Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald – Part Two w/Tom Libby

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Hello.

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My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from

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the Great Books podcast, episode number one

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forty nine.

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Mental illness, shame, alcoholism, and the

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utility or the lack of utility of psychiatry and the endless

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self-loathing that wealth creates were all themes we

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addressed with Libby Unger in the last episode of the

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podcast that also focused on the book that we’re going to be talking about

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today. However, in this episode, we’re going to be

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going in a little bit of a different direction. We’re going to

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explore more this idea of a generation that is lost, which is

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now so much a part of the background of our understanding of the post

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World War one, pre Great Depression world that we don’t really critically

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examine the undercurrents that led to such a

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loss. Sure. There was a war, and we talked a

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lot about that with Libby. We talked about World War one and PTSD.

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But there was even more so a move in the

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zeitgeist, a move in the cultural landscape

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from a concentration on the development of moral character

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to a cynicism fully born and mature in our own era, one

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hundred years later, about the nature of institutions and the level of

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their trustworthiness in the West overall and in America

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in particular. Today, on this episode of the podcast, we

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will be recommending that we will come into what it is that leaders can

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do in times of cynical change, fatalistic opportunism,

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and endless cultural slop, through insights

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provided us via Tinder is the Night

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by F Scott Fitzgerald.

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Leaders, we have looked at the society that has messed up and are found ourselves

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wanting. So what do we do

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now? And, of course, joining us

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on our journey today through this book, we had

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Libby Unger on in the last episode. And, of course, this is part of our

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new format where we do the same book but with a different,

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different, guest cohost or a different cohost, for at least

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a couple of episodes. And so today, we will be joined by our usual partner

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in crime, Tom Libby. How are you doing, Tom?

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You know, the sun popped up this morning. My eyes

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opened. It’s It’s a good day. That’s that’s about the that’s about the gist

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of it, these last couple of weeks. This is the low bar to jump over.

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Right? Exactly. Exactly. No. No. I I’m I’m doing

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I’m doing very well. Doing very well. We were we were just talking about this

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before I hit the record button, and,

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it’s been an invigorating last couple of months in 2025.

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So For sure. Yeah.

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So we’re gonna take a look at, Tender is the Night. The I’m

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going to pick up from the book, of course. We’re gonna kinda go a

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little bit into it, just to start off. And

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today, what I’m going to do rather than sort of reading straight through is I’m

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going to pick out certain selections and, have,

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Tom comment on them. And we’re gonna talk around them and

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some of the themes that are that are, buried in,

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in these in these sections. And one of the big ones is this idea

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of a party, right, particularly in a lost generation context. And

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so gonna pick up a chapter 18 of Tender is the Ninth.

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And, and I quote, all the divers

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were honestly apathetic to organized fashion. They were

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nevertheless too acute to abandon its contemporary contemporaneous

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rhythm and beat. Diggs’ parties were all concerned

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with excitement, and a chance breath of fresh night air was the

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more precious for being experienced in the intervals of the excitement.

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The party that night moved at the speed of a slapstick comedy. They

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were 12. They were 16. They were quartets in separate motors bound on a

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quick odyssey over Paris. Everything had been foreseen. People

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joined them as if by magic, accompanied them as specialists, almost

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guides through a phase of the evening, dropped out, and were

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succeeded by other people so that it appeared as if the freshness of each one

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had been husbanded for them all day. Rosemary

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appreciated how different it was from any party in Hollywood no matter how splendid in

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scale. There was, among many diversions, the car of the Shah of

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Persia, where Dick had commandeered this vehicle, what

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bribery was employed. These were facts of irrelevance.

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Rosemary accepted it as merely a new facet of the fabulous, which for two years

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had filled her life. The car had been built on a special chassis in America.

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Its wheels were silver, so was the radiator. The inside of the body was

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inlaid with innumerable brilliance, which would be replaced with true

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gems by the court jeweler when the car arrived in Tehran the following

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week. There was only one real seat in the back because

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the Shah must ride alone, so they took turns riding in it and

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sitting on the Marten fir that covered the floor. By the way,

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just a side note, the Shah rode alone and so does

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the Ayatollah, who’s currently running

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Iran. He rides alone too.

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Back to the book. But always there was dick. Rosemary

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assured the image of her mother ever carried with her that never, never had she

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known anyone so nice, so thoroughly nice as Dick was that

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night. She compared it with the two Englishmen whom Abe or

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Abe addressed conscientiously as major Hengset and mister

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Horsa, And with the heir to a Scandinavian throne and the novelist just back from

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Russia and with Abe who was desperate and witty and with,

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Colias Clay who joined them somewhere and stayed along and felt there was no

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comparison, the enthusiasm, the selflessness behind the whole performance

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ravished her. The technique of moving many varied types, each as

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immobile, as dependent on supplies of attention as an infantry battalion, as

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dependent on rations appeared so effortless that he still had pieces

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of his own most personal self for everyone.

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Then we go into the we go into the, the party, and, I

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wanna pick up this piece here. Then Dick

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came up to Rosemary. Nicole and I are going home, and we thought you’d wanna

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go with us. Her face was pale with fatigue and the false dawn,

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two one dark spots on her cheek marked where the color was by day.

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I can’t, she said. I promise Mary North to stay along with them or Abe

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will never go to bed. Maybe you could do something. Don’t you know

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anything about people? Or don’t you know you can’t do anything

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about people? He advised her. If a was my roommate in college,

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tight for the first time, it’d be different. Now there’s nothing to do.

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Well, I’ve got to stay. He says he’ll go to bed if we only come

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to the Hales with him, she said almost defiantly.

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He kissed the inside of her elbow quickly. Don’t let Rosemary go home

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alone. Nicole called to Mary as they left. We feel responsible

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to her mother. Now there’s a couple of

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different things that are enveloped in that little piece

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there about the party that, Nicole and Dick

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Divers, the titular characters of Tender is the Night, are

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holding in order to impress Rosemary, the

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ingenue Hollywood Starlet, starring in

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Daddy’s Little Girl in 1920 and just going to Europe for

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the first time. And it kind of opens up the door to talking about some

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of the things that we’re going to talk about today, starting with, which we have

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not really focused on with this book, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s

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experiences as a Hollywood

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Screenwriter. So I mentioned this

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in the episode with Libby, but it bears repeating again. Hollywood in the

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nineteen twenties and in the nineteen thirties was,

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a business that could properly probably be compared in our time to

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the streaming services of Netflix, Hulu, Disney

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plus at that time in in history. Right? Hollywood was

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where fast paced writing

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and, new forms and new modes of entertainment

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were going in order to be developed. Things were moving away from

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the seriousness of the theater and, quite frankly, of Vaudeville

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in the late nineteenth century and had moved through the silent

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era, which was still considered to be an era that was relatively recent

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even though we think of it as far away and ancient now, because so

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much has happened in film since then. And by the time

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the twenties and thirties showed up, Hollywood, though not a fully mature

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industry quite just yet, it wouldn’t quite get there till the fifties and sixties,

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and reach its apotheosis, I think, in the nineteen seventies,

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before it began its long and ignominious decline

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into our own time. But Hollywood there

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was was considered in in a play as a

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place in the twenties and thirties where

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serious writing and I wanna be very clear on this. Serious

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writing went to die. Not that

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serious writers went to die. Many serious writers worked in

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Hollywood, not just f Scott Fitzgerald, but also Ogden Nash, who

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we’ve covered on this podcast. John Steinbeck

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wrote, a couple of of screens, screenplays,

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during that time and many other writers. But

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it was a place that was William Faulkner even wrote, wrote

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a couple of screenplays, in Hollywood. So it was a place that was

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starting to come into its own, but it was still also a place that was

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considered by serious artistes to be a place where,

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well, you’re kinda doing slum work. And, F. Scott

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Fitzgerald sort of fell into that mindset around Hollywood.

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Now he did write screenplays and treatments off and on, for

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various Hollywood productions and various Hollywood Producers, in

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1927 and in 1931, and then more consistently between

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1939 and 1941. There’s a

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whole article that I read about this, and Tom and I could talk about this

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today because I actually sent him the article that was in The New Yorker. It

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was actually pretty good, from 02/2016, I

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believe. And, it talks about how Fitzgerald

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wasn’t cut out for writing in Hollywood because, quite frankly, he

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demanded too much from the screenplay process. But he

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also demanded too much, interestingly enough, from the business

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of Hollywood. He was

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so unable to take what he

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wanted to do in his novels and translate that to the screen and

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became frustrated when other people were able to do it in a way that he

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did not respect, which is a real problem for Fitzgerald.

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So that underscores some of the conversation we will have today with

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Tom around Tender is the Night. But even before we jump into

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that, I’d like to start off with this. I don’t even know if Tom’s read

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this book. So let’s start with that. Tom, have you read Tender is the Night?

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I know you’ve heard of Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, who hasn’t? But, like,

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Tender is the Night, have you read this book or any of anything outside of

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Gatsby from, from Fitzgerald? No. I think Gatsby was the only

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one. There we go. Look at that. But but here

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I did read the article, though. How’s that? I did actually read the article you

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sent me. So There you go. Alright.

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Yeah. The research has occurred. Yeah. Exactly. At least some

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semblance of research has occurred. But, but I no. I have not

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I have not read, this particular book.

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Okay. So one of the

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things that’s interesting about this book is that it was not a bestseller in,

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in Fitzgerald’s time. And as a matter of fact, he

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actually tried to there’s a couple different versions of Tender is the Night

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because he tried to rewrite it, in order to make it appeal

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to more of a mass market. And that was one of the challenges

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with, with Fitzgerald as a writer coming

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off of The Great Gatsby. Right? So even The Gatsby The Great

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Gatsby during its time was not nearly as popular as it

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became later. Matter of fact, I think if I remember

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correctly, and, these numbers are

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probably incorrect, But, I

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think Gatsby only sold something like

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five to 8,000 copies or something like that. It was 20 I

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thought it was 23. It was like it was like he sold 23,000 in the

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first twenty three thousand. The first. Okay. But then Alright. Like, then the book, for

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some reason, after his death, all of a sudden exploded.

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Mhmm. After his death in 1940, it ended up

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becoming the the American novel. Right? Like, it was the

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the one that everybody basically, refers to as the great American

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novel. So but it wasn’t until after his death that it became

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really popular. Well, and part of that, I think, was because

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and I I might have read this somewhere, but it was distributed to GIs,

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in, in World War two when they were wandering around Europe. Right?

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Sort of a

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a primer from the last war to help you with this new

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with this new one. Right? Right. And a distraction. Right?

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Reminder of what it is you’re missing you’re missing at home. And many of those

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many of those GIs would have

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been kids during the jazz age. So they

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wouldn’t have had any direct

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experience, right, with any of the things that were going on in Gatsby in The

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Great Gatsby. That would have been probably, their

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either fathers or uncles or even, in some cases, older brothers.

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And so there was a certain amount of,

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for lack of a better term, sentimentalism attached to Gatsby,

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from those, from those GIs. But But Tender is the Night is a little bit

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of a different thing. It was not a popular book

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when it was when it was first, written. When it

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was first published, it sold almost no copies.

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Fitzgerald and this is part of what drove Fitzgerald back to Hollywood. He

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I think the royalties on it were only, like, $81 or something like that.

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Like, he wouldn’t make it no money, you know, off of Tinder is the

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Night. And in general, it was

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perceived by critics, during the

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time as being, for lack of a better

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term, claptrap, you know, not not good

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writing. And

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he thought it was because he did a flashback in the second book that’s in

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the middle. So the book is divided up into three parts. Right? You got book

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one, which, sort of where you meet Nicole

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and you meet Dick and you meet Rosemary. You meet all these characters. Right? Abe,

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who we’re gonna talk Abe, who we’re gonna talk about today. Not Abe, Abe, who

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we’re gonna talk about today. Much of the cast of characters. Right? And he sort

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of sets the the dynamic. Then in book two, you get a flashback

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on, Dick and Nicole’s relationship and setting

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up how Dick was her doctor and fell in love with her,

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because she had a background that was, where there was, some,

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some sexual abuse from her father, and, you know, they were

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wealthy enough. The Warrens were. Nicole Warren, her her father was

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was was wealthy enough to send her and her sister,

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the, the the socialite

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baby Warren. Loving how they nicknamed women baby back

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then. It’s kind of amazing. Anyway, baby Warren. You would not get away with that

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today, by the way. So baby Warren.

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What’s up? Was I mean, could you imagine Jeff

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Bezos’s girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, her sister

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being referred to as babying? No.

258
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Oh my god. No. I cannot. I I can,

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like, I can actually hear the the the feminists,

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like, yelling at me. Screaming? The screaming? Oh, you’re

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They’re, like, yelling. I can hear them. There’s an entire sidebar story

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that I wanna tell, which I I will tell it right now. So one of

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the guys with whom I work at the

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coworking space that I work at told us a story

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about how his grandfather, who was born in 1920

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and served in World War two, one of those aforementioned vets

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that I was, that I was talking about, who probably read The Great Gatsby when

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he was in Europe, interestingly enough, when he came back from the

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war in the seventies

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when this guy was a teenager and a kid. Right? And he’s now

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this man who was telling me this story the other day is now in his

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early to mid sixties. Right? So that’s how the math lines up

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00:17:12,609 –> 00:17:16,255
there. Anyway, he said that his grandfather would sit outside

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underneath the tree with a radio, one of those old AM radios, and listen to

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the baseball game. And I won’t tell you what baseball team was because I’ll tell

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you a bunch of different details you don’t need to know. But he would listen

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to the baseball game. And about 20 yards away

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from where he would sit underneath the tree was the,

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the house that he lived in. Right? And the kitchen window was

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facing the tree. And so so the kitchen window, every time you go out to

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listen to baseball games under the tree on the AM radio, the,

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the, the window would be would be

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open. The kitchen window would be open because the grandfather,

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would drink some would drink interesting. Left Pabst Blue Ribbon,

285
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PBR. Right? And he drink a PBR listening to the AM radio

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baseball game. And when he wanted a new PBR, talk

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about feminists, he would whistle, and the

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grandmother would come out with a freshly opened PBR and give it to him

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and take the old one back into the house. And so when when this guy

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told us this story right out the window. Sorry.

291
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Go ahead. Sorry. No. No. No. No. It don’t. No. It’s good because I asked

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him a question. I asked him a question about this after we so so myself,

293
00:18:23,010 –> 00:18:26,770
who I was born long after all of that era

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was over, and so myself and and the other guy who sits in the

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other gentleman who sits next to me is also in his early forties. We started

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cracking up laughing. We did. We started cracking up laughing. And the other guy who

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works kind of in the office behind us, he’s also in his early sixties,

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and he, of course, quit when he when we heard they when he

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heard this story. He said, that dude was a man. That’s how you know he

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was a man. I was like, okay. That’s

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that’s fine. No. And this is not me saying these things, gentlemen, ladies and

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gentlemen. I’m merely relating to you the story. And so

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I asked the guy who told me this about his grandfather

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if he would whistle for his wife currently, and he

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didn’t even let me get the sentence out of my mouth before he said, no.

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She’d kill me.

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Then when I told my wife this story later on during the day,

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in the evening when we were preparing to go out for our date night, my

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wife goes, that kind of woman, they don’t make that kind of

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00:19:28,975 –> 00:19:32,735
woman anymore. That kind of woman ain’t around. She’s

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00:19:32,735 –> 00:19:36,415
she’s long gone. She ain’t coming back. Well, I I hope your

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00:19:36,415 –> 00:19:40,255
wife actually never meets mine because my wife my wife

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00:19:40,255 –> 00:19:43,350
would tell you she was born in the wrong era, that she wishes that she

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was born in the fifties because that would she would prefer just to stay home

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and clean the house and take care like, if she had her druthers, she wouldn’t

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work a day in her life. She’d just stay at home and do all the

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things that women were supposed to do Supposed to do. At that

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point. She she kinda she kinda feels like she was a

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00:19:59,875 –> 00:20:03,635
she’s a misplaced in a misplaced error. Well, I tell you what. You

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00:20:03,635 –> 00:20:07,335
tell her the story about the whistling and, see how she responds to that.

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I was gonna say and part of the problem is because I treat her the

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way that your wife probably expects to be treated. Right? Like, that’s Yeah. That

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00:20:15,010 –> 00:20:18,530
that’s what we do today. Right. That’s what I try to share in all the

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Mhmm. Movies around the house. I try to share it, like and she’s constantly telling

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me to stop. And I just it’s not in

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00:20:25,965 –> 00:20:29,725
me to not help. Like, I can’t I can’t help it.

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00:20:29,725 –> 00:20:32,525
Anyway, we are so off track right now. We’re so off track right now. It’s

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00:20:32,525 –> 00:20:35,325
fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. The reason why I brought the reason why

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I brought up all that is because in Tender is the Night, back to the

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book. In the book, in book two,

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Nicole Warren and Baby Warren and Dick Divers all

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meet. Right? And that’s a flashback sequence. And so

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and then in book three, you get into more of the results, and we’ll

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00:20:54,054 –> 00:20:56,615
talk about some stuff that happens in book three. But more of the results of

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00:20:56,615 –> 00:20:59,495
everything that happens in the flashbacks, and then it sort of brings everything to the

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current day and then the book ends. Okay. That’s the setup for Tender is the

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Night with my sidebar digression.

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Just a little color for the folks.

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The main knock that Fitzgerald thought

340
00:21:17,380 –> 00:21:20,995
was the problem with the book was that book

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too. He thought the flashbacks were a problem. And so he

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rewrote the book to put everything in chronological

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order. And so there’s two different versions of Tender is a Night. There’s a

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version, which is the version that I have, where

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everything is in his original original written direction.

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And then there’s another version that I’ve heard that floats around somewhere,

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00:21:43,970 –> 00:21:46,290
and I don’t even think it’s been reprinted. I mean, you may be able to

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00:21:46,290 –> 00:21:49,715
find it in a used bookshop somewhere where he wrote everything in a chronological

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in chronological order. However, over the course of time, as

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audiences became more sophisticated, and this is as a result, I think, of Hollywood, this

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00:21:57,535 –> 00:22:01,295
is where the tie in is here, audiences became able

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00:22:01,295 –> 00:22:04,970
to or at least more willing to understand the

353
00:22:04,970 –> 00:22:08,809
digression or the sidebar of a flashback or of a story inside of

354
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a story and be able to follow that narrative that narrative thread.

