The Collected Poetry of Ogden Nash w/Ryan J. Stout

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

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Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number

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one forty three. Today

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on the show, we will be talking about we’ll be

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dissecting. We will be examining,

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what some folks might consider to be gossamer,

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humorous doggerel, a little bit of light

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verse. We will be looking at the

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rhymes, verses, lyrics, and poems of a what I

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consider to be a genuine poetic master, a

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person who came out of the middle part of the twentieth century

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and started in the world of marketing, way back

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when they really needed a jingle. They really needed something to

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rhyme for you to remember, the name of

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the product. He was somewhat good at that, but then he

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turned his hand to verse. And, well,

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poetry is really, in essence,

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the, soundtrack of our lives. Poetry is everywhere.

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Poetry is in music. As my daughter tells me,

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poetry is in, is in the marketing

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and it’s in the jingles, but poetry is also in the air.

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And so we are going to talk about we’re going to examine. We’re going

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to dissect, like I said, what might be considered by some to be

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lighthearted gossamer and a relatively lighthearted conversation,

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with our very special guest who also talked with us about

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poetry a few episodes ago, and I’ll introduce him in

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just a second. But today, we’re going to be

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covering, the selected poetry

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of Ogden Nash, a truly

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great American poet.

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Leaders, if you’re going to write poetry, at

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least make it something that rhymes at the end.

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And today on the show, as I said, we will be joined by our special

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guest who, just discussed Tennyson with us with

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Moumin Quazi. You should go back and check out that episode,

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from November of He was awesome. Yes. He was awesome for November of

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last year, and who also has come on and talked with us

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about Othello and was on with us with the one hundredth

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anniversary episode. Longtime personal friend of mine and a good friend

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of the show, Ryan Stout. How are you doing, Ryan? I

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could not be better, my friend. Thank you kindly for the gracious introduction.

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It’s, it’s, wonderful to be here as always.

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Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s Wonderful to have you. So we’re

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going to start off here with a bit of poetry

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from Ogden Nash. Let’s start off with this one.

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Old is for books.

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A poet named Robert Browning eloped with a poetess named Elizabeth Barrett.

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And since he had an independent income, they lived in an Italian villa instead

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of a London garret. He created quite a furer with

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his elusive caesura. He also created a

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youthful sage, a certain rabbi, Ben Ezra, who urged people

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to hurry up and age. This fledgling said, grow

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old along with me. The best is yet to be. I term him

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fledgling because such a statement, Surcedes, could

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emanate only from a youngster in his thirties.

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I have a friend named Ben Azara who is far from a fledgling.

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Indeed, he is more like from the bottom of the sea of life, a

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barnacled dredgling. He tells me that as the year slipped

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by, he has become utterly dependent on his wife because he has

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forgotten how to tie his tie. He says he sleeps after

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luncheon instead of at night, and he hates to face his

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shaving mirror because although his remaining hair is brown, his mustache

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comes out red and his beard comes out white. Furthermore,

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he says that last week, he was stranded for thirty six hours in his club

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because he couldn’t get out of the tub. He says he was

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miserable, but when he reflected that the same thing probably

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eventually happened to rabbi Ben Ezra, it relieved

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his misra.

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From the selected poems of Ogden Nash, I’m going

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to put some information from the

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introduction by Archibald MacLeish from my my

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version of the selected poetry of Ogden Nash and a little bit of the life

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of Ogden Nash.

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Archibald begins with Ogden’s death, his obituary,

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actually, in the New York Times, which was titled under the

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heading master of light verse dies.

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MacLeish takes umbrage, such as it were,

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with the the three things that are wrong in

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those five words. He says that Nash’s most important

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and most characteristic work is not inverse. It is not

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light. And his mastery, which was real enough, had nothing to do with a

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combination of the two. Talks

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about, Nash and talks about,

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how he put together his work, but this is

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maybe more important. Nash’s first New Yorker

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publication, this is quoting directly from MacLeish, shows how the form

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began. It was a piece written in 1930 when mister Herbert Hoover’s

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plateau of permanent prosperity had collapsed into the great depression, carrying a

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generation with it. Most painfully, a generation of the young.

