A Conversation on How to Lead in a Post-Literate Work World

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Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and this

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is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books

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podcast, episode number

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200.

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That’s right. This is our penultimate, such as

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it were, 200th episode.

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Now, we’ve covered a lot of books on this show. We’ve had a lot of

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conversations with a lot of interesting people. Folks who

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have brought a lot of insight to you, our

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listener, and brought a lot of insight to me as a host.

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And today, we have a collection of guest co-hosts who

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are rejoining us for this 200th episode to

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discuss a topic that I think is very

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important in our time, a topic that I think is critical for

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all of us who are readers and who are leaders. And that

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is the topic of, well, literacy.

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What does it actually mean to be literate? What does it actually mean to

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have comprehension in a society that

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is rapidly becoming and transforming

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into a post-literate society?

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What does post-literate mean? Well, post-literate means that

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the average person fails to finish at least

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5 books in a year. Regardless of genre,

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regardless of topic, regardless of interest,

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fails to finish. What a post-literate culture

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means is that individuals have the ability

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to read words in a book, but they don’t have the attention spans in

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general, nor do they have the comprehension of what those words

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mean and the ability to bring those words

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and the meanings behind those words and the impact

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behind those words into their daily lives.

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This is going to impact all of us because quite frankly, we are coming

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off of and we are exiting the long 20th century, which

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was a century of literature. If you don’t believe

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me, think about this for a minute. Reader’s Digest

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condensed great books between the 1950s and the

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1970s, and they sold something like 30 to 50 million

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volumes of these condensed books. What that meant was

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people were actually interested not only in reading,

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but also appearing literate. And in a

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post-literate society, people aren’t really that concerned

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with appearing literate. They’re very much concerned,

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however, with having opinions about things that make them

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sound as if they have been or are

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literate. This is a challenge for leaders. This is a

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challenge for followers. This is a challenge for all of us,

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not just in terms of education, in terms of comprehension,

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but also in terms of civic leadership, in terms of who we vote for and

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how we vote. Now, we don’t tell

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people how to vote on this show, and we don’t tell people why

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to vote. We do encourage people to think about their

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civic engagement. And all civic engagement, I fundamentally believe,

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begins with literature. But what does that mean?

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And this is the question before our panel today. What does that mean in a

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post-literate society? So I have an august

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panel here, like I said, of several, several folks, and I would like to go

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through and have them all each introduce themselves. I have

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prepped them beforehand for what their introduction should look like. So you should

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be able to hear this on the audio and watch this on the video of

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this show. Thank you. I would encourage you to check all these folks

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out. I will have links to all of their websites and all their resources in

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my show notes that are below the player of this podcast upon which

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you are listening. And yes, I’m hoping today that this will be a

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wide-ranging conversation. So

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I am going to start off with sort of the panel introduction

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with the person who is directly to my

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left. Okay, I’m going to start with my upper left-hand side. side, and

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then he is going to pick the next person on his

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screen. So he needs to be looking at that right now. So the person to

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my left is Richard Messing. Richard’s going to go ahead and introduce

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himself, and then he’s going to pick the next person to introduce themselves,

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and we’ll go around the room. We’ll go around the panel that way and then

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get started with our conversation. Go ahead, Richard.

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My name is Richard Messing. I’m the founder and executive

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director of the World Ethics Organization. Uh, this is

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my third, uh, opportunity to be on this

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amazing podcast with Hassan Sorels. Uh,

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the first time we discussed a book called Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor

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Frankl. The second, uh, time we

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discussed the book called Leadership Lessons from the Five Books of

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Moses by Jonathan— Lord Jonathan, uh,

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Jonathan Sacks, who was the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom for

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22 years. and wrote 40 books himself.

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And then we’re going to be talking about— in the

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next one, which will be before the end of the year, is a book by

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Melanie Phillips, who’s a world-class journalist,

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about the decline of Western civilization

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and how to turn the decline around.

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The book is called The Builders’ Stone. Thank you very much,

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Hasan, for giving me this opportunity to participate with these amazing people today.

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And I’m sure this is going to be an amazing podcast.

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And the next person to introduce themselves,

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I select John Small.

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My name is John Hill, aka Small Mountain. I run a company

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called Adapted Growth. We are a sales training, coaching,

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recruiting consultancy. I’ve been a guest a

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couple of times. It was always thrilling to come back and

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kind of spar with Hasan over the ideas and things that we take from the

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books. Most recently we did Coriolanus. We’ve also done

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Duane Geordi’s Dream of Electric Sheep. And the first one I ever did with

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Hasan was Musashi, Book of the Five Rings, way back in the day. So

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excited to hop in with a bunch of other readers and hopefully get some good

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nuggets from my own, own to-be-read pile, which is massive and

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growing by the day. I

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pick, let’s go Tom Libby.

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Thanks, John. Hey, everybody, Tom Libby. I am the

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owner and CEO of a company called Smarketing Connect. We are a sales and marketing

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consulting firm. I also work on projects like Growth

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Graph and a couple others that kind of move around

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the sales and marketing atmosphere, stratosphere, I should say.

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I think it was funny because you asked us to mention the last book we

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reviewed with each other, but the last time you and I did the podcast, we

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didn’t review a book. We were doing Project Hail Mary and

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the massive impact of He-Man on the

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universe. But in fairness, we have also done

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books like The Good Earth from Pearl Buck and

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Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. We don’t always stick to the great books when

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it comes to

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Novels. Sometimes we will do some historic fiction and things like

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that that we tend to talk about, because that’s really the genre of reading that

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I prefer is historic fiction. But yeah, I’m

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happy to be here. I’m excited to kind of throw my 2 cents in here.

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As John mentioned, I’m not always right on the same page with Hasan, so sometimes

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it becomes very fun to debate these things. But

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I will pass it over to— who’s to my left is Brian, is

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the guy to my To my side here.

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Awesome. Hey, uh, so Brian Bagley, that’s my

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name. Uh, I do, um, lots of different things.

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Um, I was, uh, spent several years in military

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service, oiling management. Um,

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I was a pastor for a while. Um, latest gig is, uh,

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Uh, in financial services. But, uh, but, uh,

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man, some of the, some of the podcasts we’ve done, Hassan, uh,

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been mostly religious in nature, although we did a great one on

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The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That was a great, uh, great conversation.

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Uh, When the Man Comes Around by Douglas Wilson was a good one, uh,

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that I really enjoyed. Um, but there have been others, and again, just

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super grateful for the opportunity. Uh, and let’s go

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with Uh, Hannah Gaila.

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Hi everybody, it’s Hannah and it’s a

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pleasure to be here. Hi, Jesan, uh, good to see you again.

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We actually met fairly recently.

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I’ve been on different podcasts in different

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contexts with Hasan in the past, but the last one

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we discussed Dostoevsky Notes from the

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Underground, which was wonderful. And

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as you know, the conversation usually spans

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way over the actual topic. And

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I’m a big fan of Dostoevsky, hence the invite.

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And otherwise, in my actual life, I

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am a neurocoach and I’m a professor of

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business management. So I have a very unique

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skill set, and generally speaking,

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clients come to me when they’re high achieving and

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they don’t feel like their brain capacity can solve

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whatever holds them back. And that’s my specialty.

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And I’m very excited about today. I am

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deeply disturbed by the Numbers

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that you shared. I actually think that reading 5

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books is over the top considering where we are. I think

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that if people read 1 book, it would still make them

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illiterate in a way, but even that would

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be a success. The numbers are horrible when you look at

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how many people don’t read any book in a year.

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But I get ahead of myself here. I’m going to call

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Neil, uh, as the next guest.

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Uh, hi everybody, Neil Kalachofsky. Uh, I’m a,

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uh, I guess in my background and training I’m a physicist.

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Um, and, uh, Hassan and I have,

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um, know each other professionally, um, through

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Growth Craft, but I’ve also been a guest on his podcast where we

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talked about G.K. Chesterton and then had a, uh, a

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journey that touched on J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and

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Pink Floyd. And that was a lot of fun to kind of throw all that

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into a single podcast. And finally,

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and the irony of this is not lost on me, I am

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about to publish my first book.

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Given that we’re discussing the death of literature in America,

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but That’s me. And

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DeRolo, I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly. DeRolo Nixon, you’re next,

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sir.

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Can y’all hear me or no?

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Excellent. So this is DeRolo Nixon Jr. I’m an attorney.

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It’s great to be back. Thank you, Hasan. Welcome to all of you.

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The last episode I was on was episode 196 on

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the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers. So I’m a I’m a

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federal trial lawyer, so it may not be ironic

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that Hasan and I like to talk about our country’s founding documents a lot,

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as well as the 18th

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century’s version of podcasts, right? Because

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that’s what they were, right? A great media campaign to make sure that the

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Constitution passed because we were all done with those articles. So

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happy to be here. Excited to talk about

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I mean, I don’t think literature is gonna die. And I’m sure

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we will talk about its elite status anyway, but it certainly doesn’t bode

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well for freedom and for democracy to have an illiterate population.

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That’s actually a recipe for tyranny. So

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great to be here.

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Let’s see, when I look I don’t

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see— oh, yes, I do. So

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let’s go with Dr. Qazi. Hey,

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everyone. My name is Momen Qazi. Thank you, Darrell. I

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am a professor of English at Tarleton State University. I

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have a degree in theology as well and a radio, TV, film degree.

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I do a weekly radio show called The Beatles and Beyond. So I really

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like the references to like Pink Floyd and so forth.

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I’ve done a few podcasts with Hasan. I met him

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in Granbury where he was the founder of

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the Granbury Jazz Fest. And so we know each other,

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you know, because of music and literacy. And so

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those connections are strong. I’ve done a podcast with

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Hasan regarding Joseph Conrad’s Heart of

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Darkness, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

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And then fast forward way into the—

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actually, go back to the beginning before Joseph Conrad.

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We went to Sir Alfred, Lord Tennyson and talked

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about his poem, great poem, Ulysses.

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And so we’ve had some great discussions. I really enjoy

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Hyesung’s take on things. And I like, again, I think

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John mentioned that or maybe others as well about kind

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of bringing a little friction, you know, and

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pushback, and but all in a spirit of

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great dialogue and discussion. And I thoroughly

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love this podcast. So I’m happy to be part of the

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200th. It’s awesome, you know. So thank you

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so much. And I’m looking forward to maybe

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mentioning later on

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Because I teach at Tarleton State.

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Every semester I teach The Odyssey. This morning in my

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classroom, one of my students, I kind of— she almost had a boastful

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tone, said, I’ve never finished a book in my life. And I’m like,

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oh, so hopefully we’ll change that this semester. But

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yeah, it’s a challenging time to be alive.

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Thank you, Ehsan.

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To my left, both, both have spoken, so I’m gonna pick on—

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I think Kristin Horn is someone I’ve not, not heard from yet.

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That’s right. I’m, I’m here. Thank you. I

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apologize if you guys hear the noise. I’ve got both my AC on and

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2 toddlers in the room with me, so hopefully my mic is doing its job.

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But I’m Kristin Horn. I am a classically trained

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musician, but I’m also an author and Like Neil, I’m also— I think it was

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Neil— I’m also getting ready to publish a book, um, hopefully

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in the same vein, following in the, uh, tradition of Tolkien.

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Um, so I write fantasy. Um, that’s my favorite. Uh,

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in the past I have been on, uh, Jesan’s podcast. We did Ender’s

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Game first. Uh, that was a blast. Um, we’ve done Shakespeare’s sonnets.

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We did Count of Monte Cristo a couple of times, and we still didn’t get

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through it, all of it. I think the last one I was on was Mere

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Christianity, which was an amazing discussion. And then the next one I’m uh,

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on is actually Children of Huron towards the end of this year. Uh, very

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excited about that. Um, and yeah, as a prospective

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author/writer, it’s, it’s

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an interesting— that the article that he sent from The Atlantic was just

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thrilling to read but also incredibly depressing. It was like, okay, what do we do?

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What do we do about this? Especially as a mother of 2 small children who

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thankfully I can honestly say love to read. So

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Yep, that’s me.

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And last but not least, I believe— I’m the one who forgot.

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I’m so sorry. I’ve been sitting here every time. David, I think you’re—

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David, we’ll wrap it up with you. All right. I’ll be the

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caboose. My name is David Baumrucker. I’m a practicing psychotherapist stepping into

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my 8th year. I run my practice with my wife.

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Before I even did that, I worked as a kind of a behaviorist. We did

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a lot of clinical research, so studying people’s behavior. And we talk about reading

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and focus. One stat that I just came across the other day that blew my

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mind was when people are on social media,

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1.7 seconds is the amount of time that people take before

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to qualify if they’re going to look at something longer or not. Doesn’t

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matter what kind of content. I found that to be— kind of jarred me a

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little bit. I imagine I have the privilege to be on several

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different podcasts with Hasan. I did Crime and Punishment, and then we did Orwell.

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I did a mashup. I cannot remember exactly which episode the last one

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was. Um, But, you know, and in terms of reading,

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I’ve actually not been reading for myself, but I’ve been reading a whole bunch of

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children’s books because we just had my first son. And so it’s been a totally

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different lens for me, kind of diving into the world of what

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that is and making sure that that’s appropriate for my son. But I’m

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excited to be here. Sometimes I’m aligned. Again, I think a lot of people said

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this really well. Sometimes I’m very much aligned. Sometimes I’m in

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a different planet or over there and with the conversation. So I look

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forward to this conversation, talking with all of you.

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All right. Excellent. Excellent. Very good. We went around the horn

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there. Great introductions. Folks will be able to,

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to, to keep track and to, to monitor

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who’s talking there. And so we’re gonna

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follow the bouncing ball a little bit. If you’re listening on audio, this will probably

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be a little bit of an easier thing for you to watch, a little bit

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of easier conversation for you to pick up on video. I would encourage you to

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watch the video of this. It will be on our YouTube channel. So go ahead

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and check that out. But if you’re following the audio, we’re, we’re And we’re gonna

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try to, we’re gonna try to keep this as, as clean as possible.

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So let’s open up the door here because

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many of us are, are, you know, working

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in spaces and working in places where

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reading is fundamental to how we got to where it is that we are,

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right? Whether that’s reading in psychotherapy research, whether that’s reading in

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ethics, whether that’s even reading and

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understanding music theory or the law. Reading got us to

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where we are today. And, uh, I don’t want to pick on Momen’s

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student at all. However, I do believe

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that not only is she the canary in the coal mine, her attitude

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is the coal mine itself. We’re long past the canary in the coal mine

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idea. We’re now probably 4 miles deep and we

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keep digging deeper. And so I I think the question

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before us, and anybody on the panel can jump in to start.

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And again, keep your, keep your comments tight today. We have a lot of people

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here and a lot of different ideas. And as folks are talking, of course, take

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notes. And as you hear things, you know, that you want to respond to, please,

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please feel free to do so. But let’s start with this idea.

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Well, we’ll just jump in. You know me. I’m just going to go

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for it, right? I’m going to go for the jugular. Here we go.

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If we no longer believe that reading is fundamental, which we say we

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do, but our behavior, our cultural behavior says we don’t.

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If we no longer believe that reading is fundamental, okay,

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what is a leader to do? How does a leader lead if

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reading is no longer fundamental? And by the way, I’m not talking about reading fiction.

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Let’s start with the lowest-level thing. Let’s start with the safety

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manual at work so you don’t spill

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chemicals on yourself. Or, you know, you don’t— to

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Neil’s career, you don’t wind up opening

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up a black hole to like Alpha Centauri and sucking the entire Earth in because

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you didn’t read the safety manual. Okay?

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How do we lead people? How do we manage

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folks in our organizations and in our businesses

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If reading is not fundamental? I kick this out

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to anyone. Go ahead and start.

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Sure, let’s do it. So

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I’ve thought a lot about this, and I find myself in this space a lot

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with clients. My take is this. I

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think that the world we’re going into is going to be prompt-based.

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And I think that The age of the self-directed learner is over. And

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so if leaders are going to lead, the leader needs to find a way to

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meet the people, or the people they’re going to lead where they are, not where

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we wish they would be. And so this idea of prompt-based learning,

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you see it everywhere. You see it with how our social media is

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tuned up. You see how people almost find themselves like a deer

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in the headlights when they are asked to do something intuitive. Yet the

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second you start to give them the kind of the what’s next prompt, what’s next,

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and you kind of cue them in, I don’t get it. I’m

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not going to get into where I think that all comes from because I think

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it’s a longer discussion. But I think when we think about what we’re going to

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need to do as leaders, I think we have to fundamentally

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take some time to really look at going, how do I

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invite them into a process that I already have an intimate connection with?

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Because I need to prompt them into the engagement. Because I think it’s the

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engagement itself that’s under attack. with people not reading

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anymore. Because again, the attention economy has made it so that everybody

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essentially is looking voyeuristically and they’re not actually engaging.

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So we need to find something that actually pulls them out of that space. We

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need to invite them with some kind of prompt to engage with us as the

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leader.

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Anybody can jump in. Thoughts on that?

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Uh, yeah, I, um,

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but I just want to, uh, say that,

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you know, when we read something, what’s actually happening

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is the author has something in his mind

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that he wants to transmit into the minds of others.

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So he puts it down on paper, and so that when people read it,

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hopefully what the author has in his mind will end up the

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same way in other people’s minds. And so

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that’s actually what’s going on with reading.

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It’s a way of

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communicating precisely what you want

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other people to understand about what’s going on with you.

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And so therefore, if people just stop reading,

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What’s gonna happen is you’re gonna have to actually just verbally

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tell people what’s going on in your mind and explain it to them,

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explain it to them in detail, and have a back and forth interaction with

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them until you’re convinced they understand what’s going on in your mind, that they

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have the same thing in their mind that you have in your mind. So I

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don’t— I think that

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that’s what’s going to

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happen. It’s gonna— I mean, it happens this way anyway. And so if

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people just stop reading, and people are gonna stop writing, and instead

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we’re gonna be communicating with each other more, more that way.

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I personally don’t think there’s anything new under the sun.

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The— what writing and reading enabled us to

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do is to be able to put our thoughts

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down on paper And then we could make copies of

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that paper, make copies of what’s in our mind, many

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copies, and then distribute it to massive numbers of people.

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That’s the— that was what the invention

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of the printing press and writing actually enabled us to do.

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So we can influence many, many people in a

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very leveraged way. We can scale it. And so I

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think that just the scaling is going to be different. Then

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instead of books, it’s going to be some other mode.

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Hannah, go ahead. All right. So my

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take is a little

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different. I do agree with what Richard was saying

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about sort of, look, books are

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a medium. It’s a tool how we

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communicate, right? Okay, fine, that has changed over

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the years, but that led me to bring up Marshall

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McLuhan’s idea that the medium is the message,

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right? So we need to,

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back to David’s point, remember that the medium

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shapes and informs the

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idea that is being communicated. So

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When the writer has time and struggles with

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finding the right words and, you know, like pours his heart into

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or her heart into the content and then the reader has the

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time to sort of wrestle with those ideas,

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etc., etc. That no longer seems to be the case.

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We are in a TikTok, you know, what was

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it, 1.17 seconds timeframes,

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et cetera, et cetera. Your original question was,

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what is the leader to do? And to me,

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it leads to 2 outcomes. One,

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to echo what David was saying, you actually need to meet

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people where they are. And if your

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millennial, you know, or even Gen

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X workforce, let alone the Gen Z,

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is all about 1.17 seconds

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attention span, you have to get your messages

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to them and you have to communicate with them in a way that they will

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respond to. And to me, that means that it

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will lead to the outcome of

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storytelling becoming even more important

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than ever before. That’s number one. And number two,

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you better make sure that you are crystal

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clear in your message. You don’t have time. You

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have to be really, really crisp in your thinking.

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Messy thinking, messy writing. You have to be very, very

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good at communicating. And also what that

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means then as a consequence is those who

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actually hone those skills and can

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communicate well, quickly, short, you

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know, content will get ahead of the

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PAG who’s just consuming. So that’s, that’s my

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opening salvo. All right, Momen, you’re, you’re

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next. Yeah, thank you. So one of the things that

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I like to open up a semester with at the university is to

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introduce Plato’s introduction of Socrates

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in Apology. And one of the things that he says, and it’s kind

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of a well-known quote, and it’s the idea of the

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unexamined life not being worth living. And so what

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I want to do with my students is just basically say, hey, look,

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lots of different tribes, clans,

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cultures, groups have already

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prepackaged because they’ve already preexamined

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lots of these answers that we’re all thinking about. Who am I? Where am

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I from? Who are we? What is our purpose? And so on and so forth.

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But it’s about who— where are you

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going to get those answers? And if you want, you can

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not ever read anything, and you’ll just— you can just go out and

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accept any prepackaged

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answer that are very much part of

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our cultural discourse. Or maybe you can come up with some

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of your own ideas, but I think doing that requires some

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reading and some thinking and examining.