355
00:22:12,570 –> 00:22:16,090
And thus, Tinder is the Night in its original form became more

356
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popular over the course of time. And it is now, along with

357
00:22:19,865 –> 00:22:23,645
The Beautiful and the Damned, the Side of Paradise, and, The Last Tycoon,

358
00:22:24,424 –> 00:22:26,924
now it is mentioned as part of his overall,

359
00:22:28,505 –> 00:22:31,309
oeuvre, such as it were or canon,

360
00:22:32,090 –> 00:22:35,929
around, around Fitzgerald. But it doesn’t surprise

361
00:22:35,929 –> 00:22:39,610
me that you haven’t read it because, again So so an F. Scott dominates so

362
00:22:39,610 –> 00:22:43,130
much. You know? Yeah. Because every time anybody says anything about F. Scott Fitzgerald, I

363
00:22:43,130 –> 00:22:46,705
mean, they’re almost always talking about Gatsby. Even even amongst his, what,

364
00:22:46,705 –> 00:22:50,545
400 short stories that he wrote. And, like, there’s Yep. He wrote he was

365
00:22:50,545 –> 00:22:54,305
basically writing his entire life, and but Gatsby

366
00:22:54,305 –> 00:22:57,985
is the only thing that anybody ever really talks about. But I I just again,

367
00:22:57,985 –> 00:23:01,525
back to the cinema kinda component to his life. And and

368
00:23:01,940 –> 00:23:05,140
do you feel like do you feel like he was way ahead of his time

369
00:23:05,140 –> 00:23:08,660
in this? Like, I I actually am one of those people that

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00:23:08,660 –> 00:23:11,640
gets sort of annoyed at these

371
00:23:12,100 –> 00:23:15,815
prequel style movies. Like, you know, you make you make,

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00:23:16,115 –> 00:23:18,914
you know, three movies in a series, and all of a sudden you go, oh,

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00:23:18,914 –> 00:23:21,955
but we need to tell you how the whole thing started, so we bring back

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00:23:21,955 –> 00:23:24,855
this prequel. It drives me bananas, but

375
00:23:25,635 –> 00:23:29,400
but he it seems like he already saw that coming. He was like,

376
00:23:29,400 –> 00:23:32,299
oh, let me write this the prequel in the middle of it so that people

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00:23:32,360 –> 00:23:35,240
can kinda and then we’ll go back to the finish of the story. Like, it

378
00:23:35,240 –> 00:23:38,600
just seems like and that’s an interesting dynamic to me. I never really thought of

379
00:23:38,600 –> 00:23:42,215
it that way is that if if because I I equate that to a

380
00:23:42,215 –> 00:23:45,675
more recent trend in in the movies, in the movie cinema.

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00:23:46,135 –> 00:23:49,655
And even in writing, if you look at authors and the way that they’re writing

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00:23:49,655 –> 00:23:53,415
their series of books at this point, there’s a lot of authors that

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00:23:53,415 –> 00:23:56,820
will go back and write a prequel, three books in, five books in to their

384
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series. So Yeah. I find it fascinating that you’re telling

385
00:24:00,580 –> 00:24:03,220
me that this is a major component and the fact that he felt like he

386
00:24:03,220 –> 00:24:06,500
had to rewrite it because he thought it was a problem, and now everyone’s doing

387
00:24:06,500 –> 00:24:10,075
it. Like, it’s kinda interesting to me. So

388
00:24:10,215 –> 00:24:14,055
the the the there’s

389
00:24:14,055 –> 00:24:17,895
always been flashbacks inside of films or stories

390
00:24:17,895 –> 00:24:21,655
inside of stories in film. Right. Right? Flashbacks are different. Right? It’s like a scene

391
00:24:21,655 –> 00:24:25,310
that kinda pops in and it’s gone. But this this whole idea or concept of

392
00:24:25,310 –> 00:24:29,070
prequels is is Right. He thought it was relatively new, but apparently, he,

393
00:24:29,390 –> 00:24:33,090
he kinda threw it in there in that book. So Well, you know, I think

394
00:24:38,585 –> 00:24:40,925
I think that for Fitzgerald

395
00:24:42,345 –> 00:24:46,185
well, okay. Couple of different things. Number one, Fitzgerald wrote during

396
00:24:46,185 –> 00:24:49,945
a time when we had a switch in the culture, and we’ll

397
00:24:49,945 –> 00:24:53,560
talk about this a little bit with his friend, Abe a little bit. But we

398
00:24:53,560 –> 00:24:57,340
had a switch in the in the in the culture from being

399
00:24:57,560 –> 00:25:00,380
a culture of character to a culture of personality.

400
00:25:00,920 –> 00:25:04,680
Right? And so he was he was he was in that in that

401
00:25:04,680 –> 00:25:08,495
switch. Right? That shift over. Right? And so you have Fitzgerald,

402
00:25:08,555 –> 00:25:11,855
the author, who’s the the public celebrity,

403
00:25:12,475 –> 00:25:15,755
and then you have Fitzgerald, the writer. I’m sort of backing into the answer to

404
00:25:15,755 –> 00:25:19,195
this question, because it’s a good one. And so

405
00:25:19,195 –> 00:25:22,770
Fitzgerald, the writer, and you saw this in the article about him, and this is

406
00:25:22,770 –> 00:25:25,910
why he struggled in Hollywood, I think. Fitzgerald, the writer,

407
00:25:27,410 –> 00:25:31,250
wanted to have all of the acclaim and the fame

408
00:25:31,250 –> 00:25:35,085
that went along with Fitzgerald, the celebrity, But he also wanted to keep his

409
00:25:35,085 –> 00:25:38,705
artistic druthers and be true to his creative self. Right?

410
00:25:40,605 –> 00:25:44,205
The reason we have prequels in films, I think, these

411
00:25:44,205 –> 00:25:47,585
days I was actually just talking with somebody about this today.

412
00:25:48,230 –> 00:25:51,990
But the reason we have prequels in film today is

413
00:25:51,990 –> 00:25:55,130
because the writers that we have

414
00:25:57,670 –> 00:26:00,675
aren’t nearly as good as Fitzgerald at being an artist

415
00:26:01,635 –> 00:26:05,395
around writing. Even, dare I

416
00:26:05,395 –> 00:26:09,155
say and we don’t read a whole lot of contemporary writers on

417
00:26:09,155 –> 00:26:12,755
this podcast, and so people can come for me, that’s fine. But when I look

418
00:26:12,755 –> 00:26:16,530
at my Goodreads book list, or when I look

419
00:26:16,530 –> 00:26:20,290
at the recommended books on Amazon, or when I go into Barnes and Noble

420
00:26:20,290 –> 00:26:23,510
and look at what’s splayed in the front. Right?

421
00:26:26,130 –> 00:26:29,685
With the exception of folks that are legacy authors like,

422
00:26:31,265 –> 00:26:35,045
Jack Carr is becoming a legacy author. John Gersham

423
00:26:35,745 –> 00:26:39,360
John Grisham. I’m sorry. Stephen King, of course. With the

424
00:26:39,360 –> 00:26:43,200
exception of legacy authors, you gotta take them out because they’re outliers. Well, that A

425
00:26:43,200 –> 00:26:47,040
lot of started writing thirty forty years ago. It’s it’s not Bingo.

426
00:26:47,040 –> 00:26:50,480
These are not new writers. Even though they’re not new writers. New books, they’re not

427
00:26:50,480 –> 00:26:54,174
new writers. But That’s right. Exactly. Yeah. Take out the legacy writers. Take

428
00:26:54,174 –> 00:26:57,215
them out. The new writers that you have, if you go and actually look at

429
00:26:57,215 –> 00:26:57,875
their books,

430
00:27:01,535 –> 00:27:05,155
they’re garbage. Not to put you find a point on it. They’re trash.

431
00:27:06,320 –> 00:27:10,080
And the reason why is because and this goes

432
00:27:10,080 –> 00:27:13,600
to that whole conception of, like, a streaming service being

433
00:27:13,600 –> 00:27:17,440
parallel to Hollywood. And, actually, the parallel is probably closer to

434
00:27:17,440 –> 00:27:21,195
movies, but we’re gonna go with Hollywood for the time being. Streaming services

435
00:27:21,815 –> 00:27:25,175
increasingly not increasingly, for the last ten

436
00:27:25,175 –> 00:27:27,115
years have looked

437
00:27:32,135 –> 00:27:35,915
at the thing that we view. And we talked about this with Havoc, interestingly

438
00:27:35,975 –> 00:27:39,170
enough, a couple of episodes ago. But they’ve looked at

439
00:27:39,790 –> 00:27:43,310
stories being something that goes on in the background while you’re doing other

440
00:27:43,310 –> 00:27:46,910
things that never distracts you from the

441
00:27:46,910 –> 00:27:50,130
primary screen, which means we’re not getting into complicated

442
00:27:50,270 –> 00:27:54,065
characters. It’s something that you could just dip in and dip out of. And when

443
00:27:54,065 –> 00:27:57,585
you have that, then, of course, you need prequels because no one’s

444
00:27:57,585 –> 00:28:01,025
fully explained or fleshed out the story. Of course, you need a

445
00:28:01,025 –> 00:28:04,800
prequel. Yes. Versus the old days, quote, unquote.

446
00:28:04,800 –> 00:28:07,680
So let’s go back to Godfather two for just a minute. I have a more

447
00:28:07,680 –> 00:28:11,520
cynical I have a more cynical thought thought of it. Because I so well, first

448
00:28:11,520 –> 00:28:14,480
of all, let me just say, I I do agree with you on the on

449
00:28:14,480 –> 00:28:17,920
the quality of the writing. Yeah. Hands down, I agree with you. I mean, just

450
00:28:17,920 –> 00:28:21,345
think of, like, you’re just gonna go to The Godfather. I mean, that movie was

451
00:28:21,345 –> 00:28:24,504
made in 1972 or ’74 or something like that. And Yep.

452
00:28:24,705 –> 00:28:28,385
It’s still, to this day, considered one of the best movies of all

453
00:28:28,385 –> 00:28:32,225
time. So, I mean, you know, anyway but the I it to

454
00:28:32,225 –> 00:28:35,790
me, we have so we have so systematized

455
00:28:36,410 –> 00:28:39,770
the the the process of writing in

456
00:28:39,770 –> 00:28:41,550
general that it’s very

457
00:28:44,170 –> 00:28:47,770
like like, my daughter my daughter doesn’t like watching movies with me very often

458
00:28:47,770 –> 00:28:51,425
because within the first fifteen minutes of the movie, I can tell you how it

459
00:28:51,425 –> 00:28:55,185
ends. Like Oh, yeah. Because because we’ve so systematized this,

460
00:28:55,185 –> 00:28:58,785
and there’s a formula to everything. So now people are starting to write in that

461
00:28:58,785 –> 00:29:02,010
style because, eventually, they’re thinking their book might be a movie.

462
00:29:02,250 –> 00:29:06,090
So it’s it’s it’s like this it’s like this trickle effect, and

463
00:29:06,090 –> 00:29:09,530
I think the the the prequel thing is flat out money

464
00:29:09,530 –> 00:29:12,990
grab. I I I I don’t think that there’s a artistic

465
00:29:13,130 –> 00:29:16,735
creativity to it. I don’t think the writing is good or it’s it’s

466
00:29:16,735 –> 00:29:20,255
money. It’s all about money. If the series does really well, let’s do a

467
00:29:20,255 –> 00:29:23,375
prequel because we know we can make a certain amount of money with it. Like,

468
00:29:23,375 –> 00:29:27,155
it’s not really I don’t think they’re thinking of it ahead of time. Meaning, like,

469
00:29:27,215 –> 00:29:30,940
I don’t think Oh, no. Think they went, you know, like, I don’t think they’re

470
00:29:30,940 –> 00:29:34,700
going, okay. We’re gonna make six Harry Potter movies, and now we’re gonna do a

471
00:29:34,700 –> 00:29:38,540
prequel because we’ve we missed out on on some creative liberties on the

472
00:29:38,540 –> 00:29:41,820
character development. So we we should do this prequel to let everybody know what’s going

473
00:29:41,820 –> 00:29:45,195
on. No. No. No. It’s we we built we made these six movies of Harry

474
00:29:45,195 –> 00:29:48,635
Potter, and I’m not suggesting that a prequel of Harry Potter people. I’m just using

475
00:29:48,635 –> 00:29:51,674
it as an example. But, like, we’re made these six movies. We made billions and

476
00:29:51,674 –> 00:29:55,195
billions and billions of dollars. We have no idea for the next movie, so let’s

477
00:29:55,195 –> 00:29:59,000
just do a prequel. Like, it’s like they have no more idea

478
00:29:59,299 –> 00:30:02,820
left in the next in the next set, so let’s just do

479
00:30:03,059 –> 00:30:06,740
and I’m more I’m so that’s my my my problem with prequels today is I

480
00:30:06,740 –> 00:30:10,265
think they’re money grabs. I don’t think that was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s

481
00:30:10,485 –> 00:30:13,285
thought process when he No. Put one in the middle of his book. I think

482
00:30:13,285 –> 00:30:16,485
for him, it was creative. I think he was thinking of it from a very

483
00:30:16,725 –> 00:30:19,365
I think he was trying to be different. Right? He was trying to look at

484
00:30:19,365 –> 00:30:21,685
the way books were being written. He said, I think I can do this a

485
00:30:21,685 –> 00:30:25,370
little differently. And to your point a few minutes ago, because I think

486
00:30:25,370 –> 00:30:28,890
that’s the way he was thinking of society in

487
00:30:28,890 –> 00:30:32,730
general at that point, that he had to be something different in order to stand

488
00:30:32,730 –> 00:30:36,429
out. Right? Like, he was just trying to figure it out. Again, we just said,

489
00:30:36,490 –> 00:30:40,335
he wrote four major books, and most of them were not

490
00:30:40,395 –> 00:30:44,095
major hits until after his death. He wrote hundreds of short stories.

491
00:30:44,155 –> 00:30:47,595
He wrote for other people. He ghost wrote for other people, never got the credit

492
00:30:47,595 –> 00:30:51,434
he deserved, and spent years in Hollywood with only one movie credit to

493
00:30:51,434 –> 00:30:55,280
his name. Like, just one beeps. One movie

494
00:30:55,280 –> 00:30:58,900
credit. So I think I think he was just I think he

495
00:30:59,120 –> 00:31:02,800
was trying to look at what the the formula of that

496
00:31:02,800 –> 00:31:06,640
time was and just disrupt it. And I don’t think that we

497
00:31:06,640 –> 00:31:10,365
do that enough today in writing. So here’s another

498
00:31:10,365 –> 00:31:13,085
thing that jumped out to me about Fitzgerald, and and we’ll go back to the

499
00:31:13,085 –> 00:31:15,965
book here in just a moment. But here’s here’s another theme that jumps out to

500
00:31:15,965 –> 00:31:19,405
me in this whole Hollywood idea in the article that I that we, that we’re

501
00:31:19,405 –> 00:31:23,005
referencing. By the way, we’ll have a link to that article, in the,

502
00:31:23,245 –> 00:31:26,950
in the show notes. It’s from the New Yorker magazine, and, I said it

503
00:31:26,950 –> 00:31:30,390
was 02/2016. It was actually 02/2009, called Slow

504
00:31:30,390 –> 00:31:33,990
Fade by Arthur Crystal. So go ahead and check out that

505
00:31:33,990 –> 00:31:37,830
article. I have a link to that in the show notes, below the player

506
00:31:37,830 –> 00:31:40,914
of this episode. So one of the things about Fitzgerald that jumped out to me

507
00:31:40,914 –> 00:31:44,515
in that in that, in that

508
00:31:44,515 –> 00:31:47,815
article was this. And it is something I think that is critical.

509
00:31:50,515 –> 00:31:53,880
And the parallel that I’ll make is this. I have

510
00:31:53,880 –> 00:31:57,019
sometimes worked with people who are very artistic,

511
00:31:58,919 –> 00:32:02,760
who and and I’m saying this

512
00:32:02,760 –> 00:32:06,355
is a person who has a bachelor of fine arts degree, and I did my

513
00:32:06,355 –> 00:32:07,575
I did my my

514
00:32:10,355 –> 00:32:13,995
my digging in the wells of art. I still handwrite our

515
00:32:14,115 –> 00:32:17,875
the scripts, like, for this show. AI doesn’t touch anything that has to do with

516
00:32:17,875 –> 00:32:21,710
this show, like, at all. I mean well, not I wouldn’t say like

517
00:32:21,710 –> 00:32:25,310
at all. There might be some AI in the editing, you know, of the

518
00:32:25,310 –> 00:32:29,070
audio maybe. But, but in the writing of this,

519
00:32:29,390 –> 00:32:33,235
this show and of the production of this show, my hand touches the script.

520
00:32:33,235 –> 00:32:36,215
My brain reads the, reads the books.

521
00:32:37,075 –> 00:32:40,755
The conversation that you’re having is between two two real live people. And the video

522
00:32:40,755 –> 00:32:43,735
that you’re seeing of this is is two live people,

523
00:32:44,600 –> 00:32:48,220
Ache, Google, Vero three, which is freaking everybody out right now.

524
00:32:49,160 –> 00:32:51,800
Oh, by the way, I don’t think we have anything to worry about those Google

525
00:32:51,800 –> 00:32:55,080
videos that are being produced because number one, that,

526
00:32:55,480 –> 00:32:58,995
they’re usually being used for marketing and advertising slop. That’s number one.

527
00:32:59,155 –> 00:33:02,195
Number two, you could still tell if they’re AI because the fingers and the eyes

528
00:33:02,195 –> 00:33:05,875
are still wrong. But number three, here’s the biggest one, the

529
00:33:05,875 –> 00:33:07,335
writing is trash underneath.

530
00:33:10,275 –> 00:33:13,780
This is why I’m not worried about the AIs. This is one of them. One

531
00:33:13,780 –> 00:33:15,780
of the one of the other reasons out of the myriad of reason we talk

532
00:33:15,780 –> 00:33:18,260
about AI on this show a lot, but one of the reasons of the myriad

533
00:33:18,260 –> 00:33:22,020
of reasons I’m not worried about about this. When the writing gets better, when they

534
00:33:22,020 –> 00:33:25,720
start hiring the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s of our time, then I’ll start being worried.

535
00:33:29,335 –> 00:33:32,695
One of the things that Nook that that jumps out to me about Fitzgerald, just

536
00:33:32,695 –> 00:33:35,975
like any other artists that I’ve worked with, whether it’s in the visual, in the

537
00:33:35,975 –> 00:33:39,274
dance, theater, television, wherever, anything creative.

538
00:33:40,440 –> 00:33:43,740
Sometimes, certain creative people are, for lack of a better term,

539
00:33:44,200 –> 00:33:47,580
precious about their

540
00:33:48,040 –> 00:33:51,660
art. Kind of like Gollum in Lord of the Rings.