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Nash was 28, a failed prep school teacher, a failed bond salesman,

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a failed sonneteer, supporting himself, if that is the term, by

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composing advertising copy for a New York publisher. He was

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approaching the age at which a young man’s commitment to art can no longer survive

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on hope. After 30, failure

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begins to taste of finality, and it becomes harder and harder to try again. But

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as one approaches 30, things have a way of happening, and they

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differ Ogden Nash in his grubby office. On that nineteen thirty afternoon, he

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found himself, or if not precisely himself, in a form of language he could

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speak. It fell into a half a dozen more or less rhymed couplets, which he

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might have well called, but didn’t, portrait of the artist as a young

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man, and it changed his life. It ended the failure, began

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a considerable literary success, and more astonishing than either

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altered or began to alter the relation of his contemporaries to the time

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in which they lived. And by the way, we give an example of this,

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MacLeish quotes from, Ogden Nash’s

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poetry. I sit in an office at 02:44 Madison Avenue,

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and I say to myself, you have a responsible job avenue.

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Why then do you fritter away your time on this dogga roll? If you have

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a sore throat, you can cure it by using a good dogga

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roll.

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Ogden Nash is considered to be by many

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a satirist. Right? He’s considered to be not a

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serious poet, but that’s a mistake. He

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was deadly serious about putting together his verse and

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putting together his poems. He was also deadly

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serious about getting them out into the public. And he was, of course,

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because he was writing advertising copy, and because he he started out writing

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matter writing, advertising copy. He was deadly serious

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in marketing himself. But in all other areas, he

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was not deadly serious at all. So we’re

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going to talk a little bit about Ogden Ash, the American poet,

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who was born August ‘2 and died

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05/19/1971.

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And he wrote 500 pieces of poetry and was considered

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by The New York Times, again, to be the country’s best known producer

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of humorous poetry. So let’s start

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off with this. Ryan Stout, what do

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you like about Ogden Nash or dislike?

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What is that? Creating your own words

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Need to love that. Fulfill a rhyme scheme

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Mhmm. Is

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so, like, perversely genius and

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also, like,

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it’s it so there’s there’s a I think I brought this up before. There’s a

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there’s a scene in Thank You for Smoking Mhmm. Yes.

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Where, Rob Lowe is talking to Aaron

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Eckhart. Mhmm. And they’re like, yes. That’s when we introduce

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smoking into outer space. And then it’s like, yeah. But you can’t smoke in

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space because the oxygen. And it’s like, yeah. But that’s just one line of dialogue.

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Right. Thank god we could smoke in space now because so and so invented

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the blah blah blah. Right. You know? So,

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it’s it’s he reminds me of, like

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Oscar Wilde and how there was,

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well, sort of like a there’s a farcical. There’s a

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there’s there’s a the humorous you know, it’s

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it’s this it’s this other sort of thing that takes its

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own intelligence and seriousness in order to convey

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and still remain humorous. Mhmm. I don’t think you can do the

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one without the other because the depth,

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I don’t know, exists if you

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just throw whimsy on the wall without Right. Without the foundational

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understanding of, the intricacies of how those

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things weave together. Well, he also seemed and in

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looking at his, Wikipedia article, which I’ll read a little bit from that as well.

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He, it seemed as though he had a, to your

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point, had a knack for thinking around a corner. So

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maybe one of the reasons why I like his poetry, a, because I have a

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prejudice in favor of poetry than rhymes.

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Tennyson was a real struggle for me, I’ll admit. And most poetry is a real

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struggle for me, because it doesn’t rhyme, and I see no point in it. And

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then I’ve gotta, like, get my brain to to operate in sort of, like,

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contemplating a run on sentence, and my brain hates that. It just

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it’s friction. It’s like a little little grit rolling around in, like, the shell.

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Right? And I can do it. Like, I have the discipline for it. And I

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keep waiting for a pearl to pop out, and it just it just doesn’t. Yes.

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But with Nash, Nash is more like Eminem

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or Kanye West, where, like, they’re just making up words at the end to fit

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to your point to fit a rhyming scheme. And I think that actually is

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more requires more creativity than

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sort of the more prose versus

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nature. I I don’t know. Am I wrong in that? Because I’m not a I’m

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not a poetry guy. It is you know, it it’s

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some some men like no salt for their affair.

