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 184. Opening

up from our book

today with a well,

with a poem and I

quote to Edmund,

Clara, Hugh Bentley

A cloud was on the

mind of men, and

wailing went the

weather. Yea, a sick

cloud upon the soul.

When we were boys together, science announced

nonentity and art admired decay. The world was old and

ended, but you and I were gay. Round us in antic

order their crippled vices came lust that had lost its laughter,

fear that had lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler that

lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as

proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that

faded and death a drone that stung. The world was

very old indeed. When you and I were young, they

twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named. Men

were ashamed of honor, but we were not ashamed. Weak

if we were, and foolish. Not thus we failed. Not thus.

When that black bale blocked the heavens, he had no hymns from

us. Children we were Our forts of sand were even

as weak as we. High as they went, we piled them

up to break that bitter sea. Fools as we

were in motley, all jangling and absurd. When all church bells were

silent, our cap and bells were heard. Not

all unhelped. We held the fort, our tiny flags

unfurled. Some giants labored in that cloud to lift it

from the world. I find again the book we found. I feel the

hour that flings Far out of fish shaped Pomonok Some cry

of cleaner things and green carnation withered as in

forest fires that pass roared in the wind. Of all the

world 10 million leaves of grass or sane and sweet and

sudden as a bird sings in the rain. Truth out of Tusitala

spoke, and pleasure out of pain, Yea, cool and clear and

sudden as a bird sings in the gray, Dunedin to Samoa

spoke and darkness unto day. But we were young, we lived

to see God break their bitter charms. God and the good

Republic come riding back in arms. We have seen the

city of Mansoul even as it rocked relieved.

Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind

believed. This is a tale of those old

fears, even of these emptied hells, and none but you shall

understand the truth, the true thing that it tells

of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet

crash of what huge devils hid the stars yet fell

at a pistol flash the doubts that were so plain to

chase, so dreadful to withstand. Oh, who shall understand

but you? Yea, who shall understand the doubts that drove

us through the night as we too talked to main and day

had broken on the streets, Error broke upon the brain

between us. By the peace of God, such truth can now be told.

Yea, there is strength and striking root and good

in growing old we have found common things at

last, and marriage and a creed and I

may safely write it now, and you

may safely read.

There are certain books

that remind you of things you have seen

other places. Partially

that's because the books themselves influence other

mediums, but also it's partially because we all have short

memories. There are books that have been adapted to

movies, and usually not well, then there are the films that

would work better as books or stories. And of course, in our

time of declining attention spans, dopamine driven

distractions, and the technological hijacking of the

brain, there are certain social media performances that

don't translate to any other medium at all. I'm sure Neil

Postman would have something to say about that, and I'm

sure that none of it would be good. But before Postman,

there was our author who wrote the poem I read just now, who

we are covering today. The writer of over 80 books, several

hundred poems, 200 short stories, 4000 essays which were

mostly newspaper columns, columns and several plays.

This author was prolific in the way that only a man, a

denizen, such as it were of the 19th century could be. And

the book we are going to address ourselves to today is

probably the most psychedelic story I've read by a 19th

century author in a really, really long time.

It starts out with the reader believing and

contemplating and trying to accept the reality

that he's building in one way, and ends with we

believing a totally, completely different

thing. Now, of course, you could say that all

good literature accomplishes such a dramatic

two-step, but only rarely does a piece of

literature accomplish such a two-step so well.

The term that I've heard used for this book is so

paradoxically, today on the show we are

exploring meaning and what it means for leaders

from one of the more entertaining and

profoundly Catholic books we've covered on

this show, the man who Was Thursday by the great

Catholic apologist and prolific writer G.K.

Chesterton. Leaders, there is no dark side in

literature. Matter of fact, it's all dark. The

only thing that makes it look light or sheds any

Light upon it is the sun. And I'm joined today

back from back for this episode from his last

foray into the space. During last year's mashup

episode where we talked about the weird

intersections between Pink Floyd, all quiet in

the western front, and Lord of the Rings is a

growing friend of the show. This is the second time

he's been on. So that's two more times than most, folks.

Neil Kalakofsky, how you doing today? Neil, how's it

going? I'm doing great, Jesan. How are you? There's no dark side

of the moon, really. It's all dark. That's right. I

wonder if you were going to pick that up. Yes. Oh, yes.

You were not going to slip that by me.

I think after reading this book, I think that

Chesterton would have been a big fan of Pink Floyd. I think he would have.

Yeah, I think he would have. He would have shown it to all their

shows in a rumpled, rumpled suit, and he would have critiqued them,

you know, with that big mustache and the, the bad combover.

But it would have been sharp, it would have been ribald, but he would

have gotten the paradox. He would have understood what they were trying to lean into

or lean out. So, so. Well, the thing, and we talked about

this a little bit last time, you know, that's a little bit paradoxical. I think

that's going to be our word for today about Pink

Floyd is that these guys were

in some ways godless rock and rollers, and yet they were really, you

know, crying out for faith, right? Oh, absolutely. They were

decrying the lack of faith, the lack of humanism,

and the. What

I think Chesterton might have said is you're looking in the wrong

place. You know, you are, you're not. You're. You're. You're trying to

find God without, you know, finding God. Right?

Well, he would have also. He would have also. And we talked about this on

the, the episode, the mashup episode that we did. We touched a little bit on

this. But he would not have been a fan of

the psychedelic experiments of Aldous

Huxley. He would not have been a fan of any of that. He would

have. As a matter of fact, he would have. And you could tell from the

man who was Thursday how he goes after Nietzsche. He

would have seen that as a direct line from Nietzschean

worldview and would have rejected the dominoes all

the way down the path. Right. But I

also think he would have been shocked by how

popular Huxley got and then how influential he got. And that probably would

have disappointed him. I. I can imagine that would. He would have taken that badly.

I think the fabulism, he would love. It's the fact that it

descends so quickly into hedonism. That's the, you know,

almost. Almost. Almost like there's no red, you

know, light at all on the. There's just. There's no red light.

There's no kaboom. Right down. It's a kaboom.. There's no William F.

Buckley on the highway. It's just. You're going, yeah, well, saying this much

and no more. Right, right. Yeah, it's all the way. But, you know, you think

of Lewis Carroll. Right, Right. Who Chesterton must have.

He may even have crossed. I'm not

sure of the timeline, whether they were contemporaries in any way,

but certainly they were literary. Close enough. Literary

contemporaries. And, you know, Lewis, Alice in Wonderland is some

pretty wild stuff. Right. But it doesn't descend. There's never an

orgy in Alice in Wonderland. Right. There's no Eros or loving or

anything like that. That would have been. Lewis Carroll would have just

been completely bl. By stuff like that. And then 100 years later, you

have Grace Slick singing White Rabbit at, you know, at Woodstock and.

Which my neighbor was at, by the way, he was telling me. And he saw

that performance. Really? Yeah, Just. Just

as an aside, it was kind of funny. He sent me a clip of Grace

Slick singing White Rabbit, and he says, I remember this like it was yesterday.

And I wrote back. I said, I'll bet she

doesn't.

Yeah. Chesterton was born in. He was born in. He was born in

1874. And looking up. Looking

up on Google, just. Just because it's interesting that you sort of. Alice in

Wonderland sort of. I don't know. Go ahead, tell me. Yeah, so Alice in

Wonderland was written in. Let me go ahead and

pull that up, because I don't have it off the top of my head.

Alice in Wonderland was written in 1865.

So, yeah, I mean, a little bit earlier than Chesterton

was born. So he not only would have. Would have. Would have been

exposed to Carol, it would have been one of those

background influences that was just sort of floating around there

now, how much she would have. How much she would have, shall we say,

embraced Lewis Carroll, for lack of a better term. We don't know

that. But. But yeah, he. I mean, Lewis Carroll had a long life in the

middle of the middle of the 19th century. He was born in. Let me see,

it was like 1836

or something. So he had a. He had a long and all. Let me

pull this up. He had a long lifespan. And then I'll tell you the

other guy who jumped to mind when I read Besides the obvious, C.S.

Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, which. Yeah, the influence is, you

know, jump. Jumping out at. You know, like, even in the poem you

read. Yep, I noticed. So at some point he mentioned Dunedain,

which. Yes. In all

to. To be clear, I looked up on Wiki, and apparently it's an island somewhere

in the South Pacific. It is, but in the Lord of the Rings, the

Dunedain were the noblemen.

Right. Who survived the fall of Numenor and then

come back to. To Middle Earth. And. And there's no way

that's, you know, a mistake. No. No.

Coincidence. Yeah. No. So Lewis Carroll was born

1832. He died 1898. Okay. Alice in

Wonderland was, like I said, was 18. Now was

1865. G.K. Chesterton was born in 1874, died

in 1936. Right. So while Chesterton

overlapped a little bit with the end of Carroll's

life, most of Carroll’s work would have been in the

background, probably for him. Which it's weird to

think about that because we tend to put these

people on pedestals, literature, whatever. But,

you know, like. Like his relationship. Like

Chesterton's relationship with. Oh, what was the

author, the eugenicist and author. Um, Bernard

Shaw. George Bernard Shaw. Right. So he was. He was a

sparring partner against George Bernard Shaw for years.

Right. And roundly opposed the Fabian Society, roundly

opposed Fabian socialism, thought eugenics was nonsense.

There are some, depending upon what you read in his

Wikipedia article, there are some intimations that maybe

he might have been anti Semitic, but maybe not. Nobody

really knows for sure, you know, but it was one of those

things where, you know, Carroll is in the air, Tolstoy's in

the air, Dostoyevsky's in the air. And these guys are just

reading them like. Like we read YouTubers. We're like, oh, yeah, that's just the

critical drinker over there. Or that's, you know, whoever that we're going to on

YouTube. I don't know. You know, in 100 years, who knows? Who knows who's gonna

be. Who knows what YouTuber will rise in the back of your mind somewhere.

Right, exactly. The other guy that jumped to

mind, unfortunately, also known for his anti Semitism was Roald

Dahl. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. At the end, I was getting. This

is very Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a little bit where people are just flying

up in the air and you know, it is.

Yeah. And I think Dahl was much less. He must have been

50s and 60s again, I guess. But, you know. Yeah,

but I was, I was actually kind of.

Yeah. Flashing on some Roald Dahl there at the end. But. And

then I think I was telling you earlier, before the podcast, you know, some of

this seems like the early movies of, you know, Keystone

Cops or, you know. Yes, yes. When the

anarchists are running around Europe, you know, I picture them running around in

stilted fashion like they're being filmed, you know, in 1912 or something.

I had a Buster Keaton flashback. Yeah.

When they're, when the whole, the whole section occurs in the book where

they are chasing them across the field and they're chasing them through the town and

it's just like chapters, long chase and. Yeah,

it's Benny Hill, man. It's. That's it. Yes. Oh my God, I'm glad

you brought this up like this. And I'm like, oh my God. Oh my God,

the Benny Hill music. Yakety Sax.