541
00:33:52,745 –> 00:33:56,284
It’s my own, my precious. And they’re sitting down there

542
00:33:56,825 –> 00:34:00,044
in the cave, they’re stroking the manuscript,

543
00:34:00,985 –> 00:34:04,284
or they’re stroking the the the,

544
00:34:05,865 –> 00:34:09,280
the the film, or they’re polishing the sculpture.

545
00:34:10,300 –> 00:34:13,440
And they don’t wanna let it go out into the world

546
00:34:14,300 –> 00:34:17,900
for a couple of different reasons. But the big one is the

547
00:34:17,900 –> 00:34:21,580
second other people start having an opinion about your art, your

548
00:34:21,580 –> 00:34:25,075
art stops being yours. And now all these other

549
00:34:25,075 –> 00:34:27,015
people’s opinions begin to,

550
00:34:28,755 –> 00:34:32,295
gather on it like crustaceans on the bottom of a boat. Right?

551
00:34:32,915 –> 00:34:36,690
And the original meaning, the original thing that was this art

552
00:34:37,650 –> 00:34:41,250
now transforms into something that’s out of your control. And artists hate

553
00:34:41,250 –> 00:34:44,929
this. They hate this, particularly an

554
00:34:44,929 –> 00:34:48,690
artist artists with strong vision like an f Scott

555
00:34:48,690 –> 00:34:52,195
Fitzgerald, or a John Steinbeck, or an Ernest

556
00:34:52,195 –> 00:34:55,875
Hemingway, or any of these mid twentieth century modernist writers that

557
00:34:55,875 –> 00:34:59,555
we’ve read and even more so on this podcast, the eighteenth and

558
00:34:59,555 –> 00:35:03,175
nineteenth century writers enlightenment writers that we’ve read on this podcast.

559
00:35:03,235 –> 00:35:06,740
Right? This idea that and I think this is what

560
00:35:06,740 –> 00:35:10,500
driving Fitzgerald. The idea that other people would touch his work and have an

561
00:35:10,500 –> 00:35:13,560
opinion about it drove him absolutely crazy,

562
00:35:14,260 –> 00:35:17,995
particularly people he did not respect. And

563
00:35:17,995 –> 00:35:21,755
you see this in his relationship to other writers he worked with who polished

564
00:35:21,755 –> 00:35:25,595
his material in Hollywood versus how he took the

565
00:35:25,595 –> 00:35:29,275
feedback from Ernest Hemingway, particularly in Movable Feast. Hemingway

566
00:35:29,275 –> 00:35:33,029
talks about this, where they were young writers, you know,

567
00:35:33,029 –> 00:35:36,869
in Paris, part of the lost generation, running around drinking and

568
00:35:36,869 –> 00:35:40,470
writing and all that. And Hemingway was always, like, just get back to work.

569
00:35:40,470 –> 00:35:44,085
Just do the work. Like, I’ll help you, but just do the work.

570
00:35:44,325 –> 00:35:48,165
And Fitzgerald always kinda took that critique from him and was able to roll

571
00:35:48,165 –> 00:35:51,925
with it. Whereas in Hollywood, if

572
00:35:51,925 –> 00:35:55,285
David O’Selznick had an opinion about,

573
00:35:56,270 –> 00:35:59,950
about Fitzgerald’s writing. Fitzgerald probably struggled to

574
00:35:59,950 –> 00:36:00,849
take those notes.

575
00:36:03,790 –> 00:36:07,630
And I don’t know if you’ve run into this in entrepreneurship or

576
00:36:07,630 –> 00:36:11,035
in sales. These this concept of preciousness. This

577
00:36:11,035 –> 00:36:14,715
concept that I can’t let this thing out to, like, have it

578
00:36:14,795 –> 00:36:18,395
other people touch it. But because we’re a leadership podcast, we’ll tie this into

579
00:36:18,395 –> 00:36:21,950
leadership. Leaders can’t be precious. Like, if you’re not if you’re

580
00:36:22,090 –> 00:36:25,530
if you’re not out there with your thing, then you don’t have a

581
00:36:25,530 –> 00:36:29,290
thing. True. But there, you know,

582
00:36:29,290 –> 00:36:33,130
I there are some I guess it depends. Right? Like, I again,

583
00:36:33,130 –> 00:36:36,635
I I think there’s there’s a lot of factors to consider when you’re

584
00:36:36,635 –> 00:36:40,234
making that kind of statement because if you have something that is

585
00:36:40,234 –> 00:36:43,695
not necessarily protectable

586
00:36:44,075 –> 00:36:47,595
by law so, like, you have an IP that’s that

587
00:36:47,595 –> 00:36:51,300
anybody can replicate, but you have a secret sauce to it. You just

588
00:36:51,300 –> 00:36:54,840
gotta be careful how you go out and you put it out there.

589
00:36:55,540 –> 00:36:58,500
So you there are certain things you have to keep close to the vest when

590
00:36:58,500 –> 00:37:02,340
it comes to things like that. But to your point, as

591
00:37:02,340 –> 00:37:05,625
long as you can get beyond that part of it, then yes. Then I I

592
00:37:05,625 –> 00:37:08,845
agree a %. Once you get beyond the you know?

593
00:37:09,465 –> 00:37:13,005
Again, you know, you developed a new way to

594
00:37:14,105 –> 00:37:17,945
microwave popcorn. I don’t know. Whatever. Like Whatever. Yeah. You know? So I’m just use

595
00:37:18,025 –> 00:37:20,780
I don’t know where the hell mic maybe I’m hungry. But, anyway,

596
00:37:21,800 –> 00:37:25,560
like, like, you know, right now, we basically have, like, one

597
00:37:25,560 –> 00:37:28,840
way to microwave popcorn. We put it in a bag, and we put it no.

598
00:37:28,840 –> 00:37:32,280
Not well, there are some other Tupperware things and whatever. But,

599
00:37:32,280 –> 00:37:36,095
anyway, you come up with a new one and but it’s not

600
00:37:36,095 –> 00:37:39,775
patentable. Right? Like, you can’t get a patent on it, so you can’t protect it

601
00:37:39,775 –> 00:37:43,375
by law. So you basically have this secret version of how you

602
00:37:43,375 –> 00:37:47,214
fold the bag or whatever. I don’t know. So but to your

603
00:37:47,214 –> 00:37:50,609
point, you still need to shout from the rooftops that you have a new way

604
00:37:50,609 –> 00:37:53,330
to microwave popcorn. I have a new way. I have a new way. I got

605
00:37:53,330 –> 00:37:57,010
my microwave popcorn never microwave popcorn the same way ever again. And then

606
00:37:57,010 –> 00:38:00,550
just start tell just don’t tell them how the bag’s folded.

607
00:38:00,930 –> 00:38:04,335
Look at it. But to your to your point, and I that’s a terrible example,

608
00:38:04,335 –> 00:38:07,775
people. I know. I get it. But it’s but it to your point, though, it

609
00:38:07,775 –> 00:38:11,295
is I do agree that, you know, you’re

610
00:38:11,375 –> 00:38:15,055
there’s always going to be listen. Your your your point

611
00:38:15,055 –> 00:38:18,720
about if I hear ever hear this in sales, I I

612
00:38:18,720 –> 00:38:21,840
heard a phrase when I was very young as a kid and as a kid

613
00:38:21,840 –> 00:38:25,540
in sales, and I tell everybody who’s ever decided to go into sales,

614
00:38:25,840 –> 00:38:29,360
listen. Some do, some don’t, some will, some won’t. Who cares who’s

615
00:38:29,360 –> 00:38:33,005
next? Right? If you don’t have that mentality, then you shouldn’t

616
00:38:33,005 –> 00:38:36,845
be in sales. Right? You just shouldn’t be. You you just gotta be

617
00:38:36,845 –> 00:38:40,145
able to take those harsh criticisms, take those those

618
00:38:40,605 –> 00:38:44,390
noes, so to speak, and move on. They didn’t ruin your

619
00:38:44,390 –> 00:38:48,230
life. They didn’t put you in the ground. They they just gave you a

620
00:38:48,230 –> 00:38:51,590
note. So to your to your point, yeah, I do agree with you that you’d

621
00:38:51,750 –> 00:38:55,590
and I agree with Hemingway’s philosophy. Just do it. Like,

622
00:38:55,590 –> 00:38:57,750
just get out there and do it. Just get out there and do the work.

623
00:38:57,750 –> 00:39:01,295
Just do the work, and just get out there and and tell everybody what you’re

624
00:39:01,295 –> 00:39:05,055
doing and try to get support. And and believe it or not, in

625
00:39:05,055 –> 00:39:08,895
my opinion, you want the criticism. If you don’t get the criticism, how the hell

626
00:39:08,895 –> 00:39:12,590
are you gonna make yourself better? You can’t get better

627
00:39:12,590 –> 00:39:16,310
by everybody telling you how great you are. Right. Which I also think

628
00:39:16,430 –> 00:39:20,130
but to your point too about Fitzgerald, I think as much

629
00:39:21,230 –> 00:39:24,825
of a student of the game as he was in the literary sense, he

630
00:39:24,825 –> 00:39:28,585
didn’t want the same thing in Hollywood. He walked he wanted the

631
00:39:28,585 –> 00:39:31,625
Hollywood to look at him as the expert because look at how good of a

632
00:39:31,625 –> 00:39:35,305
writer he was. Mhmm. He just didn’t. They just kinda chewed him up and

633
00:39:35,305 –> 00:39:38,744
spit him out. Yeah. They didn’t they didn’t they didn’t care. Much much like today,

634
00:39:38,744 –> 00:39:42,490
they don’t care about writers. Right. Yeah. They don’t care about writers. Unless you are

635
00:39:42,490 –> 00:39:45,050
one of those legacy people, like, I mean, you you know, you’re gonna make a

636
00:39:45,050 –> 00:39:48,250
Stephen King movie. You better damn well have Stephen King on the set and make

637
00:39:48,250 –> 00:39:51,609
sure that he he’s okay with everything that’s going on. But you’re not getting that

638
00:39:51,609 –> 00:39:55,165
with everybody. You’re not getting that with every writer. No. No.

639
00:39:55,165 –> 00:39:58,925
You’re not. Well and and and he couldn’t well, so

640
00:39:58,925 –> 00:40:01,724
let’s talk about let’s talk about Abe North. This is this is a good way

641
00:40:01,724 –> 00:40:05,484
to sort of come into this. So one of

642
00:40:05,484 –> 00:40:09,059
the things that was a knock against him and, again, you can see this in

643
00:40:09,059 –> 00:40:12,440
the in the New Yorker article or read this in the New Yorker article.

644
00:40:14,660 –> 00:40:18,200
He didn’t understand how the medium

645
00:40:18,500 –> 00:40:22,180
of film was different than the medium of the novel

646
00:40:22,260 –> 00:40:26,075
of the book. Right? So in our time,

647
00:40:26,695 –> 00:40:30,455
we we smoosh together all of this into the phone. Right?

648
00:40:30,455 –> 00:40:34,075
So we say the book, the, the book,

649
00:40:35,655 –> 00:40:39,210
the paper, the the TikTok video,

650
00:40:39,670 –> 00:40:43,109
the social media post, Martin Scorsese’s latest

651
00:40:43,109 –> 00:40:46,809
film, and the billboard I just saw.

652
00:40:46,869 –> 00:40:49,849
Okay. We put all of that

653
00:40:50,395 –> 00:40:54,075
underneath a rubric called content. And by the

654
00:40:54,075 –> 00:40:57,595
way, Scorsese hates this. He hates it that we do this. And

655
00:40:57,595 –> 00:41:01,295
underneath the rubric of content, everything becomes mushed down.

656
00:41:01,515 –> 00:41:05,290
And for lack of a term, and to paraphrase from Ted Goya, who

657
00:41:05,290 –> 00:41:08,970
writes a great substat called the, The Honest Broker, you should go read it.

658
00:41:09,210 –> 00:41:12,730
It becomes slop. Right? And it becomes all mixed together and

659
00:41:12,730 –> 00:41:16,250
sloppy, and then we just spit it out on onto social media

660
00:41:16,250 –> 00:41:19,985
platforms, generate clicks, do things that the algorithm

661
00:41:19,985 –> 00:41:23,825
likes, and maybe people buy our stuff, maybe they don’t. We

662
00:41:23,825 –> 00:41:27,665
don’t care because we’ve we’ve condensed all of these things that used to be

663
00:41:27,665 –> 00:41:31,185
disparate and separate, even music, and we

664
00:41:31,185 –> 00:41:34,970
we we compress it down and it becomes sloppy. And by the way,

665
00:41:34,970 –> 00:41:37,770
we could do this even faster with AI because now we could dump it directly

666
00:41:37,770 –> 00:41:41,609
into an algorithm machine or an LLM, and it’ll just regurgitate out

667
00:41:41,609 –> 00:41:45,450
some garbage. Right? Okay. By the way, when

668
00:41:45,450 –> 00:41:48,744
you regurgitate out garbage, you compress everything down together. And by the way, this process

669
00:41:48,744 –> 00:41:52,425
started back in the nineteen nineties. When you when you compress everything down together,

670
00:41:52,425 –> 00:41:54,765
then distinctiveness, voice,

671
00:41:56,505 –> 00:42:00,265
taste, flavors, these things all go away

672
00:42:00,265 –> 00:42:02,845
because you’re trying to create some form of globalized

673
00:42:05,260 –> 00:42:08,160
post war,

674
00:42:08,780 –> 00:42:12,220
liberal order, new world, you know,

675
00:42:12,220 –> 00:42:14,940
whatever. Because there’s always a political element to it because that’s the only spice we

676
00:42:14,940 –> 00:42:18,475
could think of. That’s the only salt we could think of to put on and

677
00:42:18,475 –> 00:42:21,355
Tom’s laughing for those of you who are listening on the audio. Tom’s laughing at

678
00:42:21,355 –> 00:42:24,235
me right now when I said post war liberal order. Because this is what you

679
00:42:24,235 –> 00:42:27,035
always this is a critique you always see. It’s all part of it. Right? Because

680
00:42:27,035 –> 00:42:30,475
everything is just content now from what Justin Trudeau is

681
00:42:30,475 –> 00:42:34,190
saying to what Trump is tweeting, and then I can go watch something on

682
00:42:34,190 –> 00:42:37,869
Netflix. It’s just running in the background. It’s all content. Right? And

683
00:42:37,869 –> 00:42:41,309
so content becomes this thing, this, for lack of a better term,

684
00:42:41,309 –> 00:42:43,410
slop, and we all know what animal,

685
00:42:45,150 –> 00:42:46,690
eats slop out of a trough.

686
00:42:51,315 –> 00:42:54,375
And we’re we’re gonna cover animal farm on this podcast,

687
00:42:55,075 –> 00:42:58,915
in a few episodes. So we’re gonna talk about pigs and donkeys and

688
00:42:58,915 –> 00:43:02,300
allegories. Y’all stay tuned for that. So this is a

689
00:43:02,300 –> 00:43:05,520
massive critique of our time. Right? Massive critique.

690
00:43:06,060 –> 00:43:09,900
And we don’t seem to have a way out of it nor do, for

691
00:43:09,900 –> 00:43:13,740
lack of a better term, the normies, normal people who are not people

692
00:43:13,740 –> 00:43:17,385
who tend to listen to this podcast. But if they do work across it,

693
00:43:17,385 –> 00:43:20,445
great. I am glad you’re here. You’re gonna get educated,

694
00:43:21,065 –> 00:43:24,845
and you’re gonna have some interesting conversation. But normal people

695
00:43:24,985 –> 00:43:28,770
who aren’t obsessed with the distinctions between these kinds of things

696
00:43:29,650 –> 00:43:33,410
seem to not care. Right? And and so the massive frustration with our time is

697
00:43:33,410 –> 00:43:37,090
how do you wake these people up? Okay. One of the ways you wake these

698
00:43:37,090 –> 00:43:40,530
people up, and I think this is what Fitzgerald would say, is you build great

699
00:43:40,530 –> 00:43:43,925
characters. But that doesn’t work from a

700
00:43:43,925 –> 00:43:47,765
writer’s perspective exclusively in the Hollywood machine, which

701
00:43:47,765 –> 00:43:51,605
you also saw reflected in the New York article. And so we get to

702
00:43:51,605 –> 00:43:54,585
a character in Tender is the Night, we don’t wanna talk about today,

703
00:43:55,045 –> 00:43:58,810
Abe North. So I’m gonna kinda jump around, bop around in here. I’m gonna

704
00:43:58,810 –> 00:44:02,510
build a character study of this guy, and then we’re gonna talk about Abe

705
00:44:02,650 –> 00:44:06,170
North. Alright. Back to the book. Back to

706
00:44:06,170 –> 00:44:09,845
Tender is the Night. Gonna pick up

707
00:44:14,305 –> 00:44:16,485
here with a duel.

708
00:44:19,185 –> 00:44:21,765
Okay. So Rosemary is talking,

709
00:44:22,890 –> 00:44:25,950
and, she’s talking to a gentleman who was drunk,

710
00:44:26,890 –> 00:44:30,329
on the steps, outside of a, outside of a

711
00:44:30,329 –> 00:44:33,690
hotel, a man named Louis Campion. And,

712
00:44:34,490 –> 00:44:37,875
he says this, his face is repulsive in the

713
00:44:37,875 –> 00:44:41,635
quickening light, not by a flicker of her personality, a movement of

714
00:44:41,635 –> 00:44:45,155
the smallest muscle that she betrayed her sudden disgust with whatever it was. This is

715
00:44:45,155 –> 00:44:48,675
Rosemary. But Campion’s sensitivity realized it, and he changed the

716
00:44:48,675 –> 00:44:52,500
subject rather suddenly. Abe North is around here somewhere. Why is

717
00:44:52,500 –> 00:44:56,260
he staying? Why? He’s staying at the divers? Yes. But he’s up. Don’t

718
00:44:56,260 –> 00:45:00,020
you know what happened? A shutter opened suddenly in a room two stories above,

719
00:45:00,020 –> 00:45:03,720
and an English voice spat distinctly. Would you kindly

720
00:45:03,940 –> 00:45:07,115
stop talking? Rosemary

721
00:45:07,495 –> 00:45:11,255
and Louise Campion went humbly down the steps into a bench beside the road to

722
00:45:11,255 –> 00:45:14,935
the beach. Then you have no idea what happened. My dear, the

723
00:45:14,935 –> 00:45:18,555
most extraordinary thing. He was warming up now. Hang on to his revelation.

724
00:45:18,660 –> 00:45:22,500
I’ve never think seen a thing come so suddenly. I’ve always avoided violent people.