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Other men live on straight pepper diets. It’s really like what is

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I mean, look at E. E. Cummings. Look at so many

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poets who it’s it’s not necessarily the genre

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or the verse or the stylings that it’s like you

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know, just like, who’s the splatter

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poet? Oh, Jackson Pollock. Jackson Pollock. I mean,

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Jackson Pollock could could paint an exact replica of

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you. Oh, yeah. But he arrived at

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that. Do you know what I mean? So it’s like Ogden

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Nash had to go through all of the copy and all of

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that because that provided all of the insight and all the

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knowledge and all the, like like, the he got, like, a a a,

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like, a a doctorate in

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what makes people tick Right. And and

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contributing to that. So, I mean, there’s there’s so

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stylistically, I think it’s kind of whatever

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kinda comes out of the you know, I think most writers,

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you know, would say that I mean, it’s coming from somewhere. They’re just kind of

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like the you know, they’re just the channel or the The channel. Vessel. You know?

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Yeah. Yeah. But Well, that’s okay. So that’s interesting.

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So, like, Stephen King on writing. We’ve talked about on writing before on

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this. I met Stephen King before. So let me not let

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me not mention him again other than say his name there. Many

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writers I was actually just looking up something the other day, and I was trying

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to find, like, Ernest Hemingway quotes about writing. Right? You

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know? And Hemingway

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believed that talking about writing killed

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it. And so he would he didn’t really like talking about writing.

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Right? And a lot of writers believe that. Right? Because, like, he’s walking

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around with f Scott Fitzgerald, and that guy’s wackadoo anyway.

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And so, like, you know, like, the less you get f

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Scott to talk about writing, the more maybe he’ll actually go out and do the

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act of writing. And so that imprinted on Hemingway, I think, very young, and he

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was like, oh, I’m gonna take that lesson. But

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poets seem to be

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they seem to operate in general versus prose writers. And

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Tennyson is one of those guys that sort of is a crossover guy. Right? So

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he’s the Allen Iverson of, like, all of this.

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But and and probably Shakespeare too, writing sonnets,

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then going off in writing plays. But the

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the mental switch you have to do

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to write verse and then to go

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back into into write, and to write

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prose seems to me

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to be not innate. That seems to be

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something you really have to struggle at or you really have to learn. Is is

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that am I onto something here? My my my

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experience my experience writing poetry, it’s it is interesting because you

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talked about spoke about songs. And it’s I’ve been writing

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poems and songs for,

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you know, twenty year over twenty years, and

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none of my poems are like songs.

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You know? Do you know what I mean? So it’s like this weird there is

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this weird it’s like I can look at something that’s eight lines

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and say, oh, that was supposed to be a song. Or look at it and

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go, oh, no. That’s a that’s a poem. Absolutely. And so and when

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I look at my own writing, it is clear as day if there’s a

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distinction between the two. Now what’s motivating

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it? And and

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back to your point about, like, the stock, I often would write

234
00:14:50,415 –> 00:14:53,935
things in chunks. Okay. So I would write,

235
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like, 10 songs in one sitting or write, like,

236
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25 poems in the course of, like, you know, a six hour

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period. Okay. You know? So there’s a lot of times I would chunk

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the work. Right. And a lot of times,

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it was basically starting off with an idea, and

240
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then that idea became five or

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six different things. Oh, okay. To kinda, like, pick and choose the best

242
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one out of that. Okay. Because that’s more of along the lines of,

243
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like, Anne Lamott, who did a book called Bird

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by Bird. Okay. It’s it’s incredible. I’ve I I I recommend it

245
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to to anyone who’s aspiring to writing or just to wanna

246
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read a good book around writing. She’s really hysterical. She’s also in recovery

247
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and and talks about her son a lot.

248
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And one of the,

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you know, she she one of her exercises is you start with an imaginary

250
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picture, and then you just frame. You just you

251
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just create a frame, and then what do you see in the frame?

252
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And then you write that out to depth. You write the scene until

253
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and so so much of it is just about

254
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the act of writing and doing the writing.

