Leadership Lessons From the Great Books – Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain w/Brian Bagley

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Giddy up. Alright. Leadership lessons from the great books

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podcast, episode number

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129 in chronological order

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with Brian Bagley, the adventures

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of Huckleberry Finn in 3,

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2, 1.

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Hello. My name is Hason Sorrells, and this is

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the leadership lessons from the great books podcast episode

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number 129. The book that we’re going to be covering

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today, comes out of a very specific

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place. But before we get into that, I’d like to bring up a

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point here. There is a comedy award that’s

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given out every year at the Kennedy center in New York city,

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since 1998. This award is designed to

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honor, quote, a controversial social commentator and

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his, quote, uncompromising perspective of social injustice

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and personal folly. The mission of the prize

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that’s given out at the Kennedy Center in New York City is to, quote,

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honor the greatest contributors to American comedy of our time,

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close quote, which matches the type of

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literary comedy on offer from our author,

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today. Now leadership and comedy aren’t

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often thought to overlap, but on this podcast, we’ve already

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discussed in previous episodes, particularly those focused around totalitarianism,

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discussed the necessity of having the court jester on

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your team as a leader and the importance of risk taking evident

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in thinking about the world through the lens of comedy.

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I think often of how the comedian,

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and game show host Steve Harvey once quipped that, quote,

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every time a disaster happens in the world, every comedian you know

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already has a joke crafted about it 5 minutes after the event

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happens. But we can’t tell that joke 5 minutes

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after that tragedy happens.

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For Shakespeare, all the way to the author of our book

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today, in the West, the incisive value of adopting a

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comedic approach to the tragedies of life is of great

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value to the leaders of the world and to the leaders of their teams.

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Taking your position seriously might be great wisdom, but taking

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circumstances, other people, or even yourself unseriously

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might not be the worst thing in the world. And by the way, being

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humorous and seeing humor in serious situations makes a

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leader more authentic, not less.

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And we’re going to talk about the crisis of authenticity that we have today, which

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walks parallel with the crisis of incompetence, which we’ve also talked

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extensively about on this podcast.

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And we’re going to do that today in light of

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the book we will be reading today. And I’m going to, of course, as I

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usually do hold up my copy here that I’ve got, we’re going to

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be pulling leadership lessons from

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the adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark

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Twain. And we’re going to be joined

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on our journey through the adventures of Huckleberry Finn,

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with my co host today, my co guest host today,

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who has been on the show before. You’ve heard his voice before,

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talking about the old testament, talking about leadership, talking

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about putting Caesar back in the box in a variety of different other

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topics, Brian Bagley. How How are you doing today,

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Brian? Man, I’m doing great, Thanks for having

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me. So, the

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challenge of Huckleberry Finn well, there’s several challenges to Huckleberry

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Finn, and, this is a book that,

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well, it presents several challenges, and we’re going to jump right into them.

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And we’re gonna start right in chapter 1,

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discover Moses and the Bullrushers.

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And I quote, you don’t know about me without you have read a

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book by the name of the adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter.

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That book was made by mister Mark Twain, and he told the truth mainly. There

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was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing

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I’ve never seen anybody, but lied one time or another without it. It was aunt

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Polly or the widow or maybe Mary on poly Tom’s on poly. She is

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in Mary and the widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is

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mostly a true book with some stretchers. As I said before,

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Now the way to look at that book winds up is this. Tom

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and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made

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us rich. We got $6,000 a piece, all gold. It

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was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, judge Thatcher, he

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took it and put it out of interest, and it fetched us a dollar a

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day apiece all year round, more than a body could tell what to do with.

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The widow Douglas, she took me in for her son and allowed she would civilize

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me. But it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal,

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regular, and decent the widow was in all her ways. So when I couldn’t stand

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it no longer, I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar

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hogs head again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer, he

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hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers and

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I might join if I would, go back to the widow and

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he be respectable. So I went back

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the widow. She cried over me and called me or lost lamb and called me

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a lot of other names too, but she never meant no harm by it. She

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put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn’t do nothing but sweat, sweat,

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and feel all cramped up. Well, then the old thing commenced again.

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The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come on time. When

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you got to the table, you couldn’t go right to eat. You had to wait

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for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victors,

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though there weren’t really anything the matter with them. That is nothing. Only everything was

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cooked by itself. In a barrel odds and ends is different. Things get mixed

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up, and the juice kinda swaps around, and things go better. After

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supper, she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the bullrushes, and

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I was in a sweat to find out all about him. But by and by,

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she left it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time, so then

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I didn’t care no more about him because I don’t take no stock in dead

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people. Pretty soon, I wanted to

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smoke and asked the widow to let me, but she wouldn’t. She said it was

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a mean practice and wasn’t clean, and I must try to not do it anymore.

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That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when

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they don’t know nothing about it. Here she was a bothering about Moses, where there’s

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no kin to her and no use to anybody being gone, you see. You find

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it a power fault in me for doing a thing that has some good in

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it. And she took stuff too. Of course, that was alright because, you

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know, she done it herself. Her sister, miss

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Watson, tolerable, slim old maid with goggles on and just come to live with her

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and took a set at me now with a spelling book. She worked me midland

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hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn’t

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stand it much longer. Then for an hour, it was deadly dull, and I was

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fidgety. Miss Watson would say, don’t put your feet up there, Huckleberry, and don’t scrunch

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up like that, Huckleberry. Sit up straight. And pretty soon she would say, don’t gap

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and stretch like that, Huckleberry. Why don’t you try to behave? And she told me

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all about the bad place, and I said, I wish I was there. She got

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mad then, but I didn’t mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewhere.

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All I wanted was to change. I wasn’t particular. She said it was a wicked

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thing to say when I said it, and and she said she wouldn’t say it

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for the whole world. She was going to live so as to go to the

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good place. Well, I couldn’t see no advantage of going where she was

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going, so I made up my mind. I wouldn’t try for it. But I never

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said so because it would only make trouble. It wouldn’t do

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no good.

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So begins the opening of the adventures

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of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain.

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Now we’ve covered a couple of books. I’ll cover to lose 1 book by

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Mark Twain on this podcast before. We we’ve talked about roughing

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it. His

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memoir about going down the Mississippi as a young

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man on the paddle boats and on the river

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boats, that went up and down the

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Mississippi during the pre civil war era

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of the United States. And, Mark Twain, of

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course, is the pen name for Samuel

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Langhorne Clemens. Now we’ve covered a lot of his background on another podcast, but

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just to refresh you, he was born November 30th, 18 35

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in Florida, Missouri. And his life story and background

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is probably the most well known of any man of letters born

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and active during the entirety of 19th century. And he was up against

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some pretty strong, some pretty strong competition, everybody

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from Edgar Allen Poe, all the way to, to

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Nathaniel Hawthorne, Charles Dickens, and even Rudyard

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Kipling. Clemens was a writer,

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humorist, essayist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer.

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William Faulkner called him quote unquote the father of all

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American literature.

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Clemens like the aforementioned Edgar Allen Poe is a person whose avatar

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has transcended American literature and he has appeared and

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I’m sure he’d be. He would find it absolutely

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strange that this has happened, but he has appeared in television shows like

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star Trek, and has been portrayed by live events by

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actors like Val Kilmer in Branson, Missouri. I think that

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one really threw him for a loop, actually.

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Curiously enough, Samuel Langer Clemens was born shortly after an appearance of

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Halley’s comet, and he even predicted that his own death in 1910

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would accompany it, coming back. And

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he did indeed die a day after the comment was at its

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closest to earth. There’s

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a lot that can be said about Samuel Langhorne Clemens, a lot that can

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be said about Mark Twain. And I could say a lot about it on this

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podcast today, but that’s why we have Brian here. He’s going to say some things.

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So I’m gonna kick it over to him and start off with this question.

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Brian Bagley, in looking at the adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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and looking at it from the perspective of 2024,

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well over a 100 and probably almost, what, 50

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years now since its publication,

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Why have we lost the ability to be funny?

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Wow. Well, I think there are people who

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can be funny. And they

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just can’t be funny in, approved

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channel, just so to speak. And,

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so there’s there’s definitely those that know how to be funny. It’s just

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where can you be funny and what can you be funny about?

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And I think we’ll I think we’re gonna get into some of the taboo things

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here in a little bit, so I won’t get into that so much now. But

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but I I think one of the one of the big challenges, that’s

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kind of faces leaders

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is, well, you you, I think maybe I read this somewhere.

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You may have mentioned it, Hassan, is so much

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of, when we talk about authenticity,

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authenticity is sort of,

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a life that is that is, up

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against a well crafted image.

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Okay? And so, so whether it’s politics

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or religion, kind of the, the old

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guard really, really wanted to

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present it was very important to present a well

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crafted image. And so, you know, you think

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about, you know, all the great some of the great political

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scandals or religious scandals of the 19

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eighties, you know, sort of that unraveling period,

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of the of the last century, you know, where you had the

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the famous the the, the Baker family, the religious

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family that had that big television empire

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and, of course, you know, his public scandals and Tammy Faye Baker and

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all that. But then he also had,

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there was a a Democratic candidate for

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president, from Colorado. He’s a senator from Colorado.

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I believe it was 80 or 84. I cannot remember the guy’s name off the

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top of my head. It’ll come to me here in a minute. But

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he had he he was a very prominent

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senator, was was definitely on his way to getting the

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nomination for the Democratic presidential committee. And then it came out some

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photos of him on a yacht with a very young woman.

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Probably could have been his daughter. I mean, in terms of how old she was.

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And, and his presidential bid was over oh, it was

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overnight, and it was over. Same thing with, John Edwards in 2008. He’s

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challenging Barack Obama. He had scandal came out. Boom. So you

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had this this well crafted,

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image, and the media was the same way. The media you had

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3 channels, ABC, NBC, CBS. They were crafting

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and curating certain forms of news.

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Johnny Carson curated a certain form of comedy.

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All somewhere along the way, all of that

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curation became canned, inauthentic,

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because people just knew that’s just not real. That’s not right.

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It’s not genuine. And,

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and so, yeah, you had other forms

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of of comedy, news, politics,

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some very unconventional things have have sort of percolated in its wake. I I

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think that kinda gets to the point you’re making. Yeah.

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Well and the guy you’re talking about, the senator, was Gary Hart. Just a

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little bit. Thank you. That’s right. Yes. Who

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interestingly enough is still alive. He’s 87 years old. So there you go.

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Yeah. So Gary Hart, John Edwards,

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you mentioned Tammy Faye Baker. And, you know,

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in in Huckleberry Finn, Ms. Watson

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and the entire culture that’s not on the river stands in. I

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think, I think the, the theologian Doug Wilson would make this point

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stands in for all of that.

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All of the ways in which Huck Finn is bound down. Right. And I’m not

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gonna get too philosophical about this because it is humorous, but it’s all the, you

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can even see it in the first part there that I just read, which is

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in the first chapter. Right. You know, Twain

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effectively skewers religion, societal pieties,

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the good people who and, of course, women who are

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responsible for holding down

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boisterous, adventurous young men Right. And

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civilizing them. I I mean, that’s literally what, you know right. She’s gonna

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civilize me. Right? Miss Watson’s gonna civilize me. And Huck

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doesn’t wanna be civilized, and humor doesn’t want to be

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civilized. It it it’s it’s like that line in Jurassic

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Park. Right? It breaks through. It it it it creates new

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forms. It has to go outside its own boundaries. Right?

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That’s right. That’s right. I have to be able to make a joke about Gary

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Hart being on a boat with a woman that everybody’s

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thinking of to go back to that Steve Harvey, you know, idea

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that I brought up, everybody’s thinking this, but the comedian, the

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court jester, these are the people that actually open their mouths and

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say it. And this is why I’m a

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big fan of free speech because without free speech, you stifle all of

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that, and then there’s no it’s not just the stifling of humor that’s a

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problem underneath an anti free speech regime or cancel culture. It’s not

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just that. But that’s the canary in the coal mine to not solving

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a whole bunch of other problems. But there’s a sub idea in

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here that I want you to flesh out a little bit more. And it’s this

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idea that and I think

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it’s been coming for a while, and you mentioned the unraveling. Right? And and we

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talk a lot because the other the other book that we cover was the 4th

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turning, a book you recommended, and we talked about it on this podcast. And

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you and I firmly believe that, we are in the well,

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I think we’re at the end of the 4th turning. I I think we’re close

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to the end of of the period of chaos, but there’s always 4 turnings.

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Right? So, you know, there’s a there’s a springtime high.

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There’s a summer, that’s sort of, you know,

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kind of a summer of love, such as it were, to use a term

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from the most recent past. Then there’s a fall that that basically is a

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societal unraveling. Think of everything that happened in the United States between the

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19 seventies and the end of the 19 nineties. And then you have a winter

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of chaos. Think about everything that’s happened ever since 2001 all the

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way to, all the way and and September 11th, all the way to now. Okay.

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So those are your 4 cycles of history. And you and I both believe that

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we’re we’re we’re walking out these cycles, and they sort

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of happened without our permission. Right? Well,

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during a time of unraveling, when that authenticity is being

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questioned, what do you think happens? No. Not what do you

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think happens? Why do leaders who are incumbents? Why do they struggle so

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much during that time of unraveling? Why do they because this is something that’s even

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a little bit this is a little bit deeper in in in the adventures of

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Huckleberry Finn because when this book was written, or when this book was

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published, and was first published in

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18/84. Right? And it was

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published during a time after a period of chaos. Right? This

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is 20 years after the civil war. Right?

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Clemens finally felt like he could, you know, put this out there because there had

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been enough time that had passed between that chaotic period and

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and when the book was published, and the slavery question had been

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solved. So he was writing to a culture where maybe you’re not

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gonna sell that many books of the south, but they lost the war.

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So, you know, reconstruction is going on. We need to have something, you know,

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that sort of builds the people up. And the dynamic that was happening in

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the United States at that time was there weren’t 4 generations. 1 generation had

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completely died in the, in the, on the fields of the battle of the civil

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war. And so you had an older generation that had driven a

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younger generation basically to slaughter, and then a generation that was coming up after

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that who were kids when all that was going on, who would literally have

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no, as Huck Finn would say, no truck

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with anything going on in the past. So Twain is writing this in a very

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specific period of time. And so, again, my question is, why do leaders

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struggle with times of of unraveling? Not the chaos part.

303
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I understand why that, but why do they struggle in times of unraveling?

304
00:18:49,024 –> 00:18:52,625
Well, the I I think that, when when you’re in a period of

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unraveling, though, you don’t know what

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direction the unraveling is going to take. So Right.

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To stay ahead of that is is certainly a

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challenge. One of the things I think we

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we tend to be really hard on in in

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and what I encourage a lot of when I talk to leaders,

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especially younger guys, that I’ve mentored through through church

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or, maybe on the job, and I

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just encourage them, to you

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know, anytime that you reflect on history, it’s good to

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approach history with a good dose of humility

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because you don’t know how

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people are going to judge your actions and your

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social mores in a 150 years. And so

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we don’t know what we’re doing today that we think is just

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top of the top. I mean, we’re we’re doing our best, and we’re trying to

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be as, as moral as we possibly can. And

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in a 150 years, what we think is is, is the

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very best that we could be doing. You know, our

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great great grandkids are just gonna be so offended that we even thought

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that that might even be a good deal, a good way to think about things.

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And so, so just right off the bat, just whenever

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you approach history, or or a a

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period of time that wasn’t part of your own, it’s just

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important to understand that that, you know, it we

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don’t we don’t know everything, and we certainly can’t know what was going on

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in their hearts, in their souls when they were making

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decisions or making judgment calls. But to get to your point, why why does

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a leader struggle, I think, in a in a period of unraveling to be authentic?

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I think there is there’s a desire. Every leader there’s a

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conservative nature in every leader, even progressive leaders. They

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have there’s something that they have to be holding on to,

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in order to have a fixed point of reference that they’re

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moving everybody toward or or or or past

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maybe. And and so there’s there’s some

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level of, conservativeness

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that every leader needs to possess in order

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to to be,

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presentable, I guess, is the right word, and to have gravitas.

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And and so, like and and so as the leader is is navigating

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through a period of unraveling, There’s there’s this

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struggle to be, to try to maintain this

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curated image, I think, of what things were in the

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past and try to hold the ship together. Meanwhile, the ship

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could just be falling apart. And, and it’s just it’s

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00:21:43,875 –> 00:21:47,015
just a really tough thing to to navigate through.