725
00:45:22,500 –> 00:45:26,020
They upset me so I sometimes have to go to bed for days. He looked

726
00:45:26,020 –> 00:45:29,220
at her triumphantly. She had no idea what he was talking about. My dear, he

727
00:45:29,220 –> 00:45:33,059
burst forth, leaning toward her with his whole body as he touched her

728
00:45:33,059 –> 00:45:36,595
on the upper leg to show it was no mere irresponsible venture of his

729
00:45:36,595 –> 00:45:40,135
hand. He was so sure of himself. There’s going to be

730
00:45:40,355 –> 00:45:43,895
a duel. A what?

731
00:45:44,434 –> 00:45:48,055
A duel with we don’t know what yet. Who’s going to duel?

732
00:45:48,434 –> 00:45:51,310
I’ll tell you from the beginning. He drew a long breath and then said as

733
00:45:51,310 –> 00:45:54,830
if it were rather to her discredit, but he wouldn’t hold it against her. Of

734
00:45:54,830 –> 00:45:57,710
course, you were in the other automobile. Well, on the way, you were well, in

735
00:45:57,710 –> 00:46:00,349
a way, you were lucky. I lost at least two years of my life. It

736
00:46:00,349 –> 00:46:04,025
came on so suddenly. What came? She demanded. I don’t

737
00:46:04,025 –> 00:46:07,485
know what it what began it. First, she began to talk. Who?

738
00:46:07,865 –> 00:46:11,705
Violet McKisco. He lowered his voice as if they were people under the bench.

739
00:46:11,705 –> 00:46:15,325
But don’t mention the divers because he made threats against anybody who mentioned it.

740
00:46:15,705 –> 00:46:19,220
Who did? Tommy Barbin. So don’t you say that I so much has mentioned

741
00:46:19,220 –> 00:46:23,060
them. So Louise Campin starts telling Rosemary about

742
00:46:23,060 –> 00:46:26,200
the, the elements that led up to the duel.

743
00:46:28,100 –> 00:46:31,674
And then, Abe North pops up, and he says this.

744
00:46:31,674 –> 00:46:35,035
Abe North, is looking somewhat distracted, came out of the

745
00:46:35,035 –> 00:46:38,795
hotel, perceived them against the sky white over the sea. Rosemary shook her head

746
00:46:38,795 –> 00:46:42,155
warningly before he could speak as they moved to another bench further down the road.

747
00:46:42,155 –> 00:46:45,920
Rosemary saw that Abe was a little tight. By the way, the

748
00:46:45,920 –> 00:46:49,680
term tight is, what they use back in the nineteen twenties to

749
00:46:49,680 –> 00:46:53,359
describe drunk, not hungover. Hungover is what happens

750
00:46:53,359 –> 00:46:57,015
when you were drunk yesterday, to paraphrase from school of rock.

751
00:47:00,855 –> 00:47:04,454
What are you doing what are you doing up? She demanded. I just got up.

752
00:47:04,454 –> 00:47:08,295
She started to laugh, but remembering the voice above, she restrained herself. Plagued

753
00:47:08,295 –> 00:47:12,000
by the nightingale, Abe suggested and repeated, probably plagued by the

754
00:47:12,000 –> 00:47:15,840
nightingale. Has this Sewing Circle member told you what happened? And then Abe jumps

755
00:47:15,840 –> 00:47:19,300
in and starts talking about the duel as well. So this is the duel.

756
00:47:20,000 –> 00:47:22,800
Now we’re gonna move forward a little bit. And,

757
00:47:24,065 –> 00:47:27,424
Abe, starts talking about Tabby Barban and miss

758
00:47:27,424 –> 00:47:31,265
Kisco, and the divers. And,

759
00:47:31,505 –> 00:47:34,805
they kinda come to the conclusion, at least Abe does, that

760
00:47:36,305 –> 00:47:40,110
the, there was a wonderful duel in a novel of Pushkin’s Recollected

761
00:47:40,250 –> 00:47:43,370
Abe. Each man stood on the edge of a precipice, so if he was hit,

762
00:47:43,370 –> 00:47:47,130
he was all done for. So she he starts talking about his war experience. He

763
00:47:47,130 –> 00:47:50,565
starts talking about his experience with duels. And this sets the

764
00:47:50,565 –> 00:47:54,405
table for who Abe North and Mary North are, a

765
00:47:54,405 –> 00:47:58,244
couple that revolve around the divers. And Abe North is

766
00:47:58,244 –> 00:48:01,065
a man who, suffers from,

767
00:48:02,244 –> 00:48:06,000
rather acute bouts of and sharp dealings

768
00:48:06,000 –> 00:48:09,600
with, PTSD. And so we follow

769
00:48:09,600 –> 00:48:13,440
Abe through the book as a veteran. And, at a certain point,

770
00:48:13,440 –> 00:48:16,960
he gets called back up to to military service. And,

771
00:48:17,200 –> 00:48:21,025
he has to go to a, go on a train, but he

772
00:48:21,025 –> 00:48:24,785
never makes his train. He never actually goes back into the military

773
00:48:24,785 –> 00:48:28,005
service. He deserts. Right? And, eventually,

774
00:48:29,345 –> 00:48:32,865
he winds up back in Paris, and

775
00:48:32,865 –> 00:48:36,539
Nicole picks him up in chapter 22 long after the

776
00:48:36,539 –> 00:48:40,140
duel, and a few other events have occurred, with this. A

777
00:48:40,140 –> 00:48:43,980
sergeant Deville confronted her courteously and stepped inside the door. Mister

778
00:48:43,980 –> 00:48:47,675
Afghan North, is he he is here? What? No. He’s

779
00:48:47,675 –> 00:48:51,135
gone to America. When did he leave, madame? Yesterday morning.

780
00:48:51,435 –> 00:48:54,635
He shook his head and waved his forefinger at her in a quicker rhythm. He

781
00:48:54,635 –> 00:48:58,335
was in Perique last night. He is registered here, but his room is not occupied.

782
00:48:58,395 –> 00:49:02,150
They told me I had better ask at this room. Sounds

783
00:49:02,150 –> 00:49:05,910
very peculiar to me. We saw him off yesterday morning on the boat train. Be

784
00:49:05,910 –> 00:49:09,049
that as it may, he has been seen here this morning. Even his

785
00:49:10,630 –> 00:49:14,470
has been seen. And there you are. We know nothing about it, she proclaimed

786
00:49:14,470 –> 00:49:17,895
in amazement. He considered. He was an ill smelling,

787
00:49:18,035 –> 00:49:21,714
handsome man. You were not with him all last night? But

788
00:49:21,714 –> 00:49:25,395
no. We have arrested a Negro. We are convinced we have at

789
00:49:25,395 –> 00:49:29,130
last arrested the correct Negro. I assure you I haven’t any idea what you’re

790
00:49:29,130 –> 00:49:32,650
talking about. If it’s the mister Abraham North, the one we know well, if he

791
00:49:32,650 –> 00:49:36,250
was in Paris last night, we weren’t aware of it. The man nodded, sucked his

792
00:49:36,250 –> 00:49:39,770
upper lip, convinced but disappointed. What happened? Nicole

793
00:49:39,770 –> 00:49:43,415
demanded. He showed his palms, puffed out his closed mouth. He had

794
00:49:43,415 –> 00:49:47,015
begun to find her attractive, and his eyes flickered at her. What do you wish,

795
00:49:47,015 –> 00:49:50,855
madame? A summer affair. Mister Afghan North was robbed, and he made a

796
00:49:50,855 –> 00:49:54,540
complaint. We have arrested the miscreant. Mister Afghan should come to

797
00:49:54,540 –> 00:49:58,380
identify him and make the proper charges. So they

798
00:49:58,380 –> 00:50:02,140
eventually do find, Abe, who is, of course, drinking in a

799
00:50:02,140 –> 00:50:05,980
bar, with several other I’m gonna use this

800
00:50:05,980 –> 00:50:09,755
word again. Several other Negroes. Turns out that the French police arrested the

801
00:50:09,755 –> 00:50:13,375
wrong Negro, not the first time in the history of the world.

802
00:50:13,434 –> 00:50:16,654
And, so, and so

803
00:50:17,115 –> 00:50:20,730
they, they eventually have to get Abe back to the jail.

804
00:50:21,210 –> 00:50:24,970
Abe does wind up getting locked up. The correct Negro winds up going

805
00:50:24,970 –> 00:50:27,850
off with a bunch of other Negroes or, sorry, the incorrect Negro winds up going

806
00:50:27,850 –> 00:50:30,650
off with a bunch of other Negroes in the book, and he winds up getting

807
00:50:30,650 –> 00:50:34,250
stabbed for all of his trouble and dying. Again, not the first time this

808
00:50:34,250 –> 00:50:37,055
happens to a Negro in the history of the world and,

809
00:50:38,155 –> 00:50:41,994
and or literature. And, that is the end of of our

810
00:50:41,994 –> 00:50:45,595
intersection with Abe and North in book two. Then we

811
00:50:45,595 –> 00:50:49,435
skip directly over to sort of the end or closer to the end of

812
00:50:49,435 –> 00:50:52,740
the book, and, we find out this about Abe,

813
00:50:53,520 –> 00:50:56,880
from Dick’s recollection of him and a message that he

814
00:50:56,880 –> 00:51:00,640
gets. It

815
00:51:00,640 –> 00:51:04,000
was the first indication. So he’s talking to a person in a, in a

816
00:51:04,000 –> 00:51:07,365
restaurant. Oh, a guy named McKibben.

817
00:51:07,825 –> 00:51:11,505
Oh, McKibben’s face fell. Well, I’ll say goodbye. He unscrewed

818
00:51:11,505 –> 00:51:15,345
two blooded wire hairs from a nearby table and departed. Dick

819
00:51:15,345 –> 00:51:19,184
pictured the jammed Packard pounding towards Innsbruck with the McKibbons and their children

820
00:51:19,184 –> 00:51:22,240
and their baggage and yapping dogs and the governess.

821
00:51:23,420 –> 00:51:26,700
The paper says they know the man who killed him, said Tommy, but his cousins

822
00:51:26,700 –> 00:51:29,580
do not want him to the papers because it happened in his speakeasy. What do

823
00:51:29,580 –> 00:51:32,560
you think of that? It’s what’s known as family pride.

824
00:51:33,405 –> 00:51:36,685
Hanan played a loud chord on the piano to attract attention to himself. I don’t

825
00:51:36,685 –> 00:51:40,525
believe that his first stuff holds up, he said. Every even barring the Europeans,

826
00:51:40,525 –> 00:51:44,045
there are a dozen Americans that could do what North did. It was the first

827
00:51:44,045 –> 00:51:47,040
indication that they were talking about Abe North.

828
00:51:47,760 –> 00:51:51,360
The only difference is that Abe did it first, said Tommy. I don’t agree, persisted

829
00:51:51,360 –> 00:51:54,400
Hanon. He got the reputation for being a good musician because he drank so much

830
00:51:54,400 –> 00:51:58,000
that his friends had to explain him away somehow. What’s this about Abe North? What

831
00:51:58,000 –> 00:52:01,775
about him? Is he in a jam? Didn’t you read The Herald this morning?

832
00:52:02,395 –> 00:52:06,155
No. He’s dead. He was beaten to death in a speakeasy

833
00:52:06,155 –> 00:52:09,855
in New York. He just managed to crawl home to the racket club to die.

834
00:52:10,474 –> 00:52:14,234
Abe North? Yeah. Sure. They Abe

835
00:52:14,234 –> 00:52:17,609
North? Dick stood up. Did Dick stood up. Are you sure he’s

836
00:52:17,609 –> 00:52:21,450
dead? Panon turned to McKibben. It wasn’t at the racket club he

837
00:52:21,450 –> 00:52:24,970
crawled to. It was the Harvard club. I’m sure he didn’t belong to the

838
00:52:24,970 –> 00:52:28,724
racket. The paper said so, McKibben insisted. It

839
00:52:28,724 –> 00:52:32,325
must have been a mistake, I’m quite sure. Beaten to death in a

840
00:52:32,325 –> 00:52:36,085
speakeasy? But I happen to know most of the

841
00:52:36,085 –> 00:52:39,625
members of the racket clubs in Henan. It must have been at the Harvard Club.

842
00:52:39,924 –> 00:52:43,680
Dick got up, Tommy too. Prince Shilashev started out of a one

843
00:52:43,680 –> 00:52:47,280
study of nothing, perhaps, of his chances of ever getting out of Russia, a study

844
00:52:47,280 –> 00:52:50,720
that had occupied him so long that it was doubtfully given up immediately and joined

845
00:52:50,720 –> 00:52:53,775
them in leaving. Abe North beaten to death.

846
00:52:54,734 –> 00:52:57,775
On the way to the hotel, a journey of which Dick was scarcely aware, Tommy

847
00:52:57,775 –> 00:53:00,414
said, we’re waiting for a tailor to finish some suits so we can get to

848
00:53:00,414 –> 00:53:03,694
Paris. I’m going into stockbroking, and they wouldn’t take me if I showed up like

849
00:53:03,694 –> 00:53:07,300
this. Everybody in your country is making millions. Are you really leaving tomorrow?

850
00:53:07,680 –> 00:53:10,640
We can’t even have dinner with you. It seems the prince had an old girl

851
00:53:10,640 –> 00:53:14,160
in Munich. He called her up, but she’d been dead five years, and we’re having

852
00:53:14,160 –> 00:53:18,000
dinner with the two daughters. The prince nodded. Perhaps I

853
00:53:18,000 –> 00:53:21,845
could have arranged for doctor Diver. No. No. Dick said hastily.

854
00:53:23,105 –> 00:53:26,705
He slept deep and awoke to a slow mournful march

855
00:53:26,705 –> 00:53:30,165
passing his window. It was a long column of men in uniform

856
00:53:30,545 –> 00:53:34,160
wearing the familiar helmet of 1914, thick men in frock coats

857
00:53:34,160 –> 00:53:37,839
and silk hats, burgers, aristocrats, plain men. It was a

858
00:53:37,839 –> 00:53:41,460
society of veterans going to lay wreaths on the tombs of the dead.

859
00:53:41,920 –> 00:53:45,680
The column marched slowly with a sort of swagger for a lost magnificence, a past

860
00:53:45,680 –> 00:53:49,385
effort, a forgotten sorrow. The faces were only formally

861
00:53:49,385 –> 00:53:52,745
sad, but Dix Lungs burst for a moment with regret for Abe’s

862
00:53:52,745 –> 00:53:55,885
death and his own youth of ten

863
00:53:56,345 –> 00:53:57,165
years ago.

864
00:54:02,599 –> 00:54:06,440
Abe North in the book and the way that he’s written is as

865
00:54:06,440 –> 00:54:09,240
a character who sort of jumps in and jumps out, jumps in and jumps out.

866
00:54:09,240 –> 00:54:11,960
That’s why I kinda bounced around a little bit in my selections and in my

867
00:54:11,960 –> 00:54:15,675
reading. Because you don’t really get a good handle

868
00:54:15,815 –> 00:54:19,495
on who Abe North was. When

869
00:54:19,495 –> 00:54:22,795
we are introduced to him on the beach, he is

870
00:54:23,095 –> 00:54:26,730
married to Mary North, and he’s part of the

871
00:54:27,430 –> 00:54:31,269
circle of people that hang around Nicole and

872
00:54:31,269 –> 00:54:34,630
Dick Divers. He’s drunk all the

873
00:54:34,630 –> 00:54:38,069
time and called up to

874
00:54:38,069 –> 00:54:41,865
service again. He can’t really make that

875
00:54:42,405 –> 00:54:45,944
leap forward to go back into a

876
00:54:46,005 –> 00:54:49,704
place of warfare. Eventually, he gets involved

877
00:54:50,005 –> 00:54:50,164
with

878
00:54:53,760 –> 00:54:56,900
eventually, he gets involved with crime and,

879
00:54:57,760 –> 00:55:01,600
petty issues one way or another, somehow makes

880
00:55:01,600 –> 00:55:05,120
it back to America. And, of course, as I said there at the end, gets

881
00:55:05,120 –> 00:55:07,914
beaten to death out of a speakeasy, which, by the way, on the outside of

882
00:55:07,914 –> 00:55:11,055
a speakeasy, which everyone knew back in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties,

883
00:55:11,515 –> 00:55:15,115
meant there’s a bunch of a cultural and ethnic things underneath that, but it

884
00:55:15,115 –> 00:55:18,954
basically means that he was in a place that was illegal. He

885
00:55:18,954 –> 00:55:22,510
was in a place that probably had a lot of minorities in it,

886
00:55:22,730 –> 00:55:26,090
and he was in a place where if he had been doing his duty this

887
00:55:26,090 –> 00:55:29,609
is the subtle message that Fitzgerald was giving. If he had been doing his

888
00:55:29,609 –> 00:55:33,450
duty as was desired by society and culture, he would not have

889
00:55:33,450 –> 00:55:34,245
been in that place.

890
00:55:37,445 –> 00:55:41,065
Abe North is a stand in for every veteran that Fitzgerald

891
00:55:41,445 –> 00:55:44,905
knew who couldn’t hack it in a peacetime

892
00:55:45,125 –> 00:55:48,869
world. This is

893
00:55:48,869 –> 00:55:52,550
one of those ideas that runs through Tender is the Night and also

894
00:55:52,550 –> 00:55:54,730
runs through Gatsby. Okay?

895
00:55:56,310 –> 00:56:00,095
Beautiful and the Damned, This Side of Paradise. And I’ve never read The

896
00:56:00,095 –> 00:56:03,555
Last Tycoon, but I read enough reviews around it. It also runs through that.

897
00:56:03,934 –> 00:56:07,615
Everybody who was in Fitzgerald’s generation was impacted by World War one, but

898
00:56:07,615 –> 00:56:11,375
they didn’t have a term for PTSD. They just called it shell shock. And even

899
00:56:11,375 –> 00:56:15,050
then, yeah, even then they didn’t call it shell shock until long after the

900
00:56:15,050 –> 00:56:18,190
war. They didn’t know how to identify it, which is why

901
00:56:18,970 –> 00:56:22,730
Dick is in psychiatry because psychiatry was, as we talked about on the

902
00:56:22,730 –> 00:56:26,505
Libby Younger episode, psychiatry was a relatively new tool to

903
00:56:26,505 –> 00:56:28,125
solve some very old problems.

