side of that is when you go in alphabetical order and

you cut all those people out of the system, now you've got them running around

in general population, making trouble on the internet.

And with their past connections and past networks and past ability to raise money

and. And we don't want to actually face

that consequence. We don't want the person who

spent the last 15 years in the Pentagon

fighting endless wars, working at Safeway,

bagging groceries, although quite frankly, they

would probably do a much better job at Safeway. I would rather have them

wrecking Safeway then, you know, I don't

know, selling more weapons to Ukraine

or coming up with more unique ways to, I don't

know, drop more bombs on people that don't need to have bombs dropped on because

I don't have a personal problem with them. But we're at

Safeway or go work at HEB or go work at the gas station.

Go, go wreck a gas station, go wreck Exxon Mobile's job, go wreck

Exxon Mobile's outfit over there. You'll do less damage,

but we don't actually want to do that because why do we wanna do

that? We don't actually wanna do that because the the the consequence

of that now taken from the 5,000 bureaucrats 400

miles away, now real close enough to us, we don't wanna deal with.

We don't wanna deal with that guy that is a general manager at HEB

because we know that guy would be a nightmare. But that's the

way we that's the way we fundamentally fix the system. That's one of the ways

we can fund it. And so I would like to have the proposal of

solutions. A guy like captain Beatty isn't proposing solutions to your

point. He's proposing just go they're there. They're

there. You're Make it through. You're not smart enough to understand

this than I am, so you'll make it through if I just shepherd you through.

And that and that's pay and, of course, that's patronizing. And, you

know, Bradbury is writing this out of the perspective of the military industrial complex. There's

opposition to the military industrial complex and his opposition to police power.

One of the interesting back stories behind this book is that one of the pieces

of the genesis that went into this book is that or into the story is

that he was pulled over by the cops or he was walking with the cops

because he never like actually learned how to drive. And he was like walking around

or whatever in the park and the cop was like hassling him about walking in

the park or something and gave him a ticket or whatever. Yeah. And he was

all rebellious, just like most creative types. He's rebellious in his head, but then in

reality, he just took a ticket and just like went away. And he couldn't figure

out how to make those two things, you know, sort of click together in his

reality. And so he came with his captain baby character to sort of work

through cathartically all these feelings of being oppressed by the

man, which is a very sixties sort of idea. Yeah. But

the problem is we live in 2024, and the people who used to protest

against the man and now are the man, and they've been the man for a

while. Yeah. You

brought up Rage Against the Machine a few a few moments ago, and,

I remember when that album came out. Right? Like like, I'm sure you do as

well. I think I was probably in 7 and, again, Laura Frohnick, same person

who recommended this book to me, was the person who came back. She'd taken a

trip to Italy and came back and was like, man, have you heard Bulls on

Parade? I was like, no. I didn't know what that is. And game changer of

a song. And now it's funny because, like, I'll see people who I

knew listen to this in, like, late teens, early twenties.

Now they know really what what it's about, and now they're

against it. Like, what do you think they were talking about this whole

time? You know? And, and when we get to that

level, that's kinda like, these people don't even know what

they're championing, right, in in some levels, which is very,

very interesting. But Well and I wonder

I wonder if the if the consistent uphill battle is

between not because it's an uphill battle. Maybe I shouldn't frame it this way.

I wonder if that no. I'll I'll go a 3rd way. I'm having

a thought in a middle of a thought middle of a thought. I'm gonna go

a 3rd way. So the, the, the title of this section of

the podcast is, the day after the totalitarians win the war for

control of your mind. Right? No one ever, ever

asked this question. What happens after the totalitarians win?

What happens after, like, the cap and betties win? Because they're let's

the the good guys don't always win. Sometimes the bad guys

win. The bad guys definitely get a vote, as would

say. And sometimes their vote is good enough to win the

day, and then they rule.

And 1984 is sort of the classic novel

of the classic, the totalitarians win, and we're all

being repressed. Right? And of course, George Orwell was writing this in the face of

Soviet oppression where from his perspective, and I think from the perspective

of most thinking people in the 20th century, the

totalitarians won. I mean, hell, you know, London said he was a totalitarian.

He wasn't had nothing. And so they won the day

and they got to implement their rule and they got to implement their solutions to

their problems or to the problems that they saw in,

market capitalism. And they got to run that experiment for 80

years in a country just to kind of see if it was gonna work. Mhmm.

So we know what happens the day after totalitarian. One

of my gigantic concerns in the early

part of the 20th century is, and I'm seeing this particularly.

And we talked a lot about books and libraries in the first part of this

When people don't read the books, because the books are where the stories

are about the toe, what happens after the totalitarians win.

They don't respect the history that came before them. And thus we wind up in

the same ditch that we wound up in before. Agreed.

Just with a different flavor of people with different names, maybe even in

some cases, let me be egalitarian, different colors and

different genders, but they all have the same mindset.

Like, during during the pandemic, I was reading like, that's where I found

stoicism and really started to kinda it was a thing that I was

I was interested in, but during the pandemic is when I really needed to, like,

apply it because I was struggling, you know, and, you know, lockdown.

And, one of the

things, Ryan Holiday is you know, he writes a lot about philosophy

and cynicism and everything. Mhmm. And he was just kinda talking about this

idea that, like, this isn't the first time we've had a

major lockdown. You know? Like like, let's go back and let's look at the

I think it's, like, the 19 12 Spanish influenza thing. Right? Like, there's a big

thing there. And because we were so stupid, oh,

this can't happen to us. There's no we're so much smarter.

And all these things, we end up creating something

markedly similar. Oh, yeah. You know? And

it's funny because I talk about this with, like, some of the owners and founders

that I talked to of, you know, hey. Were you were you

around in, like, o eight? Were you in business? Were you doing anything? Were you

in sales? Because let me tell you, it was rough. I was in sales.

Right? And, you know, it was rough for a while after that. You

had to earn the trust back, and some people still don't trust finance people and

mortgages and things like that. And then we had the same thing happen around

COVID. Right? And so, like, you can see it

for the recurring patterns of what it is, or you can try to, like, oh,

these two things are not similar, but I feel like those people always have an

have an agenda. Oh, yeah. Really serve everyone else

when they should be looking for the for the overlap, the commonality. Well, they're the

bosses of the captain babies. Yes. Exactly. Right. They're the people

that are giving the captain babies of the world, the marching It's the status quo

push. Right? Like, you know, and yeah. I

mean, I such a such

an interesting reread. You know? Like, I I spent time kinda wondering

what would it be like to read this for the very first time at my

age with my experience that would be kinda kinda unique. Mhmm.

Because the thing I the thing that even

having read this before, right, it had been so many years, I was

I wasn't ready for how much, like, content there was in the

space. Right? That people could turn on these, like, TVs, and they're being programmed from

the TVs. Right? And they were but that's okay. But books are you

know? So, like, in my head, I'd built it out to be be this very

sparse, almost like a Star Trek thing. We don't have Yeah. You know, and everything

else like that. And not really seeing it for, like, hey. We're taking away

the opportunity for other people to inject their ideas, and we're just creating an opportunity

for you to be bottle fed the ideas. Right?

Because then Yep. You don't even you don't even realize that you're missing anything.

Correct. That's right. So That's right. You know? This

other unique perspective I got a couple of years ago was, like, talking about

they they were talking about Dante, actually, like like like like Dante's Inferno,

and they were talking about this idea that you don't have to convince

everyone that the that that the government is wrong.

You just gotta, like, convince them that the books aren't worth reading or something like

that. But the way that it was and I and, god, man, I I I

wish I could say it because it went through everything, like, every bias that I

possibly could have put in front of it and just, like, hit me square in

the head of, like, oh, yeah. That's very much a thing.

Very, very much a thing. The so

this is my problem with,

the idea of malinformation,

disinformation. I have a problem with all of

those terms coming from any government apparatchic.

Period. Full stop. That's that's the period. That's the end of the sentence. There's no

qualifier afterward. There's no, but there's no, and I have

a problem with those words coming from the mouth of anybody who's getting a

check based in any kind of way on

any of my tax dollars. Period. Full stop.

Just period. That's the end of the sentence. I don't I don't wanna hear you

even say it. You can think whatever you want, but the human

brain is the last truly private area until Elon Musk gets

that neural link thing really wrapped up, and then we're all boned after that.

But it's like, you can think whatever you want,

but don't let it drop out your mouth.

And I'm not naive enough. And this is probably why I,

even though I have a warrior spirit, I didn't join the

military. I'm not. That is not

naive. I'm not hopeful enough that in the past there was some

housing on time when some government apparatchik didn't believe

this, please. I've read too much history.

They've believed this throughout history under any system, but they had the good

grace to not open their mouth and say it. And what

troubles me greatly is we've lost the the

government apparatchiks seem to have lost the captain base of the world,

seem to have lost the ability to keep their mouth shut and just run the

game. They want to now, in my opinion,

and this is my opinion, They want to now be,

be, be applauded for the cleverness with which they are

running the game and,

and maybe, and they gussied up by saying, oh, well, we're informing you.