452
00:29:20,154 –> 00:29:23,911
And so that’s just something I wanted to add into it is, is it as

453
00:29:24,024 –> 00:29:27,605
a leader, do we want to encourage our constituency

454
00:29:27,717 –> 00:29:31,169
to also be a leader by, by going out and

455
00:29:31,169 –> 00:29:34,445
perhaps thinking about the packaging that we’re— that they’re

456
00:29:34,798 –> 00:29:38,282
accepting or creating in their own lives? Or are they going to go out and

457
00:29:38,378 –> 00:29:42,171
just accept the prepackage? Tom,

458
00:29:42,365 –> 00:29:46,095
go ahead. I just wanted to bring it back a little bit into

459
00:29:46,095 –> 00:29:49,825
the actual original question where Hasan was saying, what is the leader to do that,

460
00:29:50,019 –> 00:29:53,773
you know, with this safety manual that we’re talking that we

461
00:29:53,822 –> 00:29:57,590
originally came up with? And I, there’s a small piece of

462
00:29:57,590 –> 00:30:01,306
me that says, you either read it or you don’t have a

463
00:30:01,306 –> 00:30:04,049
job. I mean, there is a certain point where we just have to put our

464
00:30:04,049 –> 00:30:07,458
foot down, right? And say, There are like,

465
00:30:08,004 –> 00:30:11,667
like consequences to actions. And if the action is to not

466
00:30:11,699 –> 00:30:14,848
read a safety manual, what are we talking about here? Like

467
00:30:15,153 –> 00:30:18,944
the subject of this podcast we were all getting on originally, like when we were

468
00:30:18,944 –> 00:30:22,720
talking about like, and I know you guys started kind of dipping into the,

469
00:30:23,025 –> 00:30:26,816
like, you know, is the post-literature for leaders going

470
00:30:26,816 –> 00:30:30,158
to be a problem? And I agree with all that, sort of, sure. But the

471
00:30:30,190 –> 00:30:33,949
prompt, the initial question of the safety manual. Yeah. There’s a piece of me

472
00:30:33,965 –> 00:30:37,530
that— listen, I spent 10 years in the kitchen, and if I

473
00:30:37,643 –> 00:30:40,084
gave somebody a safety manual about what to do and what not to do in

474
00:30:40,084 –> 00:30:43,183
a kitchen and they didn’t read it, they’re not working in my kitchen. I don’t

475
00:30:43,183 –> 00:30:46,122
care what their attention span is, and I don’t care if it’s 5 seconds or

476
00:30:46,411 –> 00:30:49,800
5/10 of a second, right? So I think just kind of putting into

477
00:30:49,848 –> 00:30:53,446
perspective the prompt that was given to us, I think we’re going

478
00:30:53,478 –> 00:30:56,609
beyond it real quickly, and I just want to make sure that I just kind

479
00:30:56,609 –> 00:30:59,805
of threw my 2 cents in there. If it is specifically about a safety manual,

480
00:31:00,048 –> 00:31:02,823
I don’t care what their attention span is. They’re reading it or they’re not having

481
00:31:02,823 –> 00:31:05,386
a job with me. I just want to throw that in there.

482
00:31:06,822 –> 00:31:10,329
All right, Jon, go ahead. I mean, to

483
00:31:10,361 –> 00:31:13,740
Tom’s point, like, there is some ground to where I’m like,

484
00:31:14,190 –> 00:31:17,668
yeah, right? Like, then there’s the other

485
00:31:17,668 –> 00:31:21,421
stuff, right? Like, I mean, a safety manual, sure, there’s no reason. Now,

486
00:31:22,033 –> 00:31:25,832
I do think that I like trying to meet people where they are,

487
00:31:25,913 –> 00:31:29,059
but I think the bigger part of that is that if you’re a leader, Like

488
00:31:29,188 –> 00:31:33,038
you can’t just talk about being someone who’s well-read. You need to be the

489
00:31:33,038 –> 00:31:36,856
example, right? Like being someone who reads a lot and talking about it

490
00:31:36,904 –> 00:31:40,385
with all of my clients and everything, I’ve gotten people to be more

491
00:31:40,497 –> 00:31:44,187
curious about it, right? But for me, it goes back to like

492
00:31:44,347 –> 00:31:46,834
being a little kid. I was, I was a reader then and I would go

493
00:31:46,914 –> 00:31:50,684
ask my mom like, what does this word mean? And sometimes she didn’t

494
00:31:50,684 –> 00:31:53,411
know the answer, but she would just say, well, if you go look it up,

495
00:31:53,668 –> 00:31:56,733
you will then remember it. If I just give it to you, you’re not going

496
00:31:56,733 –> 00:32:00,474
to remember it. And then fast forwarding to whenever I started to like actually take

497
00:32:00,474 –> 00:32:04,183
work seriously and I started reading all these books about sales and leadership and

498
00:32:04,183 –> 00:32:07,812
personal development, I was working with a business partner and he had this

499
00:32:07,876 –> 00:32:10,237
line. He goes, man, I wish all these business books were

500
00:32:10,847 –> 00:32:13,946
1/3 as long as they are because

501
00:32:14,620 –> 00:32:17,992
2/3 of it are like, here’s the stories about why you should trust us. And

502
00:32:17,992 –> 00:32:21,572
we would have this argument that if it didn’t have that Those case studies,

503
00:32:21,684 –> 00:32:25,422
those ideas in there, no one would learn anything from these

504
00:32:25,535 –> 00:32:29,305
books, right? So it was like this very interesting point we would talk about all

505
00:32:29,305 –> 00:32:32,369
the time that he wants the learning, but he doesn’t actually want to go through

506
00:32:32,530 –> 00:32:36,044
the process to learn it. He just wants it to be like, like a Matrix

507
00:32:36,044 –> 00:32:38,996
download. And all of a sudden he can fly a helicopter because his eyes fluttered

508
00:32:38,996 –> 00:32:42,365
really quickly. And unfortunately, like, that’s not it. But I do think,

509
00:32:42,862 –> 00:32:45,894
I do think that if you set the example, like if you talk about what

510
00:32:45,894 –> 00:32:48,961
you’re reading, If you talk about being in book club, if you talk about challenging

511
00:32:48,961 –> 00:32:52,782
yourself, upskilling yourself, you can be the example that other

512
00:32:52,815 –> 00:32:55,930
people can do too. I think that the hollow leadership of do

513
00:32:56,732 –> 00:32:59,414
what I say, not as I do is going to lead to a lot of

514
00:32:59,414 –> 00:33:03,203
people in very uncomfortable depths. And then they have

515
00:33:03,235 –> 00:33:06,655
to pass all the knowledge verbally. And we all know how bad that can be

516
00:33:06,704 –> 00:33:10,525
because most of— like, there’s a reason why the written word is

517
00:33:10,637 –> 00:33:14,433
better at passing down knowledge. than the verbal word is, because

518
00:33:14,433 –> 00:33:17,069
we’re not really great at it overall.

519
00:33:18,525 –> 00:33:20,546
So. Brian Bagley, you’re up.

520
00:33:27,439 –> 00:33:29,780
Sorry, there’s been so many great comments.

521
00:33:31,463 –> 00:33:35,254
One, just right off the bat, Richard, just really something you said

522
00:33:35,270 –> 00:33:39,050
really resonated with me was that That the, the

523
00:33:39,436 –> 00:33:42,544
book is an author. It’s an author having a conversation. And

524
00:33:43,333 –> 00:33:46,891
so many of the, the great books

525
00:33:47,084 –> 00:33:49,414
are just full of wisdom and, and

526
00:33:51,940 –> 00:33:55,372
they’ve, they’ve already faced many of the challenges that we

527
00:33:55,502 –> 00:33:59,300
currently face. And by just shutting that off and saying,

528
00:33:59,478 –> 00:34:03,277
we’re just— I’m not going to read this particular book or whatever,

529
00:34:03,293 –> 00:34:06,286
I’m just not going to read books. To me, as a,

530
00:34:07,152 –> 00:34:10,984
as someone who leads other people, what, what that does to

531
00:34:10,984 –> 00:34:14,737
me is a couple of things. Number one, I,

532
00:34:15,812 –> 00:34:19,468
I need to budget for the fact that if, if most of the people that

533
00:34:19,468 –> 00:34:23,140
I’m leading are getting everything from reels on TikTok or Facebook

534
00:34:23,205 –> 00:34:26,685
or whatnot, I need to budget for

535
00:34:26,813 –> 00:34:30,662
manipulation. I just got to budget for that, that they’re

536
00:34:30,662 –> 00:34:33,516
not getting the whole story, that there’s going to be some— we need to have

537
00:34:33,548 –> 00:34:36,883
longer conversations. And,

538
00:34:37,796 –> 00:34:41,610
and then, you know, and be aware of, of the, of what those messages

539
00:34:41,866 –> 00:34:45,712
could be and just ask great— be, be better at

540
00:34:45,793 –> 00:34:49,430
asking questions. Follow-up questions. If someone says something,

541
00:34:49,558 –> 00:34:53,260
where did that come from? Help me understand that. Can you, can you

542
00:34:53,260 –> 00:34:56,738
draw that out for me? Where— just get them to

543
00:34:56,850 –> 00:35:00,023
talk and think about what they just said. Uh.

544
00:35:00,777 –> 00:35:04,340
Is, is really helpful. I have 3 college-age

545
00:35:04,340 –> 00:35:08,176
kids at the moment, and, and we have a lot

546
00:35:08,176 –> 00:35:11,997
of great conversations over the phone about things that have been said by their friends,

547
00:35:12,029 –> 00:35:15,688
what they saw online, or some, some podcasts. You know, there have been

548
00:35:15,721 –> 00:35:19,236
times in history where, you know, we didn’t have a lot of books.

549
00:35:19,412 –> 00:35:23,008
Okay. I mean, we, all we had was oral traditions. And, you know,

550
00:35:23,586 –> 00:35:27,326
I feel like we’re in a moment where we’ve never had more access to

551
00:35:27,326 –> 00:35:30,729
more information. And yet we’re back to the oral tradition, long-form

552
00:35:30,729 –> 00:35:34,467
podcasts. You know, great storytelling audiobooks,

553
00:35:34,483 –> 00:35:38,214
which is great. All of that’s wonderful. But I think we just have to

554
00:35:38,262 –> 00:35:41,982
realize the moment that we’re in and, and, and, and

555
00:35:42,015 –> 00:35:44,405
see the challenges that we’re up against and budget for it.

556
00:35:47,868 –> 00:35:51,642
All right, David, you’re up, and then Richard, and then DeRolo. Go ahead,

557
00:35:51,658 –> 00:35:54,603
David. Yeah, these are great, great reflections.

558
00:35:55,671 –> 00:35:58,000
I think the question that came to my mind was, what do we do when

559
00:35:58,097 –> 00:36:01,511
common sense is no longer common? And when we’re talking about what leaders do,

560
00:36:02,237 –> 00:36:05,862
what we can do in a post-literate society, I think

561
00:36:05,862 –> 00:36:09,038
we need to just pause. And this is my lens, is there’s a generational

562
00:36:09,070 –> 00:36:12,599
tribalism and Gen Z is winning the generational tribalism.

563
00:36:13,000 –> 00:36:16,480
We can argue all day that they’re not, but they are because they control

564
00:36:16,609 –> 00:36:20,298
social media and they control the internet. And when we think about what’s

565
00:36:20,298 –> 00:36:23,362
happening, we have to pay attention to who are the kings of that social tribe.

566
00:36:24,212 –> 00:36:27,500
And if we are going to be leaders and we are inevitably going to have

567
00:36:27,500 –> 00:36:31,015
to hire in people from a lower From a different generation,

568
00:36:31,850 –> 00:36:34,661
then one of the things we have to be mindful of is going, if we

569
00:36:34,661 –> 00:36:38,243
do not do anything that has any kind of affiliation, any

570
00:36:38,275 –> 00:36:41,874
kind of reflection to the

571
00:36:41,970 –> 00:36:45,632
dominant tribe, the dominant energy of the time, then

572
00:36:46,146 –> 00:36:49,808
we— it feels, it feels

573
00:36:49,841 –> 00:36:53,664
like it’s nothing more than just a conversation with ourselves

574
00:36:53,680 –> 00:36:57,228
then. Because if For me, the

575
00:36:57,228 –> 00:37:00,952
question you were saying in the beginning, Hassan, was what are leaders to do in

576
00:37:00,984 –> 00:37:04,323
a post-literate world? Adapt. It’s adapt or die.

577
00:37:04,933 –> 00:37:08,224
And I get the point where we have to draw a line. I fundamentally get

578
00:37:08,224 –> 00:37:11,755
that. But I go back to what I said earlier. Common sense isn’t

579
00:37:11,755 –> 00:37:15,527
common anymore. So this idea that we’re going to draw a

580
00:37:15,527 –> 00:37:19,315
line on the basis of what? And are we going to not

581
00:37:19,524 –> 00:37:22,590
have any understanding of, like, what’s the middle ground? I guess what I’m trying to

582
00:37:22,590 –> 00:37:25,303
get is, we have to meet people at a certain point, and we have to

583
00:37:25,303 –> 00:37:29,060
have an expectation, and I think what we’re trying to do in this conversation is

584
00:37:29,092 –> 00:37:32,930
trying to kind of crowd around and create a centralized

585
00:37:32,930 –> 00:37:36,093
arena. Like we’re trying to form an arena in this conversation about what we do.

586
00:37:36,157 –> 00:37:39,754
That’s my takeaway, but I’ll leave it there. I mean, that’s just— I think there’s

587
00:37:39,754 –> 00:37:42,756
been some great reflections, but I fundamentally think that

588
00:37:43,864 –> 00:37:47,541
we’re up against a social hierarchy situation here, and the

589
00:37:47,541 –> 00:37:51,095
hierarchies are governed by generation, like the

590
00:37:51,095 –> 00:37:54,878
tribalism of each generation. And in my opinion, just from talking to

591
00:37:54,878 –> 00:37:58,308
people for thousands of hours, Gen Z is winning hands down.

592
00:38:01,148 –> 00:38:04,529
All right, Richard, go ahead. You’re up, and then DiRollo, and then Hannah.

593
00:38:05,430 –> 00:38:09,150
I’d like to suggest that the greatest

594
00:38:09,279 –> 00:38:11,437
leaders are the greatest teachers.

595
00:38:13,162 –> 00:38:16,973
In the Jewish tradition, that’s definitely the case. the

596
00:38:17,037 –> 00:38:20,306
great rabbis were just teaching people. That’s what they were doing.

597
00:38:20,659 –> 00:38:24,344
They were just teaching all the time. Moses said to the

598
00:38:24,344 –> 00:38:28,173
Jewish people when they were about to come out of— when they

599
00:38:28,173 –> 00:38:31,618
came out of slavery, out of Egypt, teach your

600
00:38:31,634 –> 00:38:35,384
children what happened here. Teach them. And

601
00:38:35,480 –> 00:38:38,909
so education has always been the foundation

602
00:38:39,326 –> 00:38:42,578
of the Jewish people. And so, but it’s very

603
00:38:42,690 –> 00:38:46,476
interesting You know, if we end up in a culture

604
00:38:46,476 –> 00:38:50,191
where people stop reading, great leaders are gonna have to

605
00:38:50,223 –> 00:38:53,588
teach people what they’re not learning through reading.

606
00:38:54,493 –> 00:38:57,308
So if you have a safety manual that people aren’t gonna read,

607
00:38:58,969 –> 00:39:01,204
if you’re a leader, you better teach people how to be safe.

608
00:39:03,216 –> 00:39:07,034
The other thing that’s interesting that— who was

609
00:39:07,148 –> 00:39:10,852
it? Yeah. Mauman, you

610
00:39:10,852 –> 00:39:14,367
mentioned Socrates. Socrates, isn’t it interesting

611
00:39:14,945 –> 00:39:18,702
that he was one of the greatest leaders that ever lived, but yet

612
00:39:18,959 –> 00:39:22,218
he didn’t write anything? It was all through

613
00:39:22,491 –> 00:39:26,038
conversation. He taught, he was constantly teaching,

614
00:39:26,103 –> 00:39:29,747
constantly teaching through conversation. And so I think

615
00:39:30,277 –> 00:39:34,001
that’s the greatest leaders are going to

616
00:39:34,065 –> 00:39:37,912
be, have to be great teachers. So I’ll

617
00:39:37,912 –> 00:39:41,450
leave it, I’ll leave it there. And yet we know Socrates through the one who

618
00:39:41,466 –> 00:39:45,053
wrote, and that was Plato, his student. Yeah, right, right, exactly.

619
00:39:46,340 –> 00:39:47,395
All right, DeRolo, go ahead.

620
00:39:50,840 –> 00:39:54,309
Oh, hear me? Perfect. So you can argue,

621
00:39:54,987 –> 00:39:58,828
Richard, that we only know of Socrates through the writing of

622
00:39:58,925 –> 00:40:02,731
Plato. And of course, one would wonder, you know, would we know

623
00:40:03,440 –> 00:40:06,682
Moses without, you know, the Torah being written,

624
00:40:07,179 –> 00:40:10,801
right? Um, but that’s, that’s just a

625
00:40:10,801 –> 00:40:14,584
response to what you were just saying. Uh, and I, I find it, um, a

626
00:40:14,648 –> 00:40:18,495
powerful insight that teaching and leadership go hand

627
00:40:18,495 –> 00:40:21,492
in hand, that one requires the other, that teachers, uh,

628
00:40:22,085 –> 00:40:25,708
at least from the 1950s to the 1970s in America,

629
00:40:25,852 –> 00:40:29,330
formed, uh, like a core of, of some of the most

630
00:40:29,378 –> 00:40:32,969
powerful leaders in America. And thus it’s fitting that as

631
00:40:33,322 –> 00:40:36,711
public education at least began to disintegrate from that point forward,

632
00:40:37,825 –> 00:40:41,537
that leadership moved elsewhere. But

633
00:40:41,537 –> 00:40:44,331
this is where I wanted to start. Why read at all?

634
00:40:46,317 –> 00:40:50,133
When I think of a manual, say for example, to

635
00:40:50,213 –> 00:40:53,578
tell me how to make the tech of this laptop work so I can be

636
00:40:53,578 –> 00:40:56,895
heard, I don’t want to read anything. I want a video.

637
00:40:57,700 –> 00:41:01,272
And I was born in the ’70s. I want a video that shows

638
00:41:01,368 –> 00:41:04,900
me how to do this thing that I don’t like that is important

639
00:41:05,141 –> 00:41:08,672
so that I don’t have to think, to read, to figure it out.

640
00:41:09,491 –> 00:41:12,862
Now let’s go to the other end of the scale. Okay.

641
00:41:13,327 –> 00:41:17,116
How do you learn how to do a federal trial without doing the

642
00:41:17,116 –> 00:41:20,888
trial yourself? You can read an excellent work about how to do

643
00:41:20,888 –> 00:41:24,660
trials and the various submissions you have to do, the various

644
00:41:24,660 –> 00:41:28,079
briefs. You can read copies of the briefs. That’s all great. It’s all important.

645
00:41:28,433 –> 00:41:32,177
But it’s also important to watch a video of a federal trial because then

646
00:41:32,354 –> 00:41:36,131
all of a sudden certain insights click and you realize this thing that I

647
00:41:36,131 –> 00:41:39,887
thought was important is irrelevant. And this other piece that I did not

648
00:41:40,000 –> 00:41:43,810
think was important, it’s actually important. And so,

649
00:41:45,811 –> 00:41:49,137
you know, I can— I mean, I’m a published

650
00:41:49,201 –> 00:41:52,978
author. I have a book I’m working on, a book I finished in

651
00:41:53,011 –> 00:41:56,147
December, a book I published in November of 2020,

652
00:41:56,678 –> 00:42:00,204
naturally about President Trump a week before the

653
00:42:00,253 –> 00:42:02,732
2020 election. But anyway,

654
00:42:04,198 –> 00:42:06,403
so I can appreciate, you know, I can

655
00:42:07,585 –> 00:42:11,357
appreciate that writing allows you to

656
00:42:11,389 –> 00:42:15,160
deliberate, to take with you that conversation and mull through it,

657
00:42:15,337 –> 00:42:18,848
right? It’s just, I think on some level with where

658
00:42:19,041 –> 00:42:22,439
tech has moved from Gutenberg’s press to

659
00:42:22,519 –> 00:42:26,305
Netflix, now among the things, and actually TikTok’s a better

660
00:42:26,305 –> 00:42:29,964
example, I think one of the things we need to think

661
00:42:29,964 –> 00:42:33,707
through is, okay, so we understand that

662
00:42:33,981 –> 00:42:37,724
we need literature. We understand that there’s— there are going

663
00:42:37,837 –> 00:42:41,340
to continue to be books that are published, but maybe certain

664
00:42:41,838 –> 00:42:45,164
aspects of knowledge are better communicated through,

665
00:42:45,935 –> 00:42:49,486
you know, not a soundbite because nothing really is, but that’s just

666
00:42:49,486 –> 00:42:53,005
marketing and advocacy, a soundbite, but a video.

667
00:42:53,248 –> 00:42:57,091
You know, and I’ve, I’ve had jobs in the law where the training was

668
00:42:57,156 –> 00:43:00,431
not a manual. It was a video and it was mad boring,

669
00:43:01,010 –> 00:43:03,823
but it allowed them to present it here.

670
00:43:05,084 –> 00:43:08,852
Here’s the content. Then they could ask questions. Do you have any questions about what

671
00:43:08,949 –> 00:43:12,588
you saw? Okay, go through that next, next,

672
00:43:12,653 –> 00:43:16,067
next. So that’s my 2 cents on that.