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00:21:48,034 –> 00:21:51,875
Mhmm. Mhmm. Okay. One last question. I

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00:21:51,875 –> 00:21:54,375
kinda skipped this one, but I wanna go back to it now.

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00:21:55,315 –> 00:21:59,140
So what did you like about Huck Finn? Like, I know why I

354
00:21:59,140 –> 00:22:01,700
like the book, but why did you like the book? What what tickled you about

355
00:22:01,700 –> 00:22:04,980
this book? I just I love the,

356
00:22:05,539 –> 00:22:08,980
I I love the characters of everything. I love how

357
00:22:08,980 –> 00:22:12,285
he he was not afraid to,

358
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portray, like, even even the institution of slavery was a caricature

359
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of itself. And the way that, you know, we

360
00:22:23,865 –> 00:22:27,040
they you know, the way that Jim was kinda handled,

361
00:22:27,580 –> 00:22:31,340
throughout the course of the adventure. And, you know,

362
00:22:31,340 –> 00:22:34,400
at one point, we were, you know, he was

363
00:22:34,860 –> 00:22:38,380
running around on the boat with the other guys, you know, butt naked. You know,

364
00:22:38,380 –> 00:22:41,485
they’re, you know, sitting on it. And then, oh, well, what what what we gotta

365
00:22:41,485 –> 00:22:44,445
make sure we we you know, we need need him to be tied up during

366
00:22:44,445 –> 00:22:47,165
the day because we’re you know, he’s he’s part of the he’s part of the

367
00:22:47,165 –> 00:22:51,005
show, if you will. Right? He’s just another character in the play

368
00:22:51,005 –> 00:22:54,800
is what’s going on. And so we just Jim, we just need you

369
00:22:54,800 –> 00:22:58,560
to play your part. Okay? That’s that’s that’s sort of the the

370
00:22:58,560 –> 00:23:02,000
vibe of this whole thing. And and I I

371
00:23:02,000 –> 00:23:05,515
I love that caricature because, you know,

372
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so much of reality is,

373
00:23:09,595 –> 00:23:12,655
it’s just perception. It’s the perception of what is,

374
00:23:13,434 –> 00:23:16,975
what is real and and and the perception of what is right and wrong.

375
00:23:18,120 –> 00:23:21,880
And and, so I I just really

376
00:23:21,880 –> 00:23:25,340
appreciated his, 20th approach

377
00:23:25,480 –> 00:23:28,940
to, to all of those American institutions

378
00:23:29,720 –> 00:23:33,545
that were in the process of changing. I mean, like you

379
00:23:33,545 –> 00:23:36,985
said, the American Civil War shattered a lot of

380
00:23:36,985 –> 00:23:40,745
societal paradigms, particularly in the South, but

381
00:23:40,745 –> 00:23:43,225
certainly in the North too. I mean, there were a lot of

382
00:23:44,520 –> 00:23:47,980
I mean, politics was upended. Religion was religion was definitely

383
00:23:48,120 –> 00:23:51,960
upended, particularly in the north, a lot more in the north than it

384
00:23:51,960 –> 00:23:54,140
was in the south. And so,

385
00:23:55,400 –> 00:23:58,975
so I I feel like he did a good job

386
00:23:58,975 –> 00:24:02,575
of of, drawing on

387
00:24:02,575 –> 00:24:05,235
some funnier things and some funnier,

388
00:24:06,415 –> 00:24:10,255
making it, making that change a little

389
00:24:10,255 –> 00:24:13,620
bit easier to swallow and deal with, if that makes sense.

390
00:24:14,559 –> 00:24:17,600
Mhmm. Well and they didn’t have TV, obviously. Yeah.

391
00:24:18,400 –> 00:24:21,940
You know That’s right. The the the the biggest

392
00:24:22,000 –> 00:24:25,635
mass media that was available

393
00:24:25,695 –> 00:24:28,995
to people in the 19th century,

394
00:24:30,655 –> 00:24:33,555
was newspapers. And most newspapers,

395
00:24:34,415 –> 00:24:37,934
people forget this. I mean, we think social media is

396
00:24:37,934 –> 00:24:41,630
bad, but most newspapers were driven

397
00:24:41,630 –> 00:24:43,890
by what we would call these days,

398
00:24:46,270 –> 00:24:49,010
libel and yellow journalism.

399
00:24:49,870 –> 00:24:53,575
Literal libel. Literal, like, this I

400
00:24:53,575 –> 00:24:57,275
saw this person kill a woman in the street,

401
00:24:58,135 –> 00:25:01,975
and, like, you know, it was it was

402
00:25:01,975 –> 00:25:05,800
a level of free speech radicalism that I don’t think we no,

403
00:25:05,800 –> 00:25:09,100
I won’t say, I don’t think, I think we, we, what we have happening

404
00:25:10,200 –> 00:25:12,380
on various social media platforms,

405
00:25:14,120 –> 00:25:17,800
pales in comparison to what was

406
00:25:17,800 –> 00:25:21,225
going on there when all of that psychic

407
00:25:21,225 –> 00:25:25,005
energy was going to just one medium

408
00:25:25,705 –> 00:25:28,685
rather than being diffused across multiple medias,

409
00:25:29,625 –> 00:25:32,985
and multiple media tools. Right? And I do think

410
00:25:32,985 –> 00:25:36,550
that with the explosion of technology that we had, particularly in the

411
00:25:36,550 –> 00:25:39,530
later part of 20th century, that diffusion

412
00:25:40,070 –> 00:25:43,910
actually has had some societal benefit. But back

413
00:25:43,910 –> 00:25:46,730
in the late 19th century, I mean, you had you had journals.

414
00:25:47,955 –> 00:25:51,795
Those are for the highly read academic folks you had, you

415
00:25:51,795 –> 00:25:55,475
had newspapers, and newspapers, like I said, were mostly

416
00:25:55,475 –> 00:25:59,095
yellow journalism. Yes. There was some reporting, but still it was,

417
00:25:59,490 –> 00:26:03,250
it was a lot of free for all there. And then the last medium that

418
00:26:03,250 –> 00:26:06,950
you had that was the entertainment medium, other than plays and theater,

419
00:26:07,730 –> 00:26:11,330
was books. I mean, people read books out

420
00:26:11,330 –> 00:26:14,865
loud. Books are read were designed to be read in the in the the

421
00:26:15,025 –> 00:26:18,545
form of the novel, while not a new form. Novels have been

422
00:26:18,545 –> 00:26:22,304
around, good Lord, since, like, the Middle Ages at least. A proto novel began

423
00:26:22,304 –> 00:26:26,145
then. But the form of the novel with,

424
00:26:26,385 –> 00:26:30,170
with mass and with the beginning of industrialization really began to come into

425
00:26:30,170 –> 00:26:33,290
the form that we know it in the later part of the 20 we now

426
00:26:33,290 –> 00:26:36,970
know it, in the later part of 20th century. And artists, we’ve talked about

427
00:26:36,970 –> 00:26:40,430
this on a podcast we did talking about,

428
00:26:42,115 –> 00:26:45,955
Edgar Allan Poe, talking about Nathaniel Hawthorne, and

429
00:26:45,955 –> 00:26:49,635
now with Mark Twain. Those writers in the

430
00:26:49,635 –> 00:26:52,934
19th century got after each other like nobody’s

431
00:26:52,995 –> 00:26:56,610
business. They had zero problem

432
00:26:59,070 –> 00:27:02,830
notorious episode. We talked about this on the the fall of the house of the

433
00:27:02,830 –> 00:27:06,450
Usher episode. Edgar Allan Poe wrote critiques of other

434
00:27:06,590 –> 00:27:10,195
artists and other writers’ writings that

435
00:27:10,195 –> 00:27:13,415
caused some of those writers to want to shoot him in a duel.

436
00:27:19,155 –> 00:27:22,215
Because this because this was how people solved problems

437
00:27:23,580 –> 00:27:26,960
back then. If you ran your mouth, you’re gonna get clapped.

438
00:27:28,860 –> 00:27:32,559
And if you ran your mouth very much verbal it was very much verbal dueling

439
00:27:32,860 –> 00:27:36,285
very much. Well, if you right. If you ran your mouth in print, like there

440
00:27:36,285 –> 00:27:40,045
was no like, oh, it was just some anonymous troll on

441
00:27:40,045 –> 00:27:43,805
Twitter. Yes. It was, oh, no, no, no.

442
00:27:43,805 –> 00:27:47,485
That’s Bob across the street. I’m going to go fix that problem, Bob.

443
00:27:47,485 –> 00:27:51,185
And, and by the way, everybody knew what the rules were. Like everybody knew

444
00:27:51,590 –> 00:27:54,890
what the rules were. Everybody knew what the consequences were.

445
00:27:55,270 –> 00:27:59,110
Everybody sort of participated. And as, of course, as you move further west

446
00:27:59,110 –> 00:28:02,790
out of the east, it became even more a space

447
00:28:02,790 –> 00:28:06,170
of even after the civil war, you would think after all that bloodletting,

448
00:28:06,515 –> 00:28:10,035
people would stop shooting each other. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. There’s

449
00:28:10,035 –> 00:28:13,795
still matters of, of, of pride and matters of

450
00:28:13,795 –> 00:28:17,555
name. And, and if you’re going to caricature

451
00:28:17,555 –> 00:28:21,390
me, if you’re going to turn me into an absurdity, you better

452
00:28:21,390 –> 00:28:24,990
be really clever with that to such a way that I laugh at my own

453
00:28:24,990 –> 00:28:28,670
absurdity, and I don’t wanna shoot you. And I always think Mark Twain. I whenever

454
00:28:28,670 –> 00:28:31,950
I read adventures of Huckleberry, fan adventures of Tom Sawyer, I always think that Mark

455
00:28:31,950 –> 00:28:34,930
Twain was sort of walking that line all of the time.

456
00:28:35,945 –> 00:28:39,705
Yeah. He was. He really was. And, I

457
00:28:40,265 –> 00:28:44,025
you know, one of the things I really appreciate about

458
00:28:44,025 –> 00:28:47,785
Mark Twain is, you know, it it takes a

459
00:28:47,785 –> 00:28:51,570
lot of courage to do good comedy, I

460
00:28:51,570 –> 00:28:55,330
think. Yeah. Because good comedy it good comedy should cut

461
00:28:55,330 –> 00:28:59,090
both ways. And, I’ll I think

462
00:28:59,090 –> 00:29:02,895
one of the big critiques that in in my mind of sort of this comedy

463
00:29:03,675 –> 00:29:07,355
right now is, you know, if if

464
00:29:07,355 –> 00:29:09,855
you’re if you’re watching late night comedy,

465
00:29:11,434 –> 00:29:12,175
it’s generally

466
00:29:14,930 –> 00:29:18,370
left wing. The right has its has

467
00:29:18,370 –> 00:29:22,070
its, comedic influences. You know,

468
00:29:22,130 –> 00:29:25,890
anytime you have a a comedian like,

469
00:29:26,210 –> 00:29:29,875
Dave Chappelle like, Dave is all you know, Dave says some stuff that

470
00:29:29,875 –> 00:29:33,575
irritates both sides, but I find, you know, whenever whenever,

471
00:29:34,275 –> 00:29:38,035
Dave is on Saturday Night Live, I mean, he’ll say something. He did this

472
00:29:38,035 –> 00:29:41,750
spiel. I’m sure you saw it on Donald Trump. Oh, yeah. It

473
00:29:41,750 –> 00:29:45,510
was just beautiful. I mean, spot

474
00:29:45,510 –> 00:29:49,049
on. And, it was really, really good comedy.

475
00:29:49,669 –> 00:29:53,350
So, you know, I I don’t know. I think, I think

476
00:29:53,350 –> 00:29:57,155
comedy good comedy takes courage and, can get you

477
00:29:57,155 –> 00:30:00,915
in a lot of trouble. Well, Bill Burr, after the most recent,

478
00:30:01,155 –> 00:30:04,915
United States presidential election, you know, comes

479
00:30:04,915 –> 00:30:08,410
on Saturday night live and got you know, he does a whole he

480
00:30:08,410 –> 00:30:11,690
softens it a little bit at the beginning, which is which is not typical for

481
00:30:11,690 –> 00:30:14,570
Bill. Usually, he just goes right into it. He softens it a little bit because

482
00:30:14,570 –> 00:30:17,850
he knows his crowd. He’s like, okay. Well, I’m gonna talk what you all I’m

483
00:30:17,850 –> 00:30:21,695
gonna talk about what you all want me to say here today. And he goes

484
00:30:21,695 –> 00:30:25,135
right I mean, he aims right at talk about courage. He aims right at, and

485
00:30:25,135 –> 00:30:28,915
he says, well, ladies, you’re down 02 to the orange man.

486
00:30:33,150 –> 00:30:36,670
And to the crowd’s credit, New York City

487
00:30:36,670 –> 00:30:40,510
crowd, they laughed. That’s right. That’s

488
00:30:40,510 –> 00:30:44,270
right. Yeah. And he just makes it easier for them to deal with

489
00:30:44,270 –> 00:30:46,130
reality. You know? Like, it

490
00:30:48,385 –> 00:30:52,065
And then, you know, he goes into a whole bit about pantsuits, and you all

491
00:30:52,065 –> 00:30:54,785
know how to get an extra drink. And, you know, and there’s a whole and

492
00:30:54,785 –> 00:30:58,304
you can go YouTube this this this bit. And and it is one of

493
00:30:58,304 –> 00:31:00,885
those where, to your point about courage,

494
00:31:02,600 –> 00:31:06,360
you have to be of a certain and Bilber and

495
00:31:06,360 –> 00:31:09,740
Dave Chappelle are both of that certain

496
00:31:10,519 –> 00:31:12,620
ilk, where

497
00:31:14,855 –> 00:31:18,615
if you’re going to come for them, you

498
00:31:18,615 –> 00:31:22,135
better be ready. If you’re gonna verbally spar with them, you better be ready to

499
00:31:22,135 –> 00:31:25,735
lose. Like, I watched a whole entire episode of, of, Bill Maher’s

500
00:31:25,735 –> 00:31:29,575
podcast club random that had Bill Burr on it, and he spent the entire

501
00:31:29,575 –> 00:31:33,370
time just skewering Bill Maher. Just he just roasted him

502
00:31:33,370 –> 00:31:37,049
the entire interview and then claimed that Bill Maher

503
00:31:37,049 –> 00:31:40,250
couldn’t handle it because, like, you know, oh, you’re so smart. You just can’t handle

504
00:31:40,250 –> 00:31:43,285
it. And that really got under Mars’ skin. Like, you could but what was he

505
00:31:43,285 –> 00:31:46,985
gonna do? Like, it’s his show. Like, is he gonna walk off his own show?

506
00:31:47,445 –> 00:31:51,285
So he’s stuck, and he’s squirming, and Bill Burr is loving it. And he

507
00:31:51,285 –> 00:31:55,125
just keeps just driving. And Bill Maher should have expected this as a

508
00:31:55,125 –> 00:31:58,059
fellow comedian. He should have expected it as a fellow comedian. You’re right. And he

509
00:31:58,059 –> 00:32:01,200
did not. He did because he’s he’s Bill Maher. Like, you know,

510
00:32:01,500 –> 00:32:05,280
uh-huh. And he and Bill Barr is just like, I don’t who?

511
00:32:05,580 –> 00:32:09,085
And that’s and that, of course, is is the whole point of, like I will

512
00:32:09,085 –> 00:32:12,925
tell my kids this. If I wanna dismiss someone or

513
00:32:12,925 –> 00:32:16,645
if I wanna be dismissive of somebody in a funny way

514
00:32:17,005 –> 00:32:20,205
Yeah. I will. I’ll say in a very high pitched way. So who? I don’t

515
00:32:20,205 –> 00:32:22,785
know who you are. Who are you? What? Go away.

516
00:32:24,340 –> 00:32:27,700
What is that? Dismissedness of this is, it is a sign of comedy. It’s a

517
00:32:27,700 –> 00:32:31,240
dismissiveness of status, and I think that’s what people really struggle with.