But the thing is, even when we only had 5

channels and 4 newspapers in a town that all

reported the same thing and, like, three copies of Time Magazine and Reader's

Digest that was on everybody's table, and you talk about

living in a place, where, you know,

maybe there weren't many minorities in the neighborhood, you know, back in the

day. Mhmm. Even when we had that system,

we were still for that system in that time

educated enough as a populist to recognize B. S.

And so what has well, but what has happened over the course of time

is not that the public has become less educated to recognize

BS. And I'm using public as an, a mass term. Okay. I'm not gonna talk

about specific individuals. The public has, has gotten more

information and more facts.

Right. Which by the way, we can access facts, not on

screens on our walls, like in Fahrenheit 4 51, we now access

facts. I mean, Bradbury couldn't have come up with this idea of a

computer in your pocket. He would that, that Asimov would have come up with that

idea. That was an Asimov. Yeah. And then, and then Heinlein would have

taken it to his logical conclusion. That's what that would have happened. Here's a vehicle

that does it for you. Exactly.

Exactly. But we

are mainlining facts and information, but

with very few insights. That's what we were looking for. We're looking for

insights. We're looking for the meaning behind the facts and the information.

And so when you, as a government apparatchik, were getting your regular

check, tell me what the meaning should be, I

say, no. No. No. I don't wanna hear

from you. I I I really don't. I reject that because to

me that there's a thin line there that you're about to cross into

the burning of the books. That's a thin

line there between just tell me, I'm just gonna tell you which

information is is, is disinformation and, and

which information is mal information. I started hearing about that more and which

information is, is, is, is well, that guy said it

was fake, but we're telling you the real thing.

Yeah. No. You're both saying the fake thing.

Yeah. You're you you making

news that someone else is lying to you is not the same thing as, like,

giving me the truth. That's the thing. Right? Like

and, like, I mean, it the this is

slightly tangential, but, like, I worked my

tail off to build a pretty high wall between, like,

myself and regular

news, political news, because

a, I can't change anything. Right. And

like stoic idea, if you can't, if you can't put your hands on it and

change it, it's outside of your locus of control and your time is better spent

focusing on what is in your control. Right. So it became very easy, but it,

but it was on the backside of frustration because.

What I think that people are doing is that they don't want to go through

the process of like having to figure it out for themselves. So it's easier to

cling to an identity of some way, shape or form. And you know, that can

be Christian. It can be military. It can be, you know, the atheists

that are out there swinging for the fences for, for their message and everything.

Like, and then when it's close enough, people just

go, let it wash over me almost. Right? And it's

like, you know, it's it's almost like you're getting baptized by

this part because you've just realized we we agree on

enough. I can just take your word for the rest of it. And that's

problematic thinking. Right? Yes. Yes.

Yes. And I and maybe this is a fundamental and and I I I will

say, this is a fundamental difference between me and maybe someone who might be a

little more progressive than me. This is maybe revealing a little bit more of my

conservative bonafides, but I tend to

mistrust that more when it's coming from a public agency with police force behind

it. Then I, then I

worry about maybe like, I don't know, amazon.com,

you know, sending me fake and from, you know, whatever. And by the way, yes,

I understand Jeff Bezos owns the Washington post. I'm not ignorant or naive.

Right. Like, but I don't have to buy the Washington post. I

always make this point. Amazon isn't sending out like, you

know, police officers to make me buy stuff from them. I think they're

not. But if I don't pay my taxes, I'm

just going to show up in my house. Like that police force thing

is really, really the defining line. Because

if, if, if, and we saw this with you mentioned COVID, we saw this with

COVID in certain places, the place that I came out of, we saw this, you

know, in places like, Well,

in other places around the world, I mean,

the government apparatchiks in China were like welding people into their

houses. Like, you know, so that's police power.

That's the power of life and death at the end of it. Yeah. No

corporation, none. Even the ones with the most repair rapacious

lawyers on the planet.

I love your vocabulary, man. It makes me so happy every time we get to

talk because, like, I know that I'm gonna get, like, 2 or 3 new words

that I'm like Rapacious. You like the word rapacious? I've never heard that word before.

I'm gonna have to go spend some time with it. And I'm and I'm so

excited because it doesn't happen that often. So thank you. It's it's it's think of

like, think of like a, a honey Badger cross with like a Wolverine just

tearing through something that's rapacious. Yeah. I'm with you.

Right? Like, yeah. BlackRock may have private military

contractors, but they can be stopped. Yes.

No one's gonna stop the ATF if they wanna knock down my

door with a no knock warrant. Oh, I I have a version

of this conversation with, some friends of mine because,

I am more liberal than most people in our

locale. Right? Like, you know, lumping in North Texas. Yeah.

I'm pretty I'm pretty pretty progressive just by comparison. You know?

Sure. But I think zoomed out, you know, I'm left

of center, but, like, I'm not far left or anything. You know? Yeah. But

when I talk to some of my friends who were, you

know, very, I would say, probably a

little too enthusiastic about, you know, weapons and everything.

And they it always comes back down to this idea of, like, well, you know,

what what's that Benjamin Franklin quote? You know, they they take away the guns and

and everything. And I'm like, you know, this is always where they go. And I'm

like, you know, you would never even know if they

decided to take you out. Like Well

Like you would think that, but I I would the only

pushback I would give on that is current events within the

last summer have proven that the folks who should know how to take it out

people out. I I believe we're in

a crisis of incompetency at all levels. Let's just say that.

Well We can't And that and that brings up a good spin. You know? But,

like, I have I I have I have friends who have, you

know, a smattering of pistols. Sure. Right? And to

them, they think that that's gonna be the game

changer. Oh, well, yeah. Those people are foolish. Yeah. Like like

I'm sorry. Right? If if that is really your perspective,

you're actually going out and training. You're not just hoarding and collecting something you

feel tough in public. Right. You're actually going to ranges. You're you're you're

doing the thing. You're not that far, so this is kinda, like, not

real perspective. You're just looking for a reason to hold on to your idea.

Because, like, if they if, you know, if they made that

decision, they would make that decision, and people would have problems with it. Right?

But and I'm not even saying that that is the solution. So before anybody at

me or comes after me or anything else like this, I'm not even against gun

ownership. I think it should be harder to get a gun than it currently

is, but I also think that if you decide to go through that

that idea and you think that just owning the gun is enough,

you're so fundamentally not on the level that that that

you should probably not qualify for having that kind of weapon.

Personal opinion. Well no. No. And I I, you know, I don't

as a person who is slightly to the right of center,

I don't, I don't just based on my life experiences and things that I've seen,

I don't disagree with that. And I would

say that we need

to be checking the captain

babies and the bureaucrats of the world using all the available tools we

have before we go to those tools. Agree.

I am also deeply troubled by the lack of faith

by people of all across all political spectrums,

whether you are the anarcho libertarian on the, on the right,

or you're the socialist Marxist progressive on the left.

I am, I am deeply concerned by the lack of faith in our elect or

of the, the, the, not only like Torah process, but also the, the, what

do you call it solidity of our electoral process? Because I think of

that. If the belief in that system by

regular people, I'm not talking about the weirdos who hang out and yell on

the internet at each other. Those people are ridiculous. I'm talking about

like one of my neighbors is this cause, he owns a

construction company in California. Right. He's He's a regular

dude. He didn't get past high school. Like he's a regular dude.

And when he says to me, does my vote even

matter? That's a problem. That's

that's a problem is my vote being counted. That's a problem. Like that guy

has to have faith in the system because that guy gets up every day

with the system just sort of running in the background.

And what COVID did was it disrupted so much of that for

people in general. I would agree with that.

Had that disrupted for them before, and they didn't the

things that they thought were solid, and he's in his he's in his sixties

now, but the things that they thought were solid for their the majority of their

adult life proved to be paper tigers. Oh,

well, I mean, welcome to the party, guys. It was not right. I thought

it was. Right. But if I'm a construction worker who didn't get

past high school and I've done kind of okay

for myself. Right. But I never really had to think about it.

Cause I pay, man, I pay my taxes and I pay my employees. What do

you want me to do? Like, and you've run across business owners like this. Well,

they got to really, I got to think about this thing now, like,

really, you know? And those are

the vast majority of people. And so the captain babies

of the world, I think had a better understanding

probably about 2 or 3 generations ago. And I think there has been an erosion.

This is where I talk about the crisis of incompetency, but there has been an

erosion over the course of time of the captain babies of the world. Understanding

that their job is to make sure that the system stays up without everybody ever

noticing they were. Exactly. And,

and I think that's what we've lost in

the pursuit of everybody wanting to be famous on, like, you know, Twitter.

Okay. I have a question potentially. X, whatever the hell it is. Yeah.

Whatever that is. It feels like on one mobile, you're saying that captain Badia shouldn't

be there, but then it also feels like like you're now describing that there's

a gap because because we don't have people willing to be

that. Let's just keep everything moving. Right. No. I I don't

think captain Baty should be there. Okay. But if captain Baty is going

to be there We need more of them? Yeah. Well,

no. No. No. No. I would rather there not be

I'd say what I at a deeper level of detail about the words. I

I I object to the arrogance and the hubris.

That's what I I would rather if we're gonna have captain Beatty's all over the

place, which to a certain degree, I guess, we will. Fine. The

the the the number of them will vary, you know, 10 or a100.