That's right. Ah. Oh. Got that song

stuck in my head. I remember Benny Hill. Oh my God. Yeah. Like

1980 British TV would come over and

you could see like clips of Benny Hill, like 11:30 at night or something.

Yeah. So this will tell you the, the. Just the age

gap that we have. I was exposed to Benny Hill. So

I'll frame it this way. Before I would go to school in the mid-90s

or I go to high school, there were two programs I'd watch. If I got

up early on PBS, I could watch the last 10 minutes of Benny

Hill, where usually the last 10 minutes involved some

lady in scanty clothes running around doing some. Something. And

then the music would come up and then I would immediately change from that

to Sports center hosted by.

Oh, what's his name, the guy who's sort of gone off the rails lately

on MSNBC. Keith Olbermannn. Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick.

Those are my guys. And this is before we knew how crazy Keith

Olbermannn was. This is before Dan Patrick had a podcast, you know,

all this time. Right. And. And Stuart Scott would come on sometimes

and I'd watch Stuart Scott with Dan Patrick and I would just watch Michael

Jordan highlights and eat my cereal. And then I would go to school. Like

that was my whole entire. That was my. That was part of my exposure to

like Benny Hill. And now

this. Interesting. So my nine year old, we got a bunch of chickens in

my. On my property. And like a bunch of chickens, like not a few,

like. Like 12 to 15. It's ridiculous for chicken farmers. And. And

whenever he's chasing the chickens. Chickens around. I play the Benny Hill music.

It's basically Yakety Sax.

Yeah. Like he's chasing the girl. Yeah, exactly. He's got his hands out. Like,

he's got his hands out the whole nine yards. You could not put that on

TV today. I think that would be. Benny Hill

would be immediately canceled. Like, immediately. It wouldn't even get out of the writers room

before the music ended. They would be closing that show down.

Oh, my gosh. Okay, well, getting back to the man who

Was Thursday. Let's. Let's focus this for just a minute. Yes.

So The Man Who Was Thursday was published in 1908. It is one of

G.K. Chesterton's more famous books associated with him.

It was written as an adventure story, a detective story. And

as I put it in. In my writing, in my notes here, a boisterous

narrative with an unexpected denouement. And it is an

unexpected denouement. Like, it takes a.

It takes an immediate left turn in the last two chapters,

and you don't know what he's going to do. Like, I. I was. I was.

I looked at the book and I go, oh, my gosh, this is so short.

Because the chapters are short. It's real easy to read. It's written in a flowing

narrative style. You get to the last two chapters, and you're

like, how is he gonna. How's he gonna bring it home? How is he going

to. He has to bring it home somehow. How is he going to turn this

corner? And then he turns the corner, and you wind up in this weird.

This is a psychedelic part. You wind up in this weird, psychedelic

cul-de-sac with. With robes and dudes sitting in chairs. It's

very much Lord of the Rings. Like, it's very Lord of the Rings or

that hideous strength by C.S. Lewis where they're all

sitting in robes at St. Anne's at the end. You know, the

victory has come. And they're sort of. You know, they're just

kind of reflecting on what their role in the entire saga has

been. I was completely channeling Lewis when I was reading

that. Yeah. And it's. And there's no

preparation for any of that. It just sort of dumps into it, and you're like,

oh, I. Okay. I didn't realize it was going to be this

kind of game. Right. The other thing about the book

is it continues to confound readers. Like, it was. So

this is 2026. When we're recording this episode, it

is 118 years since this book was published, which

is weird for me to think about, but

in the 118 years, I don't think anybody's gotten their arms around the man who

was Thursday. That's fair.

You know, someday you're talking to me, but I would love to introduce

you to my friend Bill, who's a profound. He's. I'm pointing in that direction

because he lives over there, you know, so your viewers can see.

Yeah, yeah, he's right off screen. He's over there. Right. And Bill and

I, first of all, we belong to a C.S. Lewis Book

Club together. But he is one of the best read

people that I know, and he's a huge Chesterton

fan. And maybe we could do a follow up to this at

some point where he comes on and he's just. I

think you'll find him just an interesting,

profound kind of guy. Very committed

Catholic, very, very, you know, serious

religious fellow and a deep thinker.

So I'm gonna ask him that very question,

like, basically. And I should have done this in preparation for the show, but of

course I didn't, which is. Bill's hard to

get hold of, by the way, because in keeping with Chesterton and Tolkien,

he. He doesn't have a cell phone. There you go. He is hard. I actually

have to physically walk over to his house, which is like, you know, two

and a half blocks. That's a lot. That's a lot of commitment.

I mean, I can't just text him. What? Yeah.

What is this, 1908? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are we doing? This is

100. This is 118 years ago. He's talked a lot

about G.K. Chesterton, and he would enjoy this. This

conversation. So at some point, putting the two of you

together will be my. I will enjoy that conversation

from. From my. From my chair to the side. But so to me, I

can't separate because I have such a Lord of the Rings

thing. Lord of the Rings was a massive influence

on me growing up. So is C.S. Lewis. It colored a lot

of my worldview, both of them together, both as a

kid, where I kind of sort of thought Middle Earth

was real or that I knew it wasn't quite real, but it

should be real, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It should be a place like

that. Right. Seems like a better place than the one I was

actually at to, you know, much later as an adult, where I started

to realize the profound philosophy that. That, you know, that

that was. Was underneath it all. And you know, certainly

there's some. To me, the most obvious. First of all, there's a

lot of literature mechanisms in here where I go, Tolkien,

Tolkien, Tolkien. Or literally throughout, like here in your, in your

poem. I don't know if you can see this on the screen, but over here

in your poem I wrote very J.R.R., right? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is,

right, because it is, it's. It's the, the first of all the fact that there's

a poem like that, you know, in Tolkien, every once

in a while the hobbits would just start, you know, reciting. They're just like

running around reciting poetry and eating second breakfast. Can you imagine like a

modern literary work where suddenly someone just read a poem for three pages?

No, no, no, no. The reader would be

gone at verse two. I have to, I have to give you that. I

did do a little wiki search or a little R and D before

this. And here's an interesting thing. The person to

whom he dedicated that poem is Edmund Clerihew

Bentley. Yes. Do you know what a clerihew is? I

have no idea what a clerihew is. Neither did I. But wiki, boom.

Nailed it. Clerihew apparently is named after this

guy. A four line poem. That's autobiographical. And

so it's like there's some. I was actually looking a

few of these up. Unfortunately I don't have them like

right here. But you can, you can look them up. Some of them

are cute. So of course this clerihew. Poetry examples.

Right. And Albert Einstein, though he was divine. He made

the world spin with a theory of time. You know, things like that. Right. Kind

of, you know. Yeah. Quick,

I'm just seeing these right now. Discovered radium, you

see. She glowed with pride. Oh dear. In her lap she would

have. She also died of radium poisoning, so she did. That's a

little dark, but you get the idea.

Anyway, who knew those poems had a name? And someone invented them.

Apparently it was this friend of Chesterton's. So. That's amazing.

Yeah, that's amazing. I. And they're called clerihews. Yeah,

that's amazing. I know. I did not. I did not know that at all.

And that's why we. This is my gift to you, my

friend. You impart knowledge to me. I give

these little bon mots trivia. Well, someday

you'll be at a dinner conversation and you'll

say, Someone will say, does anyone. Does

anyone know what a clerihew is? Like. Like you're like you're on an airplane,

someone's there. A Doctor, on this plane. Is there anyone on this plane that knows

what a clerihew is? Turns out like we have a poet. This will save his

life. Weirdly enough, I do.

Strangely enough, ma'am, I. With the clerihew.

It's a musical instrument, I think. Yeah. Play with

clerihew along with the harpsichord. And I failed at it. Now I'm switching to the

piano and I'm totally better. Isn't there a

clerihew and Jethro Tull or something? The

clerihew. Some guy off to the side like some

bizarre. Oh, more like in the Grateful Dead.

Oh, my Lord. Anyway, they. They would have had a Clair

Huxtable for sure. Oh my gosh. I'm not going to tell you a funny Grateful

Dead's not on this show, but not on the show that is Grateful Dead story.

But, but okay, so back to Chesterton, who never encountered

the. Although it's interesting to speculate, what would he have thought of the Dead? You

know, I don't know.

You know, so, so here's a follow up question for this. So

I asked you this question when we were talking about All Quiet on the

Western Front and Lord of the Rings in our mashup episode. And you, you gave

me a very interesting answer that has stuck with me

for a long time now. And, and this is why I have fascinating folks

like yourself on the show, because I get to ask you good questions that you

give me stuff and it sticks with me and it incorporates into other things that

I think. And the question that I asked you was, at the end of this,

towards the end of that episode, will there ever be another

writer like Tolkien? Will. Will the English, Will English

literature ever be able to produce another writer like Tolkien? And you said

probably not, because Tolkien was sort of the, the

pinnacle of the mountain of all of English culture and

society and thought it all sort of concentrated at

a tip of the spear into that man and his, his output.

Okay, but when we look not, but.

And when we look at the History of 19th century

Literature in England, you have Lewis Carroll,

you have Charles Dickens, you have GK Chesterton,

you have George Bernard Shaw, you have Robert

Louis Stevenson, you have C.S. Lewis on the tail

end of this. And of course you have Tolkien, you

have these lions, these literary lines. Rudyard

Kipling, who, by the way, we haven't covered any of

Kipling's work on this show yet. We sort of working

our way around to it. We will cover. We will cover

Rudyard Kipling coming up here fairly soon. I'm

trying to find the right text to Bring to folks.

But the, the, the. A. The 19th century literary tradition

in England was so rich, it's almost

stunning. It's like the height. It's the height of a, of a

literary.

The man who was Thursday comes along in a weird time

when the Boer wars have occurred,

right? England is having a little bit of trouble

holding onto its colonies, but it's always had trouble because it's England. So they don't

really think that it's anything really interesting that's happening there.

But what is happening that's more so interesting is the

continent is getting ready to roil literally 12

years later with World War. World War I. 10. 10 years later with World War

I. Like you're going to get into World War I. Going to be off to

the races, right? I mean, this is the, this is the beginnings of. Or the,

the foundation is being laid for the death of the British

Empire, but nobody knows it at that point. Nobody

realizes it at that point, right? So I

say all this to say. Or I asked, I lay. That's the

content I laid for this question. The man who was

Thursday. The reason is the reason we can't get our

arms around it and pigeonhole into some space. Is it

because it is truly the heir to that entire English

tradition. Was Chesterton trying to bring

everything into this one book and say sort of. And sort

of make a final statement?

Well, I'm not sure I'm the, the right person

to ask to answer that question, but I'll give it Where's Bill? Where's that guy?

Yeah, where's Bill? Ask that same question to Bill when he comes along.