904
00:56:30,505 –> 00:56:34,045
Abe self medicated with alcohol and finally imploded with violence

905
00:56:34,105 –> 00:56:37,640
and criminality. And so I guess the question that we have to

906
00:56:37,640 –> 00:56:41,180
discuss here in some at some length is, Tom,

907
00:56:41,400 –> 00:56:45,079
what are the complications of working with people with PTSD? Because now, a hundred

908
00:56:45,079 –> 00:56:48,839
years later, for and I hate to

909
00:56:48,839 –> 00:56:51,964
frame it this way, but PTSD has almost become a punchline,

910
00:56:52,505 –> 00:56:56,285
right, in certain ways. Even though there are people who are genuinely

911
00:56:56,664 –> 00:57:00,345
traumatized and genuinely have problems. I don’t know if you’ve worked with

912
00:57:00,345 –> 00:57:04,050
someone with PTSD or people with PTSD I have, but what are your thoughts

913
00:57:04,050 –> 00:57:07,890
on this? Well, I’d take it one step

914
00:57:07,890 –> 00:57:11,730
further to what you’re talking, like, with the punchline situation. I think I think

915
00:57:11,730 –> 00:57:15,190
the other we’re talking about a very

916
00:57:16,305 –> 00:57:20,085
real scenario. Right? People come back from war,

917
00:57:20,625 –> 00:57:22,805
and for them to have PTSD,

918
00:57:24,625 –> 00:57:27,505
we need we need to normalize it a little bit so that we can treat

919
00:57:27,505 –> 00:57:31,240
it better. Right? But to say that you have PTSD because,

920
00:57:31,300 –> 00:57:34,260
you know, three weeks ago, you were in a somebody rear ended you in your

921
00:57:34,260 –> 00:57:38,020
car, it’s not to me that’s apples and

922
00:57:38,020 –> 00:57:41,000
oranges to me. I’m sorry. Yeah. You know, walking down the street,

923
00:57:41,645 –> 00:57:45,325
like, we use PTSD, and I’m not suggesting that it doesn’t exist. I’m not

924
00:57:45,325 –> 00:57:49,165
gonna put a a, you know, a I’m not

925
00:57:49,165 –> 00:57:52,925
down downplaying psychology and the roles of

926
00:57:52,925 –> 00:57:56,305
psychology in in in in the world. And I’m sure

927
00:57:57,670 –> 00:58:01,430
I’m sure I’m sure there are people that are impacted by a car accident

928
00:58:01,430 –> 00:58:05,210
like that, and they never wanna drive again, I guess. But

929
00:58:06,150 –> 00:58:09,450
I think I think that to your point about the punchline, I think we,

930
00:58:10,025 –> 00:58:13,785
the term PTSD gets used so frequently about

931
00:58:13,785 –> 00:58:17,545
so many different things that I that I do think

932
00:58:17,545 –> 00:58:21,385
that we don’t pay close enough attention to our

933
00:58:21,385 –> 00:58:24,765
veterans that actually have it, like and and have a real

934
00:58:25,610 –> 00:58:29,390
crippling problem because of it. Right? Mhmm. I just recently saw,

935
00:58:30,650 –> 00:58:33,870
I don’t I don’t remember. It was some some pharmaceutical

936
00:58:34,170 –> 00:58:37,870
commercial. Right? But it was a gentleman walking through a park

937
00:58:38,145 –> 00:58:41,525
with his dog. It’s a service dog, and he starts getting disoriented

938
00:58:41,745 –> 00:58:45,185
because something’s happening with a car, like, backfire in the car. Like, you hear noises

939
00:58:45,185 –> 00:58:48,725
in the background. He starts getting disoriented, and the dog stops him

940
00:58:49,025 –> 00:58:52,640
and Mhmm. Gets his focus. And the

941
00:58:52,640 –> 00:58:55,840
guy kinda comes back down to us. Like, you could see this whole thing play

942
00:58:55,840 –> 00:58:59,280
out with the in the way that the commercial depicted it. And then he

943
00:58:59,280 –> 00:59:02,960
continues walking and his family sitting there at the playground, and he just walks in.

944
00:59:02,960 –> 00:59:06,785
And you hear the little kid’s voice saying thank you to whatever drug

945
00:59:06,785 –> 00:59:09,684
company this is for helping my dad with his PTSD.

946
00:59:10,785 –> 00:59:14,305
And I was sitting there thinking to myself, this whole

947
00:59:14,305 –> 00:59:17,930
commercial is about a drug, but yet the dog the

948
00:59:17,930 –> 00:59:21,290
dog actually in the commercial was the solution to that

949
00:59:21,290 –> 00:59:24,930
problem. Right? Like, anyway but the the the point I made Yeah. Yeah.

950
00:59:25,050 –> 00:59:27,610
That none none of that is relevant to what we’re talking. I guess none of

951
00:59:27,610 –> 00:59:30,670
it’s relevant. But I guess but the point to my relevancy here is, like,

952
00:59:30,970 –> 00:59:34,685
this the the idea behind PTSD, how the severity

953
00:59:34,685 –> 00:59:38,365
of PTSD when it comes to people who have been through what Abe

954
00:59:38,365 –> 00:59:41,585
was through in the war and all that stuff. Like, that’s very real.

955
00:59:41,725 –> 00:59:45,265
And I think as an employer and and being able to

956
00:59:47,030 –> 00:59:50,630
kinda work with people that yeah. And to answer your

957
00:59:50,630 –> 00:59:54,410
question, yes yes, I I have worked with people with PTSD. So

958
00:59:54,710 –> 00:59:58,535
I think I think the most important one of

959
00:59:58,535 –> 01:00:01,915
the most important things that we can have as an employer

960
01:00:02,375 –> 01:00:06,155
is empathy. Right? You can’t sympathize with them.

961
01:00:06,215 –> 01:00:09,335
You have no idea what they’re going through. But to be

962
01:00:09,830 –> 01:00:12,730
to give them some leeway, to give them some

963
01:00:14,470 –> 01:00:17,930
accommodations that don’t hurt your business, like, that’s that’s

964
01:00:18,150 –> 01:00:21,850
meaningful statement there, people. Like, you’re not gonna give somebody an accommodation

965
01:00:21,910 –> 01:00:25,755
that ends up putting you or your company at risk. But if you if

966
01:00:25,755 –> 01:00:29,434
there are accommodations that you can give that put that that is that

967
01:00:29,434 –> 01:00:33,194
is, that are that are helpful to them but doesn’t hurt the company,

968
01:00:33,194 –> 01:00:36,795
the product, the service, the the co you

969
01:00:36,795 –> 01:00:40,550
know, other employees, of course, too, then I think we should do that. We

970
01:00:40,550 –> 01:00:43,510
should look for ways to do that and be helpful in that sense. I think

971
01:00:43,510 –> 01:00:47,110
it behooves us as a leader to make them feel like that they are going

972
01:00:47,110 –> 01:00:49,770
to be able to contribute at every level

973
01:00:52,005 –> 01:00:55,845
without risk of being judged or fired for something they have

974
01:00:55,845 –> 01:00:59,365
no control over. Now that being said, again, I do think there are sir there

975
01:00:59,525 –> 01:01:03,285
there’s always mitigating circumstances. There’s always situations where, you

976
01:01:03,285 –> 01:01:07,069
know, I I I’ll give you a better a

977
01:01:07,069 –> 01:01:10,609
better example. If you’re a waiter and you have Tourette’s,

978
01:01:12,029 –> 01:01:15,569
don’t go work at a five star restaurant. But

979
01:01:15,789 –> 01:01:19,214
there are restaurants out there that the theme of the

980
01:01:19,214 –> 01:01:22,974
restaurant is that we treat our patrons poorly. I don’t know if you’ve ever

981
01:01:22,974 –> 01:01:26,815
heard of these, but, I mean, I mean, there are restaurants out there that, like,

982
01:01:26,815 –> 01:01:30,495
they’re medieval restaurants where the waitress Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah.

983
01:01:30,655 –> 01:01:34,220
Tell you a name, whatever. Go work for them. It would be an

984
01:01:34,220 –> 01:01:37,980
accommodation for you that you wouldn’t even have to make. Right? Like so,

985
01:01:37,980 –> 01:01:41,600
again, setting people up

986
01:01:41,660 –> 01:01:45,435
for success is important. If we can identify the

987
01:01:45,435 –> 01:01:48,975
things that are going to be roadblocks for them and help them either

988
01:01:49,115 –> 01:01:52,955
walk over them or remove them, then we should be doing that as leaders because

989
01:01:52,955 –> 01:01:56,795
it’s only gonna make us and our company better. But I do recognize

990
01:01:56,795 –> 01:02:00,510
that there are times where that’s just not feasible, have to

991
01:02:00,510 –> 01:02:04,290
make hard decisions. And and I’ve done that too where, you know,

992
01:02:05,470 –> 01:02:08,210
it was a it was a mutually agreed upon,

993
01:02:09,870 –> 01:02:11,230
a mutually agreed upon,

994
01:02:13,625 –> 01:02:17,464
disconnect from the company. Like, I like this person. I

995
01:02:17,464 –> 01:02:21,305
did not want to fire them. I had no choice. There’s a certain thing. Again,

996
01:02:21,305 –> 01:02:24,630
you you mentioned earlier, I’m in sales. If you’re not hitting sales quotas,

997
01:02:24,869 –> 01:02:28,390
PTSD can’t protect you. Right? Like, there’s no Right. So you you have a job

998
01:02:28,390 –> 01:02:32,150
to do. But as a person, as a human being, I

999
01:02:32,150 –> 01:02:35,609
still to this day consider that person a friend. Like, I like that person.

1000
01:02:35,829 –> 01:02:39,450
I I and I encourage them to go into something other than sales.

1001
01:02:39,815 –> 01:02:43,495
And because he just it just wasn’t it wasn’t a good fit for

1002
01:02:43,495 –> 01:02:47,255
him. But So there’s there’s an idea that we we we operate on

1003
01:02:47,255 –> 01:02:49,515
that is so unquestioned

1004
01:02:51,415 –> 01:02:55,090
in our culture that if you even

1005
01:02:55,090 –> 01:02:58,450
remotely talk about it out loud, you’re some kind

1006
01:02:58,450 –> 01:03:02,210
of you’re you’re a

1007
01:03:02,210 –> 01:03:05,810
set you’re you’re you’re a parody of a communist. You’re not a real communist. You’re

1008
01:03:05,810 –> 01:03:09,090
just a parody of a communist. And here’s the idea. I’m gonna talk about it

1009
01:03:09,090 –> 01:03:12,845
out loud because I’m not a communist, and I don’t mind being called a

1010
01:03:12,845 –> 01:03:15,905
parody of a communist. That’s fine. Whatever.

1011
01:03:18,205 –> 01:03:21,005
And the idea is this. I know who you are. I’m I’m full of it.

1012
01:03:21,005 –> 01:03:24,810
Go for it. We we we have

1013
01:03:25,829 –> 01:03:29,510
we are free to place our labor. This is the idea. We

1014
01:03:29,510 –> 01:03:32,730
are free to pace our labor wherever it is that

1015
01:03:33,829 –> 01:03:37,670
we want in the market. So if I have zero sales skills, but I desperately

1016
01:03:37,670 –> 01:03:41,425
wanna be a salesperson, I can come work for your

1017
01:03:41,645 –> 01:03:45,005
sales organization. Right? I can come work for you in sales.

1018
01:03:45,005 –> 01:03:48,785
Right? We we

1019
01:03:49,165 –> 01:03:52,969
we have this idea, the sacrosanct idea that my labor is

1020
01:03:52,969 –> 01:03:56,650
the most valuable thing that I bring to an employer, and this is why I’m

1021
01:03:56,650 –> 01:04:00,250
getting paid. What we don’t have

1022
01:04:00,250 –> 01:04:03,789
is we don’t have an idea that if I have Tourette’s,

1023
01:04:04,250 –> 01:04:07,529
sales might not be the best thing for me, and so maybe I should avoid

1024
01:04:07,529 –> 01:04:11,365
that area. We instead we don’t wanna say that

1025
01:04:11,365 –> 01:04:14,984
to people at a societal level because that would be communistic

1026
01:04:15,365 –> 01:04:19,125
and telling people what they have to do. That would be abrogating their freedom

1027
01:04:19,125 –> 01:04:22,808
somehow. And it also and it also it would also discredit every parent

1028
01:04:22,808 –> 01:04:26,279
in the world telling their kid they can be whatever they wanna be and they

1029
01:04:26,279 –> 01:04:29,981
can do whatever they wanna do. It’s just not yeah. But yes. Go ahead.

1030
01:04:29,981 –> 01:04:33,452
Right. Right. And so because we don’t wanna discredit, to your point, parents who are

1031
01:04:33,452 –> 01:04:37,195
also voters, but we also don’t wanna question that assumption that you could

1032
01:04:37,195 –> 01:04:40,975
do whatever it is you wanna do outside of the limitations that you have,

1033
01:04:41,355 –> 01:04:44,955
we place people in in between, sort

1034
01:04:44,955 –> 01:04:48,630
of a a Sharbatus and Scylla, two

1035
01:04:48,630 –> 01:04:52,150
monsters balanced on the head of a, balanced on the head of a

1036
01:04:52,150 –> 01:04:55,910
knife to walk through life. And if they’re a person like

1037
01:04:55,910 –> 01:04:59,430
Abe North, they have one of two options. And by the way, a generation

1038
01:04:59,430 –> 01:05:03,205
later yes. Almost a full generation. Actually, no. Full two generations

1039
01:05:03,205 –> 01:05:06,985
later. A guy like Abe North would have been getting high with the hippies

1040
01:05:07,365 –> 01:05:11,125
at, like, Woodstock or something right after Vietnam. Right?

1041
01:05:11,125 –> 01:05:14,790
So it doesn’t change. And then four generations after that, he would have been

1042
01:05:14,790 –> 01:05:18,310
in the Iraq war running around. I just remember the movie Three Kings with George

1043
01:05:18,310 –> 01:05:21,190
Clooney. Remember that movie back in the day in Ice Cube? Right. He would have

1044
01:05:21,190 –> 01:05:25,030
been running around looking for Saddam’s gold, you know, from

1045
01:05:25,030 –> 01:05:28,715
a butt map. Right? Okay. So, like, the guys like

1046
01:05:28,715 –> 01:05:32,495
Aiden North have existed throughout warfare because that’s what warfare creates.

1047
01:05:34,395 –> 01:05:38,155
But as a society, we when we ask people like that to

1048
01:05:38,155 –> 01:05:42,000
walk that fine line and they can’t, then

1049
01:05:42,000 –> 01:05:45,760
the the only option for us to do, and this is why Abe North

1050
01:05:45,760 –> 01:05:49,280
as a character winds up beaten to death outside of a speakeasy, is to kill

1051
01:05:49,280 –> 01:05:52,340
them. Whether it’s metaphorical,

1052
01:05:53,760 –> 01:05:57,535
psychological, emotional, spiritual,

1053
01:05:57,595 –> 01:06:00,635
which is usually the way we we go because we don’t actually wanna physically kill

1054
01:06:00,635 –> 01:06:04,395
anybody. But sometimes they do wind up physically dead. I mean, look, the number of

1055
01:06:04,395 –> 01:06:08,235
people that we have who are veterans, who are on fentanyl and living

1056
01:06:08,235 –> 01:06:11,035
out on the street, who are homeless in our own time, coming out of the

1057
01:06:11,035 –> 01:06:14,470
last twenty year romp that we went through in the in The Middle East

1058
01:06:15,090 –> 01:06:18,530
is staggering. Yeah. The ways in which we treat our

1059
01:06:18,530 –> 01:06:22,050
vets is staggering. We don’t treat our vets the way the old Roman Empire

1060
01:06:22,050 –> 01:06:25,650
did. We’re not giving these people you know, when you came back from Gaul, you

1061
01:06:25,650 –> 01:06:28,855
got, like, something like 20 acres and a wife wherever the hell you wanted to

1062
01:06:28,855 –> 01:06:31,655
live. Like, we’re not giving people we’re not giving veterans that. We’re not giving them

1063
01:06:31,655 –> 01:06:35,355
20 acres and a wife. Maybe we’re not doing that for our veterans. Right?

1064
01:06:37,895 –> 01:06:41,710
Instead, we’re asking them to walk this impossible line with no

1065
01:06:41,710 –> 01:06:44,990
other option other than death, either death on the battlefield or death outside of a

1066
01:06:44,990 –> 01:06:47,010
speakeasy, but those are your only two options.

1067
01:06:48,830 –> 01:06:52,430
Why aren’t we setting up people better for success? Like, this is

1068
01:06:52,430 –> 01:06:55,525
maybe one of the core core things. It’s not only intended as a night, but

1069
01:06:55,525 –> 01:06:58,645
is in all of the novels that we’ve read, of all of the books that

1070
01:06:58,645 –> 01:07:02,405
we’ve read. How can leaders and

1071
01:07:02,405 –> 01:07:04,645
it’s a lot of weight to put on leaders, and it’s a lot of weight

1072
01:07:04,645 –> 01:07:07,605
to put on the workplace. I’ll give you that. And maybe it’s not a weight

1073
01:07:07,605 –> 01:07:11,380
the workplace can handle. Maybe this is a weight that family or community or tradition

1074
01:07:11,380 –> 01:07:15,220
have to handle. And maybe it’s time we start questioning those things in

1075
01:07:15,220 –> 01:07:19,060
our society and culture. And maybe it’s not communistic to start questioning

1076
01:07:19,060 –> 01:07:22,740
those things. Maybe it’s just good sense. At a certain point,

1077
01:07:22,740 –> 01:07:26,555
we’re going to have to set up people for success to your point. And

1078
01:07:26,935 –> 01:07:30,775
a a workplace accommodation is probably the last way that we should set

1079
01:07:30,775 –> 01:07:34,375
them up for success, not the first one. How do we set up people for

1080
01:07:34,375 –> 01:07:38,214
success? No. I’ll do you one

1081
01:07:38,214 –> 01:07:41,870
better. How do we talk to people when

1082
01:07:41,870 –> 01:07:45,630
they are children about military service and the potential outcomes for

1083
01:07:45,630 –> 01:07:48,430
that? Because I have some ideas. I come out of a military family. I have

1084
01:07:48,430 –> 01:07:51,150
some ideas about that. My father was in the military. My stepfather was in the

1085
01:07:51,150 –> 01:07:54,935
military. I grew up around military people. My mother was in the medical branch

1086
01:07:54,935 –> 01:07:58,615
of the military for many years. I’m the

1087
01:07:58,615 –> 01:08:02,455
first male in my family on either side of my family. I’m

1088
01:08:02,455 –> 01:08:05,575
the first generation male on any side of my family to not serve in one

1089
01:08:05,575 –> 01:08:08,760
of the major branches of the military or in some military capacity.