673
00:43:18,550 –> 00:43:22,164
Hannah, go ahead. All right, I raised my hand and I

674
00:43:22,212 –> 00:43:25,760
had so many comments, but I’ll try to tie it

675
00:43:26,146 –> 00:43:29,325
together. First of all, I think Richard was talking

676
00:43:29,421 –> 00:43:32,841
about the teachers, and to me

677
00:43:33,130 –> 00:43:36,390
it’s like, yeah, sure, yes, teachers,

678
00:43:36,984 –> 00:43:40,565
we, we need that, and that’s where essentially the leaders

679
00:43:41,560 –> 00:43:44,338
are now, the teachers. But then

680
00:43:46,056 –> 00:43:49,668
That teacher isn’t just dispensing wisdom. The

681
00:43:49,813 –> 00:43:53,442
key is in the discernment, in the

682
00:43:54,148 –> 00:43:57,263
decision, okay, what is important and what isn’t?

683
00:43:58,082 –> 00:44:01,871
And then they have to meet the students

684
00:44:01,871 –> 00:44:05,211
where the students are. I think that David was talking about it,

685
00:44:06,030 –> 00:44:09,755
and it’s everything. I mean, I have a teenager at home, and I will

686
00:44:09,819 –> 00:44:13,411
tell you, if it is a book like this, if it’s

687
00:44:13,427 –> 00:44:17,099
interesting, he’s gonna read it. And if it’s, you know, boring but it’s this

688
00:44:17,115 –> 00:44:20,931
big, he’s not gonna touch it. Videos are so much

689
00:44:20,963 –> 00:44:24,731
better and for many things. And, you know, we might

690
00:44:24,731 –> 00:44:28,210
be looking at the time when very few

691
00:44:28,338 –> 00:44:32,010
people will read books. We’re gonna have like

692
00:44:32,651 –> 00:44:36,451
a Harpsichord situation here when that’s like

693
00:44:36,451 –> 00:44:40,144
a niche, unique, kind of like a quirky Oh, you

694
00:44:40,144 –> 00:44:43,970
know, she reads, hahaha. But really, majority of

695
00:44:44,002 –> 00:44:47,710
people will be learning through very different means. And

696
00:44:47,888 –> 00:44:51,347
AI is here to stay. And, you know,

697
00:44:51,848 –> 00:44:55,566
the question is how we’re going to leverage it. I think that to the

698
00:44:55,582 –> 00:44:57,724
point of

699
00:44:59,512 –> 00:45:03,329
who said it just before me, Dorolo, you said, you know, like

700
00:45:03,393 –> 00:45:07,157
not only videos, but also just living through and learning

701
00:45:07,288 –> 00:45:09,864
behaviorally. That is, would

702
00:45:11,265 –> 00:45:14,408
people— where people learn the

703
00:45:14,408 –> 00:45:18,145
best and deepest, but also then

704
00:45:18,418 –> 00:45:21,987
what kind of training or

705
00:45:22,372 –> 00:45:26,117
discovery we put in front of them, that’s where the leaders

706
00:45:26,214 –> 00:45:29,800
have the biggest kind of leverage. And I think

707
00:45:30,026 –> 00:45:33,631
that going back to, well, you’re the ones

708
00:45:33,905 –> 00:45:37,077
who are The older generation carries

709
00:45:38,073 –> 00:45:41,878
the torch of the wisdom and knowledge and all

710
00:45:42,007 –> 00:45:45,828
of that. But then I need to know— I’m going

711
00:45:45,941 –> 00:45:48,879
back to my earlier point about clarity— I need to know

712
00:45:49,377 –> 00:45:53,118
what in this federal trial is

713
00:45:53,568 –> 00:45:57,020
a roadblock, what could be complicated, what

714
00:45:57,020 –> 00:46:00,712
can trip you. And I want you to

715
00:46:00,856 –> 00:46:04,158
do this, to sit in front of this mad boring video

716
00:46:04,623 –> 00:46:08,134
to actually get it. Like, there’s so much

717
00:46:08,230 –> 00:46:11,756
content that the selection, the filtering, and

718
00:46:11,917 –> 00:46:15,603
understanding what gets through and why— like,

719
00:46:15,860 –> 00:46:19,450
you need to know this because it looks like a footnote, but it’s gonna

720
00:46:19,450 –> 00:46:23,185
break you. That is the role of the more

721
00:46:23,378 –> 00:46:27,080
wise, you know, more experienced person on the

722
00:46:27,096 –> 00:46:30,822
team. That should be the leader. There were like 15 other

723
00:46:30,822 –> 00:46:33,061
notes, but I’m gonna let other people go.

724
00:46:34,968 –> 00:46:37,808
Don’t worry. I’ll have you all back on the remainder of this year. So any

725
00:46:37,808 –> 00:46:41,196
notes that you have, hold onto them for other books that you’re showing up for,

726
00:46:41,212 –> 00:46:44,309
because we’re, this is gonna set the table. This kind of conversation is gonna set

727
00:46:44,309 –> 00:46:46,788
the table for where we’re going, not only for the remainder of this year, but

728
00:46:46,820 –> 00:46:50,508
also for, um, a good chunk of, uh, of season 6. And

729
00:46:50,588 –> 00:46:54,300
wait till you see the season 6 book list. You’ll understand exactly why I’m bringing

730
00:46:54,317 –> 00:46:57,629
this up now. Uh, Kristen, go ahead. I

731
00:46:58,082 –> 00:47:01,658
just wanted to speak to, uh, maybe this is top of mind both as a—

732
00:47:01,885 –> 00:47:05,688
I was up until recently a music teacher, and then I’ve, you know, I’ve got

733
00:47:05,688 –> 00:47:08,910
2 toddlers here, but I was thinking a lot about expectations is what came to

734
00:47:08,910 –> 00:47:11,047
mind. Um, and

735
00:47:12,750 –> 00:47:16,188
our— I maybe I shouldn’t say our generation, there’s people much older than I am.

736
00:47:16,285 –> 00:47:20,103
I’m a millennial. But I think it comes down to expectations

737
00:47:20,103 –> 00:47:23,696
and what, what do we expect

738
00:47:23,696 –> 00:47:26,519
people to be able to know how to do.

739
00:47:27,770 –> 00:47:31,524
I think that’s just what it comes down to, and that is what’s changing.

740
00:47:32,438 –> 00:47:36,144
And then somebody said it here before, because that is good leadership,

741
00:47:36,208 –> 00:47:39,176
is you adapt, but you, you meet people where they’re at and you help them

742
00:47:39,256 –> 00:47:42,865
rise. Um, I think that might be, um,

743
00:47:43,026 –> 00:47:46,507
kind of a follow-up question, is, is how, how

744
00:47:46,795 –> 00:47:50,135
do we start to approach that? And I really love what Hannah has been saying

745
00:47:51,037 –> 00:47:54,337
about engaging them, or engaging people,

746
00:47:54,820 –> 00:47:58,346
followers, whatever. But this,

747
00:47:58,765 –> 00:48:00,900
it can lead to a lot of frustration, this

748
00:48:02,097 –> 00:48:05,916
disconnect between what our expectations

749
00:48:06,143 –> 00:48:08,053
and their expectations. And then

750
00:48:10,035 –> 00:48:13,721
they don’t even know, people who don’t read, they don’t know what they

751
00:48:14,014 –> 00:48:17,739
don’t know. Right? And they don’t know what

752
00:48:17,739 –> 00:48:20,827
they can’t do. And we’re just looking at them being like, why can’t you do

753
00:48:20,827 –> 00:48:24,541
this? This is like, everybody used to be

754
00:48:24,590 –> 00:48:28,414
able to do this. And they’re frustrated because they’re like, nobody my

755
00:48:28,414 –> 00:48:32,021
age knows how to do this. And so we’re just mad at each other.

756
00:48:32,522 –> 00:48:35,970
And so I think that might be the bridge that

757
00:48:36,067 –> 00:48:39,159
leaders really need to look at and start to engage.

758
00:48:39,889 –> 00:48:43,711
I also loved some of the comments that David has been making. But

759
00:48:43,904 –> 00:48:47,591
there’s a gap that we need to bridge for sure. And I think

760
00:48:47,655 –> 00:48:51,342
that might be the how that we’re all kind of like trying to tackle. But

761
00:48:51,342 –> 00:48:54,500
also, you know, this thing that is so near and dear to all of our

762
00:48:54,548 –> 00:48:58,026
hearts is this reading, these books that have meant so much to us.

763
00:48:58,876 –> 00:49:01,954
Books were my best friend growing up. I didn’t— I was very shy. I was

764
00:49:02,018 –> 00:49:05,496
introverted. I didn’t make friends. I just had my books.

765
00:49:06,586 –> 00:49:10,087
And so that’s one of the reasons I’m so passionate about passing it on to

766
00:49:10,103 –> 00:49:13,353
my kids. But reading the article that you sent us, it was like, oh,

767
00:49:14,307 –> 00:49:17,783
I hadn’t even really put together that reading is what

768
00:49:17,783 –> 00:49:21,389
allowed me to do that. And so, um, to some of these other

769
00:49:21,389 –> 00:49:23,473
folks’ point is communicating that.

770
00:49:25,639 –> 00:49:29,229
What does reading get you? It’s a marketing thing,

771
00:49:29,519 –> 00:49:33,141
right? I think there’s at least one marketer here, right? It’s a marketing thing. You

772
00:49:33,141 –> 00:49:36,886
got to tell people this is what reading gets you. And

773
00:49:36,886 –> 00:49:40,572
if you don’t do it, this is what’s going to— and,

774
00:49:41,053 –> 00:49:44,835
and the one of the things that people are so frustrated about

775
00:49:45,540 –> 00:49:48,408
is we do a lot of reading. Uh, it was— there was, there was something

776
00:49:48,424 –> 00:49:51,373
you said at the very beginning, and I was like, we gotta define that because,

777
00:49:51,549 –> 00:49:55,011
um, again, the article you sent, we read more than ever, but we read— it’s

778
00:49:55,011 –> 00:49:58,408
all short form and not always well thought out

779
00:49:59,161 –> 00:50:02,939
and often inflammatory and Very

780
00:50:02,987 –> 00:50:06,504
one-sided. So the longer form, the things that really

781
00:50:07,811 –> 00:50:11,311
require the deeper thought, contemplation, that’s

782
00:50:11,311 –> 00:50:14,971
disappearing. There’s no room for it. Not in TikTok when you have

783
00:50:15,503 –> 00:50:17,195
a second to make an impression.

784
00:50:19,980 –> 00:50:20,717
Where am I going with this?

785
00:50:24,065 –> 00:50:27,633
The benefits, I think, I think that’s part of what is being

786
00:50:27,747 –> 00:50:31,192
lost is the Again, I hadn’t even thought about

787
00:50:31,385 –> 00:50:34,548
exactly what, what all does reading do for me. That might be

788
00:50:35,399 –> 00:50:39,188
a starting point is just really starting to communicate over and over and over

789
00:50:39,188 –> 00:50:42,928
again, using things like TikTok and being

790
00:50:42,960 –> 00:50:46,653
like, hey, if you do not read, this is what you’re

791
00:50:46,653 –> 00:50:50,442
going to learn. These are the dangers. Here’s all the benefits that reading gets you.

792
00:50:50,506 –> 00:50:54,166
Let’s find something that will engage you in a reading.

793
00:50:54,423 –> 00:50:57,779
And then, I don’t know, maybe offer some letter ladders.

794
00:50:58,132 –> 00:51:01,771
laddering, right? Give people the

795
00:51:01,819 –> 00:51:05,457
reading content where they can— where what they can enjoy

796
00:51:05,746 –> 00:51:08,567
and engage with, and then give them a step up, and then give them a

797
00:51:08,567 –> 00:51:11,405
step up. Because we, we often go to Charles

798
00:51:11,453 –> 00:51:14,723
Dickens, Shakespeare, and if you can’t read that—

799
00:51:14,723 –> 00:51:18,025
Dostoevsky— if you can’t read that, well then you’re not a reader and oh well.

800
00:51:18,330 –> 00:51:21,904
And I think a lot of people, especially younger, even people my age—

801
00:51:22,562 –> 00:51:25,818
I, I have personal friends who’ve been like, well I don’t get it,

802
00:51:26,413 –> 00:51:29,417
and I never have. And so I’m just not gonna try. So I guess I’m

803
00:51:29,465 –> 00:51:32,903
not a reader. I guess reading is not for me. Um, and so there is—

804
00:51:34,044 –> 00:51:37,755
there’s, uh, somebody else mentioned middle ground. I think

805
00:51:37,755 –> 00:51:41,338
there needs to be a middle ground, finding something. That was

806
00:51:41,466 –> 00:51:44,390
my one issue with that article, is

807
00:51:44,888 –> 00:51:48,278
she talked about one of the bestsellers. And you know what,

808
00:51:48,744 –> 00:51:52,587
I didn’t love the sentence that, that the Romantasy Bestseller that

809
00:51:52,702 –> 00:51:56,282
she mentioned. I didn’t love that sentence either. Um, but

810
00:51:56,847 –> 00:51:59,741
be careful about looking down

811
00:52:00,808 –> 00:52:04,187
or criticizing too hard, because at least they’re reading.

812
00:52:05,120 –> 00:52:08,949
And if they’re reading, that is some common

813
00:52:08,949 –> 00:52:12,654
ground, no matter what they’re reading. And

814
00:52:12,736 –> 00:52:14,985
if you criticize that too hard, you’ll lose them completely.

815
00:52:17,423 –> 00:52:20,522
All right, cool. Thank you, Kristen. Momen,

816
00:52:21,276 –> 00:52:23,942
Dr. Kazi. Yeah, thank you.

817
00:52:25,371 –> 00:52:29,000
There’s so many great comments that people have made, and,

818
00:52:29,208 –> 00:52:32,805
but I keep coming back to what Tom said of, if they don’t read, they’re

819
00:52:32,821 –> 00:52:36,257
fired. You know what I mean? Like, I think there is a pragmatic element to

820
00:52:36,289 –> 00:52:39,452
it. But anyway, let’s come back to a big

821
00:52:39,581 –> 00:52:43,354
conversation that just recently occurred and And then when I

822
00:52:43,354 –> 00:52:46,855
asked my students if they had seen the film The Odyssey

823
00:52:47,208 –> 00:52:50,194
directed by Christopher Nolan, absolutely

824
00:52:50,965 –> 00:52:54,738
the entire room, their hands were down. In other

825
00:52:54,738 –> 00:52:57,934
words, nobody over the summer, all my students, none of them

826
00:52:58,672 –> 00:53:02,092
went to go see that film. They could have cared less. But boy, all

827
00:53:02,317 –> 00:53:06,122
my friends and all the people in my generation and all the people my age,

828
00:53:06,556 –> 00:53:09,782
it was such a big debate. Even Emily Wilson, the

829
00:53:09,846 –> 00:53:13,377
translator that Christopher Nolan was inspired by

830
00:53:13,895 –> 00:53:16,795
to do his version of that film or that story,

831
00:53:17,810 –> 00:53:21,602
kind of dissed the movie in some ways, not the cinematic aspect

832
00:53:21,602 –> 00:53:25,378
of it but the writing part of it. What I was going to say

833
00:53:25,378 –> 00:53:29,145
about The Odyssey is there’s this entire conversation, this dialogue,

834
00:53:29,502 –> 00:53:33,093
heated back and forth, people just fighting to

835
00:53:33,093 –> 00:53:36,192
the you know, like down to their nails about it, you know,

836
00:53:36,801 –> 00:53:40,584
and, and there’s an entire other generation that could have cared less even

837
00:53:40,648 –> 00:53:43,838
about the movie, not just the book by Homer. So,

838
00:53:44,832 –> 00:53:48,406
and then who is Homer? That’s a whole different conversation. My point is, is

839
00:53:48,759 –> 00:53:52,526
the director of the film, Christopher Nolan, he was inspired

840
00:53:52,526 –> 00:53:56,373
by a translation that focused a lot on PTSD.

841
00:53:57,655 –> 00:54:00,989
If you’re even involved or interested in that conversation,

842
00:54:01,650 –> 00:54:05,468
The person who got to kind of direct

843
00:54:05,468 –> 00:54:08,542
that conversation and trailblaze in a way

844
00:54:09,431 –> 00:54:13,230
a new way of thinking of Odysseus, it

845
00:54:13,230 –> 00:54:16,958
was Christopher Nolan who was a reader, who is a reader, right? And

846
00:54:17,006 –> 00:54:20,832
so the thing is, is if you go to the

847
00:54:20,832 –> 00:54:24,416
film and you watch the movie and you don’t know Homer, boy,

848
00:54:24,545 –> 00:54:28,130
there’s a lot he left out and even some things he rewrote and

849
00:54:28,486 –> 00:54:32,195
The ending is Tennyson’s, and it’s sort of like there’s a whole

850
00:54:32,195 –> 00:54:35,727
lot of stuff that a really informed person is going to say,

851
00:54:36,209 –> 00:54:39,854
well, that’s not quite Homer, but that’s definitely not

852
00:54:40,705 –> 00:54:44,542
a Greek way of thinking about certain

853
00:54:44,542 –> 00:54:47,657
aspects of heroism and so forth, or being

854
00:54:48,893 –> 00:54:52,650
brilliant and clever or complicated or a man of twists and

855
00:54:52,650 –> 00:54:56,467
turns. And but at least Christopher Nolan is the one

856
00:54:56,595 –> 00:54:59,367
who, as a leader, is

857
00:55:00,344 –> 00:55:04,062
reframing the narrative or even rewriting the story in some way,

858
00:55:04,350 –> 00:55:08,100
right? And then Emily Wilson comes along and kind of disses him,

859
00:55:09,013 –> 00:55:12,795
but is grateful for all the books that got sold. But I don’t know

860
00:55:12,843 –> 00:55:16,544
who read them, but it could— what might— you know, hopefully

861
00:55:16,544 –> 00:55:19,204
they’ll read Emily Wilson this semester.

862
00:55:20,213 –> 00:55:21,559
My bigger point there is,

863
00:55:24,784 –> 00:55:28,604
the people who have read The Odyssey are

864
00:55:28,652 –> 00:55:32,375
gonna go to that movie and think, oh my goodness, this is wonderful,

865
00:55:32,583 –> 00:55:35,247
but boy, he sure left a lot out, right?

866
00:55:35,696 –> 00:55:39,403
Mm-hmm. And then it happens that way with every great, you know, like

867
00:55:39,403 –> 00:55:43,030
whether it be a Lord of the Rings adaptation or a

868
00:55:43,030 –> 00:55:46,063
Silmarillion adaptation on Amazon Prime or whatever,

869
00:55:47,025 –> 00:55:50,759
someone always says, well, the book was better. Well, it’s because we

870
00:55:50,791 –> 00:55:54,328
got to see all the, the extra details and all that

871
00:55:54,441 –> 00:55:58,236
inner texture and nuance. And so whenever

872
00:55:58,236 –> 00:56:01,949
we’re leaders, of course, are readers, but then what do we want to

873
00:56:01,949 –> 00:56:05,661
communicate to our students that they’re just missing out on so much of the

874
00:56:05,661 –> 00:56:07,991
story if they’re not also readers themselves?

875
00:56:11,680 –> 00:56:15,476
Thank you, Mauman. Tom, go ahead. Yeah, so

876
00:56:15,508 –> 00:56:19,345
I wanted to— I was a little abrupt, I guess, when

877
00:56:19,377 –> 00:56:21,946
my first comments came up because I wanted to be clear here.

878
00:56:22,813 –> 00:56:26,104
I’m not just saying read this or die. Like, it’s not read this or you’re

879
00:56:26,120 –> 00:56:29,507
fired. I wanted to make sure that you guys understand that I would go through

880
00:56:29,571 –> 00:56:33,311
the whys. I would compromise. I would go through that process of

881
00:56:33,360 –> 00:56:36,795
trying to get them to understand. Then if they didn’t read it, they’d fire me.

882
00:56:37,100 –> 00:56:40,808
I want to be clear on that, number one. Number two, I think Richard brought

883
00:56:40,808 –> 00:56:44,629
up a couple of really nice points with the oral histories and

884
00:56:45,126 –> 00:56:48,719
And oral histories, I think there are cultures out there that still leverage them

885
00:56:49,777 –> 00:56:53,129
really, really, really well. And they’re not required

886
00:56:53,546 –> 00:56:57,010
anybody to read anything about their oral histories, but yet expect—

887
00:56:57,411 –> 00:57:01,244
their expectations to their youth are very different than what

888
00:57:01,325 –> 00:57:05,029
our expectations in general society are to our youth when it comes to that kind

889
00:57:05,029 –> 00:57:08,750
of stuff. And then lastly, not lastly, but Darula, I

890
00:57:09,343 –> 00:57:12,326
think one of the things that you said is probably the most vital and important

891
00:57:12,326 –> 00:57:15,677
things that anyone has said so far, which is You either have to lead by

892
00:57:15,677 –> 00:57:19,299
example, learn by example, or learn by doing. And all of that,

893
00:57:19,700 –> 00:57:22,440
none of that really can be done on whether or not you are or are

894
00:57:22,440 –> 00:57:25,789
not reading, or whether you are or are not watching a book, watching a video.