I think they're all probably equal. From me and my perspective, they're all equally bad.

Get rid of all of them. But okay.

If we're not, I'd rather have 10 than a 100. You know? Sure. Okay. Fine.

So 10 captain betties that are that are humble, I will take

over a 100 captain betties that are arrogant. Oh,

man. Yeah. I talk, I talk about this idea of

being expectant, which is entitled or being

enabling. Right? Because like, I think the good leadership is enabling leadership.

And it's so funny because I talk about,

just kind of like knowing what you need in the leadership for you to, for

you to flourish. Right. And I

cannot work under like a middle manager,

like Beatty. Like, I like, I just can't. Because

inside of that conversation, and this has just happened to me so many times

now that I can see it for what it is, I'm

gonna I'm gonna ask 3 to 4 questions, like, looking for connection

to other things. And these people don't have those kind of

answers. Right? And this was such a problem whenever I was a

salesperson in bigger corporate structures where where, like, my sales manager

who came up on an ops path and has never been in a sales role

ever is just like, well, you should just keep following up because you're the

difference. Okay. Explain to me how that works. John, I don't have time to answer

all your questions. I just need you to go out and hit the goal because

this should work. It's working. And and I already know you're full of

shit. Sorry. Am I allowed to curse on here? Yeah. You're fine. You're

fine. And so, you know, in in that moment, once you show yourself to

me that you don't either know why this is connected or why we're doing it,

I can't even I can't even go with you. And I don't know if this

is me being a c. I I don't know if this is me being private

service military and just having kinda, like, maybe ridiculously high

standards for the people who who wanna be, like, my leader. But,

like, as soon as I see that gap, I'm I

can't I can't go with you. Right? Mhmm. And then this is part of the

reason why I work for myself is because, like, I know that I'm gonna run

into that somewhere. Mhmm. And then it just I

turn, and then I start becoming, well, let me go find all the other

cracks, all the other answers and everything else. Right? And it's not good. You know?

Let me start let me start pulling that thread. Oh, yeah. Don't pull the

threads. Don't pull the threads. Right? Like and and,

honestly, if you're a curious person, curious person here. Right? Mhmm.

Go figure out how to ask questions in a way so that you can be

heard the right way. Because half the time when I'm looking for these connection points,

they take it as, like, I'm looking for answers. Right. Right? And, really,

that's just how I communicate. So I think it

kinda goes back down to, like, a lack of leadership in the form of

Beatty is just thinking, like, I'm just gonna say this, and it's gonna work, and

then I'm gonna leave, and everything is just gonna go back to normal. Mhmm. Right?

Imagine how many other times he's given that same speech with how it's, like, talked

about. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's like, oh, well, and that's why

and I love it how Bradbury puts this. You know, he has him, like, or

how he frames it. He has him lighting the, the lighter

and then blowing it out in lighting. And the smoke just starts billowing up in

the room. And it sort of put me in mind, weirdly enough, of The Wizard

of Oz. Interesting. Okay. You know, the the wizard

in the, you know, the 19 thirties movie where, you know,

Oz is the great and terrible, and it's the smoke effects.

Yep. And so it's and, of course,

you know, if you know anything about the Wizard of Oz, you know that,

that the the wizard was a flimflam man.

The wizard was a scammer.

He was selling a game. Yep. And I

think Bradbury is subtly for those who are paying attention

is subtly sort of intimating that this government

apparatchik is pulling a game. Mhmm.

And he's doing it behind a smokescreen. You know?

And that's a very powerful kind of idea there,

which of course ties into the book burning and all the other all the other

kind of elements. But it it is operating at that

secondary or maybe even tertiary psychological level in the book.

And I don't know if that was intentional or if that was just something that

he put in there. It's like, oh, this is gonna be a good descriptor. This

is how I'm framing it in my head. And he just and sometimes you do

that as a writer. You just write the framing that's in your head because the

narrative drives you to a certain place. Yep. Stephen King talks about

about a lot about this in odd writing, you know, where

you start out thinking you're driving the car, and then it turns out that you

and the characters are switching. And now you're on the back, and you're just you're

along for the ride. I did some reading about his writing

process because the way that he writes is very much he has an

idea. He'll kinda flush it out. He'll flush it out, but he kinda holds himself

apart from it. And then it's like, okay, baby, it's

typewriter time. So like, I, I think, I think I read and I'm

happy to be wrong that he, that he wrote this in 9 days.

Yes. Right. He rented a typewriter for 10¢ an hour or something like that. 10¢

an hour. Isn't that crazy? And and, like, that idea of

I know that I gotta move quickly through this or else it's gonna change Mhmm.

I think then creates that flow state of him being able to get,

like, as deep into the books as he is. Right? So, like, I I think

that they're tied together. But that thing blew me away as a guy

who's been working on a second book for a lot longer than 9 days. And

I'm still, like, trying to figure out exactly what this thing is gonna be at

the final end of it. You know? But just that idea of, like, I've got

this idea. I'm gonna hit it hard because he wants the character to take

over the driving. Right? He wants to invest himself so fully in this

character that, like, he can't even see it for himself

whenever he's trying to put his finger on it and stuff like that. And, like,

that to me is such such an interesting way to approach

the entire process because, like, as a control freak,

that's everything I don't wanna do. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Well yes. Well and and and that's the difference,

interestingly enough. Well, we're gonna talk about this a little bit

because we're gonna talk about Faber. Let's talk about Faber. Yes. Please talk about Faber.

Let's talk about Faber. Faber is the sort of the counter captain

Beatty. He he he is in when you send over your notes

for the show Mhmm. And you talked about Faber Mhmm.

Immediate unique perspective, because I was not

seeing him the same way that you are talking about him, at least in the

notes that you sent me. So I'm gonna shut up and let you drive. Sorry.

Okay. Alright. No. No. It's alright. So back to the book, back to Fahrenheit

451. Let's meet Faber, a man who's

going to help out mister Montag.

Favor sniff to the book. Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some

spice from a foreign land? I love to smell them when I was a boy.

Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once before we let them go.

Favorite turn the pages, Mr. Montag, you were looking at a coward. I

saw the way things were going a long time back. I said nothing. I wanted

the innocence who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to

the guilty, but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.

And finally they set the structure to burn books using the fireman. I grunted a

few times as subsided, but there were no others grunting or yelling with

me by then. Now it's too late.

They were closed the Bible. So what would you tell me why you

came here? Nobody listens anymore. I can't talk to the walls

because they're yelling at me. I can't talk to my wife. She listens to the

walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if

I talk long enough, it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to

understand what I read. Favor examined Montauk's

thin, blue jowled face. How did you get shaken up? What

knocked the torch out of your hands? I don't know. We have

everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around.

The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I burned

in 10 or 12 years, so I thought books might help.

Your hopeless romantic said Faber. It would be funny if it were not serious.

It's not the books you need. It's some of the things that were once in

books. The same things could be in the parlor families

today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and television,

but are not. No. No. No. No. It's not books at all you're looking for.

Take it where you can find it in old phonograph records, old

motion pictures, and in old friends. Look for it in nature and look for it

in yourself. Books are only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of

things we were afraid we might forget. There's nothing magical in them at all. The

magic is only what books say, how they stitch the patches of the universe together

into one garment for us. Of course, you couldn't know this. Of course, you still

can't understand what I mean when I say all this. You are intuitively right. That's

what counts. Three things are missing. Number 1, do

you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have a

quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me, it means

texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book

can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past

an infinite perfusion. The more pores, the more truthfully

recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper,

the more literary you are. That's my definition anyway. Telling

detail, fresh detail. The good writers touch life

often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones,

rape her and leave her for the flies. So how

now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in

the face of life. The comfortable people only want wax moon faces, poreless,

hairless expressionless. We We are living in a time when flowers are trying to

live on flowers instead of growing a good rain, black loam, even

fireworks for all their prettiness come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we

think we can grow, beating on flowers and fireworks without completing the

cycle back to reality. Do you know the legend of Hercules

and NTS? The giant wrestler whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly

on the earth, but when he was held rootless in midair by Hercules, he

perished easily. If there isn't something in that legend for us today, in this

city, in our time that I am completely insane. Oh, there we have the first

thing I said we needed quality texture of information

and the second leisure. Oh, well, we've got plenty of off hours

off hours. Yes. But time to think if you're not driving a 100 miles an

hour at a clip, when you can't think of anything else with the danger, then

you're playing some game or sitting in some room where you can't argue with the

4 wall televisor. Why televisor is real. It

is immediate. It has dimension. It tells you what's to think and blast city and

it must be right. Seems so right. It rushes

you on so quickly to its own conclusions. Your mind has a time to protest.

What? Only the family is people. I beg

pardon. My wife says books. Aren't real. Thank God for

that. You can shut them. Say, hold on a moment. You play

God to it, but who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you

when you drop a seed in a TV par or grows you any shape of

wishes, it is an environment as real as the world it becomes and is

the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason, but with all my

knowledge and skepticism, I have never been able to argue with a 100 piece symphony

orchestra, full color, 3 dimensions, and being in and part of those incredible

parlors. As you see, my parlor is nothing but 4 plaster walls in

here. He held out 2 small rubber plugs for my years and I

ride the subway jets. That hems dentiferous. They

toil not neither do they spins in Montagai shut. Where do we go from here?