So. But I think that

the, the, the, the reason

we have our. One of the reasons we have

difficulty getting our arms around Chesterton

is that I think we in 2026

have difficulty. You know, there used to be

saying there's no second act in American life, right? Which once they know you as

an actor, that's it, you're an actor forever. Once you're a playwright, you're a playwright

forever. You can't do. You can't do different things or it's very difficult.

I think that that kind of is broadly true

where particularly in the world of the Internet, we pinhole people

as you're this. And once someone is known as a Christian

apologist, well, they can't also be funny, right?

They can't also be indulged in, you know,

what we would call almost psychedelic

literature because that's just not things that go together,

right? So I'm saying that's Kind of

the. The shallow view, right? Yeah,

that. So I think one of the reasons, and I think one of the reasons

Tolkien actually slips by that is because

his books are theoretically written for children.

They're not, of course, they're profoundly deep works for adults.

But he slips it in there. Right? That's. CS Lewis does that

with Narnia. Right. Because it's. In some ways, we read Narnia to

our kids because we think of them as kids stories, but of course, they're not.

They're much more than that. But that was, I think, some of the

additional genius of. Of Tolkien

where I don't think he sat down and said, well, here's a way to get

a Christian message across in a way that, you know, people will not, you

know, object to immediately in this world of, you know, material anarchy that I see

all around me. I don't. I don't think he sat down and thought that, but

it was part of his genius to kind of

develop the delivery mechanism in such a. You know,

I've read the Lord. I. I know I have a Lord of the Rings shaped

head, so I talk about it a lot, but I read it as a kid.

I read it as a young adult. I've read it as an adult. I've read

it very recently. I've read it to my kids,

with my kids. So the.

I. So I think that that's part of it. I think he doesn't. It's

difficult to put him in a pigeonhole, and he's not famous

enough in the way that Tolkien is. Just so, you know, they're

not going to make a movie out of the man who called, you know, the

man who was Thursday. Yeah, yeah. Right.

Whereas, you know, the Tolkien works are so famous that they kind

of blow away a lot of those sort of. Well, I'm not sure I.

What pigeonhole do I put this in? Kind of. Kind of. Objection. So

that's one reason. I think the other reason is something that you touched

on, which is he's so very British. Right. To me. So I was

telling you earlier I had this characterization of

Chesterton. I want to save it for the show. Here it is. I

think if you took CS Lewis and Winston Churchill and put

them together, you'd get G.K. Chesterton. Right.

I think that's my image of G.K. Chesterton. And by

the way, I didn't realize until actually after I

read the book, he was a big guy. He was almost £300.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. He was a big boy. Oh, yeah. He was A big boy.

Which makes me wonder about Sunday, because, correct me if I'm wrong, but Sunday's a

big. Sunday's a big. Yes, yes, yes. That's how he's.

That's how he's described as sort of this. This sort of all encompassing.

Yeah, like. Like at the end, he's almost like. Right.

It's. It's like the. The kid in again, in Roald Dahl. Who's

the kid who. Who, like. Or somebody takes the bubble down

and they end up blowing up to Violet Beauregarde or

something. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like three times

her size or something like that. So.

So I think also, though, we're just.

That is a vanished archetype, the Winston

Churchill, you know, the guy who. Who first

of all was grounded in certain

moral certitudes, but also could get along with just about

anyone. Right. Always had the

right thing to say at the right time, you know. You know, like, Churchill's

famous, you know, the. The woman who says, you know,

Mr. Churchill, if you were my husband, I would poison you. And he said,

madame, if you were my wife, I would drink it. I would drink it.

Well, it's like that. Yeah. Who could pull a line like that off today? I'm.

Come on. You know. You know, I don't see Tom Cruise nailing a line

like that in a movie. No, no, no. The problem is. The problem is all

those guys are on Twitter. That's the problem. They're all on Twitter.

Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Maybe that's what. Yeah, for the. For the. For the

great. The zap. So. But.

So I think that's. It's partly that he's just. I mean, he's almost

like, you know, like a Roman senator. He's so far back and

so archetypal that you can't. He's almost

not like. Not a real person. You know, we don't see people like that

anymore. Well, and it's interesting that you talk about his weight and

sort of the rumpledness that Chesterton had, and then we'll. We'll

go. We'll head back to the book here because I want to turn the corner,

sort of talk about some other themes that I want to talk about today. But

it's interesting you talk about his weight, his rumpledness.

You know, he struggled with gout and gluttony and those kinds of things.

And we live in a post television era, like one of the.

One of the. I would love to write a substack essay on this

because I've been thinking about this off and on for the last four or five

years, how no one really is

appreciating how much that box in your house

called a television has gotten pulled apart in the last 15

years. It's got pulled apart by streaming, it's been

pulled apart by different distribution channels. It's

been pulled apart by the death of attention, it's been

pulled apart by the transition of advertising and

marketing technology, and it's primarily been pulled

apart by the creation of the Internet. The second you could

have an infinite number of channels, and the second that

infinite number of channels was attached to what in the

future will be an AI template in your pocket, which is

currently a template in your pocket. Once that was

attached, once those two things came together from thank

you, Steve Jobs. The explosion that was going to happen was,

was, was, was for the television, a thermonuclear

explosion. Now, don't get me wrong, the physical object

still exists on your wall, sure. But what it meant when jfk.

This is where I mentioned Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves

to Death. Right. Postman didn't want to talk about digital. He didn't,

he didn't care about any of that. His, his whole focus was on what TV

meant for reality. That's why Amusing Ourselves to Death is such an amazing book written

back in 1985. But Postman noted that,

and I'm going to tie the suggestion in a minute, but noted that what TV

meant was images mattered more

than the medium. Right. So the medium

is the message, for sure. Marshall McLuhan, he backed that up.

But both of those things were intricately,

intricately tied together. And so you couldn't

have a sweaty Richard Nixon on TV in 1960. You know,

you had to have JFK pack on the pancake makeup. Sure.

Fast forward to our era. One of the most

notorious changes I've seen in the last two

years is how we have gone from as a culture, at

least on Internet culture, the online culture,

from being very, very positive about

everybody's body to now Ozempic-face.

Right. And we've done that in two years. All of a sudden, body positivity

went out the door because Ozempic is here.

Right, right. And so body positivity wasn't really body positivity.

It was, I don't have a get rich or get

weight loss quick over system so that I can show up as

an image, which is what we have primarily made our mode of

messaging since the rise of television.

I don't have that tool to go to that mode and so I'm going to

be positive and I'm going to shape what the tool says about. Right.

Chesterton, to your point, this is why that

archetype no longer exists. Because of tv, because of the Internet,

and because of Ozempic. That, that, that, that. I don't care

how quippy he is. If he's £300, right. You can't put

that guy, you know, he'll. He won't make it. Yep, he won't make

it. Yeah. And that's a real,

That's a real shame. It's.

In some, in some ways, you know, Hassan, I feel like we're

describing the modern Tower of Babel that is just

building itself higher and higher and eventually is going to come crashing

down. The, The. Because the. I

mean, you know, I guess

your viewers will, Will get, Get the, the idea. I'm not a huge

fan of a lot of modern culture. I just, I

find it horrific, most of it.

And the. To me, what I mourn most is the

death of books. But behind the books has to be the writer,

and behind the writer has to be the culture that produces

the novelist. The idea that the writer was rewarded.

Chesterton was probably rewarded from a young age for

being quippy and for being sharp and for having the bon mot

and for, you know, or however you pronounce it. But I don't

speak French. Amongst my many defects, that's one of

them. And the. But there was a time where that was, you

know, sort of lauded because. But, you know, you mentioned Twitter, so would.

Would the Chesterton of today have been on Twitter? The problem is I

can't distinguish the Chesterton on Twitter from the bot on

Twitter. Right. I could be talking to, To a, you

know, to nothing. And the, the. That just leads to

chaos. I, I don't know. You know, was it, Was it

Chesterton, it just made that witty observation

about Marco Rubio or was it, you know, an AI whose

server is somewhere in Tierra del Fuego? I mean, I

have no idea. So it's, It's. There's a lot about

modern culture that I, you know, it's hard to see.

And maybe this will let me. If you want to lead us back to the

book. It's hard to see the way out

where we go from here to you. Oh, okay. We got to

a, you know, a kind of better place. Um, one last thing.

And I, we do want to get back to the book, but, you know, I

sort of dabble in the side with some writing and,

And I wrote a.

I'M writing a screenplay, a movie screenplay

that is in the 80s. I traveled around a bit. I'm just

going to make this super quick, I promise. But it does tie back. And I

started my travels in Amsterdam, literally landing 1986, no idea

where I was, very little money, one way ticket to speak the language,

you know, and I'm setting the, the opening movie. I'm writing this

actually for my daughter who said, gee, you should write something

because I've been telling her stories of these travels forever.

Yeah. So I'm doing it in the form of a fictionalized movie script. And it

starts off with the fictional me in the travel bureau, which, which was a true.

Actually happened standing there in the travel bureau. And I

won't take you through it except to say, you know, there's a voiceover saying,

okay, I have no money or very little money. I don't, I don't speak the

language. I don't know where I am, I don't know where I'm sleeping that night.

And it was better.

And it was. And, and the, the point of the story is me bumbling

through Europe for eight months, which actually happened.

Right. But nothing bad, you know, Nothing bad. Yeah, it's all

fun. I saw, I met some really interesting people, had some great

times, and that's what I was trying to convey to, to my daughter,

which is, I think it might have been better and I think we may have

created something in the Internet and social media. Parts of it

are great. Like I can look up G.K. Chesterton on Wiki and in five

seconds, you know, learn more about, learn what a clerihew is.

You know, I had no idea 24 hours ago.

And, But

I kind of think the negatives maybe outweigh the positives. I don't, I

don't think you're, I don't think you're alone in thinking that.

Yeah. And, well, I think Chesterton might

have something for us. So back to the book, back to them.

The man who Was Thursday. So we're gonna go into chapter two.

Okay. The Secret of Gabriel Syme in, in

my edition. It's on page 10. I'm gonna go down to

the bottom of it here, and I'm going to go into an

argument that Chesterton was having with,

with a couple of people. And this is where I sort

of began to understand a little, or at least I

thought I began to understand what it is that,

that Chesterton was trying to pull off with,

with this book. So Gabriel Syme is a, is a

detective. I'm going to sort of lay the lay the

groundwork here. He's a detective and he's on

an investigation of an anarchist, an

anarchist named at this point named Gregory,

right? And Gregory presents himself as being

erudite, as being polite, as being formal. You

know, all the things that I said about, you

know, 19th century British culture come

together right in, in, in, in, in Gregory.

And Gregory's trying to explain to Syme after they have a

poetry battle in the first chapter what exactly it is that

this idea of anarchism is about. So I'm going to read a

couple of different sections from here as Gregory's

answers to to Syme on page 10, and I quote, it does seem to

have a moral underneath all its gaiety, assented Sime.