255
00:16:11,035 –> 00:16:14,655
So I’m not sure if, you know, Ogden

256
00:16:14,715 –> 00:16:18,475
Nash was like, I’m gonna sit down and write a poem called oldest for

257
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books. Right. And then kind of came up with

258
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this, which because he came from the

259
00:16:25,250 –> 00:16:29,029
copy world, very much, well, could have been the situation.

260
00:16:29,649 –> 00:16:33,089
Right. Well, like you said, thank I can thank you for smoking. We’re gonna smoke

261
00:16:33,089 –> 00:16:36,149
in space, and then we’ll work backwards from there. It’s fine.

262
00:16:38,195 –> 00:16:40,935
Well, in marketing writing so this is the thing. So we covered

263
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David Ogilvy’s great book. So we’re throwing out books

264
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here. Gosh. In an episode earlier

265
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earlier this year, the beginning of this year called the Confessions of an Advertising Man.

266
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Right? And Ogilvy’s writing

267
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and we don’t cover business books on this podcast. We just we just don’t. That’s

268
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not something that we do. But Ogilvy’s writing

269
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is so

270
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much like fictional prose

271
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even though he’s giving facts.

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But you see how he came up with advertising copy in the sixties and

273
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‘7. Like, he was he was a giant of advertising copy. So the show Mad

274
00:17:22,470 –> 00:17:26,230
Men is based off of David Oglebay. Yeah. That’s the guy. That’s the

275
00:17:26,230 –> 00:17:29,610
guy. He’s the guy. Like, when he says,

276
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you know, we’re pitching this in this

277
00:17:34,025 –> 00:17:37,784
particular way or one of his great one of his great lines in the book

278
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is, oh, yeah. Check your parks in all of your cities. You’ll

279
00:17:41,544 –> 00:17:44,720
find no statues to committees. That’s brilliant.

280
00:17:45,340 –> 00:17:48,940
That’s that’s brilliant. That’s brilliant. Or,

281
00:17:48,940 –> 00:17:52,640
like, if you look at any Life magazine or Time magazine

282
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between, like, 1962 and 1982, he

283
00:17:56,860 –> 00:18:00,375
probably wrote the copy for all of those ads you’re reading.

284
00:18:00,755 –> 00:18:04,515
Mhmm. Cigarettes, bourbon, cars

285
00:18:04,515 –> 00:18:07,955
within, the American, like, post war

286
00:18:07,955 –> 00:18:11,635
dream. He created all of that in market. And so you all he almost

287
00:18:11,635 –> 00:18:14,539
had no choice but to become at least a cursory

288
00:18:15,320 –> 00:18:19,000
sort of superficial I I know this is an oxymoron, but, like, a

289
00:18:19,000 –> 00:18:22,780
superficial expert Yeah. On myriad

290
00:18:22,919 –> 00:18:26,679
of of of goods that people are consuming. So you get

291
00:18:26,679 –> 00:18:30,414
inside the human psyche. Right. And and you

292
00:18:30,414 –> 00:18:33,615
play around in there. That’s that box you’re talking about. Like, that’s that frame. The

293
00:18:33,615 –> 00:18:37,294
frame is, like, just a little tiny piece. I love that. The frame is a

294
00:18:37,294 –> 00:18:40,014
tiny piece of the human psyche, and then you just jump into that. And he

295
00:18:40,014 –> 00:18:43,029
used to always say, I I don’t know if he wrote it in Confessions of

296
00:18:43,029 –> 00:18:46,870
an Advertising Man or his second book, Old Beyond Advertising. You should get

297
00:18:46,870 –> 00:18:50,169
both of those. If you don’t care about advertising, you should get them because, like,

298
00:18:50,230 –> 00:18:53,669
my god, the writing is just insane. But, but,

299
00:18:54,985 –> 00:18:58,745
he said that, people would always ask him, like, how do you write? And he

300
00:18:58,745 –> 00:19:02,585
would say, oh, I go into my office with, with a bottle

301
00:19:02,585 –> 00:19:06,424
of bourbon, a glass, a notebook, and a, and a number

302
00:19:06,424 –> 00:19:10,190
two pencil, and I come out and there’s stuff. And

303
00:19:10,190 –> 00:19:13,790
I’m like, that’s that’s brilliant. No. I would I

304
00:19:13,790 –> 00:19:16,430
can’t I can’t write with bourbon. I can’t write on bourbon. I’ve tried. I can’t

305
00:19:16,430 –> 00:19:19,790
write on bourbon. It doesn’t work for me. Well, I said, who’s who’s who is

306
00:19:19,790 –> 00:19:22,930
it, I guess, may it may have been,

307
00:19:24,764 –> 00:19:28,304
you know, work drunk edit sober, whoever that was.