Would books help us? Only of the third necessary thing could be given to

us. Number 1, as I said, is quality of information. Number 2, leisure to digest

it. Number 3, the right to carry out the actions based on what we

learned from the interaction of the first two. And I hardly

think a very old man and a fireman turned sour could

do much this late

in the game.

Here at the end of the 4th turning in the United States of

America, the hour is indeed late,

or at least from my perspective, it's late. John's

mileage may vary. Your mileage

may vary. Faber,

and this is the leap that I made in my brain that

captivated John that I put in the notes.

Faber is Montag's Morpheus, but he isn't a

cool black dude. He's not a cool black savior

character. And he's flawed

as a hero because books make us complicated,

which is what the systems that captain Beatty represented

understood. They didn't want complication. They wanted

flat wax. And by the way, wax is manipulable

when you heat it Structures.

The builders that were holding together civilization's memory along

the train tracks outside the city also understood this. And eventually,

Montauk will run into them as well on the

escape from the rapacious. There's that word again,

hordes in the city.

Faber at the end doesn't have a happy ending. Matter of fact, Faber

has no ending, weirdly enough. Bradbury just

sort of abandons him in the middle of the well, not the middle,

sort of the back end of the 3rd act of the book. And it's kind

of odd. I've never seen a writer do that. It's sort of like the inverse

of Anton Chekhov's gun. This idea that you, like, just leave

something there. I had completely forgotten about how the book wraps

up. Yeah. You know? So, like, I knew the premise. Right? You're not allowed to

have books. Right? And, someone wakes up, but the

ending was very interesting. Right. Because, like all of a

sudden I realized that I don't remember how this book ends. Right. You know, the

story. And I'm like, we're so close to the end. Like,

is this just the wake up? Is there any lasting change? You know? And then

I was like, oh, now I'm very excited because I'd forgotten how to do it.

And you're right. Like, there is like, there's a lot of hope. Mhmm. Right?

That, you know, they're gonna meet up in the future, but, like, you know, there's

there's also a lot of reason to assume that hope is not valid. Right. You

know? There's there's no denouement. There's no

there's no conclusion. There's no catharsis at the end. It

feels it like as I was reading it, I was like, god. This just feels

kinda rushed at the end of it. And then, you know, thinking about

it is like we you

know, this is about change. This is about this is about the wake up. This

is about all of these things. Right? And if you're going

through it, you have no idea what it what the what

the ultimate conclusion is gonna be like. You know what I'm saying? So

the and, initially, I was like, this feels rushed. I don't like this. I don't

like this. I want more details. I wanna know how everyone wraps up, and I

just wanna have clarity at the end of it. And then I kinda had to

slow down and, like, pause and realize, like, hey. It doesn't

have to go it doesn't have to end the way that I want it to

end for it to be a good story, which was, you know, a very interesting

part as I'm reading this book and wanting it to, like, wrap up my way,

and then it doesn't wrap up my way, and I'm a little bit frustrated for

a couple of minutes. You know? Well, I think there's one

possibility. I think Bradbury probably would have accepted

this. The possibility exists that

Faber was evaporated in the bombs No. I know. The

city. But, like like, that whole thing. And I don't really feel like

they do a good job of really talking about how, like, this country's

on the constant verge of war until, like, until he's meeting

with favor until, like, we're, like, at that midpoint. Right? Well, no. No.

No. The women no. No. No. No. The scene with the women in the parlor

when Montag goes nuts, and he starts yelling at them about their lives and

about their kids. Mhmm. And the one woman, she's on her, what,

like, 3rd marriage or whatever. And she's, like, joking about

how, you know, he's going off to war because there's a perpetual war, and

they're not gonna get married or not they're not gonna exchange names because he's just

gonna get vaporized or something like that, basically. Oh, I

it it was so funny because during that exchange, I was just so focused on

the idea of, like, kids Mhmm. And, like, and,

like, the kid Oh, yeah. Inside of there of, like, why would you ever have

kids? Well, it's just a cesarean. You know? Like, that to me was,

like, shocking and kind of, like, removed enough that that's where all my

focus went. I didn't even see that for the initial kind of,

like, ground laying of the war that then ties into the 3rd act

stuff. Mhmm. That's very interesting, to

me. But this idea that

Well, and the girl at the beginning, Claire, who doesn't make it.

Right. Yeah. Mhmm. And there's also an intimation Maybe she

did. Maybe she did. There's an intimation there

that warfare is going on.

Yeah. That's fair. But but it's it's one of those things because Montag isn't awake

yet. So he's still walking through sort of this, oh,

I just put out the fires and then I go home and there's the walls

and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Yeah. And it's all and it's

and, you know, it's interesting how Bradbury steps him down into the into

the being awake piece, ironically enough, or maybe interestingly enough, with his wife

getting her stomach pumped from the sleeping pills that she OD'd on.

Yeah. And the and the people who show up to to to pump her stomach.

And I and, you know, you talk about the cesarean. I was I

was sort of taken out a little bit. And I'm it's very

hard to take me aback. It it really is. But I was sort of

taken aback by the casualness with which

Same. Bradbury described them showing up and just sort of, oh, they're just

gonna have a cigarette. It's just another Well, I'm You

know? Like They ending in why. We'll go to the next one. It's fine.

And that casual that casualness with

human life Yeah.

I think it does such I think it does the opposite, honestly. Like like, a,

it shocked me how, like, early it wasn't just how stark it was. Right? He

just walks home and finds this thing out. But to me, them coming along

and then being so nonchalant about it, to me, that really sets the stage for,

like, the environment that, like, this is so common. They're

oh, yeah. Here's another one. You know what I'm saying? Like Right. And,

you know, we go through versions of that. And, like like, not to that extreme,

but, you know, like Well, there are there are people who would assert that in

our even in our own time. I mean, Bradbury wrote

this book in the in the fifties sixties. Right? Mhmm.

But in our own time, there are

people who would assert that we are too casual with life.

By the way, cradle the grave. It didn't matter what context

or in this matter where we're talking about the death penalty or,

you know, the 3rd rail issue of abortion or whatever. Any

anything involving life, we're way too

casual about. Anything involving the,

the transmutation of life

into something else. Right? There are people

who would assert. And I do think they have a valid point that we are

not and and it's really they they use the term too casual. I

think what they're looking for is we lack seriousness. We it lacks

our conversations lack. There's a Hebrew word Fidelity?

There's a Hebrew word, in the in the Bible called the

in the Old Testament, called kabod. Right? It's used to

describe, the patriarch Abraham. Right? He had kabod.

And what that what we translate that into in English is gravitas. He

had weight. Right? And when a person like

that speaks, it doesn't matter how much you know, you shut up and listen.

Agreed. Yeah. And we've all run into people like

that. And we, the, there are people who

would make the assertion that in the kinds of conversations we are having around

life and that we've had with increasing

intensity around life, those people with that

type of gravitas are not involved in the conversation. And so we are having

unserious casual conversations, which cheapens

life. And I think that I think there is a point

there.

And so I can see where, and even, even

with me seeing that intellectually, it still hit me like, oh, there's no, this is

the emotion of it. Yeah. This is the emotion of these guys

just being like, oh, this woman may die. She may not. I don't know. I

gotta go down the street. Let's pack our car and go down the street. It

was so, like, cold. Yeah. And it was

so early, but I was like, this

is the world. This is the world that that they were in. And for me,

it was like a it was like a very interesting pacesetter. You know? Yes.

You know, that also starts to him to kinda think and, you know, outside the

box and everything. Okay. And comparing

him to Morpheus and the black savior piece, which I know that kinda struck you

a little bit. Why did that why did that you're like, I'm like, I thought

of that that way. The question you said is, like, is Faber a good leader?

Yeah. Is he a favor? Is he a good leader? Yeah. And it's so

funny because, like, as I was reading it, he's so apologetic.

Right? I'm the I'm the I'm the coward. Right? I'm sending you to go do

these things, and I'm not doing them myself. On on one hand

and I didn't realize this until this conversation, so thank you for this perspective.

It's like I was like, god. Like, this guy is just a doormat.

Okay? But what if he's just manipulating him from the

other side? Because, you know, you have you have

Faber on one side, you have, you know, BD in the other,

and he's just there in the middle. Like, what if he is just, like, that

good of an of a manipulator and not really that much of a

coward? And I wasn't thinking about that until until I saw that and and

we're having this conversation because, like, I just thought he was just, like, this, like,

kinda this is gonna sound bad, but, like, a guy who's too

nerdy, and he's missed the opportunity to, like, to, like, speak up. And so now

he needs someone who's got some brute strength amongst him or around him

to, like Oh, yeah. To, like, cause change. But

he's so always with the

but, like, hey. You're the real hero here on you know what I'm saying? And

it and, like, like, there is a realm to where, like, if you're good at,

you know, motivational manipulation Mhmm. It's

all there. Right? The nagging and the and the, oh,

well, you know, blah blah blah. But then he's also the thing that I

really loved is when they're talking about Beatty, and he's like, maybe he's one of

us, and we just don't know it yet. And that blew my mind, man. I

was like, oh Right. Right. There was a there was a scene,

and I read about it, I think, in my research on the book.