518
00:32:31,700 –> 00:32:35,380
Well and I think to take another comedian who’s probably not as political, but

519
00:32:35,380 –> 00:32:38,975
Nate Barguetzky. Oh, yeah. What makes Nate

520
00:32:38,975 –> 00:32:42,655
so funny is his self

521
00:32:42,655 –> 00:32:46,495
deprecating authenticity. Right. Like, he’s just

522
00:32:46,495 –> 00:32:50,174
the everyday schmo, who comes home at 5

523
00:32:50,174 –> 00:32:53,800
o’clock, and he gives you every detail about his boring

524
00:32:53,800 –> 00:32:57,400
life, and you laugh hysterically. Okay? There you go.

525
00:32:57,400 –> 00:33:00,760
Between his his him and his relationship with his wife or the way he travels

526
00:33:00,760 –> 00:33:04,440
to an airport, and it’s just everybody’s been there, and it’s

527
00:33:04,440 –> 00:33:08,185
funny. Everybody’s been there. Alright. So back to the book. We’re gonna pick up,

528
00:33:08,505 –> 00:33:12,185
we’re gonna pick up a little later in Huckleberry Finn. But, back to the

529
00:33:12,185 –> 00:33:15,405
book, back to the adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

530
00:33:16,745 –> 00:33:19,805
By the way, this book is open source. You can check it out,

531
00:33:20,820 –> 00:33:24,233
get yourself a free copy. I’m looking at or I’m reading the Bantam classic version,

532
00:33:24,299 –> 00:33:26,980
but it’s the same version. You could find open source, everywhere where you download books

533
00:33:26,980 –> 00:33:27,799
on the Internet.

534
00:33:35,115 –> 00:33:38,815
Alright. So we’re gonna go directly into chapter 10. We’re gonna leapfrog

535
00:33:38,955 –> 00:33:42,795
over a couple of different things because if you know the story or the underpinnings

536
00:33:42,795 –> 00:33:45,935
of Huckleberry Finn, you don’t need me to read the whole book. So,

537
00:33:46,315 –> 00:33:48,815
Huck escapes the the

538
00:33:52,130 –> 00:33:55,970
bounds of society, and he goes out on the river, which is the

539
00:33:55,970 –> 00:33:59,010
only place he can be free. By the way, when I first read this book,

540
00:33:59,010 –> 00:34:02,610
I was probably 9 or 10 years old, and I really resonated with that

541
00:34:02,610 –> 00:34:06,315
idea of, you know, going out on the river and just floating

542
00:34:06,315 –> 00:34:10,155
down the river on a raft. It was only as I got older that

543
00:34:10,155 –> 00:34:13,455
I began to resonate with other aspects of, of this story.

544
00:34:14,395 –> 00:34:18,089
But he’s on the raft. The escaped slave,

545
00:34:18,089 –> 00:34:21,230
Jim, is is with him. And, well,

546
00:34:22,329 –> 00:34:25,849
he’s gonna wind up since he’s gonna wind up in some, with a streak of

547
00:34:25,849 –> 00:34:29,290
bad luck here from, from handling, from

548
00:34:29,290 –> 00:34:32,984
handling snake skin. So

549
00:34:32,984 –> 00:34:36,125
what comes from handling snake skin? Chapter 10.

550
00:34:36,905 –> 00:34:39,704
After breakfast, I wanted to talk about the dead man and guess how he came

551
00:34:39,704 –> 00:34:43,385
to be killed, but Jim didn’t want to. He said it would fetch bad

552
00:34:43,385 –> 00:34:46,770
luck. And besides, he said he might come at Hans. And he said a man

553
00:34:46,770 –> 00:34:49,410
that weren’t buried was more likely to go a hunting around than when it was

554
00:34:49,410 –> 00:34:53,170
planted and comfortable. That sounded pretty reasonable, so I didn’t say no more, but I

555
00:34:53,170 –> 00:34:56,210
couldn’t keep him studied over and wishing I’d known him shot the man and what

556
00:34:56,210 –> 00:34:59,935
they’d done it for. We bummers the clothes we got and found

557
00:34:59,935 –> 00:35:03,535
$8 in silver, sold him in the line of an old blanket overcoat. Jim said

558
00:35:03,535 –> 00:35:05,855
he reckoned the people in that house stole the coat because if they had to

559
00:35:05,855 –> 00:35:09,135
know the money was there, they would’ve left it. I said I reckon they killed

560
00:35:09,135 –> 00:35:12,670
him too, but Jim didn’t wanna talk about that. I says, now you think it’s

561
00:35:12,670 –> 00:35:14,830
bad luck, but what did you say when I fetched the snake skin that I

562
00:35:14,830 –> 00:35:17,630
found on top of the bridge the day before yesterday? You said it was the

563
00:35:17,630 –> 00:35:20,030
worst bad luck in the world to touch the snake skin with my hands. Well,

564
00:35:20,030 –> 00:35:23,630
here’s your bad luck. We’ve raked in with all this truck and $8 besides. I

565
00:35:23,630 –> 00:35:27,325
wish you could have some bad luck like this every day, Jim. Never you

566
00:35:27,325 –> 00:35:31,005
mind, honey. Never you mind. Don’t you get too pert. It’s a comin’. Mind I

567
00:35:31,005 –> 00:35:34,605
tell you what’s comin’? It did come too. It was a

568
00:35:34,605 –> 00:35:38,445
Tuesday that we had that talk. Well, after dinner Friday, we was laying around

569
00:35:38,445 –> 00:35:41,559
on the grass at the upper end of the bridge and out of tobacco. I

570
00:35:41,559 –> 00:35:44,520
went to the cavern to get some and found a rattlesnake in there. I killed

571
00:35:44,520 –> 00:35:47,400
him and curled him up in the foot of Jim’s blanket. It was so natural.

572
00:35:47,400 –> 00:35:50,760
Thinking there’d be some fun when Jim found him there. Well, by night, I forgot

573
00:35:50,760 –> 00:35:53,720
all about the snake. And when Jim flung himself down the blanket while I struck

574
00:35:53,720 –> 00:35:57,305
a light, the snake’s bait was there, and it bit him. He jumped up

575
00:35:57,305 –> 00:36:00,025
yelling, and the first thing the light showed was a varmint curled up hooray for

576
00:36:00,025 –> 00:36:03,464
another spring. I laid about in a second with a stick, and Jim grabbed Pap’s

577
00:36:03,464 –> 00:36:07,305
whiskey jug and began to pour it down. He was barefoot, and the snake bit

578
00:36:07,305 –> 00:36:10,319
him right on the heel. That all comes out of people such a fool as

579
00:36:10,319 –> 00:36:13,440
to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake, its mate always comes there

580
00:36:13,440 –> 00:36:16,640
and curls around it. Jim told me to chop off the snake’s head and throw

581
00:36:16,640 –> 00:36:20,319
it away, and then skin to body roast a piece of it. I’d

582
00:36:20,319 –> 00:36:23,484
done it, and he eat it and said it would help cure him. He made

583
00:36:23,484 –> 00:36:26,205
me take off the rattles and tie them around his waist too. He said that

584
00:36:26,205 –> 00:36:29,885
would help. Then I slid out quiet and throw the snake

585
00:36:29,885 –> 00:36:32,605
clear away amongst the bushes for I won’t go let Jim find out it was

586
00:36:32,605 –> 00:36:36,089
all my fault, not if I could help it. Jim sucked and sucked at the

587
00:36:36,089 –> 00:36:38,730
jug, and now and then he got out of his head and pitched around and

588
00:36:38,730 –> 00:36:41,369
yelled. But every time he come to himself when I was sucking at the jug

589
00:36:41,369 –> 00:36:45,130
again, his foot swelled over pretty big, and so did his leg. By and

590
00:36:45,130 –> 00:36:48,089
by, the drunk begun to come, and so I judged he was alright. But I’d

591
00:36:48,089 –> 00:36:50,269
rather been bit with a snake than paps whiskey.

592
00:36:51,894 –> 00:36:55,654
Jim was laid up for 4 days nights, then the swelling was all gone, and

593
00:36:55,654 –> 00:36:57,974
he was all around again. I made up my mind I wouldn’t ever take a

594
00:36:57,974 –> 00:37:01,095
hold of snakeskin again with my hands now that I see what had come of

595
00:37:01,095 –> 00:37:04,775
it. Jim said he reckoned I would believe him next time, and he said the

596
00:37:04,775 –> 00:37:07,790
handling of snakeskin was such an awful bad luck that maybe we hadn’t got to

597
00:37:07,790 –> 00:37:10,750
the end of it yet. He said he’d rather see the new moon over his

598
00:37:10,750 –> 00:37:14,350
left shadow shoulder as much as a 1000 times to take up a snake skin

599
00:37:14,350 –> 00:37:17,710
in his hand. Well, I was getting to feel that way myself, though I’ve always

600
00:37:17,710 –> 00:37:20,430
reckoned that looking out the new moon over your left shoulder is one of the

601
00:37:20,430 –> 00:37:24,165
carelessness and the foolishest things a body can do. Old Hank Bunker done it

602
00:37:24,165 –> 00:37:27,125
once and bragged about it, and in less than 2 years, got himself drunk and

603
00:37:27,125 –> 00:37:29,605
fell off a shot tower and spread himself out so he was just kind of

604
00:37:29,605 –> 00:37:33,285
a lair, as you may say. And they slid him edgeways between 2 hard doors

605
00:37:33,285 –> 00:37:36,880
for a coffin and buried him, so they say, but I didn’t see it. Pap

606
00:37:36,880 –> 00:37:39,680
told me. But, anyway, it all come a lookin’ at the moon that way like

607
00:37:39,680 –> 00:37:43,520
a fool. Well, the days went long, and the river went down between

608
00:37:43,520 –> 00:37:46,240
its banks again. And about the first thing we done was to bait one of

609
00:37:46,240 –> 00:37:49,200
them big hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it to catch catfish. It was

610
00:37:49,200 –> 00:37:52,444
as big as a man, Being 6 foot 2 inches long and weighing over £200.

611
00:37:52,904 –> 00:37:56,265
We couldn’t handle, of course. He would have flung us into the Illinois. We just

612
00:37:56,265 –> 00:37:59,944
sat there and watched him rip and tear around till he drowned. We

613
00:37:59,944 –> 00:38:03,085
found a brass button in his stomach and a round ball, lots of other rubbish.

614
00:38:03,305 –> 00:38:06,760
We split the ball open with a hatchet, and there was a spool in

615
00:38:06,760 –> 00:38:09,880
it. Jim said he had it there a long time to coat it over, so

616
00:38:09,880 –> 00:38:12,680
make a ball out of it. It was as big fish he was ever catching

617
00:38:12,680 –> 00:38:16,119
in Mississippi, I reckon. Jim said he couldn’t even see a bigger one. He would

618
00:38:16,119 –> 00:38:18,665
have been worth a good deal over at the village. They pet a lot of

619
00:38:18,665 –> 00:38:22,505
such a fish that by the pound in the market house. Everybody buys

620
00:38:22,505 –> 00:38:25,805
some of them. His meat is white as snow. It makes a good fry.

621
00:38:26,905 –> 00:38:29,465
Next morning, I said it was starting to get slow and dull, and I wanted

622
00:38:29,465 –> 00:38:32,265
to get stirring up some anyway. I said I reckon I was slip over the

623
00:38:32,265 –> 00:38:35,450
river and find out what was going on. Jim liked the notion, but he said

624
00:38:35,450 –> 00:38:38,569
I must go in the dark and look sharp. Then he studied it over and

625
00:38:38,569 –> 00:38:41,290
said, couldn’t I put on some of them old things that dress up like a

626
00:38:41,290 –> 00:38:45,050
girl? That was a good notion too. So we shortened up one of those calico

627
00:38:45,050 –> 00:38:48,490
gowns. I turned up my trouser legs and went to my legs and and and

628
00:38:48,490 –> 00:38:51,395
got into it. Jim hitched you behind with the hooks, and it was a fair

629
00:38:51,395 –> 00:38:54,755
fit. I put on a sunbonnet, a tie knot to my chin, and then for

630
00:38:54,755 –> 00:38:56,835
a body to look in and see my face, it was like looking down the

631
00:38:56,835 –> 00:39:00,515
joint of a stovepipe. Yeah. Jim said nobody would know me

632
00:39:00,515 –> 00:39:03,940
even in daytime. Hardly. I practice around all day to get the hang of things,

633
00:39:03,940 –> 00:39:07,540
and by and by, I could do pretty well on it by then. Only Jim

634
00:39:07,540 –> 00:39:10,020
said I didn’t walk like a girl, and he said I must quit pulling up

635
00:39:10,020 –> 00:39:13,720
my gown to get in my britches pockets. I took notice, and I’d done better.

636
00:39:14,685 –> 00:39:18,125
I started up the Illinois shore in a canoe just after

637
00:39:18,125 –> 00:39:20,945
dark. And then from there,

638
00:39:24,445 –> 00:39:25,825
things get even worse.

639
00:39:32,859 –> 00:39:36,299
What are the challenges that people have with the adventures of

640
00:39:36,299 –> 00:39:40,059
Huckleberry Finn along with the broken

641
00:39:40,059 –> 00:39:43,135
speech patterns, the broken English usage,

642
00:39:43,835 –> 00:39:47,515
the what Zora Neale Hurst would later call the vernacular of

643
00:39:47,515 –> 00:39:51,275
the time, the malapropisms, some of

644
00:39:51,275 –> 00:39:54,734
which we read in that little section there,

645
00:39:55,230 –> 00:39:58,990
and the quote unquote in jokes that have not

646
00:39:58,990 –> 00:40:02,590
stood the test of time because we’re just not culturally, contextually aware

647
00:40:02,590 –> 00:40:06,130
of all the tiny things that were going on around this book.

648
00:40:06,510 –> 00:40:10,350
All of these things gather together, but they are dwarfed by the

649
00:40:10,350 –> 00:40:14,165
use 219 times of and I’m

650
00:40:14,165 –> 00:40:17,685
going to say it here. So everybody block your ears if you’re worth

651
00:40:17,685 –> 00:40:21,365
listening with your kids. I’ve give I have yeah. Block

652
00:40:21,365 –> 00:40:24,485
yours if you’re in in the in the car with your kids. I’m about to

653
00:40:24,485 –> 00:40:28,060
say the word the use of the

654
00:40:28,060 –> 00:40:30,960
word nigger. 219

655
00:40:31,900 –> 00:40:35,660
times in the adventures of Huckleberry Finn has driven

656
00:40:35,660 –> 00:40:38,640
people in our increasingly sensitive age.

657
00:40:39,180 –> 00:40:42,665
Crazy. This really started back in the

658
00:40:42,665 –> 00:40:46,105
1960s with the civil rights movement and has

659
00:40:46,105 –> 00:40:49,885
continued with increasing sharpness into our own

660
00:40:50,345 –> 00:40:53,880
era. But

661
00:40:53,880 –> 00:40:57,320
here’s the thing, people did use that word on the

662
00:40:57,320 –> 00:41:01,079
regular, and people did use the word to refer to

663
00:41:01,079 –> 00:41:04,760
themselves and others. And, yes, word uses has changed

664
00:41:04,760 –> 00:41:08,465
over time. I’m a big fan of linguistics, and the work of

665
00:41:08,465 –> 00:41:12,145
the writer John McWhorter and others in the linguistic space.

666
00:41:12,145 –> 00:41:15,665
And, yes, words do change. They do drop out of

667
00:41:15,665 –> 00:41:19,425
usage, and they come into usage. The words change meaning over the

668
00:41:19,425 –> 00:41:22,510
course of time. And yes, that word,

669
00:41:22,970 –> 00:41:25,790
the in word, such as it were, has

670
00:41:26,970 –> 00:41:30,810
moved and migrated over time and

671
00:41:30,810 –> 00:41:34,570
has changed in meaning as society and context has

672
00:41:34,570 –> 00:41:38,305
shifted around. For many postmodern

673
00:41:38,365 –> 00:41:42,045
readers with delicate sensibilities and political leanings, this

674
00:41:42,045 –> 00:41:45,724
word makes people feel as though they do not want

675
00:41:45,724 –> 00:41:49,520
to touch the book with a 10 foot pole. As a matter of

676
00:41:49,520 –> 00:41:53,300
fact, African American legislatures legislators in New Jersey,

677
00:41:54,320 –> 00:41:58,160
a couple, presented a nonbinding resolution in

678
00:41:58,160 –> 00:42:01,780
the state assembly a couple years ago proposing to remove

679
00:42:01,840 –> 00:42:05,204
Twain’s novel from the state curriculum, declaring

680
00:42:05,204 –> 00:42:08,884
that, quote, the novel’s use of a racial slur and its

681
00:42:08,884 –> 00:42:12,404
depictions of racist attitudes can cause students to feel

682
00:42:12,404 –> 00:42:16,244
upset, marginalized, or humiliated and can create an

683
00:42:16,244 –> 00:42:19,880
uncomfortable atmosphere in the classroom, close quote.