But may I ask you two questions? You need not fear to give me

information, because as you remember, you very wisely

extorted from me a promise not to tell the police. A

promise I shall certainly keep. So is it in mere curiosity

that I make my queries? First of all, what is it really all

about? What is it you object to? You want to abolish

government? To abolish God, said Gregory, opening the

eyes of a fanatic. We do not only we not only want to upset a

few despotisms and police regulations, that sort of

anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the non

conformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish

to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and

virtue, honor and treachery upon which mere rebels base

themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French

Revolution talked of the rights of man. We hate rights as we hate

wrongs. We have abolished right and wrong and right and left, added

Sime with simple eagerness. I hope you will abolish them too. They are

much more troublesome to me. You spoke of a second question, snapped

Gregory. With pleasure, resumed Sime. In your all your present acts

and surroundings there is a scientific attempted secrecy. I have an

aunt lived over a shop, but this is the first time I have found people

living from preference under a public house. You have a heavy

iron door. You cannot pass it without submitting to the humiliation of calling yourself Mr.

Chamberlain. You surround yourself with steel instruments

which make the place, if I may say so, more impressive than homelike. May I

ask why, after taking all this trouble to barricade yourselves in the bowels of the

earth, you then parade your whole secret by talking about anarchism to every

silly woman in Saffron Park? Gregory

smiled. The answer is simple, he said. I told you I

was a serious anarchist. And you do not believe me. Nor do they believe me.

Unless I took them into this infernal room, they would not believe me.

Sime smoked thoughtfully and looked at him with interest. Gregory

went on, Now pause. This is the key piece right here. This is when I

thought, Chesterton, you're onto something. The history of the

thing might amuse you. He said, when I first. When first I became one of

the new anarchists, I tried all kinds of respectable disguises. I

dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops in our anarchist

pamphlets and superstition and a vampire and priests of prey. I

certainly understood from them that bishops are strange and terrible

old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. I was misinformed when, on

my first appearing in an episcopal gaiters in a drawing room, I cried out

in a voice of thunder, down, down, presumptuous human reason. They

found out in some way that I was not a bishop at all. I was

nabbed at once. Then I made up as a millionaire. But I defended

capital with so much intelligence that a fool could see I was quite poor.

Then I tried being a major. Now I am a humanitarian myself. But

I have, I hope, enough intellectual breadth to understand the position of those who,

like Nietzsche, admire violence,

the proud, mad war of nature and all that, you know.

I threw myself into the major. I drew my sword and waved it about constantly.

I called out blood abstractedly, like a man calling for wine. I often said, let

the weak perish. It is the law. Well, well, it seems

majors don't do this. I was nabbed again. At last I went in despair

to the president of the Central Anarchist Council, who is the greatest man in Europe.

What is his name? Asked Sime. You would not know it said, answered Gregory. That

is his greatness. Caesar and Napoleon put all their genius into being heard

of, and they were heard of. He puts all his genius into not being

heard of, and he is not heard of. But you cannot be for five

minutes in the room with him without feeling that Caesar and Napoleon would have been

children in his hands. He was silent and even pale for a moment and

then resumed. But whenever he gives advice, there's always

something as startling as an epigram and yet as practical as the bank of England.

I said to him, what disguise will hide me from the world? What can I

find more respectable than bishops and majors? He looked at me with his

large but indecipherable face. You want a safe disguise, do

you? You want a dress which will guarantee you harmless. A dress in which no

one would ever look for a bomb. I nodded.

He suddenly lifted his lion's voice. Why

then dress up as an anarchist? You fool. He roared, so that the

room shook. Nobody will ever expect you to do anything

dangerous then. And he turned his broad back on me

without another word. I took his advice and have never

regretted it. I preached blood and murder to those women day and

night. And by God, they would let me wheel

their perambulators.

This hide in plain sight is the. Yes.

This is the crux of the man who was Thursday.

Let's talk about anarchists. Okay. In

the year of our Lord 2026, we proclaim that we have no

anarchists. And yet. And yet, anarchists were a real

problem in the late 19th century and well into the

middle quarter of the 20th century. Their actions

inspired politicians, activists, feminists,

artists, poets, philosophers, the crazy and of

course, the power hungry. The assassination of

Archduke Franz Ferdinand kicked off the first World

War. And the trials of the murderers Leopold and

Loeb. The crime of the century in 1924 further

cemented the ideas, the ideas of burning everything

down, of anarchists into popular culture. The

analogy that we have to draw here is a very simple one.

And anarchists back in the day were what terrorists are to the

postmodern mind now.

Men who have no other desire but to deconstruct or

burn down the world around them. And when I was reading

this book, quote came to me, very famous quote, actually,

from the 2008 film the Dark Knight. And

it's rather instructive here, so I'm going to read the whole quote. This is

where Alfred Pennyworth, played by the great Michael

Caine, and Bruce Wayne, played. Played by

Christian Bale, are watching a video of

this new villain that has shown up in Gotham

City. A man who.

Chesterton would like this. A man who laughs as he burns everything down.

And I quote from Bruce Wayne. Targeting me won't get their money

back. He's talking about mobsters. I knew the mob wouldn't go down

without a fight. But this is different.. They crossed the line,

Alfred Pennyworth. You crossed the line first, sir. You

squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of

desperation. And in their desperation, they turned to a man

they didn't fully understand, Bruce Wayne. Criminals

aren't complicated, Alfred. You just have to figure out

what he's after. Mr. Pennyworth. With all due respect, Mr.

Wayne, perhaps this is a man you don't fully understand either.

A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for

the local government. They were trying to Buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing

them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in

a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So we went

looking for the stones. But in six months, we

never met anybody who traded with him. One day I

saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine.

The bandit had been throwing them away.

Bruce Wayne. So why steal them,

Alfred? And this is the killer line here.

Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because

some men aren't looking for anything logical.

Because some men aren't looking for anything

logical like money. They can't be

bought or bullied, reasoned or

negotiated with some men.

Some men just want to watch the world burn.

Let me ask you a question. Go ahead. Do you think Osama bin Laden

really thought he was going to destroy America

by killing 3,000 people on 9 11?

Or he just wanted to watch those towers burn? I

think Osama bin Laden thought two things and that's a great question.

I think he thought two things just like the Joker or the Dark Knight thought

two things. And I think they are twin tracks upon which the

train of anarchy or terrorism or chaos runs.

The first thing he thought was that the United States was a weak

horse. He actually said this. They always think that.

Always. And, and he didn't care that

history has consistently proven that we

are not. He didn't care about GDP. He didn't

care about military prowess. He didn't

care about any of the on paper reasons why

we're not. He didn't care. He said the

lesson that Osama Bin Laden was seeking to

deliver on one rail of that track was the

same lesson that the Viet Cong taught

everybody back in the 60s and 70s that if you

just culturally outlast the Americans,

they will go home. And that makes them weak.

That's the first thing Osama bin Laden thought. The second

thing Osama Bin Laden thought was that.

And again, because he's a fanatic. This is the fanaticism

he thought. Islam has been around

for 1400 years.

By this point the Americans have only been

around 200 and some odd years. Right?

We're eternal, they're not.

We win at the end of the day. So all we have to do is

play an eternity game with weak willed and cowardly

people and we'll win. And

that's the mistake that the anarchists and the terrorists and the people who

want to watch the world burn always make. Because fanatics

can never understand. They don't have a theory of mind of

other people. They only have a Theory of mind of themselves.

And they project that. Narcissism. Oh, God, yes.

Extreme narcissism. Oh God, yes. And I think it is also often

wrapped up in the artist's personality as well. I mean, everyone knows that

Hitler was a failed artist and that was part of the thing that,

that drove him. You know, Stalin was a failed

theologian. He was, he was in the seminary for a while. The, the,

I guess when you start shooting people, they, they move you out. That's the. They

kind of, they kind of let you go. Maybe this isn't for you. Yeah, the.

But. So the idea that there. But,

but, but I think that that that culture clash or that

that misunderstanding goes both ways and that's, that's what makes that line from that movie

so compelling because I think the civilized person has a great deal

of difficulty understanding someone who

really just wants to rip everything down. The civilization,

fun of it, sometimes the civilized person. And this is what I.

So I turned 21

three weeks after September 11th. And

a lot of guys from my generation, 20 years ago

went to Afghanistan and went to Iraq. I know a

lot of those guys. A lot of those guys are my friends. They went and

they came back and they've told me what they saw when they went.

And on the one hand, we can do the hand wringing thing that we always

do in America about war. Like we're doing it right now as we go around

and around with Iran, we're doing the hand wringing thing again. And

by the way, that's one of the negative lessons that we learned about Vietnam. From

Vietnam, we can always hand wring and scream about a quagmire. I got into an

argument the other day about a guy who's like, this is just going to be

a quagmire. I'm like, we're three days in or we're three weeks in.

I know that's the astonishing thing to me where you

say, well, we're winning in every single way you can win a war.

And it's three weeks and you're already declaring it a

quagmire. And you're already declaring it a quagmire. Number one, there's no boots on the

ground. Ground. Number two, like, even if there are boots, if we do put

boots on the ground, you can't. The conditions for a quagmire don't.

What are you talking about? Because. And we're wandering far from Chesterton here,

I realize, and we will get back. But I think at the back of that

is the. Wouldn't it Be great if it was a quagmire. We

want it to be a quagmire. Boy, that. Or the, or

the, or the fanciful desire that exists on both the political

right and the political left in our country for everything to be

clean and effortless. Yes. And, and, and add to

that also what we were talking about earlier, this bizarre

world we find ourselves in 2024, where we want everything

wrapped up in like an hour long TV show. Well, it's been an

hour, so I think the war should be over. Jack,

Jack Ryan should have gotten the bad guys. He should have all been shot. Didn't.

Yeah, didn't they get the bad guy yet? Yeah, didn't, didn't the black. Yeah, didn't

the black widow like beat up on all the 6 foot 5, 250 pound

dudes with her legs and like, aren't we all done by this point? Like it's,

this is all part and parcel of the ongoing cultural

discussion you and I have been having. And we do want to

get back to Chesterton. But I think, I guess to loop this

back to Chesterton, it's important, I think if people

read this book to realize anarchists in 1908, they were

a real thing. They weren't just people with handlebar

mustaches, sort of, you know, you know, Keystone

Copping their way around the world. They would, you

know, they. By the way, two, two American presidents

were shot by anarchists. One died, one died right away,

McKinley. And who was the other one was Cleveland.

Was it Taft or Cleveland? I think it was Cleveland. It was Cleveland. Cleveland.

And you know, whether was he an anarchist? Like he had an A on his

forehead. I don't know about that. But he, you know, he didn't have a, he

was one of these people who just wanted to rip down.

He didn't have a coherent political

philosophy that said I shoot the president and then good things happen.