But, Bradbury was going to put it in a scene where Beatty had like

books in his living room or something, but they were all like burned up books

on bookshelves. Oh, interesting. That he'd like charred

or whatever. And he decided not to put that in the, in

the book. And maybe maybe it was in an interview. He talked about it or

or maybe something. I I don't know. Anyway, because he's written several inter he wrote

several introductions to several different introductions to Fahrenheit 4 51. And I would

recommend if you're gonna read this book, go back and read, the

edition that has at least a couple of his,

of his, introductions. Because, you know, it's interesting how he

changed over the course of his life subsequent to the book and changed

his perspective for where the book landed. Right?

And I wanna revisit something that you said in the first part, which I didn't

fully I don't think I fully addressed you. You said, yes, my opinion about ban

banning books in libraries. Right? Well, I I

think I think the question is I think it's very easy for people to be

like, oh, yeah. We shouldn't ban books, but, like, my kid's not reading this

stuff. Sure. You know what I'm saying? Which in summation is kind

of the same thing. Right? If you're a parental figure and you're holding your kids

apart from it, you're, you know, you you don't have a

police state to come in there and, like, force it and everything, but in all

all intents and purposes, you might as well be. Well, I think we

so I think there's a bunch of different dynamics happening underneath there. First off, you've

got parents who are not for

whatever multifaceted multimotive reasons are not actually

paying attention to what's going on in their kids' heads, much less their kids' lives.

They're just, they're just not, they're not dialed in. I think something

like less than half, and it might be even

higher than that now, of all families don't have at least one meal together

at night. Over what? Like, a week or a month?

Over, like, a week? Just just don't have it. They just don't

because they're they're and by the way, there are seasons in my life, I'll be

perfectly transparent on this, like, I'm currently in a season where we are struggling to

have a meal together every night because, like, just

schedules and all this other kind of stuff. Right? Because we added one more thing

in and then everything went to help. You know, the whole entire schedule went off

went off the table. But it's okay because it's only for 8 weeks. It's only

the one thing for 8 weeks and it's done. Right? And then we'll be back

to sort of some sense of, for us, normalcy. But I try to have

meals with my kids, like, every night of the week.

Like, how else am I gonna find out what's going on with my kids? Right?

Now, are there other ways can I have other conversations? Sure. Okay. But that

idea of the traditional communal table that everybody gathers around and

we exchange ideas about our day without by the way, you'll don't get to bring

a cell phone to the table. We're not bringing distractions. You're actually gonna look at

another human being over a meal and, like, have a conversation with

them. The the vast majority of people are not doing that. So if a parent

is not doing that with it, I would assert that a parent is not doing

that with their child. On a regular or semi regular basis, you

actually probably don't have a good clue of what's going on in your kid's head.

That's number 1. And then 2, the second dynamic

and this was actually not a point made by me. It's been a point made

by others. I'm just repeating it.

You complain about the cell phones, but you're the one is the parent that paid

for the plan. You're the one that put the iPhone 4 in that kid's

hand. That 14 year old doesn't have a job.

That 12 year old ain't going out and paying the $200 a

month, cell phone bill. You are the one that put the crack

cocaine in the kid's hand. Stop putting the

crack cocaine in the kid's hand. Oh, well,

but. Oh, well, but. There's all these oh, well, buts. I don't wanna hear about

your oh, well, buts. I came from when my mama had to

pick me up this is directly out of my experience. My mama had to pick

me up from an extracurricular activity. If I had to be sitting by behind on

the sidewalk waiting for my mama to come pick me up, guess what? Because my

mama forgot, and there were times my mama forgot. Same. Yeah.

Like and I didn't die. By the way by the way, did I inconvenience other

adults? Sure. Did they all look at her like she was inconveniencing

them? Absolutely. Did my mama care? Hell no.

She didn't care. She's like, I'm making money. What are you making?

Like, you eat my food. What? But be quiet. Get in the car. You're saying

this? So so Absolutely. That's the very that's the very

specific perspective that I think so I just I gotta be very clear

on that. Right? I get it. Other people had other experiences, yada yada yada. Okay.

Yeah. We have 2 generations of hand on parenting, and now we're doing this thing

called gentle parenting. I don't know what the hell that is. My point is

that if you're not

engaged with the kid and then you're giving the

kid technology, that's basically according to Jonathan height and he's not

incorrect. Again, mainlining dopamine

into your kid's system from a very early age when they can't even handle it.

I mean, Snapchat is marketed to 8 year olds. Okay?

And I've been on that Remember you remember when it was like a porn platform?

It was just for, like, something like like and and it's so funny because it's

not that anymore, but because I was an adult when it came out. Like, I

like, there for a while when it was, like, becoming, like, a social media

platform and brands were on there and everything. And I was like, what is, like,

what is it? Like, I was so stuck in the old conjecture that, like, I

wasn't able to kinda see that that they were trying to ship that and do

something different with it. You know? Right. Yeah. But, Yeah. But when you

have that, though, and that's and but and then and then you're going

to outsource your kids to and I don't think you and I have ever talked

about this on the podcast, but, you know, I me and my

wife, we try to homeschool our kids. Not track. We homeschool our kids. And we've

been doing that for many, many years if work was cool. Like, we've got systems

in place, all that. Right? This is part of the reason why we have tons

of books in our house. We have biblio files. Right? But the point is

you're outsourcing your kid for 8 hours a day to somebody

else who's putting ideas in their heads. Yep. And you

only have 2 to 4 hours a day. And by the way, if you're not

eating a meal with them, you have less time than that to counteract

those ideas or to just offer an alternative perspective.

Forget counteract, just offer an alternative perspective.

And by the way, you're going to do that for 12 years.

Those 3 ingredients just by themselves in the

pot are enough. And this is where the banned books comes in now,

are enough for me to question you yelling and screaming about books in the

library. Work on those three things first,

and then you can worry about books in the library. Well Books in

library are are the the they're the lab place. No. I agree

with you. Right? Like What are we doing? But but the perspective is,

well, I'm, you know, I'm paying money for these schools. It's therefore they they

should And and but but no one shows up to school board meetings to talk

about the curriculum. Yeah. Please. No. You know what I'm saying? So it's it's very

much this we all want what we want, but, you know,

we're not very good at the follow through to actually make it, like, actually happen.

Right? And, you know, the thing you said about, like, the

family dinner and everything, like, part of me is

wants to push back and be like, it

doesn't need to be a dinner. Right? It needs to be intentional time.

Right? And I think I I think right? And and this is not

to kinda, like, judge you or anything else like that. No. No. No. It's fine.

Go ahead. I think it's I think it's very easy to be like, okay. We're

all coming together at dinner and blah blah blah, and then kids get busy, and

then we're just mad about the sanctity of dinner not being what it once

was as opposed to, like, trying to take the action of, like, going and

having those conversations wherever you can have them because we prioritize them as

important. Mhmm. You know? So I am

also one of those people who says, and I want to

be intellectually and emotionally consistent on this.

You have to do what fits in the context of your life. That's why

we have a republic. Right? Okay.

It's not my job to, cast

aspersions, not judgment cast aspersions on whatever it is you may have to be

doing. It's also not your job to feel guilt about whatever you may

happen to be doing or not be doing. It's your job to kind of look

at the thing that you're doing and okay. And then the other dynamic

is, and this is something that I think a lot of people who are parents

struggle with, particularly younger parents, struggle with

this. I'm not in a,

I have not raised my children and I am not personally parenting in

a war against other parents. I'm not in a competition, but frame it that way.

I'm not in a competition because of the parents, whatever you want to do, you

do. However, the

things that I do with my kids are going to be the things that I'm

going to advocate for. They're sharing it as they're

doing business. Right. And, and you

know, when we talk about things like books, you know, or we

talk about things like larger ideas you're talking about and you're talking

about intentional time. Sure. If you're taking intentional time to talk about

stoicism with your kid. Cool. Let's take that additional time. Let's figure out where

that, what that, you know, focus time is and really be intentional about doing

that. I do think that we do have a

long. Not, I think I know we have a long history in

the west where we can trace certain no

guests. We could trace the transmission of culture to certain

traditional acts that occur first at a family level, and then are usually

scaled up to a nation state level. And by the way,

Jewish people I'll use them as a perfect example, very strong

traditions around Friday, Sabbath and Friday

meals. Mhmm. And

that's the thing that has transmuted that belief system,

you know, across destructions of temples and

damn near destructions of people for 5000

years. Traditions work. And I think one of the things we're struggling with right now

in the west is with the atomization of life and

the allowing of these other systems to come in and atomize us and break us

down into our smallest bits, which are of course the individual and then even

smaller than that. It also atomizes away the

traditions. And it just kind of blows those

up. And human beings don't do really well

in general without traditions and children in particular don't do really well

without traditions. There has to be some sort of cultural transmission process

here. Now books are weighted away. Knowledge. For sure. Right.