308
00:19:29,325 –> 00:19:32,684
But that’s a some some famous writer said that. I’ll

309
00:19:33,085 –> 00:19:36,670
it might have been Cormac McCarthy. That’s usually something he would he would he would

310
00:19:36,670 –> 00:19:40,030
advocate for. Anyway, I can’t put that on the man. I can’t. But

311
00:19:40,030 –> 00:19:43,550
anyway, I I don’t know for sure. We’ll we’ll look that up. But my point

312
00:19:43,550 –> 00:19:47,310
is, like, Dolby was brilliant, and Nash came out of that

313
00:19:47,310 –> 00:19:51,054
that era of time when the model a and the model t

314
00:19:51,054 –> 00:19:54,575
were really coming into the forefront. And so there were new these new products and

315
00:19:54,575 –> 00:19:57,635
goods and services that needed to be sold to people,

316
00:19:58,095 –> 00:20:01,855
and radio was the primary way of selling it.

317
00:20:01,855 –> 00:20:05,669
So you had to build just like with podcasting, you

318
00:20:05,669 –> 00:20:09,269
had to build a story for people that they could connect

319
00:20:09,269 –> 00:20:12,549
with. And by the way, these people were way the hell more literate even than

320
00:20:12,549 –> 00:20:15,049
we are. Like, we’re, you know, a hundred years into

321
00:20:16,070 –> 00:20:19,610
overwhelmingly being an overwhelming visual culture.

322
00:20:19,990 –> 00:20:23,105
These people were not. They were coming out of an overwhelmingly

323
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literate culture. Like, everybody knew the bible back and forth whether they

324
00:20:27,245 –> 00:20:31,025
believed in it or not wasn’t relevant. They knew it. And

325
00:20:31,565 –> 00:20:35,005
they read novels. Novels were designed to be read out

326
00:20:35,005 –> 00:20:37,970
loud, and the new medium of radio

327
00:20:39,390 –> 00:20:42,610
was wrecking everything by creating

328
00:20:43,310 –> 00:20:47,150
real time, information for folks. And,

329
00:20:47,150 –> 00:20:50,590
of course, advertisers were doing as they are doing right now with the

330
00:20:50,590 –> 00:20:54,245
Internet and with AI and every other freaking thing. They were

331
00:20:54,245 –> 00:20:57,865
using it just to sell people more stuff and to separate them from their money.

332
00:20:58,325 –> 00:21:02,165
Well, it’s kind of the beginning of consumerism. Yeah.

333
00:21:02,165 –> 00:21:05,390
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The twenties and thirties? Oh, yeah. I mean, that kinda got a

334
00:21:05,390 –> 00:21:08,690
dent into it. It was a dent was laid into it with the great depression.

335
00:21:08,750 –> 00:21:11,630
But, yeah, in the in the twenties in The United States, people were spending like

336
00:21:11,630 –> 00:21:15,390
drunken sailors. At least that’s

337
00:21:15,390 –> 00:21:18,665
the myth. That’s the myth that we’re told. But it it it it just it’s

338
00:21:18,665 –> 00:21:22,505
kinda it’s so congruent with that because it’s sing songy. It’s

339
00:21:22,505 –> 00:21:25,945
fun. It’s new. It’s like you’re saying. It’s whimsical. Mhmm. It’s

340
00:21:25,945 –> 00:21:29,545
memorable. And so you have like you’re saying, I

341
00:21:29,545 –> 00:21:33,360
mean, you know, like you were saying earlier, it all kinda checks out. You know,

342
00:21:33,360 –> 00:21:36,580
it was it was the zeitgeist at the time was moving this direction,

343
00:21:37,440 –> 00:21:41,200
and Ogden Nash, you know, he was part of it. Part of the zeitgeist at

344
00:21:41,200 –> 00:21:44,640
the time. That’s funny. I do. I do like that word

345
00:21:44,640 –> 00:21:48,254
zeitgeist. I do. I must admit I like that word. Archibald MacLeish says in

346
00:21:48,254 –> 00:21:52,014
his introduction to, to this book of poetry and I

347
00:21:52,014 –> 00:21:55,375
wanna read this because we’re talking about verse, and then we’ll go we’ll go back

348
00:21:55,375 –> 00:21:59,215
to the back to another poem. But he says verse, as distinguished from

349
00:21:59,215 –> 00:22:02,510
prose, is a form of composition founded on the line.