895
00:57:26,190 –> 00:57:28,433
So some of it is just you have to do it, and you have to

896
00:57:28,914 –> 00:57:32,487
take the advice from somebody who’s been there and done that before you and do

897
00:57:32,503 –> 00:57:36,205
it. The last thing— that was the last thing about the comments. Now, my new

898
00:57:36,205 –> 00:57:39,731
comment here is, I think the one thing that we’re missing out on that we

899
00:57:39,795 –> 00:57:43,536
don’t are not emphasizing enough that what literature gave us

900
00:57:44,049 –> 00:57:47,550
that needs to be either replaced with something else or

901
00:57:47,759 –> 00:57:51,501
reemphasized through literature is the value of critical

902
00:57:51,533 –> 00:57:55,082
thinking. It’s really about critical thinking more than anything else,

903
00:57:55,467 –> 00:57:59,129
because you can get critical thinking through oral histories. You can get critical thinking

904
00:57:59,145 –> 00:58:02,902
through video and movies and tutorials and all that

905
00:58:02,935 –> 00:58:06,660
stuff that we’re talking about. You can get all of that. But somebody else had

906
00:58:06,708 –> 00:58:10,434
mentioned something about the expectation. I think, Kristen, it was you. Like, I think that’s

907
00:58:10,964 –> 00:58:14,320
The, the degree of difference between our

908
00:58:14,593 –> 00:58:17,916
setting our expectations of what we can teach and what we can learn

909
00:58:18,350 –> 00:58:21,401
versus what the critical thinking aspects are of it from the

910
00:58:21,722 –> 00:58:25,254
material that we’re leveraging to do that. I think that’s where the biggest

911
00:58:25,318 –> 00:58:28,787
gap is, and I think it would sadden me to

912
00:58:28,787 –> 00:58:32,126
think that it— that if literature was lost, we would lose that critical thinking

913
00:58:32,319 –> 00:58:35,964
skill. But I have this weird feeling that, that

914
00:58:36,077 –> 00:58:39,209
They’re just figuring out a way to replace it. It’s not so much that,

915
00:58:39,868 –> 00:58:43,515
that the— it’s the medium that we’re all

916
00:58:43,627 –> 00:58:46,808
holding on to that might lose its ground, but it’s not—

917
00:58:47,161 –> 00:58:50,455
it’s— we’re trying to figure out other ways to get critical thinking through the

918
00:58:50,455 –> 00:58:53,989
process. And David, I would love— I’m not going to bring it up here, but

919
00:58:53,989 –> 00:58:57,218
I would love to debate you on this whole Gen Z thing winning, because I’m

920
00:58:57,218 –> 00:59:00,383
a father of a bunch of Gen Zers, and I don’t think they’re winning anything.

921
00:59:01,058 –> 00:59:04,796
I’m just being very Honest. I, I, I,

922
00:59:05,469 –> 00:59:08,449
all of my kids are Gen Z. All of their friends are Gen Z. I

923
00:59:08,449 –> 00:59:12,215
am around them all the time. I don’t think they’re winning anything. And we can

924
00:59:12,215 –> 00:59:14,843
debate that another time, but I would love to, I’d love to talk with you

925
00:59:14,843 –> 00:59:18,672
about it more in depth. Right. I will set up, uh, I

926
00:59:18,768 –> 00:59:22,069
will set up side quests. We’ll do a little side quest. Maybe we’ll do some

927
00:59:22,069 –> 00:59:25,899
extra, some extra bonus episodes during the year. Please send me

928
00:59:25,915 –> 00:59:29,488
your, uh, send me your, your hot takes. I want to have hot take episodes.

929
00:59:29,744 –> 00:59:32,873
You know, you open, you Look at Tom making, giving me new

930
00:59:32,873 –> 00:59:36,663
content, new things for, new things for clipping on YouTube

931
00:59:36,663 –> 00:59:40,452
Shorts and TikTok. All right. Don’t put it on TikTok that I think

932
00:59:40,452 –> 00:59:44,289
TikTok, the Gen Z is losing this battle. Don’t put that on

933
00:59:44,289 –> 00:59:47,549
TikTok. Well, we’ll go viral. That’ll be a thing. We’ll go viral.

934
00:59:48,304 –> 00:59:51,948
John, go ahead. Well, I was, I was thinking

935
00:59:51,981 –> 00:59:55,224
about what DeRolo said a second ago about how like on certain things he wants

936
00:59:55,224 –> 00:59:58,886
a video and I was like, Okay, you know, like this past weekend my coffee

937
00:59:58,886 –> 01:00:02,098
grinder broke, and so I’m, I’m deep into YouTube land trying to figure out how

938
01:00:02,098 –> 01:00:05,022
to break this thing apart so I can get the right part and do this

939
01:00:05,086 –> 01:00:08,700
thing. And I was like, okay, wait a minute, wait a minute. But here’s, here’s

940
01:00:08,700 –> 01:00:11,672
the thing that I come back to: I had to go watch that video because

941
01:00:11,672 –> 01:00:15,206
I didn’t know enough about troubleshooting that specific kind of

942
01:00:15,206 –> 01:00:18,868
electronics with that kind of stuff. And so because I’m missing

943
01:00:19,061 –> 01:00:21,872
the foundational knowledge, I have to go

944
01:00:22,899 –> 01:00:26,078
Right. So if you’re not reading, if you don’t have a base level

945
01:00:26,127 –> 01:00:29,836
understanding of the thing that you’re trying to get good at, right? And I

946
01:00:29,900 –> 01:00:33,657
love like the musical theory stuff, right? Hasan and I

947
01:00:33,657 –> 01:00:36,981
originally connected because of martial arts, right? You are not going to get good at

948
01:00:36,981 –> 01:00:40,690
martial arts from reading a book. I promise it’s not going to happen. I’ve also

949
01:00:40,738 –> 01:00:43,436
been a poker player. You’re not going to get good at poker just from reading

950
01:00:43,484 –> 01:00:47,048
a book or being in sales, right? But if you read enough,

951
01:00:47,803 –> 01:00:51,334
And you have some conceptual understanding, some discernment, then the

952
01:00:51,334 –> 01:00:55,009
books become actually really, really helpful, right? So I think part of the

953
01:00:55,009 –> 01:00:58,733
problem, and this is maybe opening up a can of worms, is the transactional nature.

954
01:00:59,182 –> 01:01:02,617
This might come back down to expectations of read this, it’s going to make you

955
01:01:02,649 –> 01:01:06,260
better. Be a reader so that way you will be the,

956
01:01:06,742 –> 01:01:10,321
the kind of professional person you want to be. But just thinking of like, oh

957
01:01:10,321 –> 01:01:12,841
my God, I got to read this book, is probably putting it on a

958
01:01:12,841 –> 01:01:16,290
level to where expectations are never going to meet up to those, to the, to

959
01:01:16,290 –> 01:01:19,948
that level. And we’re forest for the trees kind of situation.

960
01:01:20,045 –> 01:01:23,526
Being a reader means that you can figure anything out, you can go upskill yourself

961
01:01:23,526 –> 01:01:26,462
and everything else like that. But I think a lot of people get stuck on

962
01:01:26,462 –> 01:01:29,687
read this and then you’re going to be great. And I think that transactional nature

963
01:01:29,687 –> 01:01:33,505
is ruining most of what I think this hobby has

964
01:01:33,538 –> 01:01:36,297
become for all of us here, because it didn’t start out with that

965
01:01:36,810 –> 01:01:38,559
tit-for-tat kind of situation.

966
01:01:38,640 –> 01:01:41,103
That’s all I got.

967
01:01:43,129 –> 01:01:45,576
Richard, and then Neil. Go ahead, Richard.

968
01:01:47,020 –> 01:01:50,795
I wanted to make, actually follow on what Tom was talking about, critical

969
01:01:50,972 –> 01:01:54,651
thinking. 20 years ago,

970
01:01:55,004 –> 01:01:58,693
when I pivoted and took a new direction for my career and my

971
01:01:58,693 –> 01:02:02,408
life, I started to write a book. I didn’t know if I could

972
01:02:02,408 –> 01:02:05,379
write a book. I’m still writing that same book, by the way.

973
01:02:06,982 –> 01:02:10,103
And, but what happened was I

974
01:02:10,702 –> 01:02:14,518
started eventually realizing that the writing of

975
01:02:14,583 –> 01:02:16,572
the book was actually

976
01:02:18,626 –> 01:02:21,957
part of the way I think. It’s like my thinking process

977
01:02:22,669 –> 01:02:26,304
was accelerated by writing the book because if I couldn’t write

978
01:02:26,385 –> 01:02:30,146
down my thoughts, I couldn’t articulate it in writing,

979
01:02:30,581 –> 01:02:34,354
then I wasn’t clear. I, I had to be able to write it down in

980
01:02:34,370 –> 01:02:38,169
order to be— to know that what I, what I was thinking about and developing

981
01:02:38,169 –> 01:02:41,503
in my mind was actually clear, it made sense. So

982
01:02:42,818 –> 01:02:46,585
I think that, uh, that, that’s what’s going on.

983
01:02:46,633 –> 01:02:50,175
So when people are writing, they’re thinking. It’s a part of the

984
01:02:50,256 –> 01:02:53,798
thinking process. And if people— and therefore it’s

985
01:02:53,862 –> 01:02:57,613
very valuable if you can write something down and what

986
01:02:57,613 –> 01:03:01,028
you’ve written down is valuable

987
01:03:01,397 –> 01:03:05,021
because you put an enormous amount of thought in it and you’ve developed

988
01:03:05,166 –> 01:03:08,629
this, this, this whatever it is you develop in your mind and you’re able to

989
01:03:08,693 –> 01:03:12,446
write it down and then other people are reading it and it provides value for

990
01:03:12,462 –> 01:03:15,540
them. You’re not gonna get that value

991
01:03:16,471 –> 01:03:20,078
unless you read the thing. And it’s

992
01:03:20,078 –> 01:03:22,628
gonna be very difficult in my, I

993
01:03:23,205 –> 01:03:27,032
think you just, there’s just not another medium where you can

994
01:03:27,129 –> 01:03:30,935
actually develop one’s thoughts

995
01:03:30,935 –> 01:03:34,416
and thinking in any other way other than writing it,

996
01:03:34,981 –> 01:03:38,641
than writing. I just don’t know what other medium there is like

997
01:03:38,770 –> 01:03:42,220
this. And so I think what’s happening is

998
01:03:42,253 –> 01:03:45,215
technology is dumbing down

999
01:03:46,203 –> 01:03:49,942
our youth. Because if our youth, if they’re

1000
01:03:49,942 –> 01:03:53,131
not, if the youth aren’t writing, and they’re not reading,

1001
01:03:53,792 –> 01:03:56,520
and they’re just into these short video clips, and these—

1002
01:03:58,005 –> 01:04:01,687
then they’re not really developing their intellect. And eventually

1003
01:04:02,593 –> 01:04:06,008
society is going to realize this, and, uh,

1004
01:04:06,979 –> 01:04:09,569
there are going to be those that are not going to read and they’re just

1005
01:04:09,569 –> 01:04:12,545
going to look at videos, and, and then it’s going to be like 2 different

1006
01:04:12,545 –> 01:04:15,456
classes. It’s going to be an intellectual class, and then there’s going to be

1007
01:04:16,362 –> 01:04:17,235
those who aren’t intellectual.

1008
01:04:18,834 –> 01:04:22,537
Thank you,

1009
01:04:22,618 –> 01:04:26,175
Richard. Neil, you’re up, and then DeRolo and Brian and Dave.

1010
01:04:26,418 –> 01:04:30,188
Yeah, John, I figured out the problem, by the way. Critical thinking.

1011
01:04:31,168 –> 01:04:34,880
The frequency of your voice and the frequency of my air conditioner in the corner

1012
01:04:34,880 –> 01:04:38,661
there are actually kind of the same, because I could hear everyone else, but

1013
01:04:38,661 –> 01:04:41,958
I couldn’t hear you. So I shut off the AC, and you came through loud

1014
01:04:41,958 –> 01:04:45,278
and clear, sir. So no problem. So

1015
01:04:46,346 –> 01:04:49,971
I guess the original question was,

1016
01:04:50,003 –> 01:04:53,337
what’s the role of a leader in the post-literate

1017
01:04:53,467 –> 01:04:56,912
world? And one of the things that I find interesting about this discussion

1018
01:04:57,510 –> 01:05:01,150
is that there seems to be this acceptance that the electronic

1019
01:05:01,150 –> 01:05:04,962
culture, social media, is here to stay and that we

1020
01:05:04,962 –> 01:05:08,809
have to live with that. And I’m going to challenge that to say,

1021
01:05:09,607 –> 01:05:12,802
I don’t think so. I think there’s actually a coming crisis

1022
01:05:13,380 –> 01:05:17,105
in the online culture, and it’s coming fast. And I think in like

1023
01:05:17,153 –> 01:05:20,670
maybe the next 3 to 10 years, and the crisis is gonna be one

1024
01:05:20,718 –> 01:05:24,539
essentially driven— so someone said AI is here to stay. It is. And

1025
01:05:24,620 –> 01:05:28,329
that’s the problem. The problem is that fundamentally, eventually you will

1026
01:05:28,329 –> 01:05:31,877
not be able to trust almost any communication that comes to you

1027
01:05:31,941 –> 01:05:34,462
electronically. Am I really on this call?

1028
01:05:36,035 –> 01:05:39,179
You don’t know, right? Hey, Hasan’s met me once,

1029
01:05:40,030 –> 01:05:43,399
right? But you don’t actually know. I could be an

1030
01:05:43,399 –> 01:05:47,185
avatar, right, having this conversation. I would sound like

1031
01:05:47,185 –> 01:05:51,019
this. I would look like this, right? And so to me, the job of the

1032
01:05:51,019 –> 01:05:54,132
leader— and I, I don’t have the answer, and I don’t think anyone on this

1033
01:05:54,228 –> 01:05:57,790
call has the answer— but is to navigate to whatever is waiting on the far

1034
01:05:57,854 –> 01:06:01,384
side of that. And something on the far

1035
01:06:01,384 –> 01:06:05,203
side is going to require books. Because when

1036
01:06:05,235 –> 01:06:08,975
you consume a book, it is fundamentally different from consuming

1037
01:06:09,071 –> 01:06:12,826
electronic media in terms of

1038
01:06:13,035 –> 01:06:16,774
the way your brain engages with it, in terms of how it fits

1039
01:06:16,935 –> 01:06:20,706
into, you know, everything else. I didn’t see a YouTube

1040
01:06:20,867 –> 01:06:24,654
video that said, hey, the issue with why you’re not hearing

1041
01:06:24,654 –> 01:06:28,378
John correctly is, you know, the AC in the corner. I

1042
01:06:28,491 –> 01:06:32,119
just kind of went back to some basic, you

1043
01:06:32,119 –> 01:06:35,732
know, understanding I’m sure I read in a physics book 35 years ago

1044
01:06:36,358 –> 01:06:40,148
and said, oh, that’s probably what it is. And it turned out actually that that’s

1045
01:06:40,148 –> 01:06:43,921
what it is. But the, the, the main thing I just want— yeah, uh,

1046
01:06:44,628 –> 01:06:47,229
I just want to, uh, sort of, uh,

1047
01:06:47,614 –> 01:06:51,147
communicate is I don’t think that

1048
01:06:51,291 –> 01:06:55,117
where The job, I’ll say this, I think the

1049
01:06:55,117 –> 01:06:57,747
job of the leader is to plan for the

1050
01:06:57,796 –> 01:07:01,314
post-electronic culture world where we can no

1051
01:07:01,346 –> 01:07:04,635
longer trust anything that comes to us

1052
01:07:05,135 –> 01:07:08,907
electronically. And I think there will be some kind of crisis and

1053
01:07:08,907 –> 01:07:11,594
it’s eventually, you know, maybe when

1054
01:07:13,249 –> 01:07:16,931
you simply cannot have an electronic communication that you can

1055
01:07:17,060 –> 01:07:20,463
rely on at all. It’s going to be bad

1056
01:07:20,655 –> 01:07:24,438
for a while, by the way. It’s going to be sort of like the collapse

1057
01:07:24,438 –> 01:07:27,082
of the Roman Empire, and there’ll be some kind of

1058
01:07:28,188 –> 01:07:31,986
bizarre dark age that, that, uh, follows it.

1059
01:07:32,098 –> 01:07:35,464
But I think on the far side— so I think the, the job of the

1060
01:07:35,464 –> 01:07:39,102
leader is to try to craft whatever is on the far side of that

1061
01:07:39,711 –> 01:07:43,076
collapse. But I think you can see it. Hmm.

1062
01:07:43,557 –> 01:07:46,874
You can see it. I think partly the anxiety levels you see in people are

1063
01:07:46,922 –> 01:07:50,531
driven by the fact that they don’t know what to believe about

1064
01:07:50,531 –> 01:07:54,222
anything anymore. Well, you know, well, you know,

1065
01:07:54,238 –> 01:07:57,448
Neil, leadership is the—

1066
01:07:57,448 –> 01:08:01,187
it’s not the solve for anxiety. But

1067
01:08:01,300 –> 01:08:05,055
leaders are in the role of, to your point, crafting a

1068
01:08:05,055 –> 01:08:08,650
vision. And if leaders aren’t doing

1069
01:08:08,746 –> 01:08:12,437
the reading and doing the work to craft that vision, and

1070
01:08:12,437 –> 01:08:16,162
don’t even know, quite frankly, the right questions to ask, even to begin to

1071
01:08:16,162 –> 01:08:19,966
craft that vision. Well, as it

1072
01:08:19,966 –> 01:08:23,096
says in a book older than, and one that we’ve referenced even on here,

1073
01:08:23,580 –> 01:08:27,420
without a vision, the people perish, right? And I would not be, I am

1074
01:08:27,453 –> 01:08:31,054
not the first person to say that. So, all right.

1075
01:08:31,362 –> 01:08:35,103
Oh, and by the way, you’ll never really know if I’m not an

1076
01:08:35,103 –> 01:08:38,675
AI. You’ll never really know. That’s the point. That’s true.

1077
01:08:40,575 –> 01:08:44,025
DeRollo, You’re up. Go ahead. And then Brian, Dave,

1078
01:08:44,610 –> 01:08:46,819
Momen, and Hannah. Go ahead, DeRolo.

1079
01:08:49,684 –> 01:08:53,184
Wave your hand around. Do the thing with the audio. There you go.

1080
01:08:55,790 –> 01:08:59,576
Working audio. Perfect. Thank you, audio. There’s like some kind of box around

1081
01:08:59,624 –> 01:09:02,342
it that tells me the sound is working, and I’m colorblind, so I won’t tell

1082
01:09:02,359 –> 01:09:06,207
you what color it is because I don’t know. Anyway, first, so Tom,

1083
01:09:06,288 –> 01:09:10,121
I think it was Mr. Hill and Professor Kabili-Gala

1084
01:09:10,121 –> 01:09:13,843
who who, who, um, came up with those insights you were talking about.

1085
01:09:14,549 –> 01:09:18,031
Um, what— so I’m gonna pivot from that. I just wanted to

1086
01:09:18,400 –> 01:09:22,043
state that because I think it’s important. Um, what I find

1087
01:09:22,043 –> 01:09:25,173
interesting is many of us had a college

1088
01:09:25,173 –> 01:09:28,784
experience where we were reading these books, and because I went to school in the

1089
01:09:28,784 –> 01:09:32,443
’90s, we were reading books. It was not— we weren’t reading stuff on a computer.

1090
01:09:32,860 –> 01:09:36,279
But then you’re sitting in a cafe with others and you’re debating ideas, you’re talking

1091
01:09:36,327 –> 01:09:39,407
about things. You’re drinking some kind of beverage, hot, cold, or both,

1092
01:09:40,064 –> 01:09:43,658
and, um, you’re having these lively discussions

1093
01:09:43,706 –> 01:09:47,267
about ideas. And I just wonder, um,

1094
01:09:47,844 –> 01:09:51,646
as we depart from or move past a literate culture,

1095
01:09:52,256 –> 01:09:55,287
um, is it merely coincidental that

1096
01:09:55,705 –> 01:09:59,426
also children, right, college

1097
01:09:59,426 –> 01:10:02,955
students, whatever you want to call them, aren’t meeting in cafes and debating

1098
01:10:03,019 –> 01:10:06,598
ideas? Or if they are meeting in cafes, they’re meeting in cafes

1099
01:10:06,695 –> 01:10:10,495
like this, right? Even for the

1100
01:10:10,495 –> 01:10:14,292
people right across the table, right? And

1101
01:10:14,324 –> 01:10:17,344
so that lively exchange of

1102
01:10:17,440 –> 01:10:20,814
humanity, right? Ideas, views,

1103
01:10:21,024 –> 01:10:24,070
emotions, saliva, sweat,

1104
01:10:25,423 –> 01:10:29,227
odors, right? That, that’s— Odors. That, that’s

1105
01:10:29,227 –> 01:10:32,618
not happening. And I, I don’t think it’s, it’s

1106
01:10:32,973 –> 01:10:36,039
merely coincidental. I think it’s causative right now.