684
00:42:22,260 –> 00:42:25,880
The inability of postmodern culture to contextualize the past appropriately

685
00:42:26,020 –> 00:42:29,779
and teach the past without emotion sets up a dichotomy where people of

686
00:42:29,779 –> 00:42:33,380
all races miss the essentialism of remembering the grimy

687
00:42:33,380 –> 00:42:36,875
parts of the past that don’t fit with our

688
00:42:36,875 –> 00:42:40,175
conception of how the past should work for us right now.

689
00:42:41,915 –> 00:42:45,515
Author Todd Coats, a man who I share

690
00:42:45,515 –> 00:42:48,975
almost no opinion in common with,

691
00:42:50,799 –> 00:42:54,579
except for this one that I was able to find, wrote

692
00:42:54,640 –> 00:42:58,339
in his essay, a nation of cowards that quote

693
00:42:58,880 –> 00:43:02,559
censoring Twain’s work was a shocking act of disrespect toward the

694
00:43:02,559 –> 00:43:05,915
writer executed by people who claim to hold up his

695
00:43:05,915 –> 00:43:09,595
legacy because we can’t handle the story of who we were and

696
00:43:09,595 –> 00:43:13,115
evidently who we are Twain must be summoned up from the

697
00:43:13,115 –> 00:43:16,875
dead and all against himself submitted before the

698
00:43:16,875 –> 00:43:20,609
edits of amateurs. This is our system of

699
00:43:20,609 –> 00:43:24,450
fast food education laid bare. Let us all live in a

700
00:43:24,450 –> 00:43:28,230
world of warm snuglies. Let the air conditioned anesthesia

701
00:43:28,530 –> 00:43:32,309
sprawl free. May the flowers of happiness

702
00:43:32,369 –> 00:43:35,915
multiply out. May Mark Twain’s ghost

703
00:43:36,375 –> 00:43:39,115
haunt us all. Close quote.

704
00:43:44,695 –> 00:43:48,240
I find myself agreeing with mister Coats. Weirdly

705
00:43:48,240 –> 00:43:51,920
enough. We’re strange bedfellows on this one, but

706
00:43:51,920 –> 00:43:53,460
bedfellows nonetheless.

707
00:43:56,320 –> 00:43:59,540
So let’s talk about the n word.

708
00:44:01,305 –> 00:44:05,145
Let’s talk about the grimy parts of

709
00:44:05,145 –> 00:44:08,365
Huck Finn. Brian,

710
00:44:09,065 –> 00:44:11,484
you’re a white guy from Texas.

711
00:44:13,839 –> 00:44:16,339
I’m a black guy, not from Texas.

712
00:44:20,880 –> 00:44:24,260
One of the objections that I read to this from one of the legislatures

713
00:44:24,559 –> 00:44:28,055
was or an educator from back in 2019,

714
00:44:28,435 –> 00:44:32,135
was that, they didn’t want to have to explain

715
00:44:32,195 –> 00:44:35,095
to their daughter why this word had to be used

716
00:44:35,875 –> 00:44:39,715
219 times in this novel. So it would just be easier to not have

717
00:44:39,715 –> 00:44:43,500
her read it. And I just

718
00:44:43,500 –> 00:44:46,560
thought what a failure of parenting

719
00:44:47,740 –> 00:44:49,440
along with a failure of education.

720
00:44:52,620 –> 00:44:54,560
I’ve had my kids read this book,

721
00:44:56,424 –> 00:45:00,204
all of them, except for my 7 year old for whom it is not appropriate

722
00:45:00,345 –> 00:45:03,885
yet, just like most things aren’t appropriate for a 7 year old.

723
00:45:04,424 –> 00:45:07,785
But my 14 year old has read it. My 19 year old’s read

724
00:45:07,785 –> 00:45:11,464
it, and my 27 year old read a long time

725
00:45:11,464 –> 00:45:14,500
ago. We don’t

726
00:45:15,040 –> 00:45:18,800
make the grimy parts less grimy by just

727
00:45:18,800 –> 00:45:22,560
ignoring them, but Twain didn’t think it was

728
00:45:22,560 –> 00:45:25,555
grimy. So how do we

729
00:45:26,335 –> 00:45:29,795
position this book for our current sensibilities?

730
00:45:33,134 –> 00:45:36,819
Yeah. That’s a that’s a good question. I think, it’s

731
00:45:36,940 –> 00:45:40,480
I think it says less about Twain, and it says more about our

732
00:45:40,540 –> 00:45:44,060
sensibilities, as misguided as I think they

733
00:45:44,060 –> 00:45:45,920
are. And,

734
00:45:47,980 –> 00:45:49,750
you know, there is a,

735
00:45:52,235 –> 00:45:55,275
and I I kind of alluded to this earlier when I was talking about,

736
00:45:56,075 –> 00:45:59,915
you know, when anytime you approach history, you gotta approach it

737
00:45:59,915 –> 00:46:02,975
with some level of, respect

738
00:46:03,355 –> 00:46:06,960
for for the good and the bad. You know, every

739
00:46:06,960 –> 00:46:10,100
period of human history and every person for that matter

740
00:46:10,880 –> 00:46:14,400
is a mixed bag. Okay? Like like, every

741
00:46:14,400 –> 00:46:17,940
single person without exception is a mixed bag. And

742
00:46:18,560 –> 00:46:22,255
just because and and I would say

743
00:46:22,255 –> 00:46:25,935
if if you were looking at Mark

744
00:46:25,935 –> 00:46:29,535
Twain in his context, he would definitely be a

745
00:46:29,535 –> 00:46:33,135
man on the progressive side of things, I

746
00:46:33,135 –> 00:46:36,730
think. And yet, you know, he

747
00:46:37,110 –> 00:46:40,950
he wasn’t Antifa. Okay? No. No.

748
00:46:40,950 –> 00:46:44,710
Farland. You know, he was now he might you know, who

749
00:46:44,710 –> 00:46:48,390
knows? Maybe inwardly, he was a fan of of, the

750
00:46:48,390 –> 00:46:52,085
abolitionist, you know, the hardcore John Brown or

751
00:46:52,085 –> 00:46:55,625
somebody. I don’t know that, you know. But, but he was

752
00:46:56,244 –> 00:47:00,005
more self aware for sure. And,

753
00:47:01,125 –> 00:47:04,725
and he definitely had his his leanings and his opinions on

754
00:47:04,725 –> 00:47:08,380
things. But but I think, you know,

755
00:47:08,380 –> 00:47:12,140
when when it comes to navigating our

756
00:47:12,140 –> 00:47:15,820
sensibilities, especially for the next generation I mean, so you

757
00:47:15,820 –> 00:47:19,420
brought up this this, these people past trying to pass a law that they were

758
00:47:19,420 –> 00:47:23,245
trying to protect kids, quote, unquote. The one thing that a

759
00:47:23,245 –> 00:47:26,685
parent has to do is, the

760
00:47:26,685 –> 00:47:30,365
parents have to help their kids understand the difference between beliefs and

761
00:47:30,365 –> 00:47:34,045
convictions. And, a belief is something you’re

762
00:47:34,045 –> 00:47:37,830
willing to argue over. A conviction is something you’re willing to die over.

763
00:47:38,290 –> 00:47:42,130
Mhmm. And and so, like, kids are

764
00:47:42,130 –> 00:47:45,270
gonna pick up beliefs and convictions. Like, that’s gonna happen.

765
00:47:46,050 –> 00:47:48,390
The question is from who?

766
00:47:49,835 –> 00:47:53,434
And if you’re a parent and you feel strongly about

767
00:47:53,434 –> 00:47:56,815
something, I don’t know why you would shy away from

768
00:47:57,434 –> 00:48:00,875
having to explain anything to your children, especially in a world

769
00:48:00,875 –> 00:48:03,775
that is gonna tell them all kinds of

770
00:48:04,839 –> 00:48:07,420
nonsense. Some some good, some bad, but,

771
00:48:08,760 –> 00:48:11,880
but I I certainly wouldn’t leave it up to chance. So it’s just, you know,

772
00:48:11,880 –> 00:48:15,720
regard just set aside the argument, of

773
00:48:15,720 –> 00:48:19,160
whether or not the the legislation was a good or a bad thing. I think

774
00:48:19,160 –> 00:48:21,475
it’s just profoundly,

775
00:48:23,295 –> 00:48:27,075
shortsighted to take that approach, just to even take that approach.

776
00:48:29,215 –> 00:48:32,915
Well, it’s the it’s the ultimate example of we live in a fallen world,

777
00:48:33,615 –> 00:48:37,240
but our technology has progressed on a j curve up

778
00:48:37,240 –> 00:48:40,839
into the right. So so human beings should change as fast as

779
00:48:40,839 –> 00:48:44,619
our iPhones. And because they don’t, let’s pass this piece of legislation.

780
00:48:45,240 –> 00:48:48,859
Yeah. Right. That’s sort of the ultimate, like,

781
00:48:50,975 –> 00:48:54,655
you know, let’s use government power to

782
00:48:54,655 –> 00:48:58,415
remake society. I mean, it’s it’s the argue it’s

783
00:48:58,415 –> 00:49:02,255
the argument that the conservatives have against progressives. Why are you using government power

784
00:49:02,255 –> 00:49:06,070
for social engineering? And progressives could ever explain that with going and by

785
00:49:06,070 –> 00:49:09,690
the way, they don’t feel they need to. Going back to Woodrow Wilson,

786
00:49:09,990 –> 00:49:13,750
interestingly enough, who was a child during the civil war and

787
00:49:13,750 –> 00:49:17,350
was the last president born during the civil war and who was a

788
00:49:17,350 –> 00:49:20,915
scientific progressive, his words, not mine,

789
00:49:21,455 –> 00:49:25,295
and believed we could use science to remake the world because we were

790
00:49:25,295 –> 00:49:29,055
better than people in the past. Because we had Darwin, so we knew

791
00:49:29,055 –> 00:49:32,869
more stuff. Yeah. And,

792
00:49:34,769 –> 00:49:38,369
I I hope Darwin is on his way to the dustbin of

793
00:49:38,369 –> 00:49:41,750
history. I have my doubts. But, I definitely

794
00:49:42,849 –> 00:49:43,910
have a lot of

795
00:49:46,415 –> 00:49:49,875
disagreements with Darwin’s understanding of,

796
00:49:51,055 –> 00:49:54,655
of well, his the application of his understanding to the,

797
00:49:54,895 –> 00:49:57,155
anthropology of of the human race.

798
00:49:58,550 –> 00:50:01,910
That’s just not the way that a Christian can think

799
00:50:01,910 –> 00:50:05,350
about, you know, the the nature of man and

800
00:50:05,350 –> 00:50:09,110
and how evil entered the world and how it will be

801
00:50:09,110 –> 00:50:12,845
addressed. So Well, one of the things

802
00:50:12,845 –> 00:50:16,605
that I think Twain really got on to not to interrupt

803
00:50:16,605 –> 00:50:19,565
you, but I think one of the things that Twain that Twain really got on

804
00:50:19,565 –> 00:50:23,340
to was this idea that no. Not this idea. That the

805
00:50:23,340 –> 00:50:27,020
scientific materialist progressives miss all the way from Woodrow

806
00:50:27,020 –> 00:50:29,680
Wilson to Richard Dawkins. Here’s what they miss.

807
00:50:31,660 –> 00:50:34,800
And I listened to Dawkins’ most recent interview with Jordan Peterson,

808
00:50:35,945 –> 00:50:39,545
where he got really frustrated with doctor

809
00:50:39,545 –> 00:50:43,225
Peterson. And his critique of the

810
00:50:43,225 –> 00:50:46,585
entire conversation, which I later read, was that

811
00:50:46,585 –> 00:50:50,250
Peterson is drunk on ideas, and ideas

812
00:50:50,250 –> 00:50:53,550
don’t matter to Dawkins. All that matters to Dawkins is material

813
00:50:53,770 –> 00:50:57,530
fact of the material fact of being able to put a rocket on

814
00:50:57,530 –> 00:51:00,910
the moon. That’s the only thing that matters to him. Everything else is

815
00:51:01,865 –> 00:51:05,625
kids stories and superstition. Didn’t care about any of that. Here’s

816
00:51:05,625 –> 00:51:08,585
what the material fact. He cares about the things that lead to that material fact

817
00:51:08,585 –> 00:51:12,365
to be able to put a rocket on the moon. Except what Dawkins misses is

818
00:51:14,430 –> 00:51:18,270
the reason, the meaning behind putting that rocket on

819
00:51:18,270 –> 00:51:21,950
the moon is not scientific materially based. And this is

820
00:51:21,950 –> 00:51:25,170
what Twain got. You need to have a reason,

821
00:51:25,630 –> 00:51:29,045
a story, a story that drives

822
00:51:29,105 –> 00:51:32,785
Huck out of civilization into the river. You have to have

823
00:51:32,785 –> 00:51:36,325
a story that causes Huck to have genuine

824
00:51:36,705 –> 00:51:40,310
torn feelings about whether to work for Jim’s

825
00:51:40,310 –> 00:51:43,990
escape as a slave or to engage in

826
00:51:43,990 –> 00:51:47,770
continuing the societal process during his time

827
00:51:48,150 –> 00:51:51,610
of selling this guy as flesh to people,

828
00:51:52,630 –> 00:51:56,474
as a tool. There’s there’s a story there, and

829
00:51:56,474 –> 00:51:59,855
the scientific materialistic people miss the story

830
00:52:01,595 –> 00:52:05,275
all the time. And it’s kind of amazing because,

831
00:52:05,275 –> 00:52:09,069
again, they have little interest, as they seem, this is my critique, They seem to

832
00:52:09,069 –> 00:52:12,910
have little interest in understanding the nature of

833
00:52:12,910 –> 00:52:16,369
man. They claim very much to understand the nature of man, Marxist

834
00:52:16,829 –> 00:52:20,270
progressives, Darwinists, all claim to understand the nature of man better than

835
00:52:20,270 –> 00:52:23,805
conservatives do. And yet they seem to have very little interest in

836
00:52:23,805 –> 00:52:26,944
individual well, they seem to have very little interest in individual humans.

837
00:52:27,724 –> 00:52:31,565
Yeah. Yeah. We we like to say, in our house that

838
00:52:31,565 –> 00:52:35,165
the world is not just stuff. The the world is

839
00:52:35,165 –> 00:52:38,630
also composed of nonmaterial things,

840
00:52:38,690 –> 00:52:41,829
ideas, even nonmaterial

841
00:52:42,130 –> 00:52:45,970
beings, that we can’t see, don’t have access

842
00:52:45,970 –> 00:52:49,269
to, but very much exist and influence

843
00:52:49,809 –> 00:52:52,230
our world in very profound ways.