And how are we gonna do that intentionally in in our family based on the

context of whatever it is we're doing? So and that may sound like a giant

justification for what I just said, but it's not. Well, no. I I I just

think it's important to because I

could I could see fast forwarding. Right? And my daughter's a little bit older,

and she's got extra extracurricular stuff and then being pissed that she's not

prioritizing dinner because this is our time. You know?

Whereas, like, I think the parents, you know, if you wanna be part of your

kids' lives, you need to be intentional and insert yourself in the in the kids'

lives as opposed to expecting them to, you know,

effortlessly include you in everything. Sure. And I think you also have

to, understand that

and, again, this is probably how I was raised. The the

hierarchical structure, whatever because there was a structure. And where are you at

in the hierarchy? Right? And so, you

know, are you know, is the person that you're raising these kids with, are

they on the same page that you are on? Oh, yeah. You That's a

whole other That's a whole other conversation. Right. You know,

so, you know, it's, it's, it's about, it's

about fighting the appropriate, not fighting. I shouldn't say that

it's about negotiating. That's really what it is. You'll appreciate this as a salesperson. It's

about negotiating in the appropriate way, in the appropriate manner with the appropriate

person at the appropriate time and knowing where the negotiations go.

Right. And getting alignment as much as possible.

There going to be times of misalignment? Are there gonna be seasons of disruption and

of chaos for sure? But that can't be the whole life of the child. That

can't be the whole life of the family. Oh, I agree. 100% agree. Like You

know?

God. Like, there's so many tangents I could take this conversation down from that from

that just Just from that one. Basic idea. Right? Because Yeah. You know, people also

have a habit of rubbing off on each other, right, in close proximity. Right? Like,

part of the reason that the that the military works is you're all

in the same boat. Right? You've all made this this

decision, and you all have to deal with with the outcome. You

know? And you're you're learning how to become the

machine that the government thinks that they might need to call on. You know? And

like, that's always there, but no one's really talking about it and stuff.

But yeah, man. You know? And then,

you know, you get married, you start spending time with someone and, you know, just

like we were talking about before, well, this influencer, this person

knows knows a, b, and c just like I do. So

therefore, you know, d through z,

we're probably as well. We're probably on the same page. Right? We're

probably fine. Except the challenge is, like, d and c,

you're not on the same page and probably looking at that influencer

for advice about how you should lift your Exactly. Exactly. Right?

But a was solid. A was solid. Right? B's

b's maybe 80% of line, but then we get to c and it's like it's

like 25%. Well, Jordan Peterson says this thing, so I'm gonna go do it this

way. And it's like it's like, you know, you've you've you've missed the

opportunity to have your own critical conversations with yourself.

Bingo. And and those critical thinking skills come from.

Exactly. And, man, like, I love getting

to come and do these episodes with you because, like, I read these

books and I always know that after the conversation, I'm still mostly gonna feel

the way that I feel about it. But, like, because I I have deep trust

for you and I know that you're a thoughtful person.

I have some new perspective that I didn't have before. Right? And

that's what I love so much about the second point we need

leisure. Right. If you're running from book to book, to

book, to book, to book, to book, and you're never sitting and thinking

like, what did I get from this?

You're you're you're missing 9 tenths of the point. Right? And so it's

funny when you see these online social media things of like, well, I read 52

books. How much are you synthesizing, bro? Right? And that's always the

solution. Right? I read a lot. You know? I mean, I don't read as

much as Melissa does. Melissa reads about 50 books a year, but it's like, it's

like, it's, it's her number one pastime is reading, you know,

but I, I probably read 15 to 20, sometimes 30, depending upon the

year. But I'm also I'm also, because of what I

do, like, able to, like, let's go try this, and let's go try this, and

let's go try this. Right? And it's funny because I met up with a friend

of mine that I know digitally. He's an entrepreneur. We met an

entrepreneurial community. We've only been friends digitally. Right? But last year, he,

like, he sells to, like, airports and everything, like, $1,000,000,000 deals. Right?

Yeah. So he's in town. We meet up last year as I'm

going through the process of buying the house and everything. And then he came back

in town this year. He had to follow-up with a client and everything. And so

we met up again, and we were talking again. And it was so funny

because he pauses, and he was like, dude, like, how long has it been since

since we saw each other? And I was like, oh, I did the math, actually.

You know, it's been this long, you know, because that's who I am. And he

was like, you are miles

away different than where you were a year ago.

And I kinda had this moment of, like, duh.

Like, why wouldn't I be? Right? I'm on this path. I'm on I'm pushing

myself. I'm I'm challenging my ideas. Like, I'm I'm, like,

you know, helping people think about how they think. You know? Of course,

that's gonna kinda wash over onto me. So but it was this, like, very weird

moment of realizing most people don't change that much

over a decade. Oh, yeah. No. You know? Yeah.

So that that whole thing of, like, I'm looking for things to

implement. I'm looking for things to change and to try and to dole out and

to see how it works and everything else like this. And because my job is

what it is, I get the opportunity to be like, oh, well, that sounds like

an interesting anecdote. Let me go tell someone about it in relation to this other

thing and see how they deal with it, you know? And then when and then

when they show up later and they're like, oh, that what? You know?

I told people I was rereading this book. They're like, oh, what's that book about?

I've never read it before. And I'm like, it's it's a it's about a future

with no books, and then I can just leave it. Yep.

Right? And then and then they'll, like, okay. How's the book coming? You know? Like

like, oh, man. Pretty good. Right? Mhmm. So I get this

opportunity to, and this is this

is back to the true grit thing. You can have the map, but that's not

the same thing as being in the territory. Right. Right? And, like,

I'm in the territory all the time with people that are dealing with

changes of their own perception around leadership and sales and

marketing and positioning and spin. And are we spinning for the right

reasons? Are we spinning negatively? Are we telling them just what what we think that

they wanna hear? Are these things actually connected to the things we wanna build? Like

and there's there's so much in this as

like, I'm I'm curious as to your perspective on this as someone who works with

individuals and helps kind of Yep. Rack them open, if you will. Because, like, I

think on some level, like, I'm trying to wake people

up. I'm trying to get them to to stop thinking about, yeah, you can just

walk in the room and push hard enough, and they're gonna say yes. Because, like,

even if you can, let's talk about what happens after that. They ghost you. Right.

They stall. They churn. All these things that are bad, but, like, we're

all just happy that we, like, got our way, and it's like, guys, like, think

about the connective tissue here. You know? Mhmm. So it it's

very interesting as I'm going through, like,

I do get to take these ideas and and play with them and and try

to kinda get other people to think about them and stuff like that. Do you

do you see that in your work, or did that not really show

up for you as you were thinking about the book? Oh, yeah. I mean,

so one of the things

that's very interesting to me is I was having a conversation with somebody the other

day. And I won't obviously get into names or

relationships, but it was having a conversation with, and I was having a conversation

with someone the other day about how their,

one of their intimate relationships is in the process of being

redefined. Well, hopefully that's neutral enough

and not redefined in a positive direction. Right. Okay.

Yeah. And the conversation was very intimate.

There were a lot of details in there that were dropped.

I was like, oh, I kinda didn't know that. I didn't know that before. I

didn't know that before. I've known this person for a little while, but now we've

reached a certain level of trust where he can kind of, he can kind of

have this conversation with me. Okay, cool. And I

wound up. He didn't really ask for my advice. He was just really just

looking to kind of just, like, document dump and then move on.

But there were things that were in the conversation that we were

having that I thought he was missing that were critical.

And I literally said, hold on. Like I gotta, I gotta

give you advice here, whether you want to hear it or not. Like I really

do. Cause you're, you're, you're skipping like a rock over some of this

stuff and you're missing the deeper thing here.

And I went back to a couple of books that I've been reading,

you know, over the course of, this year. Right.

And a couple of conversations where, not

just with you, but with other hosts that I've had, where we distilled out some,

some ideas that I thought would be helpful for him. And I kind of gave

those ideas to him. And then I tied that into

sort of my personal life experience around some of the areas that are similar,

similar to, to him. Right.

And in the book that I'm

writing right now, the one I'm mashing around with, I can't get out of

the book is being driven by these

conversations. So these kinds of conversations I'm having with you are

driving the book, right? It's not a book based on the podcast, but

it's a book based on the conversations that I've been able and the critical thinking

I've been able to put behind. You know, coming up with these ideas and these

ways into these books. Like, one of the things that I do with these books

is I try to find a way in. Like, what's the way in

here? Right? And so the way into true grit

was sort of thinking about what does a character

look like who is claiming moral authority,

and is just rigidly committed to that moral authority. And she's

not gonna she ain't gonna move off her rock. You know? Yeah.

Maddie Ross says at some point, and it might have been in the movie too,

nothing's free by the grace of God.