Right? No, it was just rip down the world

around you. And there was

a real thing to that. And

I think Chesterton was.

It's easy to see these people as buffoonish today, but you

know, they were really dangerous. They did really dangerous things.

They were, they were, they were dangerous men in those times.

And the spirit of anarchy, which

you'll appreciate this in some, in some form or another, which is the

spirit of Cain, right? From Genesis, you know,

Genesis 5. Right. It's that same spirit. It's a spirit of

envy, it's the spirit of jealousy, it's a spirit of resentment, it's a spirit

of, of Entitlement. Osama bin Laden, to go back to this

example for just a minute, believed he was entitled to the

Islamic empire that he thought he deserved. And if he

didn't have it, he was going to kick down every toy around him. There you

go. Just like the Joker in the Dark Knight believes he's entitled to the

chaos that he foments. He's entitled to that. Another great moment in

movie is when the convicts are on the boat and the Joker, like, gives him

a bomb to, like, blow up the boat with the civilians, or they could blow

up their own boat. And the one convict. And this is sort of the. And

this is where now you get into, like, progressive ideas of humanity

versus actual humanity. You know, the convict on the boat gets up and

takes the, the, you know, the, the explosive device away from the, the

warden or whatever the trigger away from the warden on the boat who's

getting ready to do the thing, right? Blow up the other. Blow up the other

boat. And he's like, I'm gonna do what you should have done 10 minutes ago,

right? And he sits down and he does nothing, right? He gets to be the

hero in that moment, but because he recognizes that

even though I'm a violent criminal, there's certain places I can't even go

to, which is very much a progressive post

20th century. Post, post 20th century. A progressive post

World War II way of looking at the world, it's the.

It's the outcome of the Nuremberg trials. We're the good guys. We put the

bad guys on trial. We don't appeal to God because why would we do that?

Instead, we appeal to a secular morality. Secular morality will

judge you, but it won't provide any

meaning because secular morality is based off of this

reductionist mindset, this materialist, reductionist mindset. And

Chesterton, in talking about Nietzsche, and this is

what I hooked on in that section where he puts the words of

Nietzsche into Gregory's

mouth, the anarchist's mouth. He was drawing

a philosophical line between. Drawing a philosophical line

from nihilism directly to anarchy. If you believe in

nothing, if you believe the Nietzschean lie, then

the only clearing at the end of the path for you is burning

the world down. That's the only clearing. Here's a interesting bit of

trivia I want to lay on you. You might find this

so in the. You mentioned Cain and this made me

think of the Bible. Do you know the, the Bible story? Of course

you do. The Noah Bible story where God comes to Noah and

says the world is filled with lawless Violence, basically think

of it as another term for anarchy and I'm going to send another flood and,

you know, these are the things going to happen. Do you know what the word

in Hebrew is for lawless violence? No,

I don't. Hamas.

The same term that the.

Hamas, the, the Islamic movement. Now, that doesn't mean that

in. That's not why they picked the term. It's an. They're. They,

they came in there in Arabic, it's an acronym that stands for

Islamic Liberation Movement, but it happens to be the exact same

word. Now, if you don't see a little bit of a wow

moment in that, because that word's been around

for three, 500 years.

So there's, there is something going on in the, there's something

we're missing as modern Western folks, but I also think there's

something. Oh, no, no, no. I, I'm going to look that up, but I'm going

to go on this premise. So there's something we're missing as modern

Western folks. And I think guys like Jordan Peterson, Jonathan

Peugeot, there's a certain, there's a certain line of folks that

are trying to draw us back to it. And I think Chesterton was early on

this Jung was kind of in the middle. And now we've got other, other

folks. I already mentioned Peugeot, I mentioned Jordan Peterson

and others even to a certain degree, Lex Fridman, although he's

kind of shaky, but who are trying to bring us back to this thread. And

it's the thread that we keep missing. And the thread is the

thread of the logos, the thread of the word. Right. And so

the word can be used to, obviously to create, but the word can also

be used to, to your point about Hamas, interestingly enough, to

destroy. Words have meaning.

Words have meaning. Yes. And I think that, and

I think this does loop back to, to The Man Who

Was Thursday, I think, ultimately without

God, you know, as you say, you know, the

Nuremberg trials, we're going to punish you

because you violated some secular, you know,

morality that we're kind of inventing in real

time here, you know, as opposed to, you know,

you know, you have broken the, the law of God.

You know, as you point out, you know, the Nazis

could legitimately say, well, you made these

law, our laws said it was fine. Right.

So that's, and that's what Hannah Arendt. So we covered

Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt's reporting on the trial of Adolf

Eichmann in 1965, I believe it was

in, in Jerusalem, right, Where the Mossad Went. They

snatched him from some South American somewhere, Argentina, I think it

was. Yeah, they did snatch a grab, the Mossad did, which is, you know,

what they're notorious for, and. And put him on trial in the

dock in. In Jerusalem. And she

documented exactly what you're talking about. And one of the

points she made, which got her into a lot of trouble with

Holocaust survivors in America. And they. And actually, it's

interesting that the grandsons and granddaughters of Holocaust

survivors still have a problem with Hannah Arendt for bringing this up, but she's not

wrong. There was no appeal made to a

religious violation

or even a moral violation. The only

reason, not the only reason, but the reason why the Eichmann trial was

so interesting is because there was. There was a lot of tap dancing in Jerusalem,

of all places around that moral

violation. And instead we're merely going to punish this man

for the precedent or under the precedent set

at the Nuremberg trials, which is. Oh, you were just following

orders. Well, the orders were immoral. So we're going to punish

you for following immoral orders. You should have known better. And Adolf

Eichmann, and she writes about his psychology in Eichmann in Jerusalem.

Go listen to the episode we did last year. Go read the book. I would

encourage every leader here to read it, but she writes about how when you

look at Eichmann, if you do a psychological profile at Eichmann, he was

just a civil service bureaucrat. Yeah. He came across like a. Like a

mid-level marketing manager. Not. No, no, knock on marketing

managers. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's be very, very, very clear.

Right. Listening to this. Let's be very, very clear. Like,

you know, when I look at Tom Libby, though, you know,

and the light catches him just so. Okay, all right.

I am so kidding. Stop, stop,

stop. Tom. Tom's a good man. Tom doesn't deserve that.

Tom's a great guy. The. The thing with

Eichmann is. And the thing. And by the way, I think this is going to

be a real problem with AI is

you will have orders from nowhere. Right. Orders with

nobody behind them. Right. Because no appeal can be made.

And thus decisions were made, but not by me. That's its

own form of. And I'm going to draw a parallel here.

Bureaucratized anarchy. Sure. And

how do you put AI in jail? How do

you fire AI? How do you solve

AI? How do you. How do you. We're very much consumed

with. How do we prevent AI from getting control of. Name your weapon

here or name your military system here. I'M less concerned about

that. I'm more concerned about how do you.

How do you prevent the human in the loop

from consciously abandoning accountability and responsibility?

Because it's just easier. Because we've

proven it over the last eight years. It's just easier

to sort of say, I was following orders, shrug my

shoulders, and be a mini anarchist myself. And we, by

the way, we have evidence of mini anarchism. We have

mini anarchism in our, in our families, we have mini

anarchism in our communities. We have many

anarchists in our workplaces. You know, we, we have

people who. Without a, a, a, a, a Chesterton's fence

of morality, right. Based on God, which is what

Chesterton would say you need to base it on whether

it's your Catholic conception, your Jewish

conception. He probably wouldn't be in favor of the Islamic

conception, but he would be probably begrudgingly be like, okay, at least it's something. You

have to have a conception of a higher transcendent power that puts a fence around

you. Otherwise, so,

you know, let it go. It's not what I do for a living. Right. I

work on a lot of grants for a lot of different projects. And I'm gonna,

I'm not gonna go into any detail because I

like to say I'm under so many NDAs, I can't even talk in my sleep.

But the. I can tell you that there

are a lot of projects that are currently trying to find their way

through the

how to use AI in a medical context in such a

way that it's not making, say, the ultimate

medical decision, but it kind of is.

Right? So. And you can see it.

You can see it eroding. In the time that I've been doing this, I'm watching

it eroding. There used to be a very fixed line, like it had to come

down to, essentially, is the AI giving you advice

like, gee, that sounds like a cough. Right? So

there's a lot of people have wearables, right? I don't happen to have

them. I have nothing against it. I just don't happen to wear one.

And that wearable is continually transmitting information about

the wearer. And sometimes it will say the, the

information will be, wow, your heart rate seems to be

like 260. That's really high. You might want to go to an

ER, you know, to see what's going. That's unusually

high. Yeah, yeah, that, that's for, for those

listening at home, that's high. Yeah. Yeah. All

right. So if your heart rate is 260 and you're listening to this,

go to the emergency room, turn this off and go directly. Turn

this off and go directly to the er. Right. But so the,

the, in that. And that sort of advice giving, which is generally

okay, and goes down a certain track through the fda, which is a

relatively easy track to get down. And then

there are ones where the, you might say, well, your heart rate

is 260, you should take this pill.

It's a little closer to telling you, giving you

something. And then finally it's not too far from that to

your heart rate is 260. And I can inject this

medication into you and I'm going to do it without you

saying yes or no, or a doctor saying yes or no.

That's doable today. It's not out there to my knowledge anyway,

but it's, you gotta wonder when we'll

cross that line. So

I am watching with trepidation

the development of

the casual acceptance of euthanasia.

Sure, yeah. With growing horror.

And it's one of those areas where

both the Jewish rabbi

and the Christian evangelists should make a common cause.

Because when the

AI is infused

with that sort of ability

to pattern, recognize

ruthlessly to an end

and can then advise humans in what to

do, humans with no

guardrails

are going to follow what the AI

says. And we talk a lot as Christians,

particularly in the last 50 years. We talked a lot

in the bookends of Roe v. Wade. We talked a lot about

abortion and beginning of life issues in this country.

And I believe it is becoming more critical. I

think it will become more critical over the next 25 years to begin

to talk about end of life issues.

What if this person doesn't even realize they're talking to an AI? Right.

And this is going to go directly to suffering. This is going to go

directly to meaning, this is going to go directly to

autonomy and agency. All of these areas

that make us really uncomfortable.

And we don't want to think about it, we don't want to talk publicly about.

And yet we have governments. I'm looking at you, Canada.

I'm looking at you. State of New York. I'm looking at you. Soon to

be Oregon and California. I'm looking directly at you all. Now

we have lawmakers who are saying, well, we'll just

sort of set the guard, set up the rails here and you all can do

it. I'm sure it will be fine. I'm sure it will be fine. And, and

that's just another example of, in my mind, it's just another Example of

anarchy. It's just another example of.

Chesterton opposed anarchy because, yes, anarchy comes

directly from nihilism at a social level. I

think he would also approach or oppose anarchy because

anarchy at a personal level leads

to the deception of autonomy, the deceptive idea that

you are an autonomous being that can make their own choices even out to death.