844
00:52:53,454 –> 00:52:56,815
And so, you know, if you’re coming if if that

845
00:52:56,815 –> 00:53:00,655
whole line of possibilities is off limits to

846
00:53:00,655 –> 00:53:04,115
you, then you’re gonna come to very different conclusions

847
00:53:04,255 –> 00:53:07,714
about the reality of the world in which we exist. So,

848
00:53:09,809 –> 00:53:13,650
yeah, I I I think

849
00:53:13,650 –> 00:53:16,069
for for Mark Twain’s part,

850
00:53:17,569 –> 00:53:21,250
you know, he, I think at one point, he talks

851
00:53:21,250 –> 00:53:24,885
about the, the angel that, you know, the the good the good

852
00:53:24,885 –> 00:53:28,185
angel and the bad angel that can get a hold of a man and, causes,

853
00:53:29,445 –> 00:53:32,965
you know, cause him to pick right or wrong. He’s

854
00:53:32,965 –> 00:53:35,865
he’s, while this book is a caricature,

855
00:53:36,920 –> 00:53:40,360
you know, he’s he’s not, he’s not wrong about

856
00:53:40,360 –> 00:53:44,040
that. Mhmm. K? And

857
00:53:44,040 –> 00:53:47,640
and so that’s, that that that’s very much part

858
00:53:47,640 –> 00:53:51,240
of part of the the reality. And even when Jim is

859
00:53:51,240 –> 00:53:54,655
talking about some of the, you know, the hairball and some of

860
00:53:54,655 –> 00:53:58,494
the the witchcraft type things that that he’s been exposed

861
00:53:58,494 –> 00:54:02,015
to, again, that’s an illusion to, other

862
00:54:02,015 –> 00:54:05,555
forces outside of the material world that are influencing

863
00:54:06,255 –> 00:54:09,870
what’s happening in the on the book. So

864
00:54:10,730 –> 00:54:13,610
anyway. Well, I think leaders

865
00:54:14,410 –> 00:54:18,110
like, I’m sure the legislators who proposed

866
00:54:20,535 –> 00:54:23,915
the banning of the book in New Jersey.

867
00:54:25,974 –> 00:54:29,815
And and and saying this from my location in Texas abuses me for

868
00:54:29,815 –> 00:54:33,650
a whole variety of reasons. But

869
00:54:33,650 –> 00:54:37,330
the legislators that were

870
00:54:37,330 –> 00:54:41,170
proposing banning Twain’s book in New Jersey, in the

871
00:54:41,170 –> 00:54:44,870
New Jersey school system, for very self serving

872
00:54:44,930 –> 00:54:48,525
reasons seem to not

873
00:54:48,585 –> 00:54:52,105
understand caricature because they don’t understand human

874
00:54:52,105 –> 00:54:55,245
nature. And

875
00:54:56,985 –> 00:54:59,725
I just think people who are more,

876
00:55:01,460 –> 00:55:04,119
temperamentally oriented towards conservativism,

877
00:55:05,780 –> 00:55:08,359
just understand human nature better.

878
00:55:09,619 –> 00:55:13,140
They just, they just do they’re they de complicate human

879
00:55:13,140 –> 00:55:16,915
nature and they don’t live

880
00:55:16,915 –> 00:55:19,395
in, I won’t say they don’t live. They can’t live in their own ivory towers.

881
00:55:19,395 –> 00:55:22,994
I won’t, I won’t make that claim, but they D yeah,

882
00:55:22,994 –> 00:55:26,135
they de complicate human nature. And I think

883
00:55:26,619 –> 00:55:30,460
and this is sort of my last idea. Maybe I’ll bounce this off you. So

884
00:55:30,460 –> 00:55:34,300
I think not, I think I know Mark Twain has changed over the

885
00:55:34,300 –> 00:55:37,820
course of time. Again, he would be shocked at how much

886
00:55:37,820 –> 00:55:41,275
his, his image maybe

887
00:55:41,974 –> 00:55:45,595
has changed and probably become a caricature of who he actually was.

888
00:55:46,214 –> 00:55:50,055
Mhmm. And he might find that he might he may I think he

889
00:55:50,055 –> 00:55:52,980
would probably find I think he would probably find that to be ironic, actually.

890
00:55:54,740 –> 00:55:57,400
I think the irony of that would would strike him as humorous.

891
00:56:00,260 –> 00:56:03,859
Do we need a Mark Twain for our

892
00:56:03,859 –> 00:56:07,540
time? I’m not meeting somebody who steps in, like, in the Kennedy Center Honors and

893
00:56:07,540 –> 00:56:11,015
gets a prize. That’s not what I’m talking about. Kevin Hart most recently

894
00:56:11,015 –> 00:56:14,795
received, the Kennedy prize, the Mark Twain prize. Right? Most recently,

895
00:56:15,255 –> 00:56:17,755
Bill Cosby had his prize stripped from him.

896
00:56:19,015 –> 00:56:22,530
Richard Pryor got one even though Bill Cosby wouldn’t show up and give it to

897
00:56:22,530 –> 00:56:24,790
him because he said Richard Pryor cursed too much.

898
00:56:26,210 –> 00:56:29,810
You know? So, I mean, Jerry Seinfeld’s never received one, which I find to be

899
00:56:29,810 –> 00:56:33,345
incredibly interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And

900
00:56:33,425 –> 00:56:37,105
and very very interesting. Very funny Jewish man. Very funny Jewish

901
00:56:37,105 –> 00:56:40,785
man, who has not received one even though another

902
00:56:40,785 –> 00:56:44,625
very funny Jewish man. What’s his name?

903
00:56:44,865 –> 00:56:48,540
Did history of the world part 1. Oh, you know who

904
00:56:48,540 –> 00:56:52,240
I’m talking? Mel Brooks. Yeah. Mel Brooks. Yeah. Mel Brooks. Mel

905
00:56:52,300 –> 00:56:55,180
Brooks turned down the award. He was offered it.

906
00:56:55,740 –> 00:56:59,280
Robin Williams turned down the award. Didn’t want it. Right?

907
00:57:00,220 –> 00:57:02,880
So this award is very interesting. It’s malleable.

908
00:57:04,925 –> 00:57:06,865
Do we need a Mark Twain?

909
00:57:08,685 –> 00:57:12,445
Not do we need. Are we going to be able to mold successfully a

910
00:57:12,445 –> 00:57:16,285
Mark Twain for the time on the

911
00:57:16,285 –> 00:57:19,980
other side of the well, in the spring high that we’re

912
00:57:19,980 –> 00:57:23,420
coming into as a society, or will Mark Twain be one of those folks that

913
00:57:23,420 –> 00:57:27,200
will just sort of fade to the background until the next unraveling

914
00:57:27,340 –> 00:57:31,005
shows up, like, 60 years from now? Well, I hope

915
00:57:31,005 –> 00:57:34,444
so. I mean, I think it would it it would be helpful to

916
00:57:34,444 –> 00:57:38,204
have someone like that. I I I do think that

917
00:57:38,204 –> 00:57:41,244
that person is gonna have to come from the right. I I mean, I could

918
00:57:41,244 –> 00:57:44,760
be wrong about that. I’m they do left. But but I do

919
00:57:44,760 –> 00:57:48,600
think based on, you know, I because I do agree with you. I I

920
00:57:48,600 –> 00:57:51,500
think about, you know, like,

921
00:57:53,800 –> 00:57:57,580
you you were talking about just having a the right perspective on

922
00:57:57,825 –> 00:58:01,525
human history and, being more comfortable

923
00:58:01,585 –> 00:58:05,205
with things. You know, I was I got to thinking about the obsession

924
00:58:05,505 –> 00:58:09,345
in our culture over the last few years over

925
00:58:09,345 –> 00:58:13,030
justice, You know? Mhmm. Justice justice just you know, Black

926
00:58:13,030 –> 00:58:16,710
Lives Matter, all this other. And and I was

927
00:58:16,710 –> 00:58:20,230
thinking about, you know, as, you know, as a

928
00:58:20,230 –> 00:58:24,025
person on the right, it’s not that you know, and I

929
00:58:24,025 –> 00:58:27,625
don’t I can’t speak for everybody, but I I think I can speak in general

930
00:58:27,625 –> 00:58:31,465
terms and certainly for myself. It’s you know, it’s not it’s not that

931
00:58:31,465 –> 00:58:34,905
I think conservatives are against justice at

932
00:58:34,905 –> 00:58:38,329
all. It’s an understanding though that

933
00:58:38,390 –> 00:58:41,990
ultimate justice cannot be achieved in

934
00:58:41,990 –> 00:58:45,430
a fallen world. In other

935
00:58:45,430 –> 00:58:47,750
words, it doesn’t matter if someone

936
00:58:49,715 –> 00:58:53,335
the whole point of forgiveness of the concept

937
00:58:53,395 –> 00:58:56,835
of forgiveness. Okay? As a as a

938
00:58:56,835 –> 00:59:00,675
pastor, I preached extensively on forgiveness

939
00:59:00,675 –> 00:59:04,319
for a long time, in a lot of different context, whether

940
00:59:04,319 –> 00:59:07,780
it’s counseling or marriage ministry or recovery

941
00:59:07,839 –> 00:59:11,220
ministry. The the purpose of

942
00:59:11,599 –> 00:59:14,960
of forgiveness is the person you’re

943
00:59:14,960 –> 00:59:18,785
forgiving is not competent to

944
00:59:18,785 –> 00:59:22,224
pay back what they took from you. Completely

945
00:59:22,224 –> 00:59:25,984
incompetent. They can’t do it. They cannot rewind the clock. They can’t

946
00:59:25,984 –> 00:59:29,605
take back the words. Even if they say I’m sorry, the words were still said.

947
00:59:30,710 –> 00:59:34,390
The action was still taken. The you know, and they and they

948
00:59:34,390 –> 00:59:38,069
can’t rewind history and take all that back. So so there is

949
00:59:38,069 –> 00:59:41,530
no undoing. It’s not going to be undone.

950
00:59:44,945 –> 00:59:48,465
And and so even if they paid a paid a price, like

951
00:59:48,465 –> 00:59:52,065
what? Like, you know, go to jail or something else,

952
00:59:52,065 –> 00:59:55,905
whatever that is, it’s still not going to make up for what happened

953
00:59:55,905 –> 00:59:59,330
because that can’t be undone. And so we

954
00:59:59,330 –> 01:00:03,010
believe, you know, as a as a Christian, you know, I believe that there will

955
01:00:03,010 –> 01:00:06,770
be a day when all wrongs are made right. There will be a

956
01:00:06,770 –> 01:00:10,070
day of ultimate justice. It just won’t be in this life.

957
01:00:11,145 –> 01:00:14,905
And so with that as a context, right, and as

958
01:00:14,905 –> 01:00:18,285
I as I live out my Christian faith,

959
01:00:18,665 –> 01:00:21,165
as I impart forgiveness to someone,

960
01:00:22,665 –> 01:00:26,160
I do it in the way in the in the context of how would I

961
01:00:26,160 –> 01:00:29,440
would I want to receive forgiveness. So Jesus says,

962
01:00:29,920 –> 01:00:33,680
or in the model prayer, you know, forgive us our debt as we forgive others.

963
01:00:33,680 –> 01:00:37,520
Right? So so at just the way I forgive other people, god, that’s

964
01:00:37,520 –> 01:00:41,204
how I want you to treat me. And so so it

965
01:00:41,285 –> 01:00:44,805
with with my own sinfulness, with my own brokenness, my own

966
01:00:44,805 –> 01:00:47,285
patterns of of of,

967
01:00:48,724 –> 01:00:52,484
unhealth and sin in my life, you know, just the the the level

968
01:00:52,484 –> 01:00:56,130
of forgiveness that I want for that, that’s the level that I

969
01:00:56,130 –> 01:00:59,490
wanna try to present to other people. So, again, that’s not to say we don’t

970
01:00:59,490 –> 01:01:02,849
want justice. We don’t you know, criminals don’t go to jail. People don’t aren’t tried

971
01:01:02,849 –> 01:01:06,690
for crimes. None of that. But just but just knowing that

972
01:01:06,690 –> 01:01:10,125
a society that says ultimate

973
01:01:10,265 –> 01:01:13,705
justice must be achieved is a society that can’t

974
01:01:13,705 –> 01:01:17,545
function, because there is there is no

975
01:01:17,545 –> 01:01:21,385
way to achieve ultimate justice without, without someone paying

976
01:01:21,385 –> 01:01:24,760
the ultimate price, by dying, really, at the end of the

977
01:01:24,760 –> 01:01:28,519
day. So that’s why you see a lot of violence in a

978
01:01:28,519 –> 01:01:32,359
lot of these social justice causes because in

979
01:01:32,359 –> 01:01:36,140
order to achieve ultimate justice, somebody does have to die. They really do.

980
01:01:40,065 –> 01:01:43,905
With that, we’re gonna go back to the book, back to Huckleberry Finn.

981
01:01:43,905 –> 01:01:47,125
We’re gonna pick up in chapter 16,

982
01:01:49,505 –> 01:01:52,980
following up with the rattlesnake skin. The rattlesnake

983
01:01:53,120 –> 01:01:56,420
skin does its work.

984
01:01:59,040 –> 01:02:02,800
We slept most all day and started out at night, a little ways behind a

985
01:02:02,800 –> 01:02:06,500
monstrous long raft that was as long going by as a procession.

986
01:02:07,065 –> 01:02:09,704
She had 4 long sweeps at each end. So we judge, she carried as many

987
01:02:09,704 –> 01:02:13,545
as 30 men likely. She had 5 big wigwams aboard wide apart and an

988
01:02:13,545 –> 01:02:16,685
open campfire in the middle, the tall flagpole. Each end,

989
01:02:17,385 –> 01:02:21,085
there was a power of style about her. It amounted to something

990
01:02:21,350 –> 01:02:25,110
being a raft man on such a craft is that we

991
01:02:25,110 –> 01:02:28,390
were drifting down into a big bend and the night clouded up and got hot.

992
01:02:28,390 –> 01:02:31,830
The river was very wide and it was wall with solid timber on both sides.

993
01:02:31,830 –> 01:02:35,495
So you couldn’t see a break in it hardly ever, or light. We talked

994
01:02:35,495 –> 01:02:39,175
about Cairo and wondered whether we would know it when we got to it. I

995
01:02:39,175 –> 01:02:42,855
said likely we wouldn’t because I heard say there weren’t, but about a

996
01:02:42,855 –> 01:02:45,335
dozen houses there. And even if they did happen to have them lit up, how

997
01:02:45,335 –> 01:02:49,170
was it gonna know who was passing the town? Jim said if the 2

998
01:02:49,170 –> 01:02:52,530
big rivers joined together there, that would show. I said, maybe we might think we

999
01:02:52,530 –> 01:02:55,890
was passing the foot of an island and coming into the same old river again.

1000
01:02:55,890 –> 01:02:59,570
That disturbed Jim and me too. So the question was what to

1001
01:02:59,570 –> 01:03:03,095
do. I said, paddle ashore the first time a light showed and tell them Pat

1002
01:03:03,095 –> 01:03:06,615
was behind, come along with the trading scout and was a green hand at the

1003
01:03:06,615 –> 01:03:09,975
business. He wanted to know how far it was to Cairo. Jim thought it was

1004
01:03:09,975 –> 01:03:13,115
a good idea. So we took a smoke on it and waited.

1005
01:03:14,470 –> 01:03:16,950
There’s nothing to do now, but to look out sharp for the town, not pass

1006
01:03:16,950 –> 01:03:19,990
by without seeing it. He said he’d be mighty sure to see it because he’d

1007
01:03:19,990 –> 01:03:23,350
be a free man the minute he seen it. But if he missed it, he’d

1008
01:03:23,350 –> 01:03:26,810
be in a slave country again, and no more show for freedom.

1009
01:03:27,190 –> 01:03:31,005
Every little while, he jumps up and says, dash he is. What a worm. He

1010
01:03:31,005 –> 01:03:33,724
was jack o’-lantern as a lightning bug, so he sit down again and went to

1011
01:03:33,724 –> 01:03:37,484
watch the same as before. Jim said it made him all over trembling and feverish

1012
01:03:37,484 –> 01:03:40,684
to be so close to freedom. Well, I could tell you it made me all

1013
01:03:40,684 –> 01:03:44,045
over trembling and feverish too to hear him because I began to get it through

1014
01:03:44,045 –> 01:03:47,620
my head that he was most free and who to blame for it.

1015
01:03:47,620 –> 01:03:51,320
Why me? I couldn’t get that out of my conscience. No how, Norway.

1016
01:03:51,380 –> 01:03:54,180
It got to trouble with me so I couldn’t rest. I couldn’t stay still in

1017
01:03:54,180 –> 01:03:58,020
one place. I had never come home to me before, what this thing was that

1018
01:03:58,020 –> 01:04:01,845
I was doing. But now it didn’t. It stayed with me. It scorched

1019
01:04:01,845 –> 01:04:05,365
me more and more. I tried to make my make out to myself I weren’t

1020
01:04:05,365 –> 01:04:08,805
a plane because I didn’t run Jibar from his rifle owner. There were no use.