1090
01:08:09,299 –> 01:08:12,260
I have broken the chain that great chain of being that went all the way

1091
01:08:12,260 –> 01:08:16,020
back to, quite frankly, the civil war, in my in

1092
01:08:16,020 –> 01:08:19,800
my family. And so there’s a lot of,

1093
01:08:20,975 –> 01:08:24,015
not that I’ve struggled with. Well, maybe I did. I struggle with a lot of

1094
01:08:24,015 –> 01:08:27,774
guilt and thinking about that and and

1095
01:08:27,774 –> 01:08:31,215
doing all that. And I am people who know me deeply will tell

1096
01:08:31,215 –> 01:08:33,395
you, Hae san would have been

1097
01:08:35,420 –> 01:08:38,540
Haysan would have been really, really good in the marines. He would have been really,

1098
01:08:38,540 –> 01:08:41,500
really good. He’d have been a really smart grunt, and then he’d work his way

1099
01:08:41,500 –> 01:08:45,340
up the up the up the ladder. So so we we are

1100
01:08:45,340 –> 01:08:48,859
similar in that sense where a very high majority of my family was in

1101
01:08:48,859 –> 01:08:52,375
military as well. Right? Same same scenario. Dad, uncles,

1102
01:08:52,375 –> 01:08:55,975
brothers, whatever. Yeah. Even, like so even generationally, I didn’t break the

1103
01:08:55,975 –> 01:08:59,035
chain. I just skipped the link because my brother’s all in military.

1104
01:08:59,495 –> 01:09:03,130
Nephews, so on and so forth. But

1105
01:09:03,130 –> 01:09:06,910
I’m the opposite of you. So I didn’t go in the military because I knew

1106
01:09:07,370 –> 01:09:11,210
they would have killed me. I would not have made it through boot

1107
01:09:11,210 –> 01:09:15,050
camp because I was I was that guy. I was that guy.

1108
01:09:15,050 –> 01:09:18,755
Like Yeah. Drop and give me 20. I only have a 10. Like, I

1109
01:09:18,835 –> 01:09:20,835
you know what I mean? Like, I don’t have a $20 bill on me. What

1110
01:09:20,835 –> 01:09:24,274
are you I like, I’d have been I’d have been dead. They were You were

1111
01:09:24,274 –> 01:09:28,035
the joker. You were joker in, in full metal jacket with, with board to

1112
01:09:28,035 –> 01:09:31,449
kill on the helmet, and then the the laughing’s good on the inside. Yeah. There’s

1113
01:09:31,449 –> 01:09:34,090
a lot of there’s a lot of people that go into the military like that,

1114
01:09:34,090 –> 01:09:37,929
but they break them. And they break them down into their basic fundamentals, and they

1115
01:09:37,929 –> 01:09:41,689
rebuild them into soldiers. Right? That’s the whole point of basic training. Basic

1116
01:09:41,689 –> 01:09:45,495
training Right. From what I’m told is basically to strip you of

1117
01:09:45,495 –> 01:09:49,015
all of what makes you an individual and turn you into what makes you a

1118
01:09:49,015 –> 01:09:52,614
team. Right? And Right. Like, a cog in the wheel. Yeah. And I

1119
01:09:52,614 –> 01:09:56,135
would never have allowed that to happen. I’m not that person. I’m not that person

1120
01:09:56,135 –> 01:09:58,710
that’s just gonna sit there and take it and allow you to break me down

1121
01:09:58,710 –> 01:10:02,469
and rip rip apart my my being. I am it just wouldn’t

1122
01:10:02,469 –> 01:10:06,150
have happened. I’m telling you it wouldn’t happen. Jokes aside, because jokes would have

1123
01:10:06,150 –> 01:10:09,030
jokes would have come out, and you know me. Jokes would have come out, and

1124
01:10:09,030 –> 01:10:12,705
that would have been, but the principle of me would have been what would what

1125
01:10:12,705 –> 01:10:15,425
they wouldn’t have been able to break, and they would not have liked that. They

1126
01:10:15,425 –> 01:10:18,305
would have pushed me out. Even if they didn’t kill me, they would have pushed

1127
01:10:18,305 –> 01:10:20,785
me out. They were like Yeah. You’re not fit for you’re not fit for the

1128
01:10:20,785 –> 01:10:24,610
military because you’re not you’re not a team player. And people who know me really

1129
01:10:24,610 –> 01:10:28,309
well is I really am a team player, but I want my

1130
01:10:28,449 –> 01:10:31,909
I want my I want my

1131
01:10:32,449 –> 01:10:36,265
commitment to the team to be mine. I want my I want my skill

1132
01:10:36,265 –> 01:10:38,985
set and what I bring to the team to be mine. I don’t want it

1133
01:10:38,985 –> 01:10:42,825
to be the, you know, next man up syndrome like everybody like everything

1134
01:10:42,825 –> 01:10:46,505
in the military. You know, like, storm storm storm storm

1135
01:10:46,505 –> 01:10:50,265
troopers. They just killed the corporal. Well, you’re the corporal now.

1136
01:10:50,265 –> 01:10:53,630
Let’s go. Like, I can’t handle that. That that would not be that would not

1137
01:10:53,630 –> 01:10:57,390
be okay with me. Anyway, but to answer your other questions, so so

1138
01:10:57,390 –> 01:11:01,070
I I I actually think about this quite often. And I

1139
01:11:01,070 –> 01:11:04,450
think and I think it really the pinnacle of it for me

1140
01:11:04,795 –> 01:11:08,574
was a couple of weeks ago, I I was invited to a community meeting

1141
01:11:08,635 –> 01:11:11,994
with one of the local universities here, one of the local colleges here in in

1142
01:11:11,994 –> 01:11:15,295
where I live. And they were getting they were gathering a lot of community,

1143
01:11:15,994 –> 01:11:19,835
leaders from different organizations. And one of the organizations I belong to

1144
01:11:19,835 –> 01:11:23,460
outside of work was part of that community building thing. So I went

1145
01:11:23,460 –> 01:11:27,060
in representation of them. And what I heard

1146
01:11:27,060 –> 01:11:30,420
there kinda irked me a little bit. I gotta be honest with

1147
01:11:30,420 –> 01:11:34,120
you. What they were talking about was this new method of

1148
01:11:34,515 –> 01:11:38,275
teaching, and I’m paraphrasing here people. So this is a this was a three

1149
01:11:38,275 –> 01:11:41,815
hour meeting that I’m gonna give you in one sentence. That

1150
01:11:42,195 –> 01:11:45,955
everybody learns differently, so we should accommodate the way they learn. So if

1151
01:11:45,955 –> 01:11:49,530
somebody if we give somebody a deadline and they can’t and they don’t hit it,

1152
01:11:49,530 –> 01:11:52,809
we’re not gonna grade them on that. We’re we’re gonna grade them on the actual

1153
01:11:52,809 –> 01:11:56,349
work that they submit. So, again, if I have to write a paper,

1154
01:11:56,889 –> 01:12:00,500
the deadline is, the deadline is June

1155
01:12:00,500 –> 01:12:04,025
1. I hand it in on June 3. There’s no

1156
01:12:04,025 –> 01:12:07,545
repercussions or ramifications for that two days late. I’m gonna be

1157
01:12:07,545 –> 01:12:10,844
judged on the merit of the work that gets handed in. And

1158
01:12:11,065 –> 01:12:14,905
or here’s and here’s the the the secondary part of this is, or I

1159
01:12:14,905 –> 01:12:18,630
hand it in on the deadline because I’m that kind of person. I have a

1160
01:12:18,630 –> 01:12:22,410
I have a I have a a compass like that. But

1161
01:12:22,550 –> 01:12:25,430
I think about it three days later and realize I didn’t really like what I

1162
01:12:25,430 –> 01:12:28,870
handed in, so I’m gonna rewrite it and then rehand it in. And they’re okay

1163
01:12:28,870 –> 01:12:32,485
with that. The the so, again, three hour

1164
01:12:32,485 –> 01:12:36,265
meeting people. I’m just paraphrasing here. I’m just giving you the the idea. So I

1165
01:12:36,565 –> 01:12:40,265
I looked at that and I said, you are not preparing

1166
01:12:40,325 –> 01:12:44,020
our students for the real world workforce. You

1167
01:12:44,020 –> 01:12:47,320
cannot put your boss if your boss gives you a deadline and say,

1168
01:12:47,780 –> 01:12:51,300
I don’t feel like like, I I just I didn’t get it done, so I’ll

1169
01:12:51,300 –> 01:12:54,420
give it to you tomorrow. It doesn’t work like that in the real world. But

1170
01:12:54,420 –> 01:12:58,180
yet they’re saying that employer should. Now here here’s here’s to go back to

1171
01:12:58,180 –> 01:13:01,885
your point now, here’s where I think the flaw is. I

1172
01:13:01,885 –> 01:13:05,485
feel like our education system, whether it’s from

1173
01:13:05,485 –> 01:13:08,225
pre k all the way up to postgraduate degrees,

1174
01:13:09,645 –> 01:13:13,230
their entire function is to get you to learn

1175
01:13:13,369 –> 01:13:16,750
how to be a student, not to live your life.

1176
01:13:17,130 –> 01:13:20,730
And I think that’s a fundamental problem where we’re not solving at home

1177
01:13:20,730 –> 01:13:24,090
anymore. Right? Like, so if you want schools to you

1178
01:13:24,090 –> 01:13:27,495
cannot, hey. So how many people have you seen graduate with an

1179
01:13:27,495 –> 01:13:31,335
MBA, cannot run a business? Oh, please. All of them.

1180
01:13:31,335 –> 01:13:34,295
So what use is the MBA? Why are you going to school to get an

1181
01:13:34,295 –> 01:13:38,055
MBA? I don’t understand why we’re putting so much emphasis on this when they

1182
01:13:38,055 –> 01:13:41,250
can’t run a damn company when they come out of school. Like, you just

1183
01:13:41,490 –> 01:13:45,330
anyway. Because and and I think this meeting that I went to was a

1184
01:13:45,330 –> 01:13:49,030
was a was a real rude awakening for me because I realized

1185
01:13:49,410 –> 01:13:52,950
that school and education is teaching people

1186
01:13:53,445 –> 01:13:57,205
how to learn. They’re teaching people how to be a student, how

1187
01:13:57,205 –> 01:14:00,965
to gain knowledge. They’re not teaching people how to take that knowledge and

1188
01:14:00,965 –> 01:14:04,405
put it into the workforce. So to your point about

1189
01:14:04,405 –> 01:14:06,825
how how do we as leaders,

1190
01:14:08,640 –> 01:14:11,540
I think it goes back to what I was saying a little while ago as

1191
01:14:12,000 –> 01:14:14,900
I think it starts at home. I think parents have to stop

1192
01:14:15,680 –> 01:14:18,640
telling their kids they can do anything they wanna do and they can be anything

1193
01:14:18,640 –> 01:14:22,364
they wanna be and start pushing them toward their own aptitude

1194
01:14:22,505 –> 01:14:26,105
or their own love. Like, so to your point about this the salesperson that

1195
01:14:26,105 –> 01:14:29,945
probably shouldn’t be in sales, but if they really love it and

1196
01:14:29,945 –> 01:14:32,765
they don’t see themselves doing anything else,

1197
01:14:33,590 –> 01:14:36,650
fine. Let’s figure out a way to make it work for them. But

1198
01:14:37,110 –> 01:14:40,630
I I I have a 25 year old at home right now, and he has

1199
01:14:40,630 –> 01:14:43,110
no idea what he wants to do when he grows up. Like, he he still

1200
01:14:43,110 –> 01:14:46,469
he still has no idea. He he decided he didn’t wanna go to college because

1201
01:14:46,469 –> 01:14:48,724
it wasn’t for him. He thought it would be a waste of money. He thought

1202
01:14:48,724 –> 01:14:51,525
he was he said, I I’m going to be a blue collar guy, dad. I

1203
01:14:51,525 –> 01:14:54,085
don’t need a degree to be a blue collar guy. I said, okay. Great. Go

1204
01:14:54,085 –> 01:14:57,445
find a blue collar job. So he did. Bounced around a few of

1205
01:14:57,445 –> 01:15:01,230
those blue collar jobs. I feel like now he’s finally

1206
01:15:01,230 –> 01:15:04,910
got his feet in a place where he’s gonna be happy. He’s only been there,

1207
01:15:04,910 –> 01:15:08,750
like, a month, but this is the best month he’s had at any job

1208
01:15:08,750 –> 01:15:12,350
he’s ever been at. Put it that way. So he’s finding his own way,

1209
01:15:12,350 –> 01:15:15,885
but that’s because I’m not sitting here telling him you can do anything you want.

1210
01:15:15,885 –> 01:15:19,565
You should be whatever you want. No. I said, you’re right. School probably

1211
01:15:19,565 –> 01:15:22,365
isn’t for you because you’re gonna waste a lot of money. You’re probably gonna flunk

1212
01:15:22,365 –> 01:15:25,565
out. Why bother wasting that? Like, don’t go to school. Find something you’re gonna be

1213
01:15:25,565 –> 01:15:28,929
happy with and you can do you like working with your hands? Fine. Let’s go

1214
01:15:28,929 –> 01:15:32,770
find your blue let’s go auto mechanics, HVAC, whatever. So him

1215
01:15:32,770 –> 01:15:36,449
and I worked through all of these things about what his aptitude was versus

1216
01:15:36,449 –> 01:15:40,210
what he loves, and he ended up finding something that he

1217
01:15:40,210 –> 01:15:43,045
thinks is going to be a career for him. But it took a lot of

1218
01:15:43,045 –> 01:15:46,165
trial and error. Now I, as a parent, was willing to go through that trial

1219
01:15:46,165 –> 01:15:49,684
and error with him. That’s where I think a lot of the fault is, where

1220
01:15:49,684 –> 01:15:53,204
parents are like, but you can do it. You can do it. There’s they just

1221
01:15:53,204 –> 01:15:56,885
wanna be encouraging to be encouraging. No. Encourage them to do what they’re supposed to

1222
01:15:56,885 –> 01:16:00,340
do. Don’t encourage them to no. I’m sorry.

1223
01:16:00,340 –> 01:16:04,099
Nobody you can’t be anything you wanna be. I can’t be

1224
01:16:04,099 –> 01:16:07,940
a six foot four forward in the NBA as much as I love basketball. I’m

1225
01:16:07,940 –> 01:16:11,719
five foot nothing. Okay? I cannot play in the NBA.

1226
01:16:12,099 –> 01:16:15,855
Let’s face it. Like like, you can’t be anything you wanna be. Let’s be

1227
01:16:15,855 –> 01:16:18,815
realistic people. And I think it does start at home. I think I think that’s

1228
01:16:18,815 –> 01:16:22,034
where we start that that shift. Now that as employers,

1229
01:16:22,494 –> 01:16:26,335
that starts with the interviewing process. If you’re interviewing people, you

1230
01:16:26,335 –> 01:16:29,860
should be able to vet out some of that stuff. Why hire somebody if you

1231
01:16:29,860 –> 01:16:33,300
don’t think they’re gonna be a rock star for you? Stop hiring for the

1232
01:16:33,300 –> 01:16:37,140
masses and hire for the actual job you want. Then you can be a real

1233
01:16:37,140 –> 01:16:40,900
leader to that person. So if you’re in the middle of the interviewing process

1234
01:16:40,900 –> 01:16:43,875
and you recognize that somebody has Tourette’s, I mean, you don’t have to flat out

1235
01:16:43,875 –> 01:16:47,175
tell them, listen. We’re not hiring you because Tourette’s just isn’t welcome here.

1236
01:16:47,235 –> 01:16:50,355
No. You’re just saying you don’t have the skill set required to do the job

1237
01:16:50,355 –> 01:16:53,955
we need you to do. Sorry. We’re gonna go with another candidate. Like, it’s

1238
01:16:54,355 –> 01:16:58,179
and I know, again, the HR departments of the world are gonna hate

1239
01:16:58,179 –> 01:17:02,020
me right now because you can’t you can’t dis you can’t you can’t

1240
01:17:02,020 –> 01:17:05,860
discriminate based on a medical disability, blah blah blah. I get that.

1241
01:17:05,860 –> 01:17:09,415
I understand that. But there are certain things. Let’s be real. You have to be

1242
01:17:09,415 –> 01:17:12,955
realistic for your business. Let me just be real. Not

1243
01:17:13,015 –> 01:17:15,515
not only do you have to be realistic from your business,

1244
01:17:17,895 –> 01:17:21,255
and I’m gonna let that whole, like, community meeting idea just sort of sit there

1245
01:17:21,255 –> 01:17:24,968
and base for a while, let the listeners come to whatever conclusions they’re gonna come

1246
01:17:24,968 –> 01:17:28,784
to about that. I do have some thoughts. Oh, I was not happy. But I

1247
01:17:29,038 –> 01:17:32,855
anyway, go ahead. But, anyway, I’m gonna let that I’m gonna let that sit

1248
01:17:32,855 –> 01:17:35,145
for a minute because we have limited time here.

1249
01:17:40,985 –> 01:17:44,285
Families and communities and traditions,

1250
01:17:45,305 –> 01:17:49,065
which are the things that we have abandoned for a long time in

1251
01:17:49,065 –> 01:17:51,830
America because we thought that commercialism

1252
01:17:52,530 –> 01:17:56,370
or mass education, mass employment, mass is

1253
01:17:56,370 –> 01:18:00,210
mass, that was gonna take care of the problems. Mhmm. Mass has broken down

1254
01:18:00,210 –> 01:18:03,670
over the last twenty five years, and the consequences of mass

1255
01:18:04,135 –> 01:18:07,494
have now all washed up, to use the metaphor, washed up on our

1256
01:18:07,494 –> 01:18:11,255
shores. And now we have to build something

1257
01:18:11,255 –> 01:18:14,315
different. And I think we have to build something different by going back

1258
01:18:15,014 –> 01:18:18,810
to what was before mass. And the idea that Tom

1259
01:18:18,810 –> 01:18:22,330
is talking about where a parent guides

1260
01:18:22,330 –> 01:18:25,770
their child is an idea that is as old as

1261
01:18:25,770 –> 01:18:28,910
time and worked for every single century

1262
01:18:29,585 –> 01:18:32,245
globally and in the West up until,

1263
01:18:34,785 –> 01:18:38,225
arguably, the, mid nineteenth beginning of

1264
01:18:38,225 –> 01:18:41,745
industrialization all the way through and was abandoned all for the mid

1265
01:18:41,745 –> 01:18:45,469
nineteenth all the way through to currently the early twenty

1266
01:18:45,469 –> 01:18:48,989
first century. And historians, I think five hundred years from

1267
01:18:48,989 –> 01:18:52,830
now, will write very interesting histories about what happened in the last hundred and fifty

1268
01:18:52,830 –> 01:18:56,430
years, particularly in America, because it makes

1269
01:18:56,430 –> 01:19:00,050
no sense why an entire culture would abandon that

1270
01:19:00,905 –> 01:19:04,665
in favor of something else, particularly when

1271
01:19:04,665 –> 01:19:08,505
that something else does not stand up against the evidence of

1272
01:19:08,505 –> 01:19:11,485
98 to 99% of the rest of human history.