You have to pay for everything in this world. And she was fine with paying

her price. Where do you run into someone like that? Like

ever in the world today now? Like, where do you run into somebody that's like

that? Just that rigidly committed? Many people

that I run into are loosey goosey. I run to a lot of loosey goosey

people who are kinda flopping all over the place. Now, again, your

mileage will probably vary. Yeah. I

okay. This is one of my favorite topics. Right? Because in in

the Well and I wanna draw I wanna draw that in in comparison to a

guy like captain Beatty, who I run into a lot of

captain Beatty's. Oh, yeah. A lot of those

folks. And those would drive me absolutely crazy, but go

ahead. I I I can't deal with the captain

Beatty's. Right? And so if I hear anything about, like, well, we're just gonna get

rid of these people and get new people, and that's gonna fix the problem. I'm

like, no. No. No. No. No. No. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'm forced I'm forced to turn see, the Maddie Rosses drive the captain babies

crazy. 100%. For sure. That that's the

that's the whole process of coin. That's the that's the Like like,

that's the other greatness of the whole thing. Right? But in the kung fu school,

one night, you know, I was, like, I was lamenting that, like, people

don't do kung fu. Right? But, really, I was wrapping it up in the idea

that people don't have lives because they they just finish work, and they go home,

and they sit on the couch, and they drink beer, and they watch TV. Right?

And I'm over here, and I'm doing a thing. Right? And, like, I was

drinking too much of the Kool Aid at the time. Right? You kinda have to

in those environments or else, you know, you don't get the good stuff, if you

will. Mhmm. And one of my friends, still friends with him, he

goes he goes, man, everyone has kung fu. But for most people, that kung fu

is watching TV. Right? There you go. And I know people and you know people

that watch UFC fights, and they can they can name off every one of those

moves. They know exactly what's happening. Like, and you and I also both know that

that being able to name those names is not going to help them against an

8 year old. You know what I'm saying? So I think

I think what what has happened is we you do see those people.

Right? You see black belts in jujitsu. That takes a level

of, like, nah. Not going your way. Right.

You know? Yeah. Business ownership. Right? You know, I

can't tell you this is gonna sound so bad. I can't tell you how

many people can't seem to figure out how to be productive for their

own intrinsic needs and to do it consistently enough that they can have a business.

Right? So they're almost like, oh my god, I hope I can spin up this

business before I get bored. And it's almost like they know about it, which is

very just interesting to me because I do think

it takes a little bit of, like, no. Screw you. Watch me go do this

thing to do any of these things. Yes. And I think that

that's I think that's Maddie Ross. It's just not

as, what's the word? It's

not as it's not as Concentrated, maybe?

It's not as is trying to build an archetype. That's the other thing 100%. For

sure. These authors are trying to build archetypes. Right? So there's an archetype of Capturably.

There's an archetype of Maddie Ross. Mhmm. There's an

archetype of we read War and Peace, one of our more downloaded episodes this

year. Mhmm. Just the first part of it, just like the first introduction. And it

is a masterclass in how to do business networking. It's a

masterclass in how to go to market, but it's a Russian party.

I need to go back and read that. Yeah. I go back and read like

the first, like 5 chapters. It is a masterclass in how to

network. It's a masterclass in how to run a networking

event. Right. And the way that Tolstoy describes

Anna Pavlovna going through and like making sure everybody's talked

to and everybody's got engaged with you, but it's, but it's old school,

aristocratic 19th century politeness. Yeah. That

we have just totally blown up and abandoned. We had a whole conversation about that

on our podcast to kind of the similar to the one we had of about

way of the samurai, but in a but in a Western, a more Western, a

more Western context. But mean, I like And that's

the archetypes that that that these these authors are building or archetypes. I'm

sorry. So one of my big shifts around networking was around this idea. Like,

I I hated small talk. Right? And my coach was always like and

and I was going to a sales coach. That way I could be a brass

tacks type and not have the small talk. Right?

Completely holding it with the wrong intention. Right? And,

my coach was like, you know what? You don't have to learn all this stuff

if you just play with people who were, like, good to play with.

Right? And he's, like, even trying to put it in my vernacular as a poker

player so that way I can understand it. And I'm still like, what? You know?

And he's like, don't try to sell people that don't want what you got, idiot.

You know? But I wasn't clear enough to see any of that stuff at the

time. But I network a lot now.

Right? I'm on I'm on Lunch Club, which is an AI driven

matchmaking service for networking. I've had 300

meetings alone on that platform.

And the the trick, the trick, if you will,

the my goal is I'm trying to find your kung

fu. Right? And so people come on the thing, and I'm not like,

well, how's your week going? What's the most exciting tell me about a time when

you struggled in your work. I'm like, what do you do on the weekends? What

do you do when you're not working? Right? And then and I'm going somewhere with

this because kung fu is a craft. Jujitsu is a

craft. Writing is a craft. Sales is also a craft. But if we don't have

this conversation, there's no way they're gonna be able to see it as a craft

unless they come from the territory kind of situation.

Yeah. So what I have found is the craziest

depths of, like, community and passion and

drive. Like, I talked to a guy who had 7 Cantina

Racer motorcycles inside of his garage because, like, that is his kung

fu, that is his jam, and he spent all of his all of his all

of his improvement time, his development time, his meditative time, his kaizen time, if

you will, on that. And I've met more and more people

that have odd, odd hobbies. Right? And I'm

saying this as someone who often gets looked at for having the weirdest hobbies on

the planet. Right? Like martial arts and poker and these sayings, I get

it. But it's only weird because you don't do it. Right.

Right? And so I think I think that

people have these drives to where they can be

that driven and that oriented and stuff. I just don't think that

people see it for what it is. Right? People are scared to turn

their hobby into their livelihood for all the reasons that make sense.

Right? There's lots of people like, I I had to have this

conversation with someone else of, god, do you really wanna carry

that much weight for someone else's thing? Because

you might just be someone who's better off working on your own, so that way

you can have the wider lane and stuff. And, you know, we all need

different things, but I think there's drive for everybody. You just have to

kinda, like, look for where you're already driven and pull the elements away from,

like, what makes you drive there and instill those in this other thing, and then

it's easier to drive. Well, and I think

And we gotta we gotta wrap up. We're we're way off on this. But, hey,

surprise, guys. If you listen to the other ones, you knew this was gonna happen.

Right? Congratulations. Everybody drink. Take your shot.

Well well, one of the this well, that actually it actually ties into where we're

gonna gonna go towards at the end here.

So one of the things that that kind of that I'm sort of starting to

noodle with another idea of sort sort of starting to do with I'll do it

through the science fiction books because we're gonna read dune here. Dune's coming

up. I'm finally on the back end of Dune.

Well, I found a person who's really passionate about Dune, like really passionate

about Dune. I wish it was me because, like,

my wife is, like, a Dune fanatic. And I'm just like talk to

her. You should have heard her. Like like, when

I finally read it because I read it late. I didn't read it, kid. Right?

And so then reading it late, I was like, oh, this is the same messiah

story that I've just seen over and over and over. And she's like, no. It's

the messiah story. And I'm like, no. It's not.

No. But,

like, that idea, right, talking about writing and

everything. And I I got kinda got stuck on my book, so I dug into,

Brandon Sanderson's lectures on creative writing.

Right? Mhmm. A little stuff. And the thing that he says in there that blew

my mind is that it's always a cliche until you do it so well that

people forget that it's a cliche. Right. Oh, that's like some

Robert McKee level stuff right there. Man, it I was like,

oh, I'm so glad I'm watching these free YouTube videos. Like, well, you know, like,

I could be watching cat memes, but this is inherently more specific.

This is better. A bit. But I think I think when

we the idea in science fiction

is that tomorrow well, no. I've been playing

with a couple ideas in my shorts episodes. First off

that most science fiction, particularly dystopian science fiction, even utopian

science fiction, but let's talk about the dystopias because we always like those better. Oh

yeah. Dystopian science fiction is a reflection of whoever

the author is, their current anxieties or whatever moment they're writing it. A 100%.

And a buddy of mine actually told me that years ago, and I was like,

you're full of crap. No. It actually turns out he was correct. I was wrong.

He was right. Okay. He'll be he'll be happy to hear this.

We have that kind of relationship. He'll be happy to hear this.

But the layer that's on top of which is why, by the way,

Star Trek can never really fully be replicated, and I'll just

I I don't believe it fully can be. I think the Paramount will always continue

to screw that property up for a very specific reason. And the specific

reason is that Gene Roddenberry created something that went

against the anxieties of his of his era, and

he went into positive direction. And it's really hard to do a

positive. It's easier to do a negative. That's why you have so many dystopians or

dystopias versus utopias. Anyway And, like, it's perfect

except this one big, huge clearing hole. You know what I'm saying? Because it's Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. We're all just jaded. All just jaded. Exactly.

Yep. But when you look

oh, I got that. What oh, I heard you.

One of the things that's interesting to me, and I I think about it in

the context I mean, you have kids. I have kids. I think about it in

the context of our children is what do we owe?

What are the people living now? Oh, the people that are yet to be born.

What do we owe? Because there will be people tomorrow. This is like, and maybe

it's a thing where I'm starting to really comprehend my own mortality now,

in my mid forties. Mhmm. But there will be a time when Haysan Sorrells

and John Hill and all of the other hosts that I have cohosts that

I've had on my show, our voices will no longer be in the world.