1021
01:04:08,805 –> 01:04:11,925
Conscience up and says every time. But you know that he was run away for

1022
01:04:11,925 –> 01:04:15,260
his freedom, and you could have paddled a short and told somebody. That was so.

1023
01:04:15,260 –> 01:04:18,700
I couldn’t get around that no way. That was where it pinched. The conscience says

1024
01:04:18,700 –> 01:04:21,339
to me, what a poor miss Watson done to you that you could never see

1025
01:04:21,339 –> 01:04:24,619
her nigga go off right underneath your eyes and never say one single word? What

1026
01:04:24,619 –> 01:04:27,385
did that poor woman do to you that you could treat her so mean? Why

1027
01:04:27,385 –> 01:04:30,505
she tried to learn your book, and she tried to learn your manners, and she

1028
01:04:30,505 –> 01:04:33,565
tried good to you every way she know and how. That’s what she’s done.

1029
01:04:34,985 –> 01:04:37,705
I got to feel it so mean and so miserable. I almost wish I was

1030
01:04:37,705 –> 01:04:40,850
dead. I fidgeted it up and down the raft, musing myself to myself, and Jim

1031
01:04:40,850 –> 01:04:44,070
was fidgeting up and down past me. We neither of us could keep still.

1032
01:04:44,850 –> 01:04:48,370
Every time he danced around, it says, Dave’s Cairo. It went through me like a

1033
01:04:48,370 –> 01:04:51,190
shot, and I thought if it was Cairo, I reckon I would die of miserableness.

1034
01:04:52,625 –> 01:04:55,585
Jim talked out loud the whole time I was talking to myself. He was saying

1035
01:04:55,585 –> 01:04:58,065
how the first thing he would do when he got up to a free state,

1036
01:04:58,065 –> 01:05:00,864
he would go to save up money and never spend a single cent. And when

1037
01:05:00,864 –> 01:05:03,424
he got enough, he would buy his wife, which is owned on a farm close

1038
01:05:03,424 –> 01:05:06,805
to where miss Watson lived. And then they would both work to buy 2 children.

1039
01:05:07,100 –> 01:05:10,220
And and if their master wouldn’t sell them, they get a abolitionist to go and

1040
01:05:10,220 –> 01:05:13,920
steal them. Most froze me to hear such talk.

1041
01:05:13,980 –> 01:05:17,100
He would never dare to talk like such talk in his life before. Just see

1042
01:05:17,100 –> 01:05:19,500
what a difference it made in him the minute he judged he was about to

1043
01:05:19,500 –> 01:05:22,365
be free. Was according to the old saying saying,

1044
01:05:23,305 –> 01:05:27,144
give a nigger an inch and he’ll take an l. Thinks I this

1045
01:05:27,144 –> 01:05:30,345
is what comes with my not thinking. Here was this nigga, which I had just

1046
01:05:30,345 –> 01:05:33,384
as good as helped to run away, come right out flat footed, saying he would

1047
01:05:33,384 –> 01:05:36,620
steal his children. Children that belong to a man I didn’t even know. A man

1048
01:05:36,620 –> 01:05:40,460
that that had never done me no harm. I was sorry

1049
01:05:40,460 –> 01:05:43,340
to hear Jim say that it was such a low run of him. My conscience

1050
01:05:43,340 –> 01:05:46,380
got to stirring up me hotter than ever then until last I says to it,

1051
01:05:46,380 –> 01:05:49,020
let me up on it. It ain’t too late yet. I’ll paddle ashore at the

1052
01:05:49,020 –> 01:05:52,785
first light and tell. I felt easy and happy and light as a feather

1053
01:05:52,785 –> 01:05:56,545
right off. All my troubles was gone. I went out to look for a

1054
01:05:56,545 –> 01:06:00,225
sharp for a light, sort of singing to myself. I am

1055
01:06:00,225 –> 01:06:03,825
by 1 showed. Jim sings out, we safe. Fuck. We safe.

1056
01:06:03,825 –> 01:06:07,410
Don’t ever crack your heels. That’s good o’chiro at last. I just knows

1057
01:06:07,790 –> 01:06:11,310
it. I says, I’ll take a canoe and go see Jim. It mightn’t be. You

1058
01:06:11,310 –> 01:06:14,270
know? He jumped up and got the canoe ready and put his old coat in

1059
01:06:14,270 –> 01:06:16,750
the bottom for me to sit on and give me the paddle, and I shoved

1060
01:06:16,750 –> 01:06:19,645
off. And he says, pretty soon, I’ll be shot for joy. And I say it’s

1061
01:06:19,645 –> 01:06:22,605
all accounts of old Huck. I was a free man, and I could have ever

1062
01:06:22,605 –> 01:06:26,045
been freer than I had been for Huck. Huck done it. Jim won’t ever forget

1063
01:06:26,045 –> 01:06:29,164
you, Huck. You’ve been the best friend Jim’s ever had, as you was the only

1064
01:06:29,164 –> 01:06:32,670
friend Jim’s got now. I was

1065
01:06:32,670 –> 01:06:36,030
paddling off all in a sweat to tell on him. But when he says

1066
01:06:36,030 –> 01:06:39,390
this, it sounded it seemed to kinda take the

1067
01:06:39,390 –> 01:06:41,730
tuck all out of me.

1068
01:06:47,964 –> 01:06:51,645
That’s what you teach to kids in

1069
01:06:51,645 –> 01:06:55,265
school. That right there.

1070
01:06:57,005 –> 01:07:00,704
That’s what you teach to your kid in your house.

1071
01:07:01,490 –> 01:07:05,170
That right there. Yeah. That’s the conversation you

1072
01:07:05,170 –> 01:07:08,950
have with your child, white or Hispanic

1073
01:07:09,490 –> 01:07:13,250
or black or Asian or I don’t

1074
01:07:13,250 –> 01:07:17,065
care. That’s native American. One of our co hosts on

1075
01:07:17,065 –> 01:07:20,505
the show, Tom Libby, he’s a part, native

1076
01:07:20,505 –> 01:07:24,265
American, very proud of his native American heritage. And we’ve read

1077
01:07:24,265 –> 01:07:27,785
hard books on this podcast, bury my heart at wounded

1078
01:07:27,785 –> 01:07:31,500
knee, and, the story of, the

1079
01:07:31,500 –> 01:07:35,259
Native American tribes and the and the things that happened to them in the

1080
01:07:35,259 –> 01:07:38,940
course of westward expansion. And you know what? Tom

1081
01:07:38,940 –> 01:07:42,525
talks openly about all of that stuff. And do you know where he first started

1082
01:07:42,525 –> 01:07:45,244
talking about all of that history with when he found out about it when he

1083
01:07:45,244 –> 01:07:48,924
was a kid? He started with his children to

1084
01:07:48,924 –> 01:07:51,424
rebuild his culture. Yeah.

1085
01:07:52,845 –> 01:07:56,224
Tom doesn’t celebrate Thanksgiving. Why would he?

1086
01:07:57,220 –> 01:08:00,660
Doesn’t have any meaning for him, but he’s not going out

1087
01:08:00,660 –> 01:08:04,200
advocating that other people don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. He’s just saying,

1088
01:08:04,420 –> 01:08:08,100
don’t do it for me. I’m not doing it in my house. And

1089
01:08:08,100 –> 01:08:11,865
my kids will go do something else because I read the book and I

1090
01:08:11,865 –> 01:08:15,625
taught it to my kids. This is what I, I

1091
01:08:15,625 –> 01:08:18,925
am stunned by people’s failure and inability

1092
01:08:20,585 –> 01:08:24,024
to think that critically about a

1093
01:08:24,024 –> 01:08:27,750
book that quite frankly forces you

1094
01:08:29,250 –> 01:08:32,790
to engage with the dichotomies of living in a fallen world.

1095
01:08:35,890 –> 01:08:38,949
Yeah. It also

1096
01:08:40,085 –> 01:08:43,925
engages with you at a level of authenticity that I

1097
01:08:43,925 –> 01:08:47,285
think puts us in our time close to the

1098
01:08:47,285 –> 01:08:50,805
bone. The challenge of our

1099
01:08:50,805 –> 01:08:54,460
time is that courage, which has always been in short supply, is

1100
01:08:54,460 –> 01:08:58,219
now no longer connected to critical thinking and analysis of best practices, which

1101
01:08:58,219 –> 01:09:02,059
I think we’ve already mentioned that. When original thinking is on life

1102
01:09:02,059 –> 01:09:04,880
support, leaders should encourage courage.

1103
01:09:06,395 –> 01:09:09,995
Making other people uncomfortable in the pursuit of being authentic used to be looked

1104
01:09:09,995 –> 01:09:13,675
at as an iconoclastic act because so many people seem to

1105
01:09:13,675 –> 01:09:17,515
be just going along with the flow. What our time has shown is that

1106
01:09:17,515 –> 01:09:20,955
people still follow the crowd. It’s just that the size of the crowds has gotten

1107
01:09:20,955 –> 01:09:24,449
smaller and narrower in the social media driven ghettos

1108
01:09:24,590 –> 01:09:28,429
full of all these right thinking people. By the way, I’m looking at

1109
01:09:28,429 –> 01:09:31,889
all of you who are running to Blue Sky from Twitter right about now.

1110
01:09:33,949 –> 01:09:37,710
Leaders pursue authenticity above all else while also being aware of what

1111
01:09:37,710 –> 01:09:41,515
social they need to preserve. Like in that piece that

1112
01:09:41,515 –> 01:09:45,035
I read there, they need to ignore, like in that piece I just read

1113
01:09:45,035 –> 01:09:48,735
there, and they need to break, like in that piece I just read there.

1114
01:09:49,195 –> 01:09:52,735
And they have clear, intentional, and well rationalized reasons

1115
01:09:53,149 –> 01:09:56,989
for their authentic responses. So this is going to

1116
01:09:56,989 –> 01:10:00,690
be something that we are gonna wrap up with as we close today.

1117
01:10:01,869 –> 01:10:05,655
Brian, the writer Ted Goya, I put a link in the

1118
01:10:05,655 –> 01:10:09,255
script that I sent you, to the, to the article. He wrote

1119
01:10:09,255 –> 01:10:12,775
a, an article that I found to be very interesting about a

1120
01:10:12,775 –> 01:10:16,155
crisis of authenticity in our era. And

1121
01:10:16,934 –> 01:10:20,454
Ted makes the point, and he’s, he writes a substat called the honest

1122
01:10:20,454 –> 01:10:23,409
broker. He’s a tech guy from way back in the day.

1123
01:10:23,870 –> 01:10:27,630
And, and, he makes a point

1124
01:10:27,630 –> 01:10:31,390
in this article that Susan Sontag, back

1125
01:10:31,390 –> 01:10:35,170
in the 19 nineties, the, feminist and cultural critic,

1126
01:10:35,545 –> 01:10:38,905
she believed that seriousness is a function of art and

1127
01:10:38,905 –> 01:10:42,744
entertainment and culture had collapsed in the west in the mid

1128
01:10:42,744 –> 01:10:46,105
19 nineties. And Ted

1129
01:10:46,105 –> 01:10:49,950
asserts that after 30 years after this collapse, we’re no

1130
01:10:49,950 –> 01:10:53,790
closer to authenticity now than we were in the mid 19

1131
01:10:53,790 –> 01:10:57,470
nineties. And he asserts

1132
01:10:57,470 –> 01:11:01,310
also that these platforms that we

1133
01:11:01,310 –> 01:11:03,730
exist on allow us to be fake entertainers,

1134
01:11:05,975 –> 01:11:09,335
putting out avatars of ourselves that protect

1135
01:11:09,335 –> 01:11:13,015
us from having to really deal with real things in a

1136
01:11:13,015 –> 01:11:16,535
real way. And we

1137
01:11:16,535 –> 01:11:19,675
are we are rewarded for behaving

1138
01:11:20,590 –> 01:11:22,850
and thinking correctly, but not critically.

1139
01:11:25,310 –> 01:11:29,150
He says, and I quote, I love this quote, lifestyles are increasingly about

1140
01:11:29,150 –> 01:11:32,990
pretending. Your real self stays in hiding while your fake self gets

1141
01:11:32,990 –> 01:11:36,465
presented on the most in the most spectacular way on social

1142
01:11:36,465 –> 01:11:40,305
media and other digital platforms. Now

1143
01:11:40,305 –> 01:11:43,905
this ties into something that we’ve talked about on the podcast too, which is the

1144
01:11:43,905 –> 01:11:47,739
crisis of competence, which is where I think we’re at, where

1145
01:11:47,739 –> 01:11:51,119
the small things are done poorly, the middle thing things are done on average

1146
01:11:51,420 –> 01:11:55,179
or done in an average manner, and the large responsibilities are bungling

1147
01:11:55,340 –> 01:11:56,480
are bungled entirely.

1148
01:11:59,420 –> 01:12:03,119
And Ted, another quote from his article here from The Honest Broker,

1149
01:12:03,555 –> 01:12:07,155
is there a crisis of seriousness never before in history has

1150
01:12:07,155 –> 01:12:10,835
authenticity been in such short supply? That’s so much the case at the

1151
01:12:10,835 –> 01:12:14,675
very word authenticity is mocked. I know people who

1152
01:12:14,675 –> 01:12:18,320
get angry just from hearing the word authenticity. They

1153
01:12:18,320 –> 01:12:21,840
insist it doesn’t exist. It never existed and it

1154
01:12:21,840 –> 01:12:23,460
can’t possibly exist

1155
01:12:26,960 –> 01:12:28,580
here at the end of the 4th turning.

1156
01:12:33,094 –> 01:12:35,435
How do we ensure authenticity?

1157
01:12:37,335 –> 01:12:41,094
Oh, hold on one second. I’m going to kill a wasp. Hold

1158
01:12:41,094 –> 01:12:44,155
on one second. Alright. Was there a murder?

1159
01:12:45,350 –> 01:12:48,810
Was the murder off screen just now? There was a murder off screen.

1160
01:12:49,270 –> 01:12:53,030
I, I slayed that sucker. And now back

1161
01:12:53,030 –> 01:12:53,930
to our show.

1162
01:12:57,895 –> 01:13:01,335
I really do. I don’t I do not like wasps. Oh my gosh. And I

1163
01:13:01,335 –> 01:13:04,375
do not know how it got in. That’s kind of weird because this is an

1164
01:13:04,375 –> 01:13:06,715
interior room. I don’t know where it came from. Yeah.

1165
01:13:08,295 –> 01:13:10,795
Alright. Well, that’s gonna bother me for the next

1166
01:13:11,750 –> 01:13:15,590
week. Alright. Alright. So the crisis of authenticity, how do

1167
01:13:15,590 –> 01:13:19,430
we deal with this? Yeah.

1168
01:13:19,430 –> 01:13:20,970
Well, I think there are

1169
01:13:23,555 –> 01:13:26,755
a couple of I mean, I I I think I agree largely with what he

1170
01:13:26,755 –> 01:13:29,735
says. I do think though there are some pockets of authenticity

1171
01:13:30,675 –> 01:13:34,195
that are starting to emerge, in certain places. I

1172
01:13:34,195 –> 01:13:37,715
mean, and and again, probably, are they genuine, like,

1173
01:13:37,715 –> 01:13:41,490
100% authentic authentic? I mean, you know, how authentic are they?

1174
01:13:41,490 –> 01:13:45,250
I don’t really know. But, but I do think that, like,

1175
01:13:45,250 –> 01:13:49,030
long form podcasts, I think, are

1176
01:13:49,170 –> 01:13:52,950
are are a start, they’re a place for that. I mean, when you look at

1177
01:13:53,485 –> 01:13:57,245
kind of what what Joe Rogan did I mean, just think about the

1178
01:13:57,245 –> 01:14:00,925
last election. What Joe Rogan did in 3 hours or 2 and a half hours

1179
01:14:00,925 –> 01:14:04,525
or whatever with Trump and then JD

1180
01:14:04,525 –> 01:14:08,340
Vance. I mean, you can’t fake I mean,

1181
01:14:08,340 –> 01:14:11,780
you can only say so many platitudes. Over the course of 3 hours, you’re gonna

1182
01:14:11,780 –> 01:14:14,420
cover a lot of ground. There’s gonna be a lot that comes out. You’re gonna

1183
01:14:14,420 –> 01:14:18,100
say things in a certain way. If you’re faking it, it is

1184
01:14:18,100 –> 01:14:21,515
really hard to fake it for a really long

1185
01:14:21,515 –> 01:14:25,355
time. And so I I do think that those

1186
01:14:25,515 –> 01:14:28,555
I mean, I think that’s why Kamala never went on one of those, you know,

1187
01:14:28,555 –> 01:14:31,855
long form podcasts. I think there was she was trying to have a curated

1188
01:14:31,915 –> 01:14:35,760
image. And, so I I think

1189
01:14:35,760 –> 01:14:39,199
there are pockets. I think there’s that. I think there are in some

1190
01:14:39,920 –> 01:14:43,219
I’ve been a part of some churches that

1191
01:14:43,280 –> 01:14:46,580
have, made a really big effort

1192
01:14:48,534 –> 01:14:52,054
to to try to live an authentic Christian

1193
01:14:52,054 –> 01:14:54,795
life, not one that’s carefully curated.