And it removes at the

smallest level the Tolkien level or even the CS

Lewis level. It removes from individuals the ability to behave

heroically. Why would I behave heroically if I can just

like on Futurama, that great cartoon from Matt Groening, I could just go

into a suicide booth on the street corner and just be gone. I don't think

we're far away from it. I've never watched. Is that term, Is that a thing

in it? Oh, yeah, that was a thing in the cartoon. Yeah. Gray and called

it like, like 15, 20 years ago now. Yeah, that's one of the jokes in

the. That's one of the jokes in that cartoon. You can just. There's suicide booths

on every corner and if you want, you just. You just go, oh, my gosh.

Yeah, oh, dear. Yeah, oh dear. Well, but I mean, we're not

that far away from. We're not that far away from that conception

and being advised and nudged by AI. Right.

Isn't there a booth that you could. I'm not making this up.

That will basically fill with nitrogen gas and kill you.

I think that's. I think someone in suicide, someone in Switzerland died

from that matter. Well, and I'm seeing.

I don't want to go too far down this road, but I'm seeing that it's

just, It's a. It's a concern that I have. It's a growing concern. And when

I read books like the man who Was Thursday,

and then I look at how little we have sort of updated our moral code

in the last 120some odd years,

but we've updated our technology to make us. To help us

do immoral things faster and better. Right,

and where is that morality going to come from? And who is going to speak

up for it? And that, of course, is the role of the apologist. That's. That's

the role of Chesterton is speak up for that morality and,

and, and to. Well, again, I'm going

to bring up William F. Buckley here to stand to thwart history and yell stop.

As loudly as you possibly can.

All right, back to the book. Back to. Back to the book. The man who

Was Thursday. So I'm going to go to chapter five The

Feast of Fear. The Feast of Fear is an interesting little

Bond Mott where Sime goes

to a breakfast, a breakfast of anarchists

that is being held in a restaurant on

a balcony overlooking Leicester Leicester

Square. I'm probably mispronouncing that terribly. And

he sees several archetypes

while he's at this breakfast. And

I want to run through a few of them to

sort of draw a. Draw a parallel.

At one corner of the square they're projected a kind of angle of a prosperous

but quiet hotel, the bulk of which belonged to a street. Behind in the wall

there was one large French window, probably the window of a large coff room. And

outside this window, almost literally overhanging the square, was a formidably buttressed

balcony big enough to contain a dining table. In fact, it did contain a

dining table, or more strictly, a breakfast table. And round the breakfast table,

glowing in the sunlight at evidence to the street, were a group of noisy and

talkative men, all dressed in the insolence of fashion, with

white waistcoats and expensive buttonholes. Some of their jokes can almost

be heard across the square. Then the grave secretary gave his

unnatural smile and saim knew that this boisterous breakfast party was

the secret conclave of the European

dynamiters. Then, as time continued

to stare at them, he saw something that he had not seen before. He had

not seen it literally because it was too large to see.

At the nearest end of the balcony, blocking up a great part of the perspective,

was the back of a great mountain of a man. When Sime had seen him,

his first thought was that the weight of him must break down the balcony of

stone. His vastness did not lie only in the fact that he was abnormally tall

and quite incredibly fat. This man was

planned enormously in his original proportions, like a statue carved

deliberately, as colossal. His head, crowned with white hair, as

seen from behind, looked bigger than a head ought to be.

The ears that stood out from look larger than human ears.

He was enlarged terribly to scale, and the sense of size

was so staggering that when Symes saw him, all the other figures seemed

quite suddenly to dwindle and become dwarfish. They were still

sitting there as before, with their flowers and frock coats. But now it looked as

if the big man was entertaining five children to tea.

Simon never thought of asking whether the monstrous man who almost filled and broke the

balcony was the great president of whom the others stood in awe. He knew it

was so with an unaccountable measure, with an unaccountable but

instantaneous certainty. Simon Dean was one of those men who were open to all

the more nameless psychological influences In a degree a little dangerous to mental

health. Utterly devoid of fear and physical dangers, he was a great

deal too sensitive to the smell of spiritual evil.

Twice already that night, little unmeaning things had peeped out at him almost

pruriently and given him a sense of drawing nearer and nearer to the headquarters of

hell. And this sense became overpowering as

he drew nearer to the great president.

Then I'm going to skip down here for just a second. In the presence of

the president, the whole company looked sufficiently commonplace. Nothing about them caught the eye

at first, except that by the President's caprice they had been dressed up with a

festive respectability which gave the meal the look of a wedding breakfast.

One man indeed stood out at even a superficial glance. He, at least,

was the common or garden dynamiter. He wore indeed the

high white collar and satin tie that were the uniform of the occasion. But out

of this collar there sprang a head quite unmanageable and quite unmistakable,

a bewildering bush of brown hair and a beard

that almost obscured the eyes like those of a sky terrier. But the eyes

did look out of the tangle, and they were the sad eyes of some Russian

serf. The effect of this figure was not terribly like that of the president, but

it had every diableri that can come from the utterly grotesque.

If out of that stiff tie and collar there had come abruptly the head of

a cat or dog, it could not have been a

more idiotic contrast.

And he goes through every single one of the dynamiters

and describes their physicality. And there's a. There's a link

that Chesterton is making here from physicality and physical

structure all the way into respectability.

And this is an interesting point because

Chesterton was a classicist, just like every great Englishman was

of his era. And we as Americans in the 21st

century claim that we do not see class, claim

that we do not acknowledge class, and yet we are all classicists

to one level or another. Yeah, sure,

Bill Gates runs around wearing a grandpa sweater and, you know,

chino slacks, right? But no one's going to mistake

him for being your grandpa wearing chino slacks.

And with that being said, the great thing of

America, the great thing that we can construct on, I think, is that

everybody here wants to be middle class, but no one in

Chesterton time wanted to be. Everyone wanted to be upper

class. And that is where anarchists hid. They

hid in the upper classes, which, of

course, Chesterton's making. Did they hide there or did the upper classes produce them?

Well, I think Chesterton's offering the question. I think

he's, he's, he's, he's asserting a problem with

class and money. And that's the chicken or the

egg question that he doesn't know the answer to. I mean, you look

at the Bolsheviks, right? A lot of them were intellectual

bourgeoisie types. They were not the proletariat. Correct.

Yeah. There's. Do you know the Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll? Did you ever read

that? Yeah, they made it into a movie. There's a great line in that somewhere

where Jim Carroll, for like five seconds thinks he's a

communist. And he comes to his father and he says, I'm a proletariat. And the

father says, I'm the proletariat. And he goes, and I think those guys

are crazy. He goes, let me tell you who the

proletariat is. This guy right here. This guy right here.

So I think that partially what produces your anarchists

and to a certain extent your terrorists, you know, I'm thinking maybe a little bit

about like Patty Hearst here is privilege in a way, because

material stuff is boring. In the end, you get bored. You

know, it's. There's only so much TV you can watch. There's only so many,

you know, I guess, you know,

great, you know, cars you can drive and

so on and so forth. And there's a hollowness at the

center of it. And I think people seek to

fill that hollowness. I think this is one of the. I know we keep getting

dragged back to the modern world. We're trying to go back to 1908, but one

of the horrible things about the modern world is people are filled with

entertainment all the time and they're bored silly, you know, and

they're looking, they almost don't know anymore what it is

to feel anything. And so they go to these ridiculous

extremes, like, I'm going to blow something up just because it

sort of, you know, I'm gonna feel something when I do it. And.

But even back in the beginning of the 20th century, you

tended to find, you know, your anarchists and

your revolutionaries and your bomb throwers kind of among

the upper classes and.

But you're bang on about America today. I mean, I don't think anybody

really wants to be, except for a very few

wants to be. No. You know, I like to say the, the, the goal is

rich, not famous. Right. You don't want to be known. Right. The edge of the

Internet. I think Fame is a curse. So,

yeah, yeah, I think you're onto something there.

And, you know, said on a podcast, everyone. Everyone. Yeah,

that's right. Yeah. Well, so, well,

there's fame and then there's. There's influence, right? That's, that's,

that's the distinction with the difference, right? So I'm not

podcasting to be an influencer. I'm not even podcasting to be famous. I'm

podcasting because I like having interesting conversations with people and

having other people listen in on those and get some insights and move on with

the rest of their lives. That's why we're here.

I think that. And it's interesting when you talk about anything

that's an ism or an ist, a theory or an idea

that always captures people with enough

wealth to be comfortable. So the example that proves the

rule is Virginia Woolf, right? Virginia Woolf was wealthy enough

to be a feminist and to complain

and to deconstruct and all of that.

And of course, she was wealthy enough to resist attempts to improve

her talent and resist critiques of her talent.

And, and you can see sort of

not really an archetype, but the beginning of the archetype of the Virginia

Woolf feminist in Ford Maddox Ford's

parades end, right? And he ran

into a lot of those folks. So did Hemingway, by the way. A

lot of those people, right. And so that

specific type that you're talking about, even today in our era,

resists critique, resists correction, and

has enough money to be able to. Rob Henderson talks about this. The

great blogger and good writer talks about

luxury beliefs. They have enough money to be able to

adopt these beliefs of how the world. You can believe

crazy things, Right? Because you never experience the consequences of the crazy

things. The problem is, and this is what Chesterton objects to

in the anarchists, is that the average

people don't have the protections that you have based on your

wealth. And so what happens when you throw a bomb is an

average person gets blown up. So going back to just one more time,

Osama bin Laden came from wealth, right?

Not a surprise. Not a surprise. Crazy wealth.

Yeah, crazy wealth, right? Most of

the folks. And of course, wealth is, Is, Is proximal, right? Most

of the folks who are, quite frankly, the true believers in

Hamas or any other anarchist movement,

those people have enough money to survive. And

they're not living in Gaza, by the way. They're living in Qatar.

Yeah. So there was, There was something about this,

and I can't go searching through the book right now, but he was talking about

exactly that, that Chesterton was where essentially,

you know, the, the people that pay the price for these. He didn't call them

luxury beliefs, but is the average. Is the. The average

person. Right. I'll find it. Maybe if I don't find it here

while we're talking, I'll find it later and I'll send it to you. But

I, you know, you also see this quite a bit in, in, you

know, the terrorist groups of the. The 60s and 70s, which were

before your time. But, but, you know, I was scared of every time I got

on an airplane, even as a kid. Right. They were.

The interesting things is they all started off as sort of some kind of

national or some, what they would say social justice or national

justice movement. And they all ended up being criminal gangs in the end.

Chesterton talks about this at some point that it just becomes. It just

becomes mere criminality in the end. You know, the

IRA started on what. I'm not versed enough in

the politics of England and Ireland to say whether they were just or

not just. I'm not, I'm not the person to, To. To get

into all that. But I think by the end it was more like,

well, we need money, so let's go rob a bank, you know, as opposed to,

you know, that bank is. We're robbing that bank because it's, you

know, the bank of England or, you know, something. Something like that.