1273
01:19:12,820 –> 01:19:16,660
I also think that what Tom is talking about and

1274
01:19:16,660 –> 01:19:20,420
ladies probably not going to like this. But this

1275
01:19:20,420 –> 01:19:24,100
is an example of what a patriarchy actually

1276
01:19:24,100 –> 01:19:27,560
does. This is a healthy patriarchy. Because unless

1277
01:19:28,655 –> 01:19:31,875
you are not paying attention, Tom and I are both men.

1278
01:19:32,735 –> 01:19:36,515
Men who are the heads of, for lack of a better term,

1279
01:19:36,575 –> 01:19:40,335
heads of their household. Heck, that’s how the IRS taxes me.

1280
01:19:40,335 –> 01:19:44,030
It taxes me as head of household. So, okay, there we go.

1281
01:19:44,970 –> 01:19:48,430
And what that means is more than just I’m an ATM

1282
01:19:48,810 –> 01:19:52,570
where money comes out, work goes in to our conversation that we’re

1283
01:19:52,570 –> 01:19:56,275
having before we press record on the show today. Work goes

1284
01:19:56,275 –> 01:19:59,895
in and money comes out. It’s more than just that. Right? It’s

1285
01:20:00,515 –> 01:20:03,875
looking at even my 25 year old, because I have a 27 year

1286
01:20:03,875 –> 01:20:07,415
old, looking at my 25 year old and saying,

1287
01:20:08,520 –> 01:20:11,880
you’re 25. Let me help you with

1288
01:20:11,880 –> 01:20:15,480
this. That’s the example of a healthy patriarchy. So there’s a bunch of different things

1289
01:20:15,480 –> 01:20:19,000
that are going on with what Tom was talking about that I think are worth

1290
01:20:19,000 –> 01:20:22,735
thinking about and exploring for leaders, but we have

1291
01:20:22,735 –> 01:20:26,495
to wrap up and bring it home. So back to the book, back

1292
01:20:26,495 –> 01:20:29,235
to Tender is the Night. We’re gonna wrap up with

1293
01:20:30,655 –> 01:20:34,415
the end of Tender is the Night. We wanna talk about how things end

1294
01:20:34,415 –> 01:20:38,170
here as we close the podcast today. So a lot of things

1295
01:20:38,170 –> 01:20:41,150
happened between Nicole and Dick. Nicole

1296
01:20:42,170 –> 01:20:45,950
eventually winds up engaged in an affair with remember Tommy Barbin?

1297
01:20:46,250 –> 01:20:50,014
Remember the, the, the dueler? Yeah. She

1298
01:20:50,014 –> 01:20:53,395
winds up in an affair with him, breaks up her marriage on purpose

1299
01:20:54,255 –> 01:20:57,715
with Dick. They have two children together,

1300
01:20:58,974 –> 01:21:02,335
a governess, and a life in Europe, and all of that gets

1301
01:21:02,335 –> 01:21:04,915
thrown over because of Nicole’s actions.

1302
01:21:06,230 –> 01:21:10,010
Again, example of a patriarchy, but in this case, a weak patriarch.

1303
01:21:12,390 –> 01:21:15,770
That would be dick, by the way, weak patriarch. And a

1304
01:21:15,830 –> 01:21:19,565
rebellious patriarch.

1305
01:21:20,665 –> 01:21:24,105
There’s another term I would use, but I’m gonna use patriarch, a rebellious patriarch in

1306
01:21:24,105 –> 01:21:26,925
the form of, the boxer Tommy Barbin.

1307
01:21:29,945 –> 01:21:33,240
And the book ends on this note. This is the end of Tender is the

1308
01:21:33,240 –> 01:21:37,000
Night, chapter 13. I’m gonna read the whole

1309
01:21:37,000 –> 01:21:40,840
chapter here because it’s one page. And

1310
01:21:40,840 –> 01:21:44,680
I quote, Nicole kept in touch with Dick after her new

1311
01:21:44,680 –> 01:21:48,175
marriage. There were letters on business matters and about the children.

1312
01:21:48,795 –> 01:21:52,494
What she said as she often did, I loved Dick, and I’ll never forget him.

1313
01:21:52,554 –> 01:21:55,215
Tommy answered, of course not. Why should you?

1314
01:21:56,715 –> 01:22:00,489
Dick opened an office in Buffalo, but evidently without success. Nicole did not

1315
01:22:00,489 –> 01:22:02,969
find out what the trouble was, but she heard a few months later that he

1316
01:22:02,969 –> 01:22:06,650
was in a little town named Batavia, New York practicing general

1317
01:22:06,650 –> 01:22:09,869
medicine and later that he was in Lockport doing the same thing.

1318
01:22:10,650 –> 01:22:14,010
By accident, she heard more about his life there than anywhere, that he

1319
01:22:14,010 –> 01:22:17,665
bicycled a lot, was much admired by the ladies, and always had a big stack

1320
01:22:17,665 –> 01:22:21,105
of papers on his desk known to be an important treatise on some medical

1321
01:22:21,105 –> 01:22:24,165
subject almost in process of completion.

1322
01:22:25,905 –> 01:22:28,705
He was considered to have fine manners and once made a good speech at a

1323
01:22:28,705 –> 01:22:32,360
public health meeting on the subject of drugs. But he became entangled with a

1324
01:22:32,360 –> 01:22:36,200
girl who worked in a grocery store, and he was also involved in a lawsuit

1325
01:22:36,200 –> 01:22:39,500
about some medical question. So he left Lockport.

1326
01:22:41,240 –> 01:22:44,520
After that, he didn’t ask for the children to be sent to America and didn’t

1327
01:22:44,520 –> 01:22:48,255
answer when Nicole wrote him asking if he needed money. In the last letter she

1328
01:22:48,255 –> 01:22:52,015
had from him, she told her he in the last letter she

1329
01:22:52,015 –> 01:22:55,775
had from him, he told her that he was practicing in Geneva, New

1330
01:22:55,775 –> 01:22:59,535
York. And she got the impression that he had settled down with someone to

1331
01:22:59,535 –> 01:23:03,280
keep house for him. She looked up Geneva in an atlas and

1332
01:23:03,280 –> 01:23:07,120
found it was at the heart of the Finger Lakes section and considered a

1333
01:23:07,120 –> 01:23:10,960
pleasant place. Perhaps, so she liked to think, his

1334
01:23:10,960 –> 01:23:14,364
career was biding its time, again, like Grant’s in

1335
01:23:14,364 –> 01:23:18,125
Galena. His latest note was postmarked from

1336
01:23:18,125 –> 01:23:21,885
Cornell, New York, which is some distance from Geneva in a very

1337
01:23:21,885 –> 01:23:25,645
small town. In any case, he is almost certainly in that

1338
01:23:25,645 –> 01:23:29,025
section of the country, in one town or

1339
01:23:30,040 –> 01:23:33,880
another. By the way,

1340
01:23:33,880 –> 01:23:37,560
just personally, that entire last chapter jumped out to

1341
01:23:37,560 –> 01:23:41,240
me massively because back in the day, a

1342
01:23:41,240 –> 01:23:44,804
long time ago, I used to work at Ithaca College on the

1343
01:23:44,804 –> 01:23:48,505
other Finger Lake in

1344
01:23:48,885 –> 01:23:51,145
also had friends and

1345
01:23:52,565 –> 01:23:56,105
associates around Cayuga Lake,

1346
01:23:56,640 –> 01:24:00,240
number of others of those Finger Lakes areas. And I’m extremely familiar with that area,

1347
01:24:00,240 –> 01:24:03,680
including Geneva, interestingly enough. So I had to read that. I had to

1348
01:24:03,680 –> 01:24:07,280
literally read that chapter twice. I was like, what? Wait. What? And by the way,

1349
01:24:07,280 –> 01:24:10,745
it’s never mentioned again. Like, as many Buffalo is mentioned as Dick being you know,

1350
01:24:10,745 –> 01:24:14,525
his parents being from Buffalo, his father, who was a, a pastor

1351
01:24:14,905 –> 01:24:18,665
or no. I’m sorry. A priest in, in that area or pat no.

1352
01:24:18,665 –> 01:24:22,350
Pastor in that area, as mentioned earlier in the book, but in Buffalo.

1353
01:24:22,410 –> 01:24:26,090
But, like, you’re like, figure figure legs. Literally, Fitzgerald

1354
01:24:26,090 –> 01:24:28,890
just drops that on you at the end, and then you’re just like, or at

1355
01:24:28,890 –> 01:24:30,110
least for me, I was like,

1356
01:24:32,730 –> 01:24:36,555
oh, okay, F. Scott. Wait. Wait.

1357
01:24:37,035 –> 01:24:38,495
Wait to get out of the book.

1358
01:24:42,475 –> 01:24:46,075
This is one of those areas where Dick descends back into history. It’s

1359
01:24:46,075 –> 01:24:49,915
weird. So Tender is the Night is very much a book that’s

1360
01:24:49,915 –> 01:24:53,290
written kind of as an elegy,

1361
01:24:54,310 –> 01:24:58,070
to the World War one generation and the lost

1362
01:24:58,070 –> 01:25:01,770
generation. But then at the end, they all fall back into history.

1363
01:25:02,150 –> 01:25:04,005
They all become regular people again.

1364
01:25:05,525 –> 01:25:08,745
Nicole gets a divorce, initiates a divorce,

1365
01:25:09,925 –> 01:25:13,685
because of the affair. Dick loses Rosemary who

1366
01:25:13,685 –> 01:25:17,445
goes off and becomes not a Hollywood ingenue, but she becomes a starlet and

1367
01:25:17,445 –> 01:25:20,600
probably becomes famous, although she drops out of the narrative

1368
01:25:21,060 –> 01:25:24,660
about three quarters of the way through and no more is said about

1369
01:25:24,660 –> 01:25:28,500
her. Dick becomes not a serious man and loses

1370
01:25:28,500 –> 01:25:31,940
his business in Switzerland. And we talked about a lot about

1371
01:25:31,940 –> 01:25:35,585
seriousness with Libby Unger and this idea of unserious

1372
01:25:35,805 –> 01:25:39,585
people, which, by the way, to to Tom’s

1373
01:25:41,245 –> 01:25:44,925
previous point about family and preparation and accommodation, I

1374
01:25:44,925 –> 01:25:48,480
think a lot of this is driven by families being led by unserious

1375
01:25:48,700 –> 01:25:52,380
people, which then cascades upward into other areas of

1376
01:25:52,380 –> 01:25:56,140
our society and culture. And you probably saw a lot of that that community

1377
01:25:56,140 –> 01:25:59,740
meeting. I bet people who should be

1378
01:25:59,740 –> 01:26:00,975
serious who just aren’t,

1379
01:26:04,415 –> 01:26:06,915
which is which is a plague on our own time.

1380
01:26:08,495 –> 01:26:12,015
But in the book, when Dick falls back into

1381
01:26:12,015 –> 01:26:15,710
history and slides back into the verge like Homer in that

1382
01:26:15,710 –> 01:26:19,470
meme in New York, in Upstate New York, he falls back into

1383
01:26:19,470 –> 01:26:23,070
history. The relationship just ends. There’s no

1384
01:26:23,070 –> 01:26:26,290
denouement, there’s no conclusion, and there’s no catharsis.

1385
01:26:27,665 –> 01:26:31,285
Nothing is learned. There’s no great, moral

1386
01:26:31,425 –> 01:26:34,225
to the end of this story. There’s no great moral to the end of Tender

1387
01:26:34,225 –> 01:26:38,065
is the Night. It’s just these things happen to these people, and then they

1388
01:26:38,225 –> 01:26:41,960
and then it’s like you stop watching the movie, and the movie just

1389
01:26:41,960 –> 01:26:45,320
closes, and you’re done. And it’s probably the

1390
01:26:45,320 –> 01:26:48,940
strangest ending I’ve ever experienced in a book.

1391
01:26:50,199 –> 01:26:52,600
I didn’t really know what to do with it, and I didn’t really know how

1392
01:26:52,600 –> 01:26:56,205
to place it, and I didn’t really know how to talk about it. Other than

1393
01:26:56,205 –> 01:26:59,264
maybe this way, if you’re a leader,

1394
01:26:59,885 –> 01:27:03,725
how do you end things? Because we read a lot of books on

1395
01:27:03,725 –> 01:27:07,344
this podcast, and we have read a lot of books. And

1396
01:27:07,645 –> 01:27:11,340
those books end in a whole variety of different ways. Some authors can

1397
01:27:11,340 –> 01:27:14,780
close narratives really tightly, and other authors tend to leave

1398
01:27:14,780 –> 01:27:18,460
narratives wide open. But this one with Tender is the Night with F.

1399
01:27:18,460 –> 01:27:21,980
Scott Fitzgerald, he is an author who leaves an ending that

1400
01:27:21,980 –> 01:27:25,695
is, for lack of a better term,

1401
01:27:26,795 –> 01:27:29,775
like I said, sort of cinematic. It’s sort of just

1402
01:27:30,315 –> 01:27:33,835
just just fades to black and bring up the credits, and we’re done. And you’re

1403
01:27:33,835 –> 01:27:37,630
just sort of left there sitting in the theater sort of

1404
01:27:37,630 –> 01:27:41,090
wondering what you just saw. So

1405
01:27:41,630 –> 01:27:44,690
how does a leader end things? We’ve never talked about that here.

1406
01:27:46,990 –> 01:27:50,110
That’s a good that’s a good question. I I’m I’m I’m trying to figure out

1407
01:27:50,110 –> 01:27:53,825
in in what the perspective is. Right? Like, so how do you

1408
01:27:53,825 –> 01:27:57,585
end up with what? Like, a termination of an employee or

1409
01:27:57,585 –> 01:28:01,205
wrapping up the whole business because you don’t wanna do it anymore or,

1410
01:28:02,625 –> 01:28:06,460
somewhere in between? I I I don’t know. Like, because I guess All good all

1411
01:28:06,460 –> 01:28:10,219
good all good stories have a beginning of you’re a movie guy. All good store

1412
01:28:10,380 –> 01:28:13,420
I’m a movie guy. All good stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

1413
01:28:13,420 –> 01:28:16,139
Like, Tender is the Night ended very much like a French film. Like, if you

1414
01:28:16,139 –> 01:28:18,159
watch French films, you watch the French films.

1415
01:28:20,515 –> 01:28:24,135
And French films upset Americans for a whole variety of reasons.

1416
01:28:24,995 –> 01:28:28,755
But the biggest one is French films are full of

1417
01:28:28,755 –> 01:28:32,595
cynicism and nihilism and a sense of a deep sense

1418
01:28:32,595 –> 01:28:36,350
of, to paraphrase from Edith Piaf, a deep sense

1419
01:28:36,350 –> 01:28:39,950
of regret. There’s always a sense of regret at the end of a French

1420
01:28:39,950 –> 01:28:43,090
film. The French will call it malaise,

1421
01:28:44,590 –> 01:28:47,650
but I call it regret.

1422
01:28:48,375 –> 01:28:52,215
Melancholy, such as it were, if you use an older term. So I guess

1423
01:28:52,215 –> 01:28:56,055
it’s everything. How do you because the way you terminate somebody is the way you’re

1424
01:28:56,055 –> 01:28:59,895
going to wrap up a business. One thing follows from another, beginning, middle,

1425
01:28:59,895 –> 01:29:03,630
and end. Like, whenever I end go oh, go ahead. Exit

1426
01:29:03,630 –> 01:29:06,829
strategies and things like that that you have to take into consideration. Again, like, you

1427
01:29:06,829 –> 01:29:10,670
know, are you going to just close the business up? Are you gonna sell it?

1428
01:29:10,670 –> 01:29:14,190
Are you going to, pass it on to a,

1429
01:29:14,349 –> 01:29:18,065
you know, a an heir, a a a a

1430
01:29:18,065 –> 01:29:20,705
son or a daughter? Like, are you gonna pass it off off to a child,

1431
01:29:20,705 –> 01:29:24,385
or are you gonna transfer ownership to an, a current employee? Like,

1432
01:29:24,385 –> 01:29:28,140
there’s a lot of there’s a lot of, like but I

1433
01:29:28,140 –> 01:29:30,400
I guess I guess no matter what

1434
01:29:32,460 –> 01:29:34,960
pathway you choose, there’s still a certain

1435
01:29:36,780 –> 01:29:40,620
still a still a certain way

1436
01:29:40,620 –> 01:29:44,005
that you have to hold yourself through it. Right? I guess is the the idea

1437
01:29:44,005 –> 01:29:47,445
that that you’re looking for or that we’re we’re thinking of, like Yeah. That we’re

1438
01:29:47,445 –> 01:29:51,045
we’re sort of yeah. I think I think for

1439
01:29:51,045 –> 01:29:53,705
me, in in in

1440
01:29:54,965 –> 01:29:58,620
I I about just just around around the time of COVID, I

1441
01:29:58,620 –> 01:30:02,320
had exited a business. And I think one of for me in

1442
01:30:02,460 –> 01:30:06,140
while exiting that business, it was really important for

1443
01:30:06,140 –> 01:30:09,680
me to leave no bridge burned.

1444
01:30:10,245 –> 01:30:14,005
Right? So I was I was exiting the business, but it was still going to

1445
01:30:14,005 –> 01:30:17,765
function. I had a partner that, that I wanted to be bought

1446
01:30:17,765 –> 01:30:20,745
out from because we just decided to go in different directions.

1447
01:30:22,165 –> 01:30:25,910
But that partner and I are still very good friends. There was no

1448
01:30:26,130 –> 01:30:29,890
ill feeling, no bad nothing bad

1449
01:30:29,890 –> 01:30:33,330
happened from it. But to your question about that

1450
01:30:33,330 –> 01:30:37,090
was very purposeful on my part because

1451
01:30:37,090 –> 01:30:40,710
I that that that split could have been very bad. Right?