350
00:22:02,809 –> 00:22:06,330
Even what used to be called a quote, unquote free verse, particularly what used to

351
00:22:06,330 –> 00:22:09,309
be called quote, unquote free verse, I don’t know why that’s

352
00:22:10,410 –> 00:22:14,174
that’s twice, is composed of lines. In prose,

353
00:22:14,174 –> 00:22:18,014
the basic element of structure is the sentence. In verse, the sentence makes its

354
00:22:18,014 –> 00:22:21,534
peace with the line where the whole thing collapses. In

355
00:22:21,534 –> 00:22:25,375
prose, the hearing ear pays no attention to the lines end at the margin of

356
00:22:25,375 –> 00:22:28,840
the page. In verse, it is the lines end the ear is

357
00:22:28,840 –> 00:22:32,680
waiting for, close quote. I thought

358
00:22:32,680 –> 00:22:34,920
that was and and, actually, that kind of broke brought it home for me a

359
00:22:34,920 –> 00:22:38,635
little bit for why I like NASH because it just sort of it

360
00:22:38,635 –> 00:22:41,115
it hangs there, but then it rhymes with the next thing. And so it kinda

361
00:22:41,115 –> 00:22:44,875
brings you mentally it it sort of mentally dominoes it for you,

362
00:22:44,875 –> 00:22:48,715
and then it, like, closes at the end versus something that’s free

363
00:22:48,715 –> 00:22:51,995
verse where you’re just sort of wandering around at the end of a cul de

364
00:22:51,995 –> 00:22:55,750
sac. Yeah. It’s kinda like, you know, total music versus

365
00:22:55,750 –> 00:22:59,270
atonal music or, you know, pop music versus you know, there’s

366
00:22:59,270 –> 00:23:03,030
there’s, it’s it’s

367
00:23:03,110 –> 00:23:06,570
it and and to go through, like, different phases and stages

368
00:23:06,870 –> 00:23:10,605
because, it, I mean, if correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s

369
00:23:10,605 –> 00:23:12,065
in the first isn’t

370
00:23:14,284 –> 00:23:17,725
machinery doesn’t answer. But

371
00:23:17,725 –> 00:23:20,304
that’s that’s that’s written in a

372
00:23:21,710 –> 00:23:25,390
a prosy. But it it it It yeah. It’s

373
00:23:25,390 –> 00:23:29,170
written in a prosy kind of styles. Yeah. Form.

374
00:23:29,230 –> 00:23:32,110
But, yeah, I guess it but in the same sense, it’s

375
00:23:33,070 –> 00:23:35,075
it it rhymes. Right.

376
00:23:38,335 –> 00:23:42,095
Definitely rhymes. It rhymes, which, I mean, to me, again, I I like

377
00:23:42,095 –> 00:23:45,855
my I I and you know what? My kids tell me that I have a,

378
00:23:46,174 –> 00:23:49,630
I have a terrible ear, but I I do like my

379
00:23:49,630 –> 00:23:53,470
poetry to rhyme. I don’t know. I’m a terrible person.

380
00:23:53,470 –> 00:23:56,690
It’s but it’s it’s it’s no. Insaniacs?

381
00:23:58,350 –> 00:24:01,775
Come on. Yeah. It’s a tremendous

382
00:24:01,915 –> 00:24:05,675
word. It is a tremendous word. Well, and to your

383
00:24:05,675 –> 00:24:08,015
point, like, the idea that

384
00:24:09,515 –> 00:24:13,115
you would make up a word, right, in

385
00:24:13,115 –> 00:24:16,740
order to just to get a rhyme.