It's in here somewhere. I saw it and I meant to mark it, and of

course I didn't. That's okay. You'll search the book. As I bring up

an additional sort of example to back this up. Frank Miller,

who was the comic book writer back in the 1980s and artist,

he did a bunch of work on Daredevil. He also resurrected Batman

in the 80s, which eventually became the Batman that we now know as

Batman, the grim, gritty Batman. That was Frank Miller's

contribution to the mythos. But. Oh, yeah,

but in the Dark Knight Returns,

Frank Miller talks about, or he sets up a scene right, in that.

In that graphic novel where Superman is

reflecting, by the way, Superman is a government agent fully, completely

co opted by the US Government. But, but Superman

is reflecting. Clark Kent is reflecting on the.

The subcommittee hearings that were held about superheroes, right, that

eventually stripped all the superheroes of their identity, right? And they

called up Bruce Wayne, right? And as

Superman thinks in, in retrospect, you know, Bruce

sat up there, as Bruce Wayne would do, and the

senators asked him, you know, what's the difference between you and a

criminal? And I'M paraphrasing this. You can go find it. The Dark Knight Returns. It's

a great little sequence. And Superman thinks Bruce laughed his

scary laugh like he always does. And Bruce said, senator,

we've always been criminals. Like we're never

not. And then he walked out of that Senate subcommittee. And he could

have made all the moms and the kids happy, but that Bruce wasn't going to

do that. And then he got into his race car. The right thing to say,

or the. Or what they wanted to hear. Right? That's right. And Bruce got into

his race car and drove away. Right.

And that's the fundamental difference between. And this is what we.

In the Dark Knight quote that I brought forward. Right. If

you're going to go battle with anarchists, if you're going to go

battle with demons. Right. If you're going. To. Let's

go on Nietzsche for just a minute. If you're going to stare into the abyss

and allow the abyss to stare back through you, if you're going to actually do

that, not philosophically, but practically, well,

you have to get down in the dirt with these people. And again,

this is where, as when I'm thinking about the dark side of leadership,

and I guess maybe that's the sub. The subtext of this episode today,

Chesterton understood what the dark side of that was and what that

actually meant, as anybody does who understands what good

is. So in order to understand good, you have to understand

evil and you have to be willing to accept what evil is. And I think

a lot of people in our time play footsie with evil,

just like the Germans played footsie with the Russians about oil and natural gas for

years and years. And they were somehow magically shocked that Vladimir Putin invaded

Ukraine and their. Their natural gas supply got cut off. You were playing

footsie with him for 15 years. What did you. Who did you think you were

dealing with? Like, what are we talking about? But average people

don't. They're unwilling to accept

that there's that level of depravity

inside of people. And then here's the other thing they are

unwilling to accept. And maybe they should be unwilling to accept. I'm not saying

average people have to go this far, but you have to

be. You have to be willing to accept what it is that

it takes to actually root out that depravity. Right. And

we're under this, our impression in the west that good will win because

it's so easy on tv. The good guys always win. Yeah. That

it's really costless and Bloodless and doesn't involve actual

sacrifice. And that, you know, it's. It's.

It's quite astonishing. And in some ways, you could almost argue that that is

the way that we are being attacked

is essentially our own values used

to just do Jiu Jitsu us on us in a way.

Right. And it's. Yeah,

it's. It's the. The. I. I have. I have one.

One political maxim that, that, that I, I kind of

keep to, you know, in the back of my mind at all times. And it

goes like this. If someone says they want to kill you, believe them.

Right? Yeah. Right. It's very simple. They do want to kill you. They do

want to kill you. Yeah. Let me kill you. That's right. Yeah, they do. They're

not just expressing some cultural difference. No.

They want you dead. They want you dead. They want you dead. Yeah. And

actually, I, I have a very. I agree with that political

maxim and. And not only. And I go a step further.

Okay, well, I'll accommodate you, but I'm not gonna. Gonna

just. And it's interesting that you brought up Jiu Jitsu. I do Jiu Jitsu, Right.

We're doing Jiu Jitsu for many years. And one of the two

principles that's sort of involved in that hobby, such as it

was, were because I don't compete professionally. I have zero interest in doing that.

I like. I like challenging the professionals and giving them fits,

but I don't feel like it needs to go compete myself.

But what you find out in. I

learned a lot of lessons in Jiu Jitsu, and I always talk about at least

once on the show every episode because it's so. Been so impactful

and here we are. But you have to get

in close, and the enemy gets a vote.

And if you're afraid to. If you're afraid to get in close, and if you're

afraid that if you want it to all work out optimally

for yourself, you're foolish. Yeah. You're just

foolish. Right. So, like, I'll see.

This drives my wife crazy, but people will talk about.

And we talk about this in my Jiu Jitsu gym, but, like, my wife will

be like, oh, well, you know, this person over here, da, da, da, da, or

whatever, that person over there not. Could you take them? She doesn't ask you that

kind of way, but she's like, well, if things happen, like, what are you going

to do? Like, it doesn't. It doesn't matter. I'm not. I'm not worried

about what they are going to do. I'm not worried about the 250 pound guy

who's like 2% body fat. I'm not worried about what he's going to do. I'm

worried about what I'm going to do in that situation because he's going to get

a vote. That, by the way, in, in one of the things I love

about. I mean, you and I both love basketball, right? Yeah. In the NBA, I

think when an NBA player is playing at the top of his game, I don't

think he even sees the defense. Oh, I don't think he

doesn't matter what they're doing. No, it doesn't matter. It's. It's almost

part of the. And this is kind of like a less, you know, it's not,

you're not, you know, try to kill the other person. You're just trying to beat

them. But the. I think that's one of the most amazing

things when you see players get into that zone where I

don't think they're even seeing the other, other team. I don't even care,

you know. Right. It's called the. Right. It's called the.

I heard this term used. I think I'm using it correctly. Or it's called the

zone of proximal development. Right. Where, where.

Or, or I call it, I call it the flow zone. Right,

Right. So if I'm going with somebody and I'm not thinking and things are just

going,

Yeah. Oh, he just like made this thing suck for me on this joint. Well,

it doesn't matter because I'm going to do this thing over to here. Like I'm

thinking of. I was just in a role a few days ago. It is a

small anecdote. Just enrolled a few days ago with somebody who's significantly smaller than

me and female, but she's of a higher rank, so she's a real problem to

deal with. And so all of the natural things that I

would do, the natural advantages that I would have of size, of weight,

of speed or whatever, I have to put all those, I have to put all

those. I do have to put all those aside because otherwise it's not going to

be competitive for her. Right. And so we're going. And she did. She put this,

like, she put this. It doesn't matter what it's called. It's called a baseball choke.

But she put this choke on me and I'm watching this happen in real

time. Like I watched her put the hand in. I watched her sink it and

she's like trying to sink it and trying to sink it and try to sink

it. I'm thinking, well, this currently

sucks, but I could go over there

on that side of her. Right. So all I have to do is just survive

this amount of suck here to get to the other

side over there. Let me work my way over there.

I know. We're ripping all over the place. Yeah, we are ripping all over the

place. Do you want. Do you ever watch Seinfeld? Do you ever see the one?

Oh, my gosh. I am the biggest fan of Seinfeld ever. And yes,

I know. During the karate with the little children.

Children. He goes, jerry,

you. Jerry, fight the belt. You fight the belts.

I know. I love that episode. Oh, my gosh. It was so good. Oh, my

gosh. Yeah. And it's interesting. So, like, when he was doing that, when.

When that episode came on, I was actually involved in

taekwondo at the time. So I was. I was. I was. And oh, my God,

that got passed around. Oh, my God, that episode got passed around our gym. It

was ridiculous. It's a classic. Absolute classic.

I'm going to pull this back to Chesterton, because I know that's where you want

to go. What do you think Chesterton would have thought of the Batman

Chronicles?

I think Chesterton would have been disappointed because

for as much as the

conceptual ideas that we've weighed on Batman

put on Batman, the ways in which they work to defeat

nihilism, they aren't Christian. At the end of the

day. They're not. They don't. They don't uphold a Christian

ethic. They uphold strength. They uphold brutality.

Christian superhero. I think the closest that

you get. And you're asking, I'm a comic book guy. I've been a comic

book guy for a long, long time. Yeah, yeah, me too. I mean. Yeah,

yeah. Way back. I think the closest you get is Superman. And

the joke about Superman is it's. It's a Jesus archetype made by two Jewish

kids from Cleveland. That's right. Yeah. So.

But does. Does. Has there ever been a superhero that, like, professed

a belief in God? What about the. So

this was a little after my time, but wasn't there the watch.

Wasn't there, the Watcher? Wasn't he sort of godlike in his sort of, like, ability

to. Yes. So you're talking about Iwatu and the Watchers in.

In Marvel Comics. Yeah,

kind of. But comics have always been partially

because of the Jewish influence in comics. Partially. But also

partially because you're attracting artists and

creatives who tend to Be more anarchic. Not

religious types. Not religious types. Right. So they tend to shy away

from that. Also,

I think that if you have

a character and again, the closest that you get is truth, justice in the

American way with Superman, that's the closest you're going to get in

our denater time. That's the closest you're going to get. I feel like there's a

hole there that could be filled by someone who

wanted to create a character. Well, the challenges

in our time at the business level,

comic books don't make any money now. They just don't. They're. They're.

They're. What do you call it? They're either side things or they're part of a

side business or if you have them as an independent. And there are tons of

independent creators that are still making comics and digital, but digital

distribution, sort of. Not sort of digital distribution,

destroyed the comic book model basically. Then

you have the dynamic of bad artists. So we went

through in the mid 2000s when I jumped out of comics,

you could see art changing. So Marvel Comics,

once they got acquired by Disney, actually even before that, they

stopped accepting submissions from independent artists. So there was a

time in the 90s and I submitted to Marvel where if you were a good

enough artist, you could submit to Marvel and get picked up off the street. You

didn't have to go to a convention. You just sent in your samples.

I think was. Tom Brute was the editor in chief at the time of that.

Of that outfit. And you. You would have somebody look at your

samples, they would call back. They would just like if you submitted a

manuscript in writing. So they had gatekeepers, you could submit. And I

knew guys who submitted. There was a guy who worked at a printing company across

the street from me who I went and did some. Some art classes with him

and he taught me some stuff about drawing. He submitted to Marvel Comics, I don't

remember if he ever got accepted or not, but Marvel dc, then you had Image

came along, you know, Jim Lee, Mark Silvestri, Todd to Todd

McFarlane and Rob Liefeld, all those boys all came along and blew up

sort of the. The big two idea. But those guys

were all genuine artists. They had genuine chops. Even

Rob Liefeld, who I didn't particularly care for. I did not particularly care for his

art style compared to what happened in the mid-2000s with art

in comics. He was a frickin. He was a stud

that all collapsed, which allowed manga and

other influences to come into Western comic art.