1107
01:10:36,846 –> 01:10:40,381
I think, and I can live with the bias, of course, because I’m a

1108
01:10:40,397 –> 01:10:43,826
humanities guy, right? I have a degree in English lit, and I

1109
01:10:44,263 –> 01:10:48,097
write for a living and argue stuff. I’m an attorney, right? I’m always dealing with

1110
01:10:48,307 –> 01:10:51,836
words and have to write things. But, um, how does math

1111
01:10:52,094 –> 01:10:55,925
work when you can’t read? How

1112
01:10:56,054 –> 01:10:58,855
do you learn physics when you can’t

1113
01:10:59,558 –> 01:11:03,205
Read and then show your work, you know,

1114
01:11:03,751 –> 01:11:07,382
because I think that the professor who accepts that you can do

1115
01:11:07,511 –> 01:11:11,206
the complex equations in your head and then spit out

1116
01:11:11,206 –> 01:11:14,724
the answer and allows that needs to be fired, you know, like she needs to

1117
01:11:14,741 –> 01:11:18,452
lose her job. And, or she just needs to say, okay, good, write it

1118
01:11:18,452 –> 01:11:22,227
down. Show me, show me how you got from this equation we

1119
01:11:22,227 –> 01:11:25,280
gave you to the answer. And so, you know,

1120
01:11:25,842 –> 01:11:29,659
Reading enables us to solve more and more complex problems.

1121
01:11:29,851 –> 01:11:33,476
And so, as we move from that to— forget about just

1122
01:11:33,524 –> 01:11:36,362
information on TikTok— as we move from that to

1123
01:11:37,694 –> 01:11:40,773
just people are consuming content on TikTok,

1124
01:11:41,543 –> 01:11:45,151
um, I, I just think the ideas that we can handle will just get

1125
01:11:45,167 –> 01:11:48,904
dumbed down. And I think just like the Atlantic piece, which

1126
01:11:48,952 –> 01:11:51,808
is here on the other computer over there, that’s what I was looking at. Points

1127
01:11:51,808 –> 01:11:54,016
out, you know,

1128
01:11:56,239 –> 01:11:59,606
just the complexity of the ideas we can

1129
01:11:59,622 –> 01:12:03,206
handle evaporates. And so we’re more susceptible to

1130
01:12:03,335 –> 01:12:06,998
believe things like all policy

1131
01:12:07,094 –> 01:12:10,829
problems are capable of being solved with

1132
01:12:10,893 –> 01:12:14,097
a basic common sense solution or compromise.

1133
01:12:15,019 –> 01:12:18,805
There’s millions, tens of millions of Americans who think that that is true.

1134
01:12:20,378 –> 01:12:23,935
And I mean, I’ve done politics. It’s not true. It’s

1135
01:12:23,983 –> 01:12:27,733
false. The wool is being pulled over the eyes of

1136
01:12:27,765 –> 01:12:31,210
those newly minted voters. And that’s

1137
01:12:31,210 –> 01:12:34,784
dangerous because they will accept that conclusion.

1138
01:12:35,441 –> 01:12:38,919
Listen to someone try to explain or read

1139
01:12:40,088 –> 01:12:43,678
in a newspaper someone trying to explain to them, no, this is

1140
01:12:43,854 –> 01:12:47,703
actually Very complex. That’s, for example, is the reason why we have

1141
01:12:47,703 –> 01:12:51,551
2 major political parties, because we still can’t agree on this, this, this, this, this.

1142
01:12:52,049 –> 01:12:55,465
I just think that they’re less likely to accept that and more likely to

1143
01:12:55,497 –> 01:12:59,265
accept a demagogue. And so one of the principal

1144
01:12:59,265 –> 01:13:02,152
points I keep asserting is that the

1145
01:13:02,232 –> 01:13:05,857
post-literate world is one where tyranny is

1146
01:13:06,145 –> 01:13:08,599
easier to assert over greater

1147
01:13:09,609 –> 01:13:10,459
amounts of people.

1148
01:13:15,089 –> 01:13:16,069
Definitely agree with that.

1149
01:13:18,680 –> 01:13:22,221
David, and then Momin, Hannah, and then

1150
01:13:22,334 –> 01:13:26,013
John. Go ahead, Dave. Yeah, again,

1151
01:13:26,061 –> 01:13:28,869
great point. I want, I want to go back to— I mean, one aside, I’m

1152
01:13:28,869 –> 01:13:32,160
with Neil on the, uh, social media death. I think that Gen Z is having

1153
01:13:32,193 –> 01:13:35,883
their Timothy Leary moment right now, um, because 25% of them

1154
01:13:35,980 –> 01:13:38,244
have dumb phones and Just a fun aside.

1155
01:13:39,687 –> 01:13:43,360
But we’re thinking about how do you bridge the gap?

1156
01:13:43,536 –> 01:13:47,113
I think we’re having that. That was my thing I was thinking on. So much

1157
01:13:47,161 –> 01:13:50,657
of my job is about psychoeducation. People know what they don’t want to feel, but

1158
01:13:50,657 –> 01:13:54,313
they don’t know how to get there. That’s 99% of my job. And

1159
01:13:54,923 –> 01:13:57,874
a lot of what it is is helping people get out of recipe knowledge. Like,

1160
01:13:57,890 –> 01:14:00,071
they know there’s an engine in the car, but they don’t know how the engine

1161
01:14:00,119 –> 01:14:02,861
works. Well, we do that with mental health. We do that with psychology. We do

1162
01:14:02,861 –> 01:14:06,282
a So to do that, you have to—

1163
01:14:06,796 –> 01:14:10,474
and I’m with Richard here— writing, there’s something to writing. And

1164
01:14:10,474 –> 01:14:14,296
so to get people to start journaling about their thoughts helps them

1165
01:14:14,826 –> 01:14:18,520
gain the ability to forecast their feelings. And so to get them to

1166
01:14:18,584 –> 01:14:22,390
have more dynamic engagements with themselves journaling, I take the

1167
01:14:22,390 –> 01:14:25,939
time to find very unique excerpts

1168
01:14:26,534 –> 01:14:30,324
from things like Napoleon Hill’s Outwitting the Devil. To Carl

1169
01:14:30,324 –> 01:14:33,859
Jung, to Jim Rohn, you name it. I find all these little excerpts that are

1170
01:14:33,859 –> 01:14:37,442
very, very provocative, and I’ll send them

1171
01:14:37,474 –> 01:14:41,299
homework and they get this. And then we spend time in session talking

1172
01:14:41,347 –> 01:14:44,914
about the interpretation, about how this is relatable. And this is why I’m bringing this

1173
01:14:45,010 –> 01:14:48,754
up. I think that to me is the magic bullet here. Finding

1174
01:14:48,883 –> 01:14:52,594
a way to make it relatable seems to be the thread that

1175
01:14:52,819 –> 01:14:56,563
we’re all talking about, is we don’t know how to relate. Something that has

1176
01:14:56,675 –> 01:15:00,273
been so transformative or so maybe eye-opening to us.

1177
01:15:01,558 –> 01:15:04,691
Yet at the same time, for Gen Z, and why I made the comment earlier

1178
01:15:04,691 –> 01:15:08,032
about just the generational tribalism, I think it was what

1179
01:15:09,044 –> 01:15:12,481
Dr. Kwasi, you were saying about no one in your class saw The

1180
01:15:12,561 –> 01:15:16,352
Odyssey. Well, no one in the Gen Z sphere, the leaders of

1181
01:15:16,352 –> 01:15:19,886
that sphere said it was cool. So the mob doesn’t go to see it. So

1182
01:15:19,886 –> 01:15:23,687
it’s not a relatable function. And so I think when we’re talking

1183
01:15:23,719 –> 01:15:26,603
about how do we lead, I think there’s a big piece of this.

1184
01:15:27,484 –> 01:15:30,753
And, you know, someone mentioned critical thinking. Absolutely.

1185
01:15:31,666 –> 01:15:35,320
You have to make critical thinking relatable. And so you have to find ways

1186
01:15:35,416 –> 01:15:39,149
to give them almost like a buffet, like a sampler platter of all

1187
01:15:39,341 –> 01:15:42,930
these small little things that in my world is I’m

1188
01:15:42,962 –> 01:15:46,776
trying to see what you grab onto. I’m trying to see what actually

1189
01:15:46,808 –> 01:15:50,520
stimulates you. And then I’m going to double down on that. Because if that’s the

1190
01:15:50,520 –> 01:15:53,760
vehicle that takes us there, let’s go. And we’re going to use that, the thing

1191
01:15:53,760 –> 01:15:57,000
that’s going to pioneer our way forward. And then from that, we build. That becomes

1192
01:15:57,000 –> 01:16:00,080
our trunk and we build branches off of it. But I think that that’s where

1193
01:16:00,080 –> 01:16:03,180
leadership has to go on some level, is that we have to find something that’s

1194
01:16:03,180 –> 01:16:06,900
very relatable to use as the vehicle. And we kind of have to take

1195
01:16:06,900 –> 01:16:09,320
a shotgun approach to say, I’m going to give you a whole bunch of different

1196
01:16:09,320 –> 01:16:13,170
things, and I hope one or two of these things resonates with you.

1197
01:16:13,200 –> 01:16:15,260
Then we’re going to clear the table and I’m going to go, okay, those two

1198
01:16:15,260 –> 01:16:18,629
things. Now we’ve got what we’re going to do, and now let’s move forward. And

1199
01:16:18,629 –> 01:16:21,342
it doesn’t matter where we start. We’re going to go visit everything, but let’s just

1200
01:16:21,342 –> 01:16:24,104
figure out where you want to start. And that’s the point I was making earlier

1201
01:16:24,104 –> 01:16:25,257
about meeting them where they are.

1202
01:16:27,697 –> 01:16:31,537
Excellent. Thanks, Dave. Brian, you, you unfortunately

1203
01:16:31,971 –> 01:16:34,847
tapped out and then you unmuted yourself, but I’m going to go to you and

1204
01:16:34,927 –> 01:16:37,742
then, Momen, I’m going to go to you. Okay, so Brian, go ahead and don’t

1205
01:16:37,920 –> 01:16:41,549
tap yourself out. There we go. There we go. Now my

1206
01:16:41,629 –> 01:16:44,834
hand’s down. Hey, no, I I—

1207
01:16:45,606 –> 01:16:48,996
so many things, guys, have been said so good. Um,

1208
01:16:50,009 –> 01:16:53,126
I just— to kind of pile on, I think what some of these,

1209
01:16:53,945 –> 01:16:57,545
um, some of the challenges— I, I think a lot of this is

1210
01:16:58,204 –> 01:17:02,012
just emphasizes like local relationships

1211
01:17:02,012 –> 01:17:05,724
are going to be so important. Like, like how does a leader

1212
01:17:05,836 –> 01:17:09,179
exercise influence? And the, the, the sheer

1213
01:17:09,307 –> 01:17:12,471
volume of content that’s out there

1214
01:17:13,306 –> 01:17:17,144
on, on literature. Like, I mean, commentaries people

1215
01:17:17,160 –> 01:17:20,467
do like ours, like this one, the, the

1216
01:17:20,467 –> 01:17:24,080
curated list of books is amazing. But there’s a

1217
01:17:24,080 –> 01:17:27,821
lot of— there’s a lot of content out there on, on these books.

1218
01:17:27,934 –> 01:17:31,675
And how do you know which ones are worthwhile? I mean, who has

1219
01:17:31,787 –> 01:17:35,384
integrity, who doesn’t? And I think it’s going to be a lot

1220
01:17:35,464 –> 01:17:38,995
of Um, local relationships are going to be so

1221
01:17:39,011 –> 01:17:42,670
important going forward. You know, that, that kind of that dark age that somebody was

1222
01:17:42,702 –> 01:17:46,409
talking about, I, I can see it coming. The way that you get through it

1223
01:17:46,537 –> 01:17:50,148
is it’s, it’s the people in your neighborhood. You gotta know

1224
01:17:50,148 –> 01:17:53,775
them. Go over, you know, take them a plate of

1225
01:17:53,775 –> 01:17:57,466
cookies. I don’t know, talk to them. Yeah, you know, there you

1226
01:17:57,466 –> 01:18:01,125
go, new tribe, whatever. But, but like, but, and then, and then in

1227
01:18:01,221 –> 01:18:04,815
that, that’s where you exert your influence. Okay? That’s where you begin

1228
01:18:04,912 –> 01:18:08,571
to ask the questions. And, and I think a leader in

1229
01:18:08,619 –> 01:18:12,022
that setting is going to be able to like help

1230
01:18:12,070 –> 01:18:15,248
curate and gatekeep some things.

1231
01:18:15,682 –> 01:18:19,101
Okay, like there’s going to be, there’s going to be an alpha that rises in

1232
01:18:19,197 –> 01:18:22,664
that bunch. Okay, who is that going to be? If you’re the leader,

1233
01:18:23,130 –> 01:18:26,581
then, then help, help be the gatekeeper. The problem is, you know,

1234
01:18:26,741 –> 01:18:29,839
ABC, NBC, CBS, those gatekeepers are

1235
01:18:30,369 –> 01:18:33,868
gone. Like they’re like, there’s, you know, information is just free flow these

1236
01:18:33,964 –> 01:18:37,713
days. And so, and some of it’s great, some of

1237
01:18:37,713 –> 01:18:40,912
it’s terrible, some of it’s just decent. Okay, fine.

1238
01:18:42,374 –> 01:18:46,150
And so, you know, I think there

1239
01:18:46,150 –> 01:18:49,958
is some— we got to plan for this

1240
01:18:50,022 –> 01:18:52,593
post-election, this post-electronic culture. And I

1241
01:18:52,593 –> 01:18:56,128
think being intimately involved in your

1242
01:18:56,128 –> 01:18:59,741
local school board, your local

1243
01:18:59,948 –> 01:19:03,718
city council, Like, that’s where change is

1244
01:19:03,815 –> 01:19:06,955
going to happen or be— or sanity preserved. Bowman,

1245
01:19:07,692 –> 01:19:07,776
you’re up.

1246
01:19:12,740 –> 01:19:16,372
So I just want to say how much I appreciate everyone’s comments

1247
01:19:16,372 –> 01:19:20,132
again, and I especially appreciated Neil’s optimism.

1248
01:19:20,470 –> 01:19:23,636
He kept on referring to the future.

1249
01:19:24,932 –> 01:19:27,946
I want to say that dystopia is already here,

1250
01:19:28,579 –> 01:19:31,789
but, you know, Anyway,

1251
01:19:32,751 –> 01:19:36,295
I’m in the trenches now. I mean, I think I’m in the

1252
01:19:36,920 –> 01:19:40,272
maybe the last part of my career. I’ve been

1253
01:19:40,544 –> 01:19:43,912
teaching in the university for 36 years, and

1254
01:19:44,152 –> 01:19:47,632
so I’m kind of like near the end of

1255
01:19:48,001 –> 01:19:51,833
a very long career, but I’m there, and

1256
01:19:51,913 –> 01:19:55,425
I want you all to be assured that professors,

1257
01:19:55,617 –> 01:19:59,173
at least in the English department at the Tarleton State, we

1258
01:19:59,463 –> 01:20:02,984
are encouraging people to have those conversations across

1259
01:20:03,597 –> 01:20:07,057
tables, in person, with

1260
01:20:07,170 –> 01:20:10,615
people, with a book, taking notes,

1261
01:20:11,984 –> 01:20:15,607
and doing all those things that a lot of us remember doing back in the

1262
01:20:15,607 –> 01:20:18,424
’80s or the ’90s, whatever, in the 20th century.

1263
01:20:19,574 –> 01:20:23,153
The biggest issue, though, is, and it keeps coming back to this notion of

1264
01:20:23,218 –> 01:20:26,395
critical thinking, If people don’t have

1265
01:20:28,829 –> 01:20:32,391
the initial skill set, then AI is just gonna

1266
01:20:32,391 –> 01:20:35,661
replace and they’re not gonna know how to discern between

1267
01:20:36,337 –> 01:20:39,686
excellent, good, or crap, right? And

1268
01:20:40,057 –> 01:20:43,792
so what we’re doing even now in 2026 at the university

1269
01:20:43,824 –> 01:20:47,620
level, and I know a lot of people are bashing universities now, but we

1270
01:20:47,749 –> 01:20:51,451
are still, many of us, fighting the good fight. And

1271
01:20:51,467 –> 01:20:54,818
that is trying to get people to think, read,

1272
01:20:56,117 –> 01:20:59,453
and write, not generatively with AI or

1273
01:20:59,726 –> 01:21:03,398
ChatGPT, but also, I mean,

1274
01:21:03,590 –> 01:21:07,311
literally using their minds. And ultimately, the whole

1275
01:21:07,423 –> 01:21:11,272
point, and whether you’re a musician or a poet, and by the

1276
01:21:11,272 –> 01:21:15,105
way, I didn’t know we were, you know, pushing our books, but I wrote one

1277
01:21:15,217 –> 01:21:18,953
back and it’s called Migratory Words. The issue is

1278
01:21:19,226 –> 01:21:22,240
the life of the mind, imagination.

1279
01:21:23,138 –> 01:21:26,761
And, you know, whether you’re reading the,

1280
01:21:27,066 –> 01:21:30,769
the, the Pentateuch, or whether you’re reading the Bible, the Quran, the

1281
01:21:30,833 –> 01:21:34,537
Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, or Machiavelli’s The

1282
01:21:34,537 –> 01:21:38,384
Prince, man, it’s so amazing when your mind can go to

1283
01:21:38,384 –> 01:21:42,040
town on what’s going on in those words that are written down.

1284
01:21:42,569 –> 01:21:46,176
So I just wanted to come back to that and assure you and our

1285
01:21:46,240 –> 01:21:49,818
audience who listens to a great podcast like yours, Hasan,

1286
01:21:50,251 –> 01:21:53,925
and that is it’s still happening. There are people who are fighting the good

1287
01:21:53,925 –> 01:21:57,727
fight. And yes, it feels like the dystopia, the future is now,

1288
01:21:58,593 –> 01:22:02,427
but we’re, we’re trying to hold on. And I think that’s one of the

1289
01:22:02,443 –> 01:22:06,085
reasons that your message and the whole

1290
01:22:06,213 –> 01:22:09,887
lessons on leadership from great books and classical literature

1291
01:22:10,047 –> 01:22:13,015
is so important still. It’s about the life of the mind.

1292
01:22:15,919 –> 01:22:19,568
Imagination. Hannah, go ahead. Thanks. I think it’s my turn, and I

1293
01:22:19,859 –> 01:22:22,604
will push back and say

1294
01:22:23,556 –> 01:22:27,321
possibly preposterous, um, thing, but I actually,

1295
01:22:27,980 –> 01:22:30,763
um, don’t think that for

1296
01:22:31,923 –> 01:22:35,642
the non-readers, for the Gen Z, for

1297
01:22:35,803 –> 01:22:39,443
beta, who— whoever you want to— the people who are

1298
01:22:39,443 –> 01:22:42,459
not reading The issue is, or the goal

1299
01:22:42,892 –> 01:22:46,727
isn’t the life of the mind. It isn’t. It is for you,

1300
01:22:46,776 –> 01:22:50,258
maybe. It is for me. I love being on the walk and

1301
01:22:50,370 –> 01:22:53,900
thinking about— I read this fantastic passage 2 days ago

1302
01:22:54,221 –> 01:22:57,992
and I still think about what that means. For most people, I

1303
01:22:57,992 –> 01:23:01,410
think going back to what David was saying, and actually

1304
01:23:01,506 –> 01:23:05,052
Kristen was saying it earlier too, it’s the

1305
01:23:05,116 –> 01:23:08,887
pricing versus value. Show them the value. What’s What’s in it for

1306
01:23:08,887 –> 01:23:11,916
me? That’s what I want to know, right? And so

1307
01:23:13,151 –> 01:23:16,774
for younger people or for those who are currently not

1308
01:23:16,902 –> 01:23:20,621
reading, what’s in it is that in that small community— and like

1309
01:23:20,829 –> 01:23:24,276
my kid, going on walks, talking to

1310
01:23:24,372 –> 01:23:27,947
friends, being in real world really has a huge value, an

1311
01:23:28,043 –> 01:23:31,169
increasing value, and they are picking up on that.