1194
01:14:55,815 –> 01:14:59,034
And so so I do think there are pockets emerging.

1195
01:15:00,690 –> 01:15:04,450
How will it end up? I I don’t know. But but

1196
01:15:04,450 –> 01:15:08,290
I think, you know, how your your question was how do we how do we

1197
01:15:08,290 –> 01:15:11,750
deal with, you know, inauthenticities? I think I think we

1198
01:15:12,050 –> 01:15:15,575
just we approach life honestly.

1199
01:15:15,715 –> 01:15:19,175
We we we speak candidly

1200
01:15:19,395 –> 01:15:23,155
about challenges that we’re facing. And, and

1201
01:15:23,155 –> 01:15:25,655
I think if if we’re able to,

1202
01:15:28,150 –> 01:15:31,990
you know, you it’s fine to have a conviction, but sometimes, you

1203
01:15:31,990 –> 01:15:35,670
know, we talked earlier about beliefs and convictions. Sometimes those things, you think you

1204
01:15:35,670 –> 01:15:38,890
have a belief and it it winds up with the conviction.

1205
01:15:39,765 –> 01:15:43,205
And then you have a conviction and after some thought and debate and, you know,

1206
01:15:43,205 –> 01:15:47,045
you’re right. You you come to the conclusion. Maybe that’s just a belief, you

1207
01:15:47,045 –> 01:15:50,165
know. And so I think there has to be and and in the course of

1208
01:15:50,165 –> 01:15:53,844
the this 4th turning, I think there there’s a

1209
01:15:53,844 –> 01:15:57,580
lot of changing of that. The things that you held as a belief

1210
01:15:57,580 –> 01:16:01,180
now have become a conviction and vice versa. And so I think

1211
01:16:01,180 –> 01:16:04,620
giving people room to work that out and maybe say

1212
01:16:04,620 –> 01:16:08,460
something and then in 6 months realize, oh, I I didn’t mean

1213
01:16:08,460 –> 01:16:11,895
that actually now that now that I understand a little bit more about

1214
01:16:11,895 –> 01:16:15,514
it. I I I think

1215
01:16:16,295 –> 01:16:20,135
being the the hard part about cancel culture is it doesn’t give

1216
01:16:20,135 –> 01:16:23,895
anybody room to make a mistake and then admit they made a

1217
01:16:23,895 –> 01:16:26,960
mistake. Like, you’re done. It’s okay. Right.

1218
01:16:27,660 –> 01:16:30,160
So so I think cancel culture exacerbates,

1219
01:16:31,500 –> 01:16:35,280
this authenticity authenticity crisis that we have.

1220
01:16:36,140 –> 01:16:39,280
So so but I but I think just at the end of the day,

1221
01:16:39,825 –> 01:16:43,205
just just being honest, when you have a mistake when you make a mistake,

1222
01:16:43,745 –> 01:16:47,585
owning that mistake and and being willing to to acknowledge that

1223
01:16:47,585 –> 01:16:51,344
and talk about it openly, I think, goes a really long way with

1224
01:16:51,344 –> 01:16:55,070
people. At least that’s what that’s been my experience.

1225
01:16:55,690 –> 01:16:59,210
Well, what do you what do you say? I’d be curious to know what your

1226
01:16:59,210 –> 01:17:03,050
what your thoughts are on the idea that Ted

1227
01:17:03,050 –> 01:17:06,490
puts forth. And I and I do think it is an idea that is unique

1228
01:17:06,490 –> 01:17:09,225
to our time only because we have the So we have people who have grown

1229
01:17:09,225 –> 01:17:11,548
up. We now have 2 generations of people getting ready to be 3 who have

1230
01:17:11,548 –> 01:17:12,925
grown up inside of, for lack of a better term, the matrix.

1231
01:17:23,510 –> 01:17:27,190
They’re in there. And you and I are part

1232
01:17:27,190 –> 01:17:30,890
of the, the, the tail end of the last generation

1233
01:17:30,950 –> 01:17:34,250
to not fully be engaged in matrix. Mhmm.

1234
01:17:35,030 –> 01:17:38,805
I think that gives us as leaders a certain

1235
01:17:38,805 –> 01:17:42,505
amount of power. It also gives us a certain amount of responsibility,

1236
01:17:44,085 –> 01:17:47,605
to preserve authenticity, to preserve competency. And I think, by the

1237
01:17:47,605 –> 01:17:50,130
way, those of us who are in the, like,

1238
01:17:51,250 –> 01:17:54,929
46 to, like, 52 year old age range, I

1239
01:17:54,929 –> 01:17:58,770
think the light went on, earlier this year with a lot

1240
01:17:58,770 –> 01:18:01,429
of us, and we finally realized that,

1241
01:18:03,825 –> 01:18:07,585
you know, the sort of Gen x Slacker pose

1242
01:18:07,585 –> 01:18:11,425
we’ve all been taking since 1992 is probably

1243
01:18:11,425 –> 01:18:14,085
done. It’s finally, probably done.

1244
01:18:15,290 –> 01:18:18,970
And I don’t think that’s a bad thing because typically the nomad

1245
01:18:18,970 –> 01:18:22,490
generation, if you’re looking at turnings, the nomad generation always shows up

1246
01:18:22,490 –> 01:18:26,330
late, has to make up, has to make

1247
01:18:26,330 –> 01:18:29,805
up for the, the, the, the, the, the

1248
01:18:29,805 –> 01:18:33,565
problems and the, mistakes of the older

1249
01:18:33,565 –> 01:18:37,325
generation who was thought to be so wise. And then much like

1250
01:18:37,325 –> 01:18:41,005
Harry Truman, you know, gets back in their car after they’re no

1251
01:18:41,005 –> 01:18:44,699
longer president, no secret service or no nothing. I love

1252
01:18:44,699 –> 01:18:48,540
this. And just drives back to Missouri and dies in obscurity. Like,

1253
01:18:48,540 –> 01:18:52,300
that’s that’s the that’s the clearing at the end of the path for for gen

1254
01:18:52,300 –> 01:18:55,500
x. I’m sorry. Like, that’s I keep saying this on my security. Like, that’s that’s

1255
01:18:55,659 –> 01:18:59,215
right. And for many of us, that’ll be like, that’s actually that tracks.

1256
01:19:00,074 –> 01:19:03,135
That’s okay with that. That’s fine. That’s fine. That tracks.

1257
01:19:04,395 –> 01:19:07,594
We’re not a generation that gets a thank you. Right? But we’re the generation that

1258
01:19:07,594 –> 01:19:11,380
preserves the authenticity because if we don’t do it, then the

1259
01:19:11,380 –> 01:19:15,160
generations that are coming behind us to Ted Goya’s

1260
01:19:15,220 –> 01:19:19,060
point ins will insist that it, that authenticity does

1261
01:19:19,060 –> 01:19:22,660
not exist. They will insist that it never, that’s a huge

1262
01:19:22,660 –> 01:19:26,345
word, existed, and they will insist that it can’t possibly

1263
01:19:26,485 –> 01:19:30,325
exist. Mhmm. How do

1264
01:19:30,325 –> 01:19:33,765
you lead people who believe that? Because they’re so deep in the

1265
01:19:33,765 –> 01:19:37,525
matrix, they wouldn’t recognize off not even they wouldn’t recognize auth. You see,

1266
01:19:37,525 –> 01:19:41,060
that’s even that They look at authenticity as being

1267
01:19:41,060 –> 01:19:44,900
inauthentic. Like, there’s nothing I hate to pick on her, but

1268
01:19:44,900 –> 01:19:48,200
I’m going to anyway. There’s nothing authentic about Taylor Swift.

1269
01:19:49,380 –> 01:19:53,075
Literally nothing. She is not real. She

1270
01:19:53,075 –> 01:19:56,835
is a creation of herself and her agents and her

1271
01:19:56,835 –> 01:20:00,515
managers and her albums and all of that. She’s

1272
01:20:00,515 –> 01:20:04,355
a she’s a creation who has come into the

1273
01:20:04,355 –> 01:20:08,030
media, but there’s no knowledge about who the real Taylor

1274
01:20:08,030 –> 01:20:11,869
Swift is. Now people would say, particularly 18,

1275
01:20:11,869 –> 01:20:15,630
19 year old people would say, oh, yeah. Of course. Like, of course, she’s

1276
01:20:15,630 –> 01:20:19,389
inauthentic. They just sort of take it as de rigueur. It’s it’s just

1277
01:20:19,389 –> 01:20:22,105
part of the the fabric of their lives.

1278
01:20:23,125 –> 01:20:26,885
And, and as I said there in my piece a little bit before, we

1279
01:20:26,885 –> 01:20:30,405
used to call people who stepped out of that inauthenticity and showed us something

1280
01:20:30,405 –> 01:20:34,085
authentic iconoclasts. Right? But we’ve lost the use of that

1281
01:20:34,085 –> 01:20:37,820
term. We don’t even recognize those people if they showed up. So

1282
01:20:39,800 –> 01:20:43,640
how can leaders show authenticity to people who

1283
01:20:43,640 –> 01:20:45,420
don’t even believe it can exist?

1284
01:20:47,465 –> 01:20:50,664
Because there’s a level of lack of trust there, I think, fundamentally, that we’re also

1285
01:20:50,664 –> 01:20:54,505
chasing. Yeah. I think when it comes to

1286
01:20:54,505 –> 01:20:58,264
leaders, one of the most authentic things

1287
01:20:58,264 –> 01:21:00,844
you can do as a leader is to take responsibility.

1288
01:21:02,590 –> 01:21:06,270
Take responsibility for, first off, for yourself, but also

1289
01:21:06,270 –> 01:21:10,030
for others. So, we you

1290
01:21:10,030 –> 01:21:13,469
know, you you talk about the the managerial class and

1291
01:21:13,469 –> 01:21:16,945
the, you know, they are professionals

1292
01:21:17,405 –> 01:21:21,165
at avoiding responsibility. Right? So there’s always some study.

1293
01:21:21,165 –> 01:21:24,605
There’s always some form to fill out. There’s

1294
01:21:24,605 –> 01:21:27,980
always some committee. There’s always some

1295
01:21:28,200 –> 01:21:31,640
peer review article. There’s something that you can hide

1296
01:21:31,640 –> 01:21:33,740
behind and avoid responsibility,

1297
01:21:35,720 –> 01:21:39,240
for whatever the challenges that’s being faced. I

1298
01:21:39,240 –> 01:21:42,824
think I think leaders who want to demonstrate

1299
01:21:43,125 –> 01:21:46,905
authenticity are going to be leaders that are willing to take

1300
01:21:47,525 –> 01:21:50,745
responsibility for for things.

1301
01:21:51,284 –> 01:21:54,930
Whether or not they’re guilty of it or not is beside the point.

1302
01:21:54,930 –> 01:21:58,530
That, you know, guilt somebody who’s guilty and someone

1303
01:21:58,530 –> 01:22:01,830
who’s responsible are not necessarily the same things. I mean,

1304
01:22:02,770 –> 01:22:06,370
when I was, I was in the military, okay, and

1305
01:22:06,370 –> 01:22:10,145
so so, you know, as a as

1306
01:22:10,145 –> 01:22:13,905
a commander as a battery commander, I was

1307
01:22:13,905 –> 01:22:17,745
responsible for what happened or didn’t happen in my in my unit. Now

1308
01:22:17,745 –> 01:22:21,365
I may have had a soldier who was guilty of negligence

1309
01:22:21,665 –> 01:22:25,260
and got himself or somebody else killed. I’m not guilty of that

1310
01:22:25,260 –> 01:22:28,860
negligence, but I’m responsible for it. Right. So I would be held

1311
01:22:28,860 –> 01:22:32,320
responsible for something that happened. Right? And as I should be.

1312
01:22:32,940 –> 01:22:36,620
And so I think as leaders, you know, if if you

1313
01:22:36,620 –> 01:22:39,760
wanna if you wanna be an authentic leader, if you wanna be

1314
01:22:40,505 –> 01:22:42,925
someone who is,

1315
01:22:44,665 –> 01:22:48,125
listened to with gravitas, some,

1316
01:22:48,985 –> 01:22:51,885
a a person, there there used to be an old

1317
01:22:52,720 –> 01:22:56,400
commercial. When EF Hutton speaks, people listen. Yep. If

1318
01:22:56,400 –> 01:22:59,220
you wanna be that guy, take responsibility.

1319
01:23:00,080 –> 01:23:03,760
Take responsibility even if it wasn’t your fault. You just you say, hey. I

1320
01:23:03,760 –> 01:23:07,465
don’t know how I I don’t know I don’t know what my part was

1321
01:23:07,465 –> 01:23:10,905
in the in the guilt hierarchy of things, but I wanna be

1322
01:23:10,905 –> 01:23:14,745
responsible to fix it. I wanna take that on. And if you

1323
01:23:14,745 –> 01:23:18,505
can be that guy regardless of whether or not you were guilty, but if you

1324
01:23:18,505 –> 01:23:22,280
could be that guy or that girl and and say, hey. I’ll I’ll be

1325
01:23:22,280 –> 01:23:26,120
responsible for fixing this. You know, regardless of who caused it,

1326
01:23:26,120 –> 01:23:29,740
I’m I’m responsible here. I’ll take the I’ll take the blame. I’ll take the fall.

1327
01:23:30,440 –> 01:23:34,165
People are drawn to that person. They’re just drawn to

1328
01:23:34,625 –> 01:23:38,225
them. They, it’s it’s almost like that’s

1329
01:23:38,225 –> 01:23:41,825
a safe person for me to live out my

1330
01:23:41,825 –> 01:23:45,205
calling underneath. Right? Right. And and that’s

1331
01:23:45,750 –> 01:23:49,510
that’s, I think, where things start to heal and kinda

1332
01:23:49,510 –> 01:23:53,110
come together is when is when we have leaders who can who

1333
01:23:53,110 –> 01:23:56,550
can take responsibility regardless of whether or not they’re guilty

1334
01:23:56,550 –> 01:23:59,475
of of the current situation. Yeah.

1335
01:24:00,255 –> 01:24:02,435
Yeah. There’s a great line in, the movie,

1336
01:24:07,215 –> 01:24:10,915
oh, directed by Snatch.

1337
01:24:11,400 –> 01:24:15,020
Yes. The it’s it’s Irish boxing.

1338
01:24:15,160 –> 01:24:17,820
Brad Pitt plays a bumbling Irish boxer in it.

1339
01:24:18,920 –> 01:24:21,960
And there’s a character in there named Rick Top. And,

1340
01:24:23,845 –> 01:24:27,525
basically, there was a fight that

1341
01:24:27,525 –> 01:24:31,285
was supposed to happen in a particular way. It doesn’t happen

1342
01:24:31,285 –> 01:24:34,345
in that way. Guy Ritchie directed this. It’s a British film.

1343
01:24:34,965 –> 01:24:38,810
The fight doesn’t happen in that particular way. Bricktop is then

1344
01:24:38,810 –> 01:24:41,710
confronted by the people because he runs an underground boxing

1345
01:24:42,650 –> 01:24:46,250
underground boxing and and and illegal betting. And the people who

1346
01:24:46,250 –> 01:24:49,550
bet on, you know, the the fight come to him,

1347
01:24:50,315 –> 01:24:53,675
and there are people with more money and more power than him. And they’re like,

1348
01:24:53,675 –> 01:24:56,715
why didn’t the fight go the way that you wanted it to go or that

1349
01:24:56,715 –> 01:24:59,675
we wanted it to go. Right? Because we paid for this person, the Brad Pitt

1350
01:24:59,675 –> 01:25:03,375
character to take a dive basically. And Brad Pitt doesn’t do that.