They just they just won't be there anymore. And yes, the internet,

the riff off of Ronald Reagan a little bit, the internet might be like a

government program. It might be the closest thing that we have to immortality,

which, you know, I don't know that I want

my voice and I know the AI has come along. I don't know

that I want my voice resurrected with my old. You

know, podcast episodes so that people can hear. I don't know that I want

that. I'm kinda I'm sort of struggling I'm sort of

struggling with the idea of that right now. But the

concept even deeper than that is,

if I just put out Pablum, then Pablum is gonna influence the

future. Yes. So there's not real wisdom there. Right? So if

I put out wisdom, then wisdom will influence the future. Right? So what

do I owe people who I will not

meet? Because at at best, if I live to be a 100 years

old, which by the way, I consider middle age to be 50, middle age meaning

the middle of between your porn and your die. So I like, I mean, I

don't I don't plan on dying at, like, 90. I'm sure you're looking for

happen. It's like they might yeah. I I have, like, 10th century. Now, of course,

especially plants with mice and men, I'm not in charge of that. Okay. I am

I am I have a I have a death list of things that I

must do, and that is set to complete by the

time that I'm 75 because, you know, I'm

not, I'm not pushing everything off to the right. And

I think that that's where people start to get sideways with this stuff, but I

have the bucket list that will be done by this time, but I am hoping

to hit triple digits. Okay. So so it's a it's a it's a very interesting

kind of duality, I think. But the

relationships that we have are the things that that go to the future.

And even that they only go maybe 2, 3 generations down. And then our names

sort of fall out of like, how often do you think about your great, great,

your great grandfather or your great, great grandfather, right? Like not a

lot, you know? And so, and eventually, at a

certain point, the name of Hazon or the name of John is

just we're done. Like, we're out of the right? But the things that

we leave behind, the things that are permanent, the things that are important

are the things that we owe the future. And

I don't think we can experience apathy in the face of that,

but I also don't think that frenetic action is is is the way

for it either. I agree. And so these

books, these science fiction books create a template where

unlike maybe a tragedy like king

Lear, right. Or a epic tale,

like, you know, war and peace

or a set of poems. Like, we covered the the Shakespeare sonnets love poems. We

just did that. Right? Or Lolita. That was a tough

book. Oh, yeah. Nabokov. That was hard. And by the way,

I was not the one that suggested it. It was my female cohost.

So I would not have I would not have touched it, but she suggested it.

And we we we went through it. You're gonna go you're gonna wanna go listen

to that episode. Yeah. That'd be great. Yeah. It

was it was a hard read. But what do we owe the

future? Right? What do we owe people that we have not even

met yet? And science fiction plays with that.

Science fiction plays with the ideas of what happens in the far flung future, what

happens with people 50, you know, a 100 years from now

who we'll never meet. Isaac Asimov talks about this

or really, this is the underpinning of I, Robot. This is also the underpinning

of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, weirdly enough. This

is the underpinning of, do androids dream of, you know,

electric sheep. This is the underpinning of Heinlein's

almost all of Heinlein's work. In a 100 years, what

will we owe people because of the decisions we've made now? And

that is something that I'm sitting with right now because I don't know what

the answer to that is.

I do know that the container, for me anyway,

for my mileage, the container of the republic is the thing

that I'd like to see last another 100 years, but I'm not in charge of

that completely. I can do my own little contribution to that.

But, fundamentally, it's gonna take 300,000,000 people to, like, agree and

walk in the same direction and Yeah. Look at that. Do that. Right.

Oh, well, I think I think if you get more than 50%, we're gonna walk

in a particular direction. Like, that's I think that's just sort of how it goes.

And everybody else then just gets dragged along in the wake of it.

But beyond that, I will be honest.

I don't know. I don't have a

clue. And I don't have a clue

because I'm not blown away by gee

whiz technology anymore. I'm not blown away by the next

technological revolution anymore. I've been through 4

technological revolutions. You have too. We've been through 4 technological revolutions. I

mean, remember when blockchain was gonna change everything? Mhmm. Mhmm. Do you

remember that? Yeah. Okay. Right. And now we're onto, like, AI that has

run out of quality to to run out of quality

content to scrape off the top of the Internet. And now

the AI researchers, the wizards are smart, wanna use AI

content created by other AIs.

What are we doing? Agreed. Right. So I've, I've

already had, and maybe it's my Jada gen X idea,

but I'm, I've been oversold the revolution and I've been through 4

of them already. Mhmm. Go ahead. Hit me up with the 5th one, maybe a

6th one. It's fine. There's things that are still gonna be

permanent in that. Right? Yep. But, again, what do

we owe the future? What do I owe those people ahead of us? And I

think Bradbury would say, we owe them books.

I think he would say that we owe we owe

them ideas. That's why favor speech is important. We

owe them those three things. We owe them quality, leisure, time, and then we

owe them the pores of the ideas that the books have.

And then we just sort of admit that we have no control over them, and

we just let them go make the decisions that they're gonna make,

whatever those decisions are.

But and I don't know if that's the whole answer. I think maybe it might

be a part of the answer. I think it's so funny because we were both

talking about being stuck in our writing a little bit before

we turned on the recording, you know, just kinda limiting. And,

you know, I wanna do a really good job. Right? Like,

I'm trying to write, like, a quality of dialogue and content

that's supposed to reflect that mentor mentee relationship.

And, like, when you're in that kind of flow state of conversation

and there's trust, but you're being pushed, you're you're having perspective shifts right

there in front of another human being, I think that that is dope

and rad. And I'm putting myself under immense pressure to do this and do a

good job of it. And then I'm also also trying to hold, no one's

gonna care at all, man. And,

like, not even 25 years from now, like, no one might even

care, like, the day after I put it out. You know what I'm saying? And,

like, then do I still wanna do it? Do I

still think it's important if I if I if I pull that much

zoom out in, like and I think that

that's where it meets the road, like like like for what for what is the

purpose. Right? And I liked what you said about, you know, you don't

want to be reanimated later so that way everyone can, like, make fun of you

because the ideas will have shifted because that's that's, like, how we do. But

I was reading an article and it had one of the Beastie Boys on there

and he was talking about how, like, no one who's 14, 15,

16 should be listening to the Beastie Boys because, like, it's not for

them. You know what I'm saying? That's true. He's he's probably right.

Listening to brand new punk rock that's, like, let's that's causing

awareness and getting political about the things that are important now.

And I just really appreciated his, like, I'm really glad that

we've gotten to do this cool stuff, but, like, I'm also very aware that, like,

we're, like, aging on the shelf. You know?

So I think I think where people go wrong is the is the

they want to make it too much about like their idea.

Yeah. Right. And I I've seen this in books. I know you've seen this in

books. I mean, you've seen this all over LinkedIn and everything. I was like, I'm

going to take this idea. I'm going to slap new labels on it. And then

it's holistically mine. And, like, look how great I am. And, you know,

it's, like, that game is not

winnable, I don't think. Right? And you're just gonna get your

ego crushed and, you know, find something else to do.

But, like, I think if you're coming from, like

and this is the hardest part because, like, we're not even aware of the biases

we hold. Right? Like,

I love the idea a couple years ago that there was this big thing about

what was it, is digital photography. And black

black people didn't show up well on digital photography, and and it was

like this big bias. And and, like, yeah, it it it it is a bias.

It's something we need to work on, but, like, it wasn't intentional.

You know? Like like like, no one was like, hey. Let's let's build a technology

that, like, puts white people, like, in photos, but but not black

people. Like, it was, like, it was unintentional. It needs to be fixed.

Right. But let's not go demonize the people that were, like,

found something that forever changed everything else after

them. Right? So, like, I think we get way too fixated on our

impactful change, like like, at an individual level

Mhmm. As opposed to, like, thinking to where, like, we could have a meaningful

change. Like, for me, for my sales stuff, I'm I'm

under no delusion that a

100 years from now, people are talking about Sherpa and the way that I

talk about it, the way that I talk about it, unless something changes and I

start growing and and build an empire and all this other stuff.

But I, like, I also can't think about

I can't envision a world to where the ideas that I'm talking

about won't benefit the individual.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And I think some people

and business books are this way as well. Here's the thing I did once, and

because I did it, it was epic. Right? The whole Nassib,

or Nassim Taleb stuff. Right? Like Oh, yeah. Mhmm. Like, just because

you did it, doesn't mean you can do it again. You know? Right. It's not

a non what is it? Something about non repeatable. I can't remember what you're talking

about. Yeah. Right? And it's like, we we have those people. I did this once.

It's gonna work a 1000 times. Like, you should buy my course in my program.

It's only 47.99, and here's a step up to, like, $9,000 and all this stuff

that we're seeing all over the place. And it's, like, I think I

think if you're too ego driven around the change that you wanna

make, you bog yourself down to where, like, it's impossible to have any

lasting impact if you're not suspicious pushing that rock up the

hill. But I think if your intentions are

solid I'm not trying to tell I'm not trying to teach people how to

sell at the expense of other people. I'm teaching

people you need to listen, you need to ask better questions, you need to have

some curiosity. I hope that continues to be, like,

needed and and, you know, a best practice a 150

years into the future. Now my version of it probably doesn't need to

continue the way that it is, but I'm hopeful that the foundation has some

value. I think that's a good place

to stop. I'm thinking we'll let John have the last word

today. And all I'm gonna say is, well, thank you,

John, for coming on the podcast today. With that,

we're out.