1312
01:23:31,907 –> 01:23:35,705
But when you have that small group of friends, They

1313
01:23:35,770 –> 01:23:39,455
need to, um, they need to know what the books,

1314
01:23:39,519 –> 01:23:43,205
what the great books are good for them. And the answer is, oh,

1315
01:23:43,445 –> 01:23:47,034
you want to make a friend? This is what you do. Oh, that friend betrayed

1316
01:23:47,034 –> 01:23:50,736
you? Read this. All of these very practical

1317
01:23:50,736 –> 01:23:54,582
things. And I think that it was, Kristen, like, we need to start with the,

1318
01:23:54,886 –> 01:23:58,203
with the ladders. We need to start with the smaller blocks. And the

1319
01:23:58,203 –> 01:24:01,601
number one building block for them is

1320
01:24:02,097 –> 01:24:05,879
A, showing the value first, like, hey, I got here

1321
01:24:06,023 –> 01:24:09,693
because blah blah blah blah blah, or like, when you have this problem, this is

1322
01:24:09,725 –> 01:24:13,219
the answer. That’s critical. And then secondly,

1323
01:24:14,132 –> 01:24:17,674
when you have— and I have classrooms of students who

1324
01:24:18,219 –> 01:24:21,808
you put them at the round table and say discuss, and

1325
01:24:21,824 –> 01:24:25,398
they don’t know what to do because they don’t know how to

1326
01:24:25,574 –> 01:24:28,769
ask questions. So the moment we start

1327
01:24:29,347 –> 01:24:32,288
with the building blocks, I would say,

1328
01:24:32,963 –> 01:24:36,754
ask the right questions. And that goes back to the leaders. Like,

1329
01:24:37,076 –> 01:24:40,562
what questions do we need to ask? And there are,

1330
01:24:40,916 –> 01:24:44,419
you know, hundreds and thousands of books

1331
01:24:44,611 –> 01:24:48,339
on questions that leaders should be asking and then communicating to their

1332
01:24:48,468 –> 01:24:52,260
teams. Like, okay, what’s in it for us? How does it apply to

1333
01:24:52,260 –> 01:24:55,914
me? What does that mean for my department? All of these things

1334
01:24:56,764 –> 01:25:00,562
so that students, kids understand that

1335
01:25:01,074 –> 01:25:04,808
the art of getting from not knowing to knowing

1336
01:25:05,016 –> 01:25:08,814
is asking questions. That to me is

1337
01:25:08,926 –> 01:25:11,827
where we’re kind of failing because we

1338
01:25:12,596 –> 01:25:16,105
have been doing a lot of the dump of

1339
01:25:16,282 –> 01:25:19,459
data and dump of information, But now

1340
01:25:19,588 –> 01:25:23,186
what is not exactly what we spend a lot of

1341
01:25:23,219 –> 01:25:27,059
time talking about. And I think that is where we need to kind

1342
01:25:27,511 –> 01:25:30,386
of go back to. At least I would like to. And I’m just saying, that’s

1343
01:25:30,386 –> 01:25:34,087
what we’re doing in English classes still. That’s what’s happening on

1344
01:25:34,201 –> 01:25:38,014
Wednesday. As a matter of fact, you just took my syllabus right up. All right,

1345
01:25:38,340 –> 01:25:42,183
great. John, go ahead. And then

1346
01:25:42,183 –> 01:25:45,992
Richard, you’re up. The part that I think was really

1347
01:25:46,265 –> 01:25:49,057
interesting, um, and you and I talked a little bit about this on our, on

1348
01:25:49,057 –> 01:25:52,765
our last podcast episode, right? That reading with other people. Like, I

1349
01:25:52,765 –> 01:25:56,472
dropped out of college before I really hit a place to where I was

1350
01:25:56,521 –> 01:26:00,148
going out and, you know, finding minds to sit in front of and to share

1351
01:26:00,148 –> 01:26:03,839
ideas with, right? But I was reading during that time. I was just reading for

1352
01:26:03,839 –> 01:26:07,579
personal pleasure. I was a sci-fi fantasy nerd. And then

1353
01:26:07,932 –> 01:26:10,741
what happened was me and a group of friends that I was training martial arts

1354
01:26:10,741 –> 01:26:14,178
with we created a science fiction book club, which is about the

1355
01:26:14,178 –> 01:26:17,968
nerdiest thing you can possibly imagine. A bunch of kung fu guys reading science

1356
01:26:17,968 –> 01:26:21,389
fiction fantasy books. But it was so helpful

1357
01:26:21,582 –> 01:26:25,115
because until that point, I never really had to go in and defend why

1358
01:26:25,661 –> 01:26:29,291
a book was garbage through my own interpretation of it and stuff like

1359
01:26:29,291 –> 01:26:32,648
this. And I can remember the book that I hated the

1360
01:26:32,648 –> 01:26:36,438
most, right? I was reading this book and I’m about to bail. I’m

1361
01:26:36,438 –> 01:26:39,871
about to bail because I’m my God, this book is just garbage. Like, oh God,

1362
01:26:39,951 –> 01:26:43,462
like, who would write this thing? And then the thing I was like, wait a

1363
01:26:43,462 –> 01:26:47,261
minute, I’ve been wrong enough by this point to where I’m

1364
01:26:47,261 –> 01:26:51,108
like, let’s just finish this. Let’s withhold some of my own judgment and let’s go

1365
01:26:51,108 –> 01:26:54,956
have the conversation. Because thankfully, one of the guys in this book

1366
01:26:54,956 –> 01:26:58,403
club was and is a

1367
01:26:58,403 –> 01:27:02,170
professor of English at TCC. So am I really

1368
01:27:02,170 –> 01:27:05,348
going to argue with him, like, like about some of these things. Like, I mean,

1369
01:27:05,605 –> 01:27:08,672
there’s the realm of taste and preference, and then there’s the realm about if it’s

1370
01:27:08,672 –> 01:27:12,140
good or not, you know. So go read with people who,

1371
01:27:12,525 –> 01:27:15,994
who you care about enough that you’re not just going to dismiss their opinion out

1372
01:27:15,994 –> 01:27:19,735
of turn because they’re dumb or a different generation and stuff like

1373
01:27:19,735 –> 01:27:23,203
that. I think that that’s such a, such a major part of it. And I,

1374
01:27:23,524 –> 01:27:26,511
I forgot who brought that up, but I’m glad that other people are talking about

1375
01:27:26,559 –> 01:27:30,123
this because like, go read with friends. That you really gotta

1376
01:27:30,252 –> 01:27:32,757
show up in a certain way if you’re gonna debate the topics of the book.

1377
01:27:32,837 –> 01:27:36,546
Because this one book now, I’m never gonna read it

1378
01:27:36,546 –> 01:27:40,351
again, promise. Like, I’m just never gonna slog through it again. But

1379
01:27:40,769 –> 01:27:43,980
I have such a warm place in my memories of that book

1380
01:27:44,558 –> 01:27:47,705
because of the conversation that I had about it and knowing that I’m gonna have

1381
01:27:47,705 –> 01:27:51,463
to go talk about why I hated it so much while also being open

1382
01:27:51,463 –> 01:27:54,834
to the idea that maybe I’m just the person not on the And I think

1383
01:27:54,834 –> 01:27:58,351
that’s such an important part. The book, because it’s over here in the chat,

1384
01:27:58,849 –> 01:28:01,787
it’s a book called Light by M. John Harrison.

1385
01:28:03,023 –> 01:28:06,748
And it is a very weird book. Like, I won’t ruin it for anybody, but

1386
01:28:06,797 –> 01:28:10,570
my wife even read it, and she’s a big reader as well. And about halfway

1387
01:28:10,570 –> 01:28:14,311
through the book, she just started cursing about this book because it was

1388
01:28:14,343 –> 01:28:17,635
so off-putting to her as well, which was like a note,

1389
01:28:17,715 –> 01:28:20,526
like a note in my favor. I’m going to be honest about it, but I

1390
01:28:20,526 –> 01:28:23,852
was still like, but wait, my friends had some really great things to say about

1391
01:28:23,981 –> 01:28:27,805
it, right? So go read with other people. It’ll make you just better,

1392
01:28:28,079 –> 01:28:31,536
right, about talking about why you liked it and why you didn’t. And I think

1393
01:28:31,536 –> 01:28:35,231
that matters. Thanks, John. And, um, and

1394
01:28:35,231 –> 01:28:38,762
to John’s point, listen, I have been saying to anybody who will listen to me

1395
01:28:38,778 –> 01:28:42,595
lately, having things in common with people is

1396
01:28:42,855 –> 01:28:46,007
easy. Everybody likes ice cream. Everybody likes sunny days.

1397
01:28:46,666 –> 01:28:50,207
Everybody likes, you know, puppies and kittens. That’s easy.

1398
01:28:51,089 –> 01:28:54,374
What’s hard is finding things you dislike in common.

1399
01:28:55,175 –> 01:28:58,893
That’s what’s difficult. Oh, I really dislike that. And, oh, I

1400
01:28:58,925 –> 01:29:02,658
really dislike that. Oh, I never knew that. Oh my gosh. And now

1401
01:29:02,803 –> 01:29:06,584
we can unite around our dislikes. Very hard to

1402
01:29:06,617 –> 01:29:10,238
do in a really meaningful way. But we’ve been talking about— and I love how

1403
01:29:10,254 –> 01:29:14,022
DeRolo brought this up— local nature and and, and, and, and

1404
01:29:14,166 –> 01:29:17,856
engaging with folks in local community. I also

1405
01:29:17,856 –> 01:29:20,583
think we’ve been talking about, I think we’ve been talking about what’s in it for

1406
01:29:20,583 –> 01:29:24,177
me. Right. Not just, not just at a tribal generational level,

1407
01:29:24,835 –> 01:29:28,685
but also at an interpersonal level. What’s in it for us? The power

1408
01:29:28,685 –> 01:29:32,455
of video and what video can do for us. And what does that

1409
01:29:32,455 –> 01:29:35,760
video look like in relation to other ways of

1410
01:29:35,808 –> 01:29:38,343
communicating and, and getting ideas across?

1411
01:29:39,097 –> 01:29:42,804
Before I go to Richard, yes, I see you have your hand up. Before I

1412
01:29:42,804 –> 01:29:45,692
go to Richard, I want to make a point here, and I’ve been making it

1413
01:29:45,756 –> 01:29:49,511
on the podcast lately, and I think it’s relevant for— to

1414
01:29:49,543 –> 01:29:53,297
drop into this moment as we begin to turn the corner and wrap up. And

1415
01:29:53,313 –> 01:29:56,570
thank you all for participating. This has been a great conversation. We’ve thrown a lot

1416
01:29:56,603 –> 01:30:00,309
of things in here. We’ve created a bouillabaisse or a goulash,

1417
01:30:00,758 –> 01:30:04,192
and folks are going to have to think through this and move

1418
01:30:04,304 –> 01:30:08,057
through this. And so I want to thank you all for your contributions. The idea

1419
01:30:08,057 –> 01:30:11,887
that I’d like to bring, though, to the table here as we close is,

1420
01:30:13,201 –> 01:30:16,919
I think one of the things that we’ve gotten to here is that books allow

1421
01:30:17,047 –> 01:30:19,931
us to solve problems at scale. Really

1422
01:30:20,492 –> 01:30:24,322
difficult problems. Yes, there’s an oral tradition, but

1423
01:30:24,322 –> 01:30:27,944
an oral tradition dies out, right? Or it hits a

1424
01:30:27,944 –> 01:30:31,501
ceiling at a certain point, right? And what a

1425
01:30:31,629 –> 01:30:35,078
literary tradition does Good, bad, ugly, or

1426
01:30:35,078 –> 01:30:38,788
indifferent, is that it allows us to solve

1427
01:30:38,836 –> 01:30:42,433
larger problems at scale because what books do is

1428
01:30:42,866 –> 01:30:45,660
they smuggle ideas across time.

1429
01:30:46,961 –> 01:30:50,092
They smuggle really good ideas. So

1430
01:30:50,959 –> 01:30:54,749
Plato writes down Socrates’ ideas, and we’re still

1431
01:30:54,749 –> 01:30:58,378
talking about them over 2,500 years later. Uh,

1432
01:30:58,602 –> 01:31:02,232
we can argue about a translation of the Odyssey. But we’re still

1433
01:31:02,376 –> 01:31:05,636
reading fundamentally the Odyssey,

1434
01:31:06,214 –> 01:31:09,073
even if we’re reading it in chunks, even if we’re reading it in

1435
01:31:09,908 –> 01:31:13,730
1.8-second long clips. You know, we’re

1436
01:31:13,730 –> 01:31:17,391
still consuming the Odyssey, right? We’re still doing that.

1437
01:31:18,114 –> 01:31:21,871
The idea, right, of freedom or the

1438
01:31:21,871 –> 01:31:25,372
ideas of democracy, Lockean ideas. Somebody

1439
01:31:25,372 –> 01:31:28,279
mentioned— Dr. Kwasi mentioned Machiavelli.

1440
01:31:28,552 –> 01:31:32,388
Machiavellian ideas. Neil is in a C.S. Lewis group.

1441
01:31:32,725 –> 01:31:35,967
C.S. Lewis has been smuggling ideas across time for the last

1442
01:31:36,721 –> 01:31:39,658
back half of the entire back half of the 20th century to people who would

1443
01:31:39,707 –> 01:31:43,077
never have looked at apologetics or theology before.

1444
01:31:43,960 –> 01:31:47,218
Books smuggle ideas

1445
01:31:47,555 –> 01:31:51,359
across time. This is hugely powerful, and we are in a

1446
01:31:51,407 –> 01:31:55,084
moment where we are forgetting the importance of

1447
01:31:55,180 –> 01:31:58,893
this. And I think that that is actually

1448
01:31:59,118 –> 01:32:02,878
also what we are mourning here a little bit in this conversation,

1449
01:32:03,420 –> 01:32:06,888
because how do you smuggle an idea, particularly an idea

1450
01:32:07,485 –> 01:32:11,115
that can cause a society or a people

1451
01:32:11,115 –> 01:32:14,912
to scale to greatness? How do you do that and go

1452
01:32:14,912 –> 01:32:18,650
past the ceiling of the oral tradition? What’s the tool you do for

1453
01:32:18,650 –> 01:32:21,848
that effectively? And by the way, I’m not opposed to—

1454
01:32:22,798 –> 01:32:26,447
well, I’m not opposed in principle

1455
01:32:26,804 –> 01:32:30,450
to artificial intelligence or the internet. I think the internet is probably the most

1456
01:32:30,450 –> 01:32:34,169
transformational communication tool human beings have developed since the

1457
01:32:34,169 –> 01:32:37,880
printing press. Let me go down on record as saying that this

1458
01:32:38,041 –> 01:32:41,772
is the most transformational tool we’ve developed. I was joking with my kids one time,

1459
01:32:42,161 –> 01:32:45,177
probably a couple of weeks ago, and I said, if I would ever have the

1460
01:32:45,177 –> 01:32:48,960
ability to go 500 years into the future, The very first question, if I

1461
01:32:48,960 –> 01:32:51,973
were Rip Van Winkle and I was like, go to sleep now and wake up

1462
01:32:51,973 –> 01:32:55,546
500 years from now, the very first question I would ask is, are there still

1463
01:32:55,578 –> 01:32:58,671
crappy people on the internet? Like, are we still using it for that?

1464
01:32:59,520 –> 01:33:03,190
Or have we solved that problem 500 years from now? Or is it like

1465
01:33:03,190 –> 01:33:06,668
worse? Like, that’d be my, literally my very first question upon waking up.

1466
01:33:06,716 –> 01:33:09,215
Not, you know, do I have a great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great

1467
01:33:09,215 –> 01:33:12,805
grandkid? Not any of that. Just have we solved the internet problem? Did we fix

1468
01:33:12,805 –> 01:33:16,108
that? Because we’re at the beginning of a revolution right now.

1469
01:33:16,910 –> 01:33:20,630
And the same conversations we’re having about the internet

1470
01:33:21,640 –> 01:33:25,312
and about reading and about literature, these were the same

1471
01:33:25,312 –> 01:33:29,129
conversations that people had when the printing press

1472
01:33:29,722 –> 01:33:33,234
first hit ground, about the oral tradition

1473
01:33:33,747 –> 01:33:37,259
and about people’s memories and knowledge and about what this new

1474
01:33:37,259 –> 01:33:41,016
technology of the printing press was going to do to people’s memory. And what’s

1475
01:33:41,016 –> 01:33:43,761
going to do to people’s knowledge and what’s going to do to the oral tradition.

1476
01:33:44,503 –> 01:33:48,088
These were the— we’re having the exact same conversations, just about a different

1477
01:33:48,088 –> 01:33:51,354
technological medium. So we’re at the beginning of a

1478
01:33:51,354 –> 01:33:55,067
revolution, not at the end. And it’s good for

1479
01:33:55,067 –> 01:33:58,086
us to have these conversations and to record them and put them on the internet.

1480
01:33:58,135 –> 01:34:01,147
That way people can see them and can remember

1481
01:34:02,914 –> 01:34:06,448
what was lost or even celebrate what was gained.

1482
01:34:09,806 –> 01:34:13,412
Richard, I’m going to let you begin and go

1483
01:34:13,972 –> 01:34:17,097
final thoughts because we’re going to wrap up here. I want to be cognizant of

1484
01:34:17,097 –> 01:34:19,853
everyone’s time. I want to thank you for, for giving me a bit of your

1485
01:34:19,901 –> 01:34:23,394
time today. This has been great. Hopefully, you’re all exchanging

1486
01:34:23,426 –> 01:34:27,272
LinkedIn profiles and connections all in the chat. If folks,

1487
01:34:27,288 –> 01:34:29,836
if you’re watching it on video, you’ve seen me crack up a few times just

1488
01:34:29,836 –> 01:34:33,329
because the chat is very lively. People are, people are talking and engaging, which is

1489
01:34:33,425 –> 01:34:36,956
great. So, Richard, I’m gonna let you go ahead and do our final

1490
01:34:37,117 –> 01:34:40,424
thoughts, and then you can go around the horn just like we opened. Just go

1491
01:34:40,424 –> 01:34:42,769
to the person next to you and call on them, and then we’ll go around.

1492
01:34:43,218 –> 01:34:46,815
Richard, go ahead. Hey, Hasan, first I want to thank you very

1493
01:34:46,831 –> 01:34:50,668
much for doing this, but I also want to thank you

1494
01:34:50,684 –> 01:34:54,521
for your, your last comments, because when you spoke about

1495
01:34:55,115 –> 01:34:58,680
what books do is to bring thoughts

1496
01:34:58,953 –> 01:35:02,354
and ideas smuggled them through time.

1497
01:35:02,597 –> 01:35:06,364
And you talked about the Odyssey, and you talked about some other books.

1498
01:35:08,740 –> 01:35:12,299
The number one most widely read book that’s ever been

1499
01:35:12,412 –> 01:35:16,215
written, and it’s still the most widely read book that’s

1500
01:35:16,215 –> 01:35:19,823
ever been written, is the 5 Books of Moses, is

1501
01:35:19,871 –> 01:35:23,624
the Old Testament. That book was written

1502
01:35:23,738 –> 01:35:26,843
3,500 years ago. And that book

1503
01:35:27,390 –> 01:35:30,974
first talked about a guy called Abraham who lived approximately

1504
01:35:31,247 –> 01:35:34,788
500 years before that. And to this day,

1505
01:35:35,749 –> 01:35:39,398
half the population of this planet claims that Abraham is

1506
01:35:39,430 –> 01:35:43,212
their forefather. Now, if we’re going to learn about how to,

1507
01:35:43,875 –> 01:35:47,496
you know, how people get influenced, how to influence people,

1508
01:35:48,130 –> 01:35:51,659
we probably should learn about Abraham because this is a guy

1509
01:35:52,162 –> 01:35:55,994
who just was a guy. He looked at—

1510
01:35:56,011 –> 01:35:59,698
he looked around the— he looked around society, looked around his, his, his

1511
01:35:59,794 –> 01:36:03,632
culture, is that— and he thought there was something wrong. And he decided

1512
01:36:04,164 –> 01:36:07,473
he’s going to carve a new path. He’s going to leave everything behind and start

1513
01:36:07,473 –> 01:36:11,031
all over again. He didn’t have a— he

1514
01:36:11,031 –> 01:36:14,700
didn’t have a big army. He didn’t have— he wasn’t like super

1515
01:36:14,716 –> 01:36:17,810
wealthy. He, he

1516
01:36:17,810 –> 01:36:20,497
just had a vision. He just

1517
01:36:21,727 –> 01:36:25,466
committed himself to discover what life’s all about.

1518
01:36:26,113 –> 01:36:28,447
And then he taught it to his son, and then he saw it, taught it

1519
01:36:28,447 –> 01:36:32,078
to his sons, and then it just grew. And then eventually

1520
01:36:32,257 –> 01:36:34,834
the Bible showed up and told that story.

1521
01:36:37,058 –> 01:36:40,598
So I think that there’s no

1522
01:36:40,598 –> 01:36:44,009
question about it that the people who are going to be the most

1523
01:36:44,074 –> 01:36:47,912
influential people the leaders. I mean, I can’t

1524
01:36:47,912 –> 01:36:51,667
think of a better leader than Abraham. He was the most influential person

1525
01:36:51,715 –> 01:36:55,220
that ever lived and still is. It’s going to be

1526
01:36:55,220 –> 01:36:58,790
somebody who decides, you know, there’s something wrong going on here and we have to

1527
01:36:58,790 –> 01:37:02,493
carve a new path. And he has to figure out how to

1528
01:37:02,493 –> 01:37:02,895
teach it.

1529
01:37:05,645 –> 01:37:08,630
And it was eventually written down

1530
01:37:09,409 –> 01:37:12,116
so that other people can learn it. And I

1531
01:37:13,401 –> 01:37:17,062
think if people don’t learn how to write and read

1532
01:37:17,800 –> 01:37:21,044
and make that a major part of what they’re doing on a regular basis,

1533
01:37:21,220 –> 01:37:24,335
not a lot of progress is going to be

1534
01:37:25,186 –> 01:37:28,622
made. AI is probably the most dangerous thing

1535
01:37:29,200 –> 01:37:32,380
that’s ever been invented. And unless

1536
01:37:33,070 –> 01:37:36,914
people understand what the dangers are of AI, It could

1537
01:37:36,914 –> 01:37:39,315
also be the greatest thing that was ever invented as well.

1538
01:37:42,867 –> 01:37:45,553
It’s going to be a wild ride. That’s for sure.

1539
01:37:50,992 –> 01:37:53,348
Thank you, Richard. Why don’t you pick who’s next?

1540
01:37:55,410 –> 01:37:55,985
Neil, on your screen.