386
00:24:16,740 –> 00:24:20,580
Just to like like, that takes that takes a certain level

387
00:24:20,580 –> 00:24:23,380
of just commitment to

388
00:24:26,179 –> 00:24:29,895
and this comes from the copy world, the advertising world. This takes a certain

389
00:24:29,895 –> 00:24:33,575
level of commitment to for want of a better term,

390
00:24:33,575 –> 00:24:37,415
and if you’re listening to this in a in a in a car with

391
00:24:37,415 –> 00:24:41,175
a child, you know, mark this and then mute it and

392
00:24:41,175 –> 00:24:43,675
come right back. But it takes a certain level of

393
00:24:44,690 –> 00:24:46,470
willingness to fuck with the audience.

394
00:24:48,370 –> 00:24:52,210
Yeah. You know? And and and

395
00:24:52,210 –> 00:24:55,890
I think that’s what would exhaust certain people who like more of the free

396
00:24:55,890 –> 00:24:59,664
verse kind of poetry because it’s a little

397
00:24:59,664 –> 00:25:02,885
it’s a little more like, oh, serious, literary,

398
00:25:04,625 –> 00:25:08,465
Alastair Begg. You know? Whereas, like, Ogden

399
00:25:08,465 –> 00:25:11,524
Nash is more like, I don’t know, Laurel and Hardy.

400
00:25:12,990 –> 00:25:16,590
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because of yeah. So let’s move

401
00:25:16,590 –> 00:25:20,290
let’s move on to, what’s the next one? Every day is a Monday.

402
00:25:20,750 –> 00:25:23,630
Every day is a Monday. Yeah. Let’s move on to that one. Let’s take a

403
00:25:23,630 –> 00:25:27,330
look at that. Back to the book, back to

404
00:25:27,775 –> 00:25:31,475
the collected poetry of of of Ogden Nash.

405
00:25:31,535 –> 00:25:34,515
We’re gonna we’re gonna do this one. Every day is Monday.

406
00:25:38,175 –> 00:25:41,475
Monday is the day that everything starts all over again.

407
00:25:41,920 –> 00:25:45,360
Monday is the day when just as you are beginning to feel peaceful, you have

408
00:25:45,360 –> 00:25:48,400
to get up and get dressed to put on your old gray bonnet and drive

409
00:25:48,400 –> 00:25:51,840
down to Dover again. It is the day when life becomes

410
00:25:51,840 –> 00:25:55,620
grotesque again because it is the day when you have to face your desk

411
00:25:55,760 –> 00:25:59,535
again. When the telephone rings on Saturday or Sunday,

412
00:25:59,535 –> 00:26:03,295
you are pleased because it probably means something pleasing, and you take the call

413
00:26:03,295 –> 00:26:06,595
with agility. But when it rings on any other day,

414
00:26:07,055 –> 00:26:09,715
it just usually means some additional responsibility.

415
00:26:11,030 –> 00:26:14,710
And if in doubt, why the best thing to do is to answer it in

416
00:26:14,710 –> 00:26:17,990
a foreign accent, or if you are a foreigner, answer it in a native accent

417
00:26:17,990 –> 00:26:21,750
and say you are out. Oh, there is not a weekday

418
00:26:21,750 –> 00:26:25,365
moment that can’t ring a sigh from you because you are always being

419
00:26:25,365 –> 00:26:29,205
confronted with people who want to sell you something. Or if they don’t want

420
00:26:29,205 –> 00:26:32,345
to sell you something, there is something they want to buy from you.

421
00:26:33,205 –> 00:26:36,965
And every shining hour swaggers arrogantly up to you demanding to be

422
00:26:36,965 –> 00:26:40,800
improved. And apparently, not only to improve it, but also to shine

423
00:26:40,800 –> 00:26:44,640
it is what you are behooved. Oh, for a remedy. Oh, for

424
00:26:44,640 –> 00:26:48,400
a panacea. Oh, for a something. Oh, yes. Oh, for a comma

425
00:26:48,400 –> 00:26:51,745
or a swoon. Yes, indeed. Or

426
00:26:52,044 –> 00:26:55,645
oh, for a coma that would last from 9AM on

427
00:26:55,645 –> 00:26:58,625
Monday until Saturday noon.