1351
01:25:03,860 –> 01:25:07,539
And, Bricktop gives a great line, which backs up what Brian is saying

1352
01:25:07,539 –> 01:25:10,980
here. He says, stand on me. I will make it

1353
01:25:10,980 –> 01:25:14,739
right. And then he just walks away. Well, there’s some other things that happen

1354
01:25:14,739 –> 01:25:17,300
after that. You know, there’s an entire sequence because it’s all supposed to be a

1355
01:25:17,300 –> 01:25:20,545
comedy. So there’s an entire sequence of things that happen after that. But

1356
01:25:20,925 –> 01:25:24,365
that’s the line. Stand on me. Stand on my

1357
01:25:24,365 –> 01:25:28,205
shoulders. I will take you to the promised land. Doesn’t matter if you can’t see

1358
01:25:28,205 –> 01:25:32,045
it. Doesn’t matter if you are ambivalent about my

1359
01:25:32,045 –> 01:25:35,430
ability to do that. Stand on me.

1360
01:25:35,930 –> 01:25:36,990
I will take responsibility.

1361
01:25:39,610 –> 01:25:43,450
You gotta fire somebody. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you’re gonna fire

1362
01:25:43,450 –> 01:25:44,910
somebody, fire me. It’s fine.

1363
01:25:46,915 –> 01:25:50,034
There’s another idea I wanna run past you, and it does jump out to me

1364
01:25:50,034 –> 01:25:52,835
from the Ted Goya piece, and we’ll close with this idea. I don’t wanna run

1365
01:25:52,835 –> 01:25:56,594
past you. I think people

1366
01:25:56,594 –> 01:25:59,255
who wanna be authentic have to decline to participate

1367
01:26:00,435 –> 01:26:04,020
in unseriousness. Doesn’t mean they can’t laugh at

1368
01:26:04,020 –> 01:26:07,699
themselves. Doesn’t mean they can’t be humorous. Like we started off. I mean, this book

1369
01:26:07,699 –> 01:26:11,380
is a comedy. I mean, come on. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a comedy. It’s

1370
01:26:11,380 –> 01:26:15,075
a parody. It’s absurdity. Rush Limbaugh back in the day

1371
01:26:15,075 –> 01:26:18,675
used to say, illustrating absurdity by being absurd, you

1372
01:26:18,675 –> 01:26:22,515
know, it’s all of those things.

1373
01:26:22,515 –> 01:26:25,975
Right. But at the same time,

1374
01:26:26,355 –> 01:26:29,015
it doesn’t descend into being unserious.

1375
01:26:31,260 –> 01:26:35,099
And that’s, that’s a heck of a tight

1376
01:26:35,099 –> 01:26:38,699
rope to walk. But I think leaders, I wanted

1377
01:26:38,860 –> 01:26:42,645
I I wanna know what your your thoughts are on that. Do leaders have to

1378
01:26:42,645 –> 01:26:45,465
frame this question? Do leaders have to walk that tightrope

1379
01:26:46,405 –> 01:26:49,844
between or how do they not do they? How do they walk that tightrope

1380
01:26:49,844 –> 01:26:51,545
between being authentic

1381
01:26:53,605 –> 01:26:55,864
but not participating in unseriousness?

1382
01:26:58,780 –> 01:27:02,380
Like, how do they how do you do that? Because these days, participating in

1383
01:27:02,380 –> 01:27:05,900
unseriousness is thought of as being funny. They thought of it as being self

1384
01:27:05,900 –> 01:27:07,920
deprecating. And yet

1385
01:27:12,635 –> 01:27:15,275
I don’t I don’t know where the line is. Right? But I do think that

1386
01:27:15,275 –> 01:27:19,034
that’s part of the I do think that’s part of the equation, but I

1387
01:27:19,034 –> 01:27:21,855
don’t know I don’t know how you click those things together.

1388
01:27:23,600 –> 01:27:27,360
Yeah. I

1389
01:27:27,360 –> 01:27:30,900
think, some of the most effective leaders

1390
01:27:32,480 –> 01:27:35,140
that I saw, that I’ve seen,

1391
01:27:36,205 –> 01:27:38,864
were able to just laugh at themselves. They didn’t participate

1392
01:27:40,445 –> 01:27:44,205
in unseriousness, but they were able to laugh at unserious

1393
01:27:44,364 –> 01:27:48,205
they were they were able to laugh at it. And, I’m trying I’m thinking

1394
01:27:48,205 –> 01:27:51,265
of, you know,

1395
01:27:52,110 –> 01:27:55,810
whether I you know, I’ve been in military ministry. I’ve been in,

1396
01:27:58,990 –> 01:28:01,970
I’ve I’ve worked in oil and gas. And

1397
01:28:03,310 –> 01:28:06,705
those leaders who, you know because inevitably,

1398
01:28:06,925 –> 01:28:10,385
if you are in charge Mhmm. Okay, people

1399
01:28:10,685 –> 01:28:14,065
who are under you are going to make fun of you. Oh, invariably.

1400
01:28:14,205 –> 01:28:17,805
Yeah. I mean and so and so you just know that’s

1401
01:28:17,805 –> 01:28:21,130
part of it. That’s just part of being a leader

1402
01:28:21,590 –> 01:28:25,130
is that people are gonna make fun of you. And,

1403
01:28:25,990 –> 01:28:29,690
and so I think being able to laugh at that

1404
01:28:30,790 –> 01:28:34,235
and and to laugh with those people that you

1405
01:28:34,455 –> 01:28:38,295
are leading, when

1406
01:28:38,295 –> 01:28:41,675
they a, it makes you it makes them,

1407
01:28:42,695 –> 01:28:46,460
it’s safe for them to criticize you. Okay? Now

1408
01:28:46,460 –> 01:28:48,380
it’s criticism in a way that,

1409
01:28:51,020 –> 01:28:54,380
is you know, it it’s, you know, it’s it’s a it’s a fine line in

1410
01:28:54,380 –> 01:28:58,140
and of itself. Right? Right. And, and so but if you

1411
01:28:58,140 –> 01:29:01,280
can laugh at that, if you can laugh at their

1412
01:29:01,815 –> 01:29:05,575
their caricatures, their criticisms of you that right? They’re

1413
01:29:05,575 –> 01:29:09,095
trying to be funny, make fun of you, poke fun of you. If you can

1414
01:29:09,095 –> 01:29:12,695
laugh at that, to me, that makes you more serious. To me, that

1415
01:29:12,775 –> 01:29:16,140
as a leader. That means you acknowledge your

1416
01:29:16,140 –> 01:29:19,680
shortcomings. You know that they’re there. You’re not unaware of them.

1417
01:29:21,260 –> 01:29:25,100
And you can appreciate the fact that someone else can find humor

1418
01:29:25,100 –> 01:29:28,080
in that. Yeah. And so

1419
01:29:29,295 –> 01:29:32,975
so I think, but I’ve also

1420
01:29:32,975 –> 01:29:36,735
known leaders, you know, that were, that, you know but

1421
01:29:36,735 –> 01:29:39,614
that but that’s not to say that she would be the one writing the script

1422
01:29:39,614 –> 01:29:43,219
for those things, right, and participate. To me, that would be unserious, I think. If

1423
01:29:43,219 –> 01:29:46,080
you’re Yeah. If if you’re the one that’s, like,

1424
01:29:47,420 –> 01:29:51,100
you know, somehow trying to curate the the the the

1425
01:29:51,100 –> 01:29:54,460
comedy show that’s making fun of you, I think that’s totally

1426
01:29:54,460 –> 01:29:58,085
serious. And so I I I to me, I think that I don’t know if

1427
01:29:58,085 –> 01:30:01,765
that answers your question. I just I think being able to to laugh at yourself,

1428
01:30:01,765 –> 01:30:05,605
to know that you have shortcomings, to laugh with the people that are

1429
01:30:05,605 –> 01:30:09,405
making fun of you, I

1430
01:30:09,405 –> 01:30:13,179
I just I I I that’s that’s that’s that’s not come up with at

1431
01:30:13,179 –> 01:30:16,940
the moment. In in popular culture, I think of the, the

1432
01:30:16,940 –> 01:30:20,159
show, and you may have seen it or you may not have, Brian,

1433
01:30:20,780 –> 01:30:24,380
but, Brooklyn 99, comedy show

1434
01:30:24,380 –> 01:30:28,079
from years ago. It’s on Netflix now. It’s streaming now. That’s how I found it.

1435
01:30:28,695 –> 01:30:31,835
But it’s got a Andre Brauer in it who was a very serious

1436
01:30:32,775 –> 01:30:36,375
Shakespearean actor. He was on that show

1437
01:30:36,375 –> 01:30:39,895
homicide life on the streets. Very serious Emmy

1438
01:30:39,895 –> 01:30:43,730
winning, very serious actor. And he’s on this

1439
01:30:43,730 –> 01:30:47,410
comedy show with Andy Sandberg from

1440
01:30:47,410 –> 01:30:51,090
Saturday night live. And there’s a bunch of other characters in on

1441
01:30:51,090 –> 01:30:54,530
there. The guy from the old spice commercials, Ted Terry

1442
01:30:54,530 –> 01:30:58,230
Cruz and idiocracy is also on the show,

1443
01:30:58,985 –> 01:31:00,845
And he plays a police captain,

1444
01:31:02,345 –> 01:31:06,025
obviously, in New York City for the 99th precinct. And so he’s

1445
01:31:06,025 –> 01:31:09,865
surrounded by all these goofballs. It’s a serious very serious guy, serious

1446
01:31:09,865 –> 01:31:13,640
about his role, serious about who he is as a captain, serious about

1447
01:31:13,640 –> 01:31:17,480
what he does, and he’s literally surrounded by and this is the only way I

1448
01:31:17,480 –> 01:31:21,320
can think to describe it. He’s surrounded by morons and people who

1449
01:31:21,320 –> 01:31:25,000
are just stumbling all over themselves and, you know, solving

1450
01:31:25,000 –> 01:31:28,060
cases by accident and total complete goofballs.

1451
01:31:29,535 –> 01:31:33,055
And you could watch over the course of 3 or 4 seasons how they

1452
01:31:33,055 –> 01:31:36,415
loosen his character up very gradually, very

1453
01:31:36,415 –> 01:31:40,175
gradually. Matter of fact, the last episode that I watched, there was some reference to

1454
01:31:40,175 –> 01:31:43,989
the the old tone, loke, song from the 19 nineties, funky cold

1455
01:31:43,989 –> 01:31:47,830
Medina. And Andre

1456
01:31:47,830 –> 01:31:51,510
Prower, like, deadpanses. And he does. Throughout the year, he he just he

1457
01:31:51,510 –> 01:31:54,949
deadpans all of his lines. He’s taking it absolutely deadly

1458
01:31:54,949 –> 01:31:58,675
seriously as a leader, but you could

1459
01:31:58,675 –> 01:32:02,135
tell he cares about his people. Right? And they all make fun of him.

1460
01:32:02,435 –> 01:32:06,195
And the Andy Samberg character who’s, like, his his his protege or

1461
01:32:06,195 –> 01:32:09,960
he adopts as his protege, really looks up to him and

1462
01:32:09,960 –> 01:32:12,760
really admires him, but he’s trying to constantly try to get him to crack his

1463
01:32:12,760 –> 01:32:16,600
serious demeanor. And and then he’ll say something totally, literally

1464
01:32:16,600 –> 01:32:19,640
out of left field, and you’ll be like, oh, wait. He’s just as much as

1465
01:32:19,640 –> 01:32:22,380
a goofball as the rest of these people are. He’s just serious.

1466
01:32:23,735 –> 01:32:27,355
And so I’m I’ve got that thing rattling around in my head head right now,

1467
01:32:28,054 –> 01:32:31,574
with your as you’re talking. And that’s a good and a

1468
01:32:31,574 –> 01:32:34,875
comedic level, which kinda goes along with the book that we’re reading today.

1469
01:32:36,040 –> 01:32:39,880
He declines that that that is. He the Andre Brauer character in there, captain

1470
01:32:39,880 –> 01:32:43,560
Holt. He declines to participate in unserious nonsense. Like, he

1471
01:32:43,560 –> 01:32:46,940
doesn’t do pranks or anything like that, but he will do

1472
01:32:47,239 –> 01:32:51,025
the, like, you know, once a year, we’re going to

1473
01:32:51,025 –> 01:32:54,865
steal the Halloween something or other from somebody or

1474
01:32:54,865 –> 01:32:58,545
other. Like, he just outrageous, outlandish stuff that you wouldn’t

1475
01:32:58,705 –> 01:33:02,465
and he deadpans the whole thing. And, like, this guy’s dead serious. He’s an

1476
01:33:02,465 –> 01:33:06,040
Emmy winning actor surrounded by

1477
01:33:06,040 –> 01:33:09,800
these morons with Saturday Night Live. And that’s how that show

1478
01:33:09,800 –> 01:33:12,220
works. That’s how it works.

1479
01:33:13,720 –> 01:33:17,320
And I think it’s very I think it’s a an example of what you’re talking

1480
01:33:17,320 –> 01:33:20,615
about there where the, the leader

1481
01:33:21,475 –> 01:33:24,995
doesn’t participate in the clowning of himself or

1482
01:33:24,995 –> 01:33:28,755
herself, but they understand to your point that the clowning is

1483
01:33:28,755 –> 01:33:32,595
going to happen at some point. And the only job for you as a leader

1484
01:33:32,595 –> 01:33:35,630
is to just to tell everybody when it crosses the line.

1485
01:33:36,410 –> 01:33:39,710
Yeah. And to be sure to hold that line fairly consistently,

1486
01:33:40,890 –> 01:33:44,190
and then let every the the chips fall where they may at that point.

1487
01:33:44,650 –> 01:33:48,270
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

1488
01:33:50,675 –> 01:33:53,255
Yeah. Awesome. Wow. Look at that.

1489
01:33:54,755 –> 01:33:58,375
I think we’ve, we’ve covered a lot in from the adventures of Huckleberry

1490
01:33:58,435 –> 01:34:01,635
Finn. I think you you ought to go out and you ought to get this

1491
01:34:01,635 –> 01:34:04,915
book if you have not read it. Or if the last time you read it

1492
01:34:04,915 –> 01:34:08,699
was maybe in high school and you’ve forgotten things about it, you should probably go

1493
01:34:08,699 –> 01:34:12,540
back and read it again as a leader. There’s a lot of

1494
01:34:12,540 –> 01:34:15,980
areas in this book that we did not cover. We just

1495
01:34:15,980 –> 01:34:19,679
barely scraped the surface of the challenges between

1496
01:34:20,855 –> 01:34:23,915
or the challenges between abolition and slavery,

1497
01:34:24,855 –> 01:34:28,635
that that, Mark Twain, looks at quite baldly,

1498
01:34:28,935 –> 01:34:32,614
but also the challenges between being on the river and being in civilization and

1499
01:34:32,614 –> 01:34:36,320
being in culture, and, of course, the challenges of being

1500
01:34:36,380 –> 01:34:39,980
a rebellious young man, in a

1501
01:34:39,980 –> 01:34:43,679
world where rebellion is being tampered down,

1502
01:34:44,060 –> 01:34:47,675
where the west is being wrestled to the ground

1503
01:34:47,815 –> 01:34:51,494
and tamed. All of these themes resonate and are

1504
01:34:51,494 –> 01:34:55,255
resonant inside of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn written

1505
01:34:55,255 –> 01:34:59,034
by Mark Twain. And, I would encourage you to read it yourself,

1506
01:34:59,415 –> 01:35:02,570
and don’t you dare let a legislator or somebody

1507
01:35:03,030 –> 01:35:06,870
else determine who the Twain for your time and

1508
01:35:06,870 –> 01:35:08,810
for your understanding can be.

1509
01:35:10,790 –> 01:35:14,550
I’d like to thank Brian Bagley for coming on the leadership lessons from the

1510
01:35:14,550 –> 01:35:17,770
great books podcast today. And with that, well,

1511
01:35:18,525 –> 01:35:21,105
as usual, we’re out.