1541
01:37:59,343 –> 01:38:02,774
What am I— am I summing up? Is that the idea? You’re summing up. Yeah,

1542
01:38:02,790 –> 01:38:06,436
you’re helping us around the corner. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, I’ll sum up with a

1543
01:38:06,436 –> 01:38:10,258
couple of very recent anecdotes. So, Haysan,

1544
01:38:10,274 –> 01:38:13,726
you know the work that I do. I was talking to a potential

1545
01:38:13,742 –> 01:38:17,419
client recently and I used the term Catch-22 and they had no

1546
01:38:17,435 –> 01:38:20,486
idea what I was talking about. Never heard the term.

1547
01:38:21,192 –> 01:38:24,805
Never had no idea. I had to explain it to them, right? And then the

1548
01:38:24,821 –> 01:38:27,920
other one, I think maybe the group will get a small kick out of this,

1549
01:38:28,273 –> 01:38:31,823
is I’m not an

1550
01:38:31,887 –> 01:38:35,357
online guy. I’m not involved in any social media, but there was a

1551
01:38:35,422 –> 01:38:38,876
recent Wall Street Journal article that happened to be about a law firm where I

1552
01:38:39,117 –> 01:38:42,957
have some family members that work there. And I was reading through

1553
01:38:42,957 –> 01:38:46,395
the comments and at the bottom, you knew there was going to be one

1554
01:38:47,070 –> 01:38:50,541
about, you know, the comment was King Lear had it right,

1555
01:38:51,071 –> 01:38:54,766
meaning, you know, the famous Shakespearean quote, the first thing we do is kill all

1556
01:38:54,766 –> 01:38:58,460
the lawyers. And I made one My first comment ever,

1557
01:38:58,540 –> 01:39:01,444
which was, A, that’s not King Lear, it’s Henry VI.

1558
01:39:02,872 –> 01:39:06,691
And secondly, the guy who’s talking is a bad guy,

1559
01:39:08,023 –> 01:39:11,457
right? Shakespeare was not saying, hey, here’s a great

1560
01:39:11,457 –> 01:39:15,212
idea, right? You know, so it goes

1561
01:39:15,324 –> 01:39:19,159
to the, you know, man, someone decided to get

1562
01:39:19,159 –> 01:39:22,882
on the internet and make a comment thinking that they were, you know, I

1563
01:39:22,946 –> 01:39:26,574
guess sagely quoting Shakespeare, and they got Not only the play

1564
01:39:26,702 –> 01:39:30,459
wrong, they actually got the whole point wrong, which is Shakespeare was

1565
01:39:30,491 –> 01:39:34,265
trying to say this is a very bad

1566
01:39:34,265 –> 01:39:38,038
idea. And again, for the lawyers on this

1567
01:39:38,038 –> 01:39:41,298
call, I just want to say, especially, I thought it was an

1568
01:39:41,346 –> 01:39:43,578
especially bad idea.

1569
01:39:44,123 –> 01:39:47,881
So I guess I’ll just, besides

1570
01:39:47,897 –> 01:39:51,644
relating those 2 anecdotes, I’ll just say say, I

1571
01:39:51,935 –> 01:39:55,614
am basically an optimist by nature, and I mentioned C.S. Lewis earlier, and C.S.

1572
01:39:55,710 –> 01:39:58,082
Lewis has, I think, a fantastic

1573
01:39:59,760 –> 01:40:03,288
book called That Hideous Strength, which is the 3rd in his trilogy. And in

1574
01:40:03,288 –> 01:40:07,056
that, most of the heroes in that book are doing

1575
01:40:07,153 –> 01:40:10,441
nothing. They’re just living regular lives

1576
01:40:10,876 –> 01:40:13,911
while evil rises and falls

1577
01:40:14,669 –> 01:40:18,430
around them. And there was at one point actually where one of the

1578
01:40:18,430 –> 01:40:21,642
characters in the book says, what are we doing? raising

1579
01:40:21,674 –> 01:40:25,415
vegetables here. You know, I mean, in what way are we, you know, fighting

1580
01:40:25,511 –> 01:40:28,771
the great moral fight of our time? And, uh,

1581
01:40:29,285 –> 01:40:32,271
I, I’m not gonna be able to quote the exact response here off the cuff

1582
01:40:32,271 –> 01:40:35,723
on this call, but essentially the, the leader of the group, whose name is Ransom,

1583
01:40:35,739 –> 01:40:39,513
says, you were doing what you were supposed to

1584
01:40:39,513 –> 01:40:43,286
be doing. You were obeying and you were keeping the faith. And I think one

1585
01:40:43,350 –> 01:40:46,449
thing we all share on this call is we all have faith in books.

1586
01:40:46,962 –> 01:40:50,616
Whatever those books are, we all share that faith.

1587
01:40:51,273 –> 01:40:55,119
And I believe, I have to, maybe this is the optimist in me,

1588
01:40:55,135 –> 01:40:58,869
that reading and books will survive the tsunami

1589
01:40:59,125 –> 01:41:02,923
of social media. Maybe because social media will

1590
01:41:02,987 –> 01:41:06,753
ultimately collapse on itself, or it will just find its own value

1591
01:41:06,753 –> 01:41:09,638
proposition and people will go back to it. And someone on this call, and forgive

1592
01:41:09,638 –> 01:41:13,213
me, I don’t remember who, just cited that Some of Gen

1593
01:41:13,326 –> 01:41:16,939
Z or some of the younger generation are moving away from social media. They’re

1594
01:41:16,939 –> 01:41:20,744
moving away from smartphones. I have 2 children. One

1595
01:41:20,792 –> 01:41:24,212
is 30 and my daughter is 26, and she has

1596
01:41:24,309 –> 01:41:27,905
completely divorced herself from social media for that reason. She finds it depressing

1597
01:41:28,901 –> 01:41:31,935
and anxiety-driven. So that’s a data point of 2

1598
01:41:33,397 –> 01:41:37,202
amongst the 9 billion people on this planet. And that— I’ll yield the—

1599
01:41:37,920 –> 01:41:41,312
Microphone to John. You’re to my right, John, so you’re up next.

1600
01:41:43,484 –> 01:41:47,301
Um, I think for me, uh, I do get a little

1601
01:41:47,301 –> 01:41:51,070
too zoomed in, so it’s helpful to hear how like Moomin has been doing

1602
01:41:51,118 –> 01:41:54,885
this for a very long time. And there’s always been

1603
01:41:54,885 –> 01:41:58,677
people that don’t read. There just is, right? So the idea

1604
01:41:58,677 –> 01:42:01,633
that everyone is going to become a reader, we’ve never really had that, right?

1605
01:42:02,239 –> 01:42:06,088
But I think The thing that I am kind

1606
01:42:06,088 –> 01:42:09,395
of just like sitting here thinking about is like the reason why I read now

1607
01:42:09,909 –> 01:42:13,747
is to keep upskilling myself, to keep learning new things, right? And

1608
01:42:14,341 –> 01:42:18,178
I kind of take this idea that if— that it’s a little egoic

1609
01:42:18,355 –> 01:42:21,694
to think that I’m the only person that’s going through any problem

1610
01:42:21,903 –> 01:42:25,516
state season that I come across, right?

1611
01:42:26,045 –> 01:42:29,305
There is an example, and it might not be exact, But there’s an

1612
01:42:29,353 –> 01:42:33,030
example out there that’s close enough that if I’m willing to pick up a book,

1613
01:42:33,512 –> 01:42:36,996
slog through maybe some paragraphs I don’t like, I don’t have to

1614
01:42:37,060 –> 01:42:40,817
recreate the wheel from zero. I can find someone that’s been somewhere close to

1615
01:42:40,817 –> 01:42:44,238
this. And as a guy who works for himself and likes to work for himself,

1616
01:42:44,286 –> 01:42:46,855
doesn’t want to go back to work for someone else— I’ve done that, not my

1617
01:42:46,855 –> 01:42:50,419
jam— like, learn for your own

1618
01:42:50,467 –> 01:42:54,305
development, learn for your own skill set at a bare minimum. Otherwise, you’re

1619
01:42:54,321 –> 01:42:57,575
always going to have to go and work for someone else and make do with

1620
01:42:57,591 –> 01:42:58,655
what they’re willing to give to you.

1621
01:43:01,263 –> 01:43:04,567
Let’s go. I’m curious as to David’s

1622
01:43:05,035 –> 01:43:06,743
wrapping up thoughts on this.

1623
01:43:08,482 –> 01:43:12,160
Yeah. I take kind of the Wonder Twins,

1624
01:43:12,676 –> 01:43:15,548
Wonder Friends kind of approach to this, meaning that I think that

1625
01:43:16,693 –> 01:43:19,175
even in this group right now, I can tell that there are some people who

1626
01:43:19,207 –> 01:43:22,659
are large consumers of knowledge and there are people who are really good at

1627
01:43:23,042 –> 01:43:25,226
are good at applying knowledge. And I think there’s some people that are really good

1628
01:43:25,226 –> 01:43:28,873
at delivering knowledge. And I think when we think about the

1629
01:43:28,889 –> 01:43:32,086
future or like, what are we going to do as leaders, it seems like there

1630
01:43:32,102 –> 01:43:35,893
has to be some kind of roundtable formation amongst— and I

1631
01:43:35,893 –> 01:43:39,572
think that maybe that’s also what John was saying earlier about the local, like a

1632
01:43:39,572 –> 01:43:43,251
local level of that. But finding other people who are leaders

1633
01:43:43,363 –> 01:43:46,705
and really tapping into their skill set, we can’t all be everything.

1634
01:43:47,235 –> 01:43:50,448
So finding those of us who have unique

1635
01:43:50,400 –> 01:43:54,202
qualifications, skill sets. Like, for instance, Hasan has the ability to put

1636
01:43:54,202 –> 01:43:57,683
this together. He is a facilitator. And I think that that’s a skill

1637
01:43:57,812 –> 01:44:01,614
set that is very, very powerful. I think those people, again, who

1638
01:44:01,726 –> 01:44:04,759
are teachers, very powerful. Those people who are just also

1639
01:44:05,192 –> 01:44:08,946
contrarian, these are all powerful things we need that go

1640
01:44:09,107 –> 01:44:12,829
into this kind of roundtable of leadership. And I think that, I guess, from my

1641
01:44:12,957 –> 01:44:16,664
perspective, it feels like that’s what’s the future

1642
01:44:16,664 –> 01:44:20,341
needs. The future needs these, almost like we need to clap

1643
01:44:20,341 –> 01:44:23,777
together. We need to find a way to organize ourselves so that

1644
01:44:23,970 –> 01:44:27,711
whether it’s a unit of things and we all find ways

1645
01:44:27,807 –> 01:44:30,954
to either create a product or create some kind of thing that is across the

1646
01:44:30,954 –> 01:44:34,647
internet, or it’s very face-to-face and it’s very literal and it’s very local,

1647
01:44:35,835 –> 01:44:38,790
I think both are very powerful. But that to me is what

1648
01:44:39,689 –> 01:44:42,017
the thing that I just take away when looking at all the notes I took

1649
01:44:42,017 –> 01:44:45,629
during this conversation, it’s very much about that. There’s so many different

1650
01:44:45,629 –> 01:44:49,416
unique insights, and I think that finding ways to bring them

1651
01:44:49,480 –> 01:44:53,075
all together is kind of like the sum of the parts transcends. It very much

1652
01:44:53,172 –> 01:44:56,798
has this very much magnifier effect. I think

1653
01:44:56,798 –> 01:45:00,490
that’s what I would like to see personally about just not just for what I

1654
01:45:00,490 –> 01:45:04,020
can do for myself with other people, but I think it’d be wonderful to see

1655
01:45:04,020 –> 01:45:07,727
that kind of sprout up around the United States as kind of just almost like

1656
01:45:08,594 –> 01:45:12,198
maybe a movement or an organization for people who are older, kind of coming together

1657
01:45:12,198 –> 01:45:14,172
and then disseminating that stuff into the future.

1658
01:45:19,181 –> 01:45:22,754
Awesome. Thanks, Dave. Who would you like to go to next for closing thoughts?

1659
01:45:28,517 –> 01:45:29,778
Let’s go to Hannah. My apologies.

1660
01:45:32,866 –> 01:45:36,633
I almost felt like I could read your lips, and it sounded

1661
01:45:37,076 –> 01:45:40,852
Or looked like me. I’ll start with a shout

1662
01:45:40,852 –> 01:45:44,660
out to Neil. I am on a huge C.S. Lewis kick

1663
01:45:44,949 –> 01:45:48,612
and have been through the trilogy, and

1664
01:45:48,821 –> 01:45:52,468
just, just the idea that somebody writes a sci-fi

1665
01:45:52,982 –> 01:45:56,500
in 1942, and

1666
01:45:56,693 –> 01:46:00,453
it’s just— it’s that right there is why we

1667
01:46:00,453 –> 01:46:03,329
should keep reading, just because it’s so amazing.

1668
01:46:04,646 –> 01:46:08,228
I wanted to maybe say 2 things. One,

1669
01:46:09,385 –> 01:46:12,903
I— 3 things. One, I really enjoyed this

1670
01:46:13,064 –> 01:46:16,871
conversation and it gave me a lot of food for thought, and I

1671
01:46:16,871 –> 01:46:20,518
know that I will be processing in the next few days and kind of things

1672
01:46:20,550 –> 01:46:23,860
will come back and come up. So I want to

1673
01:46:24,004 –> 01:46:27,812
thank all of the participants, and Hazan, a huge

1674
01:46:27,860 –> 01:46:30,591
thank you to you for organizing and bringing us together.

1675
01:46:32,140 –> 01:46:35,880
That’s one. 2, I think that we talked a lot

1676
01:46:35,928 –> 01:46:39,365
about what books

1677
01:46:39,365 –> 01:46:43,087
communicate and what ideas are from, as

1678
01:46:43,087 –> 01:46:46,600
Richard said, Abraham through history. We

1679
01:46:46,648 –> 01:46:50,184
talked about Socrates, mentioned

1680
01:46:50,505 –> 01:46:53,895
Shakespeare, and I think that we

1681
01:46:55,245 –> 01:46:59,048
talk about ideas But what John mentioned just now,

1682
01:46:59,497 –> 01:47:02,672
I thought was so critical because I think that’s the bridge

1683
01:47:02,784 –> 01:47:06,295
to the new generation. It also

1684
01:47:06,295 –> 01:47:09,919
captures how you feel. The way

1685
01:47:10,063 –> 01:47:13,831
you feel, where, like, that is at

1686
01:47:13,831 –> 01:47:17,599
the, at the, you know, core for so many people. That’s

1687
01:47:17,599 –> 01:47:21,383
how they discover literature in the first place because they feel

1688
01:47:21,383 –> 01:47:25,151
like crap and they think that they’re the only ones who ever experienced

1689
01:47:25,151 –> 01:47:28,733
this. And this is the first time it ever happened in the history of mankind.

1690
01:47:29,328 –> 01:47:33,087
And I think that understanding that this is a human

1691
01:47:33,087 –> 01:47:36,746
experience and the books are the medium, how we have

1692
01:47:36,811 –> 01:47:40,308
been communicating this human experience, is

1693
01:47:41,425 –> 01:47:45,083
what can bring people back to a

1694
01:47:45,148 –> 01:47:48,660
certain degree. I have a very contrarian idea as well,

1695
01:47:48,951 –> 01:47:52,624
which is I think that ultimately we want to know what the

1696
01:47:52,827 –> 01:47:56,249
who the other person is, and books are

1697
01:47:56,249 –> 01:47:59,671
somewhat filtered in many ways.

1698
01:48:00,413 –> 01:48:02,637
And I think that the rise

1699
01:48:04,213 –> 01:48:07,878
of the reality TV and now TikTok,

1700
01:48:07,910 –> 01:48:11,740
where you’re watching people just being themselves,

1701
01:48:12,079 –> 01:48:15,689
I think that the reason why it has such an appeal is because it

1702
01:48:15,801 –> 01:48:19,258
gets to this very thing of I want to

1703
01:48:19,258 –> 01:48:22,933
know what my human experience versus your

1704
01:48:23,128 –> 01:48:26,268
human— like, I want to know your human experience as

1705
01:48:26,462 –> 01:48:29,717
unfiltered as possible. And so,

1706
01:48:31,087 –> 01:48:34,144
and the last thing was, I

1707
01:48:35,157 –> 01:48:38,418
really think that we might be looking

1708
01:48:38,836 –> 01:48:42,259
at the books becoming sort of a niche,

1709
01:48:42,853 –> 01:48:46,383
and we might be coming to a point where we don’t

1710
01:48:46,479 –> 01:48:49,371
read anymore because we communicate nonverbally

1711
01:48:50,605 –> 01:48:54,402
and we’re just chipped and elevated humans and/or

1712
01:48:54,771 –> 01:48:58,617
augmented humans. And I hope that it

1713
01:48:58,617 –> 01:49:02,110
will take a couple decades before we get there because I really like the

1714
01:49:02,206 –> 01:49:05,956
books, but I also think that it’s not bad

1715
01:49:06,068 –> 01:49:09,754
to think about it and to just give it a try even

1716
01:49:09,754 –> 01:49:13,151
intellectually to see what would that look like

1717
01:49:13,151 –> 01:49:16,070
because I think it is possible. And that’s my closing

1718
01:49:16,574 –> 01:49:17,681
depressing idea.

1719
01:49:20,585 –> 01:49:23,974
No, you’re fine, Hannah. Go ahead, pick who can go next.

1720
01:49:24,603 –> 01:49:26,992
Of course, I forgot. I’m going to go to Kristin.

1721
01:49:30,767 –> 01:49:34,067
Okay. I guess my closing

1722
01:49:34,148 –> 01:49:37,916
comments are, first of all, I definitely

1723
01:49:37,948 –> 01:49:41,026
feel like I’m the dumbest person in this room, but it has been so wonderful

1724
01:49:41,026 –> 01:49:44,525
sitting here and just absorbing everybody’s perspective and

1725
01:49:45,568 –> 01:49:49,200
Um, it’s good on the first— that’s not

1726
01:49:49,200 –> 01:49:52,895
meant to— that comment is not meant to be like fishing. I wasn’t

1727
01:49:52,895 –> 01:49:55,836
fishing for comments. I think that is something

1728
01:49:57,073 –> 01:50:00,865
that people probably my age and most of

1729
01:50:00,865 –> 01:50:04,464
us maybe don’t do often enough. So I’m very, very grateful to have been

1730
01:50:04,464 –> 01:50:08,048
here, and I hope that everybody that is listening to this podcast is

1731
01:50:08,562 –> 01:50:12,176
feeling just as enriched. Um, I guess I would

1732
01:50:12,240 –> 01:50:15,948
close though with a plea, and it just kind of goes back

1733
01:50:15,948 –> 01:50:19,609
to the one of the few— I think the one thing that I said

1734
01:50:19,882 –> 01:50:23,365
or felt like I needed to contribute is, is don’t, um,

1735
01:50:24,858 –> 01:50:28,599
don’t look down on other people. Don’t— oh, if somebody tells you

1736
01:50:28,631 –> 01:50:32,452
they don’t read, if somebody says they haven’t read

1737
01:50:32,500 –> 01:50:36,256
a book this year, if somebody says they’ve never finished a

1738
01:50:36,256 –> 01:50:37,669
book, if somebody says

1739
01:50:39,869 –> 01:50:43,393
anything along those lines, please do not sneer

1740
01:50:43,832 –> 01:50:47,670
at them. Please don’t look

1741
01:50:47,670 –> 01:50:51,282
down on them. Please don’t turn your nose up. Whatever it is, whatever it is,

1742
01:50:51,380 –> 01:50:55,106
this, um, I’m better than you because I’m

1743
01:50:55,106 –> 01:50:58,757
reading— that’s not, that’s not anybody’s here. I

1744
01:50:58,757 –> 01:51:02,456
don’t think that’s, that’s not the point of this conversation. One of the

1745
01:51:02,456 –> 01:51:06,178
reasons that books are— we want to fight so much for

1746
01:51:06,308 –> 01:51:09,570
books is because of how enriching they are.

1747
01:51:10,122 –> 01:51:13,950
And so ask a question

1748
01:51:13,999 –> 01:51:17,694
instead. Use that opportunity to become the

1749
01:51:17,694 –> 01:51:21,144
leader that invites them to read

1750
01:51:21,899 –> 01:51:24,839
something. Again, whatever it is,

1751
01:51:25,096 –> 01:51:28,776
wherever they’re starting, however small the start is,

1752
01:51:29,210 –> 01:51:32,312
if it’s a children’s picture book, If it’s,

1753
01:51:33,496 –> 01:51:36,836
um, oh my gosh, C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia,

1754
01:51:37,306 –> 01:51:40,788
if it’s The Hobbit, if it’s whatever it

1755
01:51:40,933 –> 01:51:44,371
is, invite them.

1756
01:51:44,708 –> 01:51:48,532
Meet them where they’re at. Invite them to join with you and experience

1757
01:51:48,725 –> 01:51:51,692
what we know to be so valuable. But

1758
01:51:52,595 –> 01:51:56,368
yeah, use that opportunity to become the leader yourself and just ask that question.