1452
01:30:40,985 –> 01:30:44,824
Go f this. Go f yourself. Whatever. I don’t care. You know? And

1453
01:30:44,824 –> 01:30:48,184
just the business goes in the toilet. The way that I looked at it

1454
01:30:48,184 –> 01:30:51,704
was I still have plenty of years to work in this

1455
01:30:51,704 –> 01:30:55,465
town. Like, I didn’t want a bad reputation. I didn’t

1456
01:30:55,465 –> 01:30:59,270
want a bad bad taste in client’s mouths. I wanted to be able

1457
01:30:59,270 –> 01:31:02,989
to go back to the well for a multitude of reasons. So the way I

1458
01:31:02,989 –> 01:31:05,730
looked at it was I could not leave a single bridge

1459
01:31:06,350 –> 01:31:09,730
burnt. Every bridge had to be unburned. So my

1460
01:31:10,005 –> 01:31:13,705
my current partnership had to be, dissolved with

1461
01:31:14,085 –> 01:31:17,925
all the best of intentions. All the clients that we were

1462
01:31:17,925 –> 01:31:21,365
handling, jointly, I had to inform them in a

1463
01:31:21,365 –> 01:31:24,659
way that didn’t burn a bridge that I was going to not be involved in

1464
01:31:24,659 –> 01:31:28,420
their account anymore. All the employees that we had had to know that I was

1465
01:31:28,420 –> 01:31:32,179
still going to be a resource, but not a decision maker. Like, they could always

1466
01:31:32,179 –> 01:31:35,940
lean on me for referrals, for references, for any of that stuff, but anything to

1467
01:31:35,940 –> 01:31:38,475
do with the business, had to go through the partner. Like, there was a lot

1468
01:31:38,475 –> 01:31:41,855
there was a lot to do, but I felt like it was my

1469
01:31:42,235 –> 01:31:45,995
obligation, not my partners, that wanted to keep the business running. It

1470
01:31:45,995 –> 01:31:49,770
was my obligation to exit that business with no

1471
01:31:49,930 –> 01:31:53,370
burnt bridges. So I think I think there’s and I think to

1472
01:31:53,370 –> 01:31:57,070
your point, even terminating an employee, termination

1473
01:31:57,130 –> 01:32:00,830
doesn’t have to be adversarial. It could be you know, when you’re

1474
01:32:01,130 –> 01:32:04,430
you’re downsizing, so you’re laying off x number of people.

1475
01:32:05,855 –> 01:32:09,614
When you’re going through that layoff process, if you are honest about

1476
01:32:09,614 –> 01:32:13,155
it and you’re making sure that the layoffs are being done in the right way,

1477
01:32:13,375 –> 01:32:17,055
nobody has a right to be mad at you personally for it. They can be

1478
01:32:17,055 –> 01:32:20,820
mad in general. Sure. Of course. They have emotions, their feelings. We’re gonna validate their

1479
01:32:21,120 –> 01:32:24,260
feelings. Sorry. I’m sorry.

1480
01:32:24,560 –> 01:32:28,020
But, but but in the same sense,

1481
01:32:28,400 –> 01:32:31,600
you also want them to know that you are you’re there for them. You wanna

1482
01:32:31,600 –> 01:32:34,880
be a resource for them. You can help them get another job with a with

1483
01:32:34,880 –> 01:32:38,695
a referral. Let them know that if they do get an interview, that this job

1484
01:32:38,775 –> 01:32:42,215
that you are not being terminated from this job because of performance issues or

1485
01:32:42,215 –> 01:32:45,575
whatever. Right? Like, making sure that somebody walks out the

1486
01:32:45,575 –> 01:32:49,255
door knowing that you still have their best

1487
01:32:49,255 –> 01:32:52,940
interest at heart, and it’s not it’s a business decision, not a

1488
01:32:52,940 –> 01:32:56,620
personal decision. Now that being said, there are occasions where you

1489
01:32:56,620 –> 01:32:59,420
wanna fire somebody just for the hell of it because you don’t like them. That

1490
01:32:59,420 –> 01:33:02,380
you it’s it’s your business. It’s your company. You don’t have to work with people

1491
01:33:02,380 –> 01:33:05,995
that you don’t like. So in those cases, I still

1492
01:33:05,995 –> 01:33:09,675
say you have to handle that in a particular way. You can’t just go, listen.

1493
01:33:09,675 –> 01:33:13,115
Hey, son. I don’t like you. I don’t want you working here anymore. Have a

1494
01:33:13,115 –> 01:33:16,600
nice life. It doesn’t work that way. You should Get your crap. Eat. Get out

1495
01:33:16,600 –> 01:33:20,200
of here. Yeah. You should come. Never mind that. You will be

1496
01:33:20,200 –> 01:33:23,800
escorted out. Your crap will be shipped. You know what I mean? Like but,

1497
01:33:23,800 –> 01:33:27,640
like, you shouldn’t have you you still shouldn’t it it doesn’t need

1498
01:33:27,640 –> 01:33:31,165
to be adversarial in any of those cases. You should be able to be at

1499
01:33:31,165 –> 01:33:35,005
least a little bit, I I’m gonna

1500
01:33:35,005 –> 01:33:37,805
use the word again. You you can be a little bit empathetic with the situation

1501
01:33:37,805 –> 01:33:40,125
that’s going on even though you have a job to do and you have to

1502
01:33:40,125 –> 01:33:43,900
do it. I I I fired I’ve terminated I don’t

1503
01:33:43,900 –> 01:33:47,420
even know how many people at this point. I don’t think I’ve ever had

1504
01:33:47,420 –> 01:33:50,860
anybody yell at me, get so mad at me that they wanted to throw something

1505
01:33:50,860 –> 01:33:54,460
at me. Nothing. If anything, when I

1506
01:33:54,460 –> 01:33:58,114
say, let me walk you out, they’re thinking it’s

1507
01:33:58,114 –> 01:34:01,715
because I like them, not because I’m like, not because I don’t trust them to

1508
01:34:01,715 –> 01:34:05,315
steal shit on the way out the door. Like, it’s it’s because they

1509
01:34:05,315 –> 01:34:08,215
they I they feel like I’m doing it because

1510
01:34:09,290 –> 01:34:13,050
I I have put myself on their level. I’ve put myself in their shoes. I

1511
01:34:13,050 –> 01:34:16,430
know I I I don’t wanna feel what they’re feeling,

1512
01:34:16,890 –> 01:34:20,170
but I I know that they’re feeling something different than I am right now. And

1513
01:34:20,170 –> 01:34:22,969
I I I can just be empathetic about it and walk, you know, walk them

1514
01:34:22,969 –> 01:34:26,235
out. So I think that’s I don’t know how else to answer that that question

1515
01:34:26,235 –> 01:34:29,515
other than that. No. No. I think that’s good. I think that that is

1516
01:34:31,355 –> 01:34:34,395
I mean, this is a leadership podcast along with being a book podcast. So we

1517
01:34:34,395 –> 01:34:37,355
talk a lot about more and more lately, we talk about the art behind the

1518
01:34:37,355 –> 01:34:41,140
book and the art that’s in bay engaged in the book. We talk about

1519
01:34:41,140 –> 01:34:44,660
the impact the culture has had on this on this book. We talk about the

1520
01:34:44,660 –> 01:34:47,720
writer and how the writer thought, how the writer engaged with culture.

1521
01:34:50,020 –> 01:34:53,540
And I think Fitzgerald himself as a writer struggled with endings. I mean, look at

1522
01:34:53,540 –> 01:34:57,085
his Hollywood career. It sort of blew up in an alcoholic, you

1523
01:34:57,085 –> 01:35:00,925
know, explosion. Right? Because he couldn’t complete the work. Right? I also

1524
01:35:00,925 –> 01:35:03,804
wonder if he didn’t expect to die at 40, and he might have had something

1525
01:35:03,804 –> 01:35:07,085
else in his in his brain for the a follow-up to that book. That’s that’s

1526
01:35:07,085 –> 01:35:10,409
kinda what I was thinking too. Yeah. Exactly. And

1527
01:35:11,670 –> 01:35:15,349
so whenever I think of endings, they can either be amicable to your

1528
01:35:15,349 –> 01:35:19,190
point or they can be adversarial. Right? We can choose which kind

1529
01:35:19,190 –> 01:35:22,665
of ending we’re going to have. That’s our, for lack of a better term,

1530
01:35:22,665 –> 01:35:25,405
autonomy, both as leaders and as followers.

1531
01:35:27,625 –> 01:35:30,985
And weirdly enough, because a bunch of things could be true all at the same

1532
01:35:30,985 –> 01:35:34,205
time, I always think of

1533
01:35:34,720 –> 01:35:38,340
the end of Star Trek, The Next Generation when that series ended,

1534
01:35:39,600 –> 01:35:43,280
and the the the the name of the last episode of that of

1535
01:35:43,280 –> 01:35:46,880
that, series. And it was

1536
01:35:46,880 –> 01:35:50,715
called All Good Things. Right? And and Captain Picard in

1537
01:35:50,715 –> 01:35:54,415
there, you know, once infamously or maybe not infamously,

1538
01:35:54,554 –> 01:35:58,235
but notoriously said, all good things must come to

1539
01:35:58,235 –> 01:36:01,950
an end at some point. Right? And this is the

1540
01:36:01,950 –> 01:36:04,210
thing we struggle with. And I think

1541
01:36:06,190 –> 01:36:09,950
I think it’s the responsibility of a generation that lost its ability to

1542
01:36:09,950 –> 01:36:13,630
have closure in endings. I think, of course,

1543
01:36:13,630 –> 01:36:17,265
that generation was going to struggle later on when those

1544
01:36:17,265 –> 01:36:21,025
endings were going to happen. Fitzgerald wasn’t the only writer of

1545
01:36:21,025 –> 01:36:24,325
his generation that that wound up blowing up his career. I mean,

1546
01:36:25,185 –> 01:36:28,225
Ernest Hemingway is at the top of the mountain. I mean, he committed suicide in

1547
01:36:28,225 –> 01:36:29,925
Montana. You know?

1548
01:36:31,710 –> 01:36:35,010
But none of the people that Fitzgerald engaged

1549
01:36:35,150 –> 01:36:38,930
with wound up right side up,

1550
01:36:39,870 –> 01:36:43,390
with the eve eve even even guys who who who who

1551
01:36:43,390 –> 01:36:47,045
avoided all of the the dysfunctions and the

1552
01:36:47,045 –> 01:36:50,885
nonsense of the drug use like a John Dos Passos. Right? Or even a

1553
01:36:50,885 –> 01:36:54,565
William Faulkner. Right? Well, Faulkner was a generation older. But, even

1554
01:36:54,565 –> 01:36:58,005
John Dos Passos, he’s a better example. They still wound up in

1555
01:36:58,005 –> 01:37:01,280
unsatisfactory endings.

1556
01:37:03,420 –> 01:37:07,100
The lost generation of World War one was, in

1557
01:37:07,100 –> 01:37:10,400
essence, the nomad generation in a in their generational

1558
01:37:10,620 –> 01:37:14,080
cycle. Right? Generation x,

1559
01:37:15,175 –> 01:37:18,155
the generation that I’m at the bottom end of, I am not a millennial,

1560
01:37:19,415 –> 01:37:23,175
but the generation that I’m at the bottom of, we’re

1561
01:37:23,175 –> 01:37:26,955
the thirteenth generation in in America.

1562
01:37:27,750 –> 01:37:31,510
And the thirteenth generation is always a nomad generation, period, full stop. It

1563
01:37:31,510 –> 01:37:35,110
just it just is. There’ll be another 13 generations before we get to another

1564
01:37:35,110 –> 01:37:38,949
one. And, we’re always the people that struggle with

1565
01:37:38,949 –> 01:37:42,550
endings. We just we just are. Like, we just this is kind of how it

1566
01:37:42,550 –> 01:37:46,145
goes. And I think of the people who

1567
01:37:46,145 –> 01:37:49,525
are struggling

1568
01:37:49,824 –> 01:37:53,264
in one form or another, whether it’s, at a personal level with

1569
01:37:53,264 –> 01:37:56,784
divorce or relationships ending, or at a more public

1570
01:37:56,784 –> 01:38:00,390
level with businesses to to Tom’s point or leadership

1571
01:38:00,390 –> 01:38:03,989
opportunities ending. And, I think we have a

1572
01:38:03,989 –> 01:38:07,750
responsibility to show the generations that are coming after us, the millennial

1573
01:38:07,750 –> 01:38:09,690
generation, in particular Gen z,

1574
01:38:11,910 –> 01:38:14,330
how to do these endings

1575
01:38:15,705 –> 01:38:18,445
well. How do you end

1576
01:38:19,385 –> 01:38:23,225
well? The boomers didn’t really show us. They’re still

1577
01:38:23,225 –> 01:38:27,005
clutching on to the bottom of relevancy all the way into the grave.

1578
01:38:27,784 –> 01:38:30,860
They they don’t wanna let go. I think I think Gen z Gen z has

1579
01:38:30,860 –> 01:38:33,740
got their own version. They just ghost people now. They don’t like, they don’t even

1580
01:38:33,820 –> 01:38:36,700
they they don’t even know end. What what do you mean end? I just I

1581
01:38:36,700 –> 01:38:39,340
don’t have to I don’t have to deal with it. I just It’s just just

1582
01:38:39,340 –> 01:38:42,220
delete it. It’s just like it’s just Yeah. I just don’t have to answer it.

1583
01:38:42,220 –> 01:38:44,925
It’s good. I’m good. I just I I deleted you off my app. It’s fine.

1584
01:38:44,925 –> 01:38:48,765
You don’t exist anymore. If I block you on, TikTok or if I block

1585
01:38:48,765 –> 01:38:52,125
you on Instagram, then I don’t have to worry about you anymore. You’re done. You’re

1586
01:38:52,125 –> 01:38:55,905
just you’re done. Yeah. That’s done. The end. Goodbye. Bye.

1587
01:38:58,560 –> 01:39:02,079
But I think we have to be, I think we have an

1588
01:39:02,079 –> 01:39:05,780
opportunity to show people that it doesn’t have to blow up in nonsense,

1589
01:39:06,480 –> 01:39:10,239
and it doesn’t have to be adversarial. But it can

1590
01:39:10,239 –> 01:39:13,955
be amicable. It can be a space where we don’t,

1591
01:39:13,955 –> 01:39:17,795
I love your point, burn bridges. Right? And where we can preserve. And

1592
01:39:17,795 –> 01:39:21,395
I think you said a keyword there, which we actually don’t

1593
01:39:21,395 –> 01:39:25,160
value nearly enough in our culture these days, but which which Fitzgerald’s

1594
01:39:25,460 –> 01:39:29,140
generation did value, but they were the last generation, I

1595
01:39:29,140 –> 01:39:32,500
think, that valued this. And this was they valued

1596
01:39:32,500 –> 01:39:35,880
reputation. Mhmm. They valued their reputation

1597
01:39:36,580 –> 01:39:40,305
very much. But they were the first post Victorian generation. Right? So they still

1598
01:39:40,305 –> 01:39:43,525
had all of that wash of, like, Victorian moral and Victorian

1599
01:39:44,065 –> 01:39:47,685
Victorian principles or Edwardian if you’re thinking about America.

1600
01:39:50,705 –> 01:39:54,410
And I think reputation is very important. Reputation is what other people say about

1601
01:39:54,410 –> 01:39:58,190
you when you’re not in the room. And, you know,

1602
01:40:00,570 –> 01:40:04,250
I think that matters. The two things that I think that matter most to me

1603
01:40:04,250 –> 01:40:07,610
the two things that matter most to me that I don’t think people put enough

1604
01:40:07,610 –> 01:40:11,445
emphasis on are exactly so reputation, what people say

1605
01:40:11,445 –> 01:40:14,485
about you when you’re not in the room, and integrity. You do the right thing

1606
01:40:14,485 –> 01:40:17,365
when you’re when nobody else is watching. You just do the right thing because it’s

1607
01:40:17,365 –> 01:40:21,205
the right thing to do. So your integrity and your and your reputation are probably

1608
01:40:21,205 –> 01:40:24,910
the only two things. I shouldn’t say they’re the only two things that matter,

1609
01:40:24,910 –> 01:40:28,430
but they should really be the foundation of who you are as a person. Mhmm.

1610
01:40:28,430 –> 01:40:31,470
And and if it’s if it’s not, then that that could potentially be a problem

1611
01:40:31,470 –> 01:40:32,210
for you.

1612
01:40:37,035 –> 01:40:40,555
With that, I would like to thank Tom Libby for coming on the podcast today

1613
01:40:40,555 –> 01:40:44,335
and talking about Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

1614
01:40:44,795 –> 01:40:47,675
This is a part two to go along with the part one that we just

1615
01:40:47,675 –> 01:40:51,070
recorded with Libby Younger. And go back and listen to the introduction where we talked

1616
01:40:51,070 –> 01:40:54,670
about the literary life of Escoff Fitzgerald. Next

1617
01:40:54,670 –> 01:40:58,350
up, we’ll be talking about I’m gonna show the book

1618
01:40:58,350 –> 01:41:01,970
here. Next up, our next episode, we will begin

1619
01:41:02,350 –> 01:41:05,345
to introduce and to cover you probably can’t see it because it’s got a nice

1620
01:41:05,345 –> 01:41:08,005
white cover on the video. But George Orwell’s

1621
01:41:09,265 –> 01:41:10,485
infinite dystopia

1622
01:41:13,425 –> 01:41:17,025
that has ruled the fever

1623
01:41:17,025 –> 01:41:18,005
dreams and imaginations,

1624
01:41:21,270 –> 01:41:24,790
particularly the totalitarian nightmares of

1625
01:41:24,790 –> 01:41:28,469
people from the time of its publication all the way till

1626
01:41:28,469 –> 01:41:28,969
now,

1627
01:41:30,150 –> 01:41:33,989
1984. So we will begin to dive into

1628
01:41:33,989 –> 01:41:37,105
that as we cross into June, our anti totalitarianism

1629
01:41:37,725 –> 01:41:41,485
month, where we will talk about not only 1984, but

1630
01:41:41,485 –> 01:41:45,025
we’ll also cover Orwell’s Animal Farm, his animal allegory

1631
01:41:45,245 –> 01:41:49,070
children’s fairy tale, as well as Hannah Arendt. And we’re

1632
01:41:49,070 –> 01:41:52,690
gonna talk about Eichmann in Jerusalem and what it means

1633
01:41:52,750 –> 01:41:56,590
to actually stare into the face and actually

1634
01:41:56,590 –> 01:41:59,170
contemplate the banality of evil.

1635
01:42:00,350 –> 01:42:04,055
We’ll do that during this month on the podcast. And so I

1636
01:42:04,055 –> 01:42:07,495
encourage you to stay tuned to listen for that. But with

1637
01:42:07,495 –> 01:42:10,715
that, well, Tom and I are out.