And that just is totally manga. And the collapse of the

distribution system have totally ruined American comics. And then you have

a third factor in there, which is the Disney vacation of everything. So the second

Marvel sold to Disney,

all of their properties fell underneath the

mouse house. And no one in the mouse house. No

one is talking about God. No one.

Because why would they. They can, they could, they could do a theme park

without God, which is the whole point, by the way. Everything supports the theme parks,

which is what people don't really realize. Yeah. You do a billion dollar Avengers movies,

but you sell far more tickets to the, to the theme parks. The theme parks

are what drive that business. It's

amazing. Yeah. Still, I wonder if there's not

a. Not a niche there for someone. But the.

Because the

struggle of the religious

man seems. Or woman. I didn't mean to make it just

about men seems

really. Well, it seems like

fertile ground for a superhero. Right. Who struggle with,

you know, their. The morality of. First

of all, there's the, the struggle. You know, one of the things I always liked

about like X Men, for example, is, you know, just being different. Right. You're

just. It's sort of like you're the. You're the. Well, it went back to

every kid in high school who was like different. Right. And you

know, and then you say, well, what if you took that kid which is. Gave

him superpowers? I'm sure he would be fine.

I know what I would have done. Yeah. And that's. And that's

the Peter Parker Spider man. Much ass would have been kicked.

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's right. Well,

that's the, that's the Peter Parker Spider man archetype that Steve Ditko

and. And Jack Kirby and Stan Lee came up with

actually where Steve Ditko the Jack Kirby. But I mean,

I think you're right. I think there is a hole in the market there.

I don't know how you fill it. I don't know if comic books are the

correct plug for that hole.

Partially because to your point.

Well, not even to your point. I don't know if it's the correct plug

to fit that hole because I'm not quite sure sure that

there's a market there anymore among

individuals who are, who are in the, in the.

In the formative years where comics work.

So the formative years were like. My father gave me my first comic book when

I was. I never talked about this on the show before. You seen enough? Huh?

Or some odd episodes. I never talked about this before. Might as well talk about

it now. But. But my father Gave me my first comic when

I was eight years old.

Seven. Eight years old. It was a. It was a Spider man. I can't remember

which number. I'm sure it was illustrated by Todd McFarlane. I'm sure it was.

Or one of the guys that came in pre Todd McFarlane into the marvel. I

wish I had a copy of that freaking comic book. It'd be worth tons now.

But that was the first comic book that I ever got,

and I can tell you, I'm a Gen

Xer. So we were the last

generation that really experienced comic book culture as a

subculture of nerds and geeks and people

who, like, were doing something that was way off. Right,

exactly. Doing things that was way off. Those who are listening, I'm holding up my

hand as a proud member of the. The nerd and geek club. The Nerd and

Geek club, exactly. And what we saw in our generation,

in our 20s, our late teens and 20s, was the switchover over

and more women started coming in. Popular culture started coming in.

You know, I, I don't go to conventions, but

you see the cosplaying at conventions and more

and more normal people are showing up. And then of course, again, Marvel

gets Disney and starts putting out good movies. And

by good, I mean not the kind of trash you would have seen in the

80s. You actually started to put together movies that can actually be released. Like

the first time I saw Captain America and the first time I

watched Iron man, that first, like Marvel phase one movies, I thought,

holy hell, they're actually going to pull it off. They're actually going to do it.

Now the challenge is they actually did do it. And then of course, they drained

all the water out of the pool, because that's what you do with your Disney.

Sure, but, but with all of that,

I thought, I thought comics would at least run parallel to that. Nope,

it's all dead. So. So the formative years now of folks

are formed by the myths in the movies. Not the myths in

a 32 page or 16 page or 22 page flimsy

magazine. Plus, if you don't have distribution, how

are you going to get them into people's hands? Because part of the joy of

comics is you could go to the grocery and you experience this. You could go

to the drugstore, you could go to the grocery store. They were in the back

of the magazine rack. You didn't have dedicated shops. Like when I was a kid,

I had dedicated shops. I was part of that revolution. The shops are almost

all gone. Like, there's no dedicated Comic book. There's none. But there's

very few dedicated comic book shops still around that are actually

doing business and surviving. So it's like record

shops. I mean, there's a few around, and you hear people going

back to vinyl, but it's. It's a. It's a. It's. It's. It's

the crazy few. It's not. Yeah, well, vinyl sales crossed

a billion dollars a couple of weeks ago. Are you kidding me? I'm

kidding. That is good news, man. I love the idea of vinyl

coming up, because the commonality between those things was this. There was a

culture of it, right? You and I, if we had known each other as kids,

would have been sitting over comic books going, oh, man, look, you know, look at

this. Right? And the same thing with. With. With records, you would

listen to the records as with your friends,

you know, and, you know, for example, in this room

I'm sitting in, you don't do that anymore. In this room I'm sitting in are

three sets of headphones. You have headphones on your head. Right? Okay. I

will listen to music later by myself, you know,

and. But it used to be a very communal experience,

and you all sat. And the record itself, the

vinyl record and the sleeve that it came in was part of that

really cool experience. You know, I think you and I have talked about this before,

so we don't have to go too deeply into it. But, I mean, you know,

I remember sitting around the Sgt. Peppers album and going,

why is George's hand pointing to that particular piece

of text on the back where they printed the lyrics? You know, why is Paul

the one turned around? You know? You know, you debated all these things

endlessly, and there was. There was. There was a lot of. Lot of

friendship, and

I want to avoid the word culture, but it keeps coming. That came out of

it, and now it's all been sort of swept away.

But I'm really. I wonder maybe if some of it is

coming back. When you say that vinyl sales passed a billion dollars, maybe that's

a harbinger of good things to come. So

let's wrap up this episode. This is. Okay. All right, man. It was Thursday.

GK Chesterton, I'm going to ask you a couple questions here, Neil.

I think that. But I will say that. No, but I will say this. I'll

start my closing comments with this idea. I want to piggyback off of what you

just said. Sure. So one of the

very reason. One of the reasons I do this podcast for many reasons,

but a Big reason is I believe in the subversive

power of books. And

comic books are subversive. Don't get me wrong. So are kids, cartoons.

Oh, my God, the suppressiveness. And Looney Tunes is unbelievable. But.

But books at the end of the day travel across

time to people, right? So I read a book now

at. In my late 40s. That book travels across

time on my shelf with an idea in it. And

my kid, who's my youngest kid, who's now nine, 30 years from now, picks up

that book and he gets a totally different set of ideas, but it's still there.

The book is the most subversive document we've got.

And you talk about culture. Books, vinyl records,

and then the digital and podcasts, they become this

thing that connects people. Because at the end of the day,

we need mediums

to get across messages of restoration and

messages of rebuilding. And these subversive mediums

can do that, particularly if the dominant culture. To our point, on our show today,

this has been a running theme, particularly if our dominant culture is denatured

or has been deconstructed by people who

followed the logic of anarchism and now are done with it.

I think anarchism is a spent force. That doesn't mean that I don't think the

spirit is still there. That'll always be there. It's part of the human condition.

But I think the. I think the support

for it and the ideas of it are beginning a downward. A

downward spiral. And what is coming up, what is

ascending is rebuilding and restoration because we've

deconstructed enough. And that's one of the other reasons why I do this show. Because

we've deconstructed enough, we have to know how to build now. We have to figure

it out. Right. I love that

concept of ideas traveling through time. Oh,

and the book is. The book is the best technology we've ever created to have

that happen, it's genius.

So in the spirit of that, if my grandchild

20 years from now is listening to this podcast.

Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep. And read the

Lord of the Rings. And read the Lord of the Rings. That's right. Yes, that's

right. Not in that order.

Not in that order. What

should leaders, business leaders, civic leaders,

leaders who have managed to get to the end of the podcast with us, this

part here, you know, our wanderings.

What should they take from the man who was Thursday? What's the big lesson

to take from that? What can they apply to their leadership lives?

Oh, dear. I have to Answer this. Oh, yes. So this is, this is your,

this is, this is the penultimate question for the guest.

So I think you asked me this last time and I did never, never despair.

Right. Yeah, was my answer. That's, that's the message of, of the Lord of

the Rings. The message to me. And

I don't know if this will help a, you know,

a business leader deciding, you know, what to invest in next week or anything like

that, but generally is without God

there is only anarchy. And the, I think

Chesterton presented that in

a fun, I think he was having

fun in the man who Was Thursday. I

don't think he meant it to be taken all completely seriously,

but that things fall apart

quickly once you get away from, from God.

And you know, I'm not trying to offer that up

as business advice. I think that that's, but

you know, a good business is, is like a,

it's like a well lived life. You know, you, you want to

have a purpose and you want it to adhere to certain

rules. And I think ultimately

if you look for what

rules, you know, you're trying to make your business or

your life adhere to, I think.

Whatever your conception of God might be, I think looking there is your best, first

place to start, to start looking. I think as we were saying earlier,

you know, I said this to my daughter the other day and I realized it's

a long answer to your short question. But you know, if

you look to the Internet to find your morality

or your, your sense of right and wrong or even whether you should

invest in Tesla or not invest in Tesla, heaven

help you, man, because there is only anarchy out

there. You're not going to get your answer because it's,

because there's, that's the howling winds of chaos.

So you have to have that internal sense of,

you know, again, I'm trying to, I'm answering your question

in real time, so forgive me if I'm going on a bit, but you know,

one of the things that we have in business, for example, you and I have

this, my wife and I talk about this a lot, which is you're always,

you're hiring people, you're firing people, you're, you're, you're constantly, of course, it's,

it's really all about people in the end. And ultimately

usually when you're making a decision about a person, you're basing that

on kind of, I mean, yes, you can have the resume in

front of you and yes, you can say, oh, they went to 15 Ivy League

schools and they did this and they did that. But

ultimately it's really a gut decision really with people. And

there's, you know, there's something, what I, what I call basically your

spider sense, right, which basically says,

do I want to be in business with this person? And

most of. There's a few instances where I did not follow

that advice and I came to regret it. And off camera sometime

I will tell you that that's true from many years ago. So it's

nothing recent, nothing recent at all, decades back.

But there are many times where I did follow that advice and I found

generally it always, it always worked. But you know,

what we call spider sense or I

just had a feeling about someone I think is another way of

expressing something about their

really that there was something you had in common with them

that resonated. And

if you want to put a religious interpretation

on that, I don't think that's so

excellent. There you go, my friend. That's the best I can come up with.

That's. No, that's actually, that's actually very, very good. No, that's. That's

actually very, very good. I usually let the guest the have

the last word on that. So I want to thank Neil for

coming on our show today and talking with us about the man who Was Thursday

by GK Chesterton. Go out and pick up that book and come to your

own conclusions. And with that, well, we're

out.