1759
01:51:56,889 –> 01:52:00,608
Ask a question. Don’t, don’t talk down to them. Don’t say you should be

1760
01:52:00,608 –> 01:52:04,148
reading this many books because that, again, that expectation

1761
01:52:04,892 –> 01:52:08,309
for someone who’s never finished a book, has graduated high school and has never finished

1762
01:52:08,309 –> 01:52:11,944
a book, is in college and never

1763
01:52:11,977 –> 01:52:15,710
finished a book. Don’t— that just— it’s

1764
01:52:15,790 –> 01:52:19,614
a mountain that’s too high for them. So this is where

1765
01:52:20,225 –> 01:52:23,711
really every person, every single person has an

1766
01:52:23,743 –> 01:52:27,314
opportunity to be a leader and

1767
01:52:27,993 –> 01:52:30,805
help the tide to rise all boats.

1768
01:52:33,010 –> 01:52:35,622
Awesome. Thank you, Kristin. Go ahead and pick who goes next.

1769
01:52:37,629 –> 01:52:40,929
I forgot again. Um, DeRollo. Can’t

1770
01:52:40,929 –> 01:52:41,928
hear.

1771
01:52:51,284 –> 01:52:55,049
Can’t hear. Can’t hear you.

1772
01:52:59,090 –> 01:53:00,072
He’ll go in a minute. Hold on.

1773
01:53:03,856 –> 01:53:06,835
Oh, perfect. Oh, there it is. All I had to do was do a circle

1774
01:53:06,835 –> 01:53:10,260
motion saying go on to somebody else, and then the

1775
01:53:10,341 –> 01:53:13,713
tech comes on. Oh, you know, this was a new computer last year, right?

1776
01:53:14,297 –> 01:53:17,898
Exactly. I’m—

1777
01:53:18,108 –> 01:53:21,894
thank you. Thank you, Kristen, because I

1778
01:53:22,088 –> 01:53:25,695
wanted to speak in response to what you said,

1779
01:53:25,809 –> 01:53:29,515
because I want to nuance it, because I— there’s a way in which I

1780
01:53:29,515 –> 01:53:32,989
disagree and agree at the same time, which sounds like I’m not taking a

1781
01:53:33,054 –> 01:53:36,627
position. But basically, I think you’re

1782
01:53:36,756 –> 01:53:40,462
right to say, don’t make these people feel bad

1783
01:53:40,640 –> 01:53:44,264
that they don’t read. At the same time, I think reading

1784
01:53:44,458 –> 01:53:48,286
makes humans better. I think we become better humans

1785
01:53:48,318 –> 01:53:51,764
by reading. And so we need to invite them, like you were saying, we need

1786
01:53:51,764 –> 01:53:55,435
to invite them into this experience that we’re having, right? That

1787
01:53:55,435 –> 01:53:58,882
allows for cafe culture and literary societies, that

1788
01:53:58,882 –> 01:54:02,553
allows for increased political understanding, that allows for not just

1789
01:54:02,649 –> 01:54:06,192
work but more complex work. Because I may

1790
01:54:06,192 –> 01:54:09,687
say, hey, show a video, but if we’re talking about

1791
01:54:10,344 –> 01:54:14,175
how to repair the control rods in a nuclear reactor, that

1792
01:54:14,207 –> 01:54:17,945
person better be able to read, whoever he or she is, and you’re not watching

1793
01:54:17,993 –> 01:54:20,466
a video to show you how to do that. You know, you get it, you

1794
01:54:20,466 –> 01:54:23,662
get the physics, you know how to do it, or we have a big problem.

1795
01:54:23,759 –> 01:54:27,340
And so I think that reading is an essential

1796
01:54:27,372 –> 01:54:31,146
way that humans just become and do better. And so we need

1797
01:54:31,146 –> 01:54:34,406
to figure out how to encourage— leaders need to figure out how to encourage and

1798
01:54:34,438 –> 01:54:37,763
lead those around us into more reading. Therefore, y’all

1799
01:54:38,196 –> 01:54:41,408
keep reading, keep talking about what you’re reading. Okay,

1800
01:54:41,762 –> 01:54:45,567
start a book club. Put actually challenging

1801
01:54:45,679 –> 01:54:49,018
books in the book club. One of the things that

1802
01:54:49,114 –> 01:54:51,971
Hasan will tell you that I love doing on the podcast is he will say,

1803
01:54:52,036 –> 01:54:55,326
we won’t talk about X. I love talking about whatever X is. I

1804
01:54:55,615 –> 01:54:59,371
love doing that because I think it’s important. I think driving

1805
01:54:59,949 –> 01:55:03,464
an idea to the place where now there is disagreement is

1806
01:55:03,577 –> 01:55:06,466
what’s necessary. And also, you know,

1807
01:55:07,509 –> 01:55:11,137
this is to respond to something that Hannah brought up, you know.

1808
01:55:11,506 –> 01:55:15,246
One of the problems with reality TV is that there’s so many people

1809
01:55:15,390 –> 01:55:19,210
certainly connected to Hollywood and being put in these shows who

1810
01:55:19,210 –> 01:55:22,501
just live terribly. And so instead of watching the

1811
01:55:22,581 –> 01:55:26,336
ideal, the heroic, right, we’re

1812
01:55:26,433 –> 01:55:29,402
watching the banal and we’re finding that

1813
01:55:29,482 –> 01:55:33,206
entertaining. And then first we’re laughing and whatever. But

1814
01:55:33,254 –> 01:55:36,849
what’s happening is we’re normalizing their nonsense.

1815
01:55:37,604 –> 01:55:41,119
Instead of being shown, here’s a model that’s

1816
01:55:41,119 –> 01:55:44,828
challenging, you know, like, why don’t they do a reality show of

1817
01:55:44,828 –> 01:55:48,584
Mother Teresa? We’d all be crying. We’d feel terrible and look

1818
01:55:48,584 –> 01:55:51,651
at what she did and say, wow, that’s amazing. And then look at ourselves and

1819
01:55:51,651 –> 01:55:55,150
say, I got some work to do, right? And it’s just like reading

1820
01:55:55,423 –> 01:55:59,212
allows us to do these things and to get to a place where we can

1821
01:55:59,276 –> 01:56:02,760
say, hey, look, this is how we tackle

1822
01:56:02,888 –> 01:56:06,701
complex problems. Like, We cannot do that without reading, so

1823
01:56:06,701 –> 01:56:08,872
we need to be about that. Thank you.

1824
01:56:11,641 –> 01:56:14,514
All right, you get to pick who goes next. Oh, excellent.

1825
01:56:15,561 –> 01:56:19,040
Tom, have you spoken or no? No, sir, not yet. Excellent.

1826
01:56:19,454 –> 01:56:21,616
I was gonna say, I was perfectly okay going last, though. If you want to

1827
01:56:21,665 –> 01:56:25,257
go Mormon, I’m fine with that. It’s up to you. All right, so for me,

1828
01:56:26,297 –> 01:56:29,978
first things first, again, like everybody has already said this, Hasan, and you’ve You

1829
01:56:29,978 –> 01:56:33,786
probably invited so many of us on here so you could hear the

1830
01:56:33,802 –> 01:56:37,240
words thank you to Hassan so many times. I know that you’re like that. So,

1831
01:56:37,673 –> 01:56:41,513
totally kidding. He’s not like that. But, but no, but I do want to thank

1832
01:56:41,513 –> 01:56:45,128
you very much. I think being a part of— and as Kristen, to your, to

1833
01:56:45,128 –> 01:56:48,952
your statement too, I, I feel, I always feel humbled when

1834
01:56:48,952 –> 01:56:52,598
I’m in a room like this full of very, very intellectual people. And

1835
01:56:52,920 –> 01:56:56,117
coming from somebody, as, as John had mentioned,

1836
01:56:56,936 –> 01:57:00,785
going to college and not finishing his degree. I never went in the first place.

1837
01:57:00,898 –> 01:57:04,009
So when I get into a room like this with very, very intelligent people, it’s

1838
01:57:04,009 –> 01:57:07,746
very humbling to me to realize that I can have conversations with them. And

1839
01:57:08,003 –> 01:57:10,345
most of them probably don’t know that I didn’t go to college. But anyway, but

1840
01:57:10,345 –> 01:57:14,194
that’s not the point. The point is that education to me

1841
01:57:14,419 –> 01:57:18,027
is very important. Education to me is very valuable, whether you go to

1842
01:57:18,027 –> 01:57:21,139
college or not. I think it’s one of the things

1843
01:57:21,797 –> 01:57:25,245
that the— as a species, and when we talk about

1844
01:57:25,245 –> 01:57:28,798
what elevates us from other species.

1845
01:57:29,653 –> 01:57:33,392
It’s not the ability to learn and educate ourselves.

1846
01:57:33,569 –> 01:57:37,281
Other species do that. It’s the willingness and desire to continue

1847
01:57:37,361 –> 01:57:40,821
it after we’ve already learned certain things. Like, we learn so much and

1848
01:57:41,096 –> 01:57:44,571
we want to continue learning beyond the simple survival

1849
01:57:44,587 –> 01:57:48,136
tactics. The reason I say all of that is because in my

1850
01:57:49,958 –> 01:57:53,214
heart of hearts, I believe books are the easiest way and the fastest way to

1851
01:57:53,214 –> 01:57:57,038
do that. Because you can learn pretty much any topic

1852
01:57:57,038 –> 01:58:00,877
you want. The nuclear rods that Darullo are talking about. Sure. If

1853
01:58:00,974 –> 01:58:04,813
I, not a nuclear engineer, wanted to go understand what he was

1854
01:58:04,845 –> 01:58:08,394
just talking about and where those nuclear rods— I can go find a book

1855
01:58:08,780 –> 01:58:12,073
and read it. I may not be able to physically go do it, but at

1856
01:58:12,073 –> 01:58:15,285
least have a better understanding of what Darullo is talking about when he’s talking about

1857
01:58:15,285 –> 01:58:17,951
nuclear reactors or nuclear rods. Same,

1858
01:58:18,996 –> 01:58:21,983
same understanding with any of you guys and the principles that you’re talking about.

1859
01:58:22,657 –> 01:58:26,443
And, you know, when Richard’s talking about Abraham, I’ve

1860
01:58:26,459 –> 01:58:30,069
never read anything about Abraham, but if I wanted to, I can now

1861
01:58:30,133 –> 01:58:33,662
go from this conversation and say, I really want to learn and understand

1862
01:58:33,806 –> 01:58:37,641
what Richard was talking about Abraham. I can go educate myself. I can

1863
01:58:37,657 –> 01:58:41,154
go find a book and learn those topics that are there.

1864
01:58:41,683 –> 01:58:45,180
So, I think it’s not going to be a niche

1865
01:58:45,357 –> 01:58:48,597
hobby, is the term that I think— I believe the Atlantic

1866
01:58:48,886 –> 01:58:52,544
article was talking about. I

1867
01:58:52,656 –> 01:58:55,881
don’t believe it’s going to be a niche hobby, but I do think it’s gonna

1868
01:58:55,881 –> 01:58:59,715
be a differentiator of educated people. And again, I’m not

1869
01:58:59,715 –> 01:59:02,539
talking about people who go to college or don’t go to college. That’s not relevant

1870
01:59:02,539 –> 01:59:06,373
to me. I’m talking about people who educate themselves and continue to

1871
01:59:06,453 –> 01:59:10,159
educate themselves, continue elevating themselves in a thought process that

1872
01:59:10,159 –> 01:59:13,560
goes beyond the knowledge they have today. And I think books are

1873
01:59:13,752 –> 01:59:17,476
always going to be a medium to do that, regardless of whether or

1874
01:59:17,476 –> 01:59:20,944
not the percentage goes down from 40 to 20 or 20 to 10.

1875
01:59:21,956 –> 01:59:25,729
At some point, it will go as low as it’s going to go,

1876
01:59:25,889 –> 01:59:29,341
and it will stay there or get better from there. So I

1877
01:59:29,823 –> 01:59:32,858
just think, and again, I thank you for having me on here. I think everybody’s

1878
01:59:32,874 –> 01:59:36,486
comments were awesome. And David, I hope you

1879
01:59:36,486 –> 01:59:40,163
got that. Like, I wasn’t trying to be the contrarian. I was just trying to

1880
01:59:40,179 –> 01:59:43,940
make, you know, be I needed to make it worth something for the

1881
01:59:43,940 –> 01:59:47,788
listeners to not just hear all of us boast about the same thing over

1882
01:59:47,788 –> 01:59:50,590
and over. I had to throw something in there to make it sound a little

1883
01:59:50,590 –> 01:59:54,337
different. So I just picked on your topic. So I appreciate the

1884
01:59:54,337 –> 01:59:56,453
fact that you’re a very good sport about it. So thank you.

1885
01:59:58,727 –> 02:00:02,548
And now, Dr. Kwasi, you’re the last one. Saved the best for last. So

1886
02:00:02,548 –> 02:00:05,042
go for it. Oh, no, no, no. I find it very odd that we saved

1887
02:00:05,042 –> 02:00:08,777
the English professor for last, by the way. Talking about— yeah,

1888
02:00:09,007 –> 02:00:10,474
I thought that was kind of interesting.

1889
02:00:12,673 –> 02:00:16,419
Serendipity. I put it in the chat, but I’ll say it

1890
02:00:16,419 –> 02:00:19,812
out loud for those who aren’t reading the chat, the

1891
02:00:19,812 –> 02:00:23,571
podcast listeners. There’s a quote by Walter Ong,

1892
02:00:23,684 –> 02:00:27,314
a very noted sociologist who, who wrote about

1893
02:00:27,314 –> 02:00:31,118
orality versus or and literacy. And he said, basically, the reason

1894
02:00:31,134 –> 02:00:33,404
that we write is not to remember, but to forget.

1895
02:00:35,792 –> 02:00:38,248
And that way you can write something down, you can go away from it, you

1896
02:00:38,248 –> 02:00:41,224
can abstract, you can think about it, and you can come back to it.

1897
02:00:42,742 –> 02:00:46,541
So I just think it’s— it is, it’s a remarkable tool. The technology

1898
02:00:46,541 –> 02:00:50,357
of writing, of literacy, is one of the most— well,

1899
02:00:50,567 –> 02:00:53,884
it’s, you know, like there’s fire, there’s the wheel,

1900
02:00:54,224 –> 02:00:57,155
there’s reading, you know, and literacy. I want to

1901
02:00:57,462 –> 02:01:00,966
celebrate Richard Messing’s

1902
02:01:01,078 –> 02:01:04,788
idea about Abraham, you know, who wrote nothing. But then, you know, of

1903
02:01:04,836 –> 02:01:08,595
course, later on, Jewish writers did write down

1904
02:01:08,787 –> 02:01:12,529
what happened with Abraham and then Moses. But 1,000,

1905
02:01:12,545 –> 02:01:16,384
1,000-plus years before that was a writer who

1906
02:01:16,496 –> 02:01:20,190
wrote in the same region. And he wrote in cuneiform.

1907
02:01:20,415 –> 02:01:23,402
And we got the Poem of Gilgamesh, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

1908
02:01:24,189 –> 02:01:27,575
And it’s a great book. And I just want to give a shout out if

1909
02:01:27,575 –> 02:01:31,262
anyone ever wants to read maybe the first book that’s written in the Western

1910
02:01:31,326 –> 02:01:35,045
culture. It’s called The Epic of Gilgamesh, and it’s, it’s

1911
02:01:35,045 –> 02:01:38,556
amazing. And it says a lot about friendship. Can you put it in the

1912
02:01:38,556 –> 02:01:42,275
chat? Sure. Yeah, The Epic of Gilgamesh.

1913
02:01:42,627 –> 02:01:46,186
And, and I love the others that are writing, talking about and celebrating

1914
02:01:46,186 –> 02:01:49,937
C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. And, oh, I mean, just

1915
02:01:49,937 –> 02:01:53,576
so, so great. I love The Great Divorce. Maybe one of these days we can

1916
02:01:53,576 –> 02:01:56,541
talk about that, Hasan, the Great Divorce or the problem of pain.

1917
02:01:57,872 –> 02:02:00,901
But to end, my wrap-up,

1918
02:02:02,183 –> 02:02:05,742
I think, are just a couple of clichés. One of them I

1919
02:02:05,870 –> 02:02:08,723
love reading because it combats the dangers of

1920
02:02:08,771 –> 02:02:12,506
univocality. I love heteroglossia. I love

1921
02:02:12,618 –> 02:02:15,632
polyvocality. You know, I love the idea that,

1922
02:02:16,866 –> 02:02:19,847
you know, writing can push back against there’s just one right answer.

1923
02:02:20,857 –> 02:02:24,544
You know, it gives us lots of perspectives. I loved what

1924
02:02:25,346 –> 02:02:28,937
was said earlier. I think it was by Hannah, and that is

1925
02:02:29,129 –> 02:02:32,912
the idea of, you know, asking lots of questions. I think whether you

1926
02:02:32,912 –> 02:02:36,343
are reading a billboard, whether you are reading someone’s clothing, whether you are reading

1927
02:02:36,407 –> 02:02:39,453
someone’s body language, whether you are reading a book,

1928
02:02:40,751 –> 02:02:44,069
the bridge from observing something to then

1929
02:02:44,182 –> 02:02:47,226
interpreting something is to ask a lot of questions.

1930
02:02:48,055 –> 02:02:51,679
And, and then ultimately, I believe that not only are

1931
02:02:51,728 –> 02:02:55,045
readers leaders, but I think, and we all agree,

1932
02:02:55,254 –> 02:02:56,524
leaders are readers.

1933
02:02:59,049 –> 02:03:02,511
Thanks, Hyesung. Thank you, Malcolm.

1934
02:03:03,627 –> 02:03:06,973
Put it in the chat, please. Oh, yes, I will. Yes. Yeah, he’ll put Epic

1935
02:03:06,973 –> 02:03:10,579
of Gilgamesh in the, in the chat. We will also be

1936
02:03:10,660 –> 02:03:14,502
reading the Epic of Gilgamesh next year. Oh,

1937
02:03:14,807 –> 02:03:18,495
on the podcast. Yeah, I’m gonna kind of drop— you might have already found your

1938
02:03:18,511 –> 02:03:21,574
co-host for that one. I think I might have. Yeah, I think I’m gonna put

1939
02:03:21,622 –> 02:03:25,343
your name on the list, gonna pre-populate. Please do. I teach

1940
02:03:25,471 –> 02:03:29,063
it every semester. So yeah, we love having

1941
02:03:29,400 –> 02:03:33,056
folks come on who know these works

1942
02:03:33,425 –> 02:03:37,177
at an even deeper level even than I do or than others and

1943
02:03:37,193 –> 02:03:40,983
really kind of pulling things from them in order to Well,

1944
02:03:41,065 –> 02:03:44,336
in order to bring those ideas forward once again across time.

1945
02:03:45,970 –> 02:03:49,594
We’ve had several folks drop off, but that’s okay. I would like to thank everybody

1946
02:03:49,627 –> 02:03:52,962
who participated in this conversation for our

1947
02:03:52,994 –> 02:03:56,783
200th episode of the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books

1948
02:03:56,783 –> 02:04:00,461
Podcast. I encourage you to go out and connect with all

1949
02:04:00,509 –> 02:04:04,188
these folks that you’ve heard today. You heard all their intros

1950
02:04:04,302 –> 02:04:06,481
all the way at the back at the beginning of the episode. And of course,

1951
02:04:06,578 –> 02:04:10,241
I will We will have links to all of their LinkedIn

1952
02:04:10,273 –> 02:04:14,014
profiles and ways to get in contact with them as guests on

1953
02:04:14,046 –> 02:04:17,835
this show. You also have the opportunity to go back and listen to previous episodes

1954
02:04:17,980 –> 02:04:21,367
of them on this show and check those out and those conversations that we’ve been

1955
02:04:21,415 –> 02:04:24,386
having. Finally, I would like to thank you, the listener.

1956
02:04:25,204 –> 02:04:28,126
Look, there’s no way I would have done this show for

1957
02:04:28,496 –> 02:04:32,076
200 episodes without somebody listening to me talking

1958
02:04:32,172 –> 02:04:35,606
about it somewhere. Uh, you walk up to me in real life, you have

1959
02:04:35,638 –> 02:04:39,088
conversations with me when I’m, well, when I’m in random

1960
02:04:39,088 –> 02:04:42,425
places in my local community and even further than my local community.

1961
02:04:42,842 –> 02:04:45,906
And, uh, please keep doing that. Please keep telling me what you think of the

1962
02:04:45,906 –> 02:04:49,516
show. Please keep commenting. Please keep liking. Please keep subscribing. And

1963
02:04:49,516 –> 02:04:52,902
please keep recommending this podcast to

1964
02:04:53,431 –> 02:04:57,153
not only all the readers in your life, but also, uh, to paraphrase and to

1965
02:04:57,201 –> 02:05:01,005
jump off what Kristen said here. In her closing comments, to those folks

1966
02:05:01,005 –> 02:05:04,755
who are intimidated by reading. This is an easy way

1967
02:05:05,369 –> 02:05:09,214
to get involved with a book. It’s a little, little, little

1968
02:05:09,230 –> 02:05:12,646
bite, a little snippet of something that allows you to go into the book at

1969
02:05:12,646 –> 02:05:16,304
a deeper level and tie it to your own

1970
02:05:17,062 –> 02:05:20,912
leadership life. Once again, I’d like to thank everybody who was on

1971
02:05:20,944 –> 02:05:23,565
the show today. And as usual with that,

1972
02:05:24,667 –> 02:05:26,808
well, we’re out.