428
00:27:00,845 –> 00:27:04,220
So so he uses he uses comma

429
00:27:04,220 –> 00:27:05,279
and coma.

430
00:27:09,259 –> 00:27:12,620
So alright. Well, you asked me my favorite. So he uses he uses

431
00:27:13,659 –> 00:27:17,415
Yeah. In, old books Yes. At the

432
00:27:17,415 –> 00:27:20,855
end of a line Yeah. And it means to cut a line in

433
00:27:20,855 –> 00:27:24,615
half. So that’s I

434
00:27:24,615 –> 00:27:28,295
thought that was really funny and and and sharp to end a

435
00:27:28,295 –> 00:27:32,059
line like that and then the the following line. That’s funny and sharp.

436
00:27:32,200 –> 00:27:35,820
The co coma and comma. Coma and comma.

437
00:27:35,960 –> 00:27:39,480
Okay. So what would like, here’s a here’s a question for us. What would Ogden

438
00:27:39,480 –> 00:27:42,380
Nash make of Twitter? Would he be a Tweeter?

439
00:27:45,685 –> 00:27:49,305
I think he would he’d be the person

440
00:27:49,365 –> 00:27:52,665
that it’s just understood that everyone follows. Right.

441
00:27:53,045 –> 00:27:55,605
Yeah. I think that guy would get lit on there. I don’t think he would

442
00:27:55,605 –> 00:27:58,740
get into literary fights with other folks. Like, I don’t think he would have, like,

443
00:27:58,820 –> 00:28:02,660
he’d be, like, chirping at, like well, I already mentioned

444
00:28:02,660 –> 00:28:06,020
Fitzgerald. I think the Fitzgerald and Dos Passos and Hemingway would all be torp

445
00:28:06,740 –> 00:28:09,780
chirping at each other, like, all the time. Like, Hemingway would just threaten to come

446
00:28:09,780 –> 00:28:11,880
over to somebody’s house and kick his ass if he was aware.

447
00:28:13,845 –> 00:28:17,525
Because that’s just how Hemingway acquired. And I think he

448
00:28:17,525 –> 00:28:21,205
would have been, like, really, really, what do you call it,

449
00:28:21,205 –> 00:28:24,885
susceptible to the dopaminergic rush of Twitter of tweeting. I

450
00:28:24,885 –> 00:28:28,330
think Fitzgerald would have been one of those people that tweets and then runs

451
00:28:28,330 –> 00:28:32,170
away. And Dos

452
00:28:32,170 –> 00:28:35,610
Passos would have tweeted, like, like, just walls of

453
00:28:35,610 –> 00:28:39,375
text. Just walls of text. Just for no reason at all.

454
00:28:39,375 –> 00:28:42,895
Just like to explain stuff. You’re just an explainer, aren’t you? I’ve I’ve

455
00:28:42,895 –> 00:28:45,875
been every single one of those people on different

456
00:28:46,735 –> 00:28:50,015
I’m not on social media anymore at all. But, like, at some point or other,

457
00:28:50,015 –> 00:28:53,350
there’s been, like, I was gonna all those dudes. Right. And it’s I don’t think

458
00:28:53,350 –> 00:28:56,010
any of them are great. No. They’re not.

459
00:28:57,750 –> 00:29:01,510
But I I sort of laugh because, like, one of my assertions on

460
00:29:01,510 –> 00:29:04,410
the show is that technology doesn’t

461
00:29:05,270 –> 00:29:08,885
make us what we are. It just exposes

462
00:29:09,265 –> 00:29:12,945
more of what we always were. Right? It’s just another door to

463
00:29:12,945 –> 00:29:16,784
open, like, with the LL with the large language models and the and

464
00:29:16,784 –> 00:29:20,625
the artificial intelligence models that people are using now, some of

465
00:29:20,625 –> 00:29:23,789
which they’re using to write novels and write poetry and claiming that it’s as good

466
00:29:23,789 –> 00:29:27,330
as anything that humans produce, which we’re gonna talk about that in a minute.

467
00:29:27,549 –> 00:29:30,910
But, you know, the idea

468
00:29:30,910 –> 00:29:34,350
that a large language model is going to

469
00:29:34,350 –> 00:29:38,095
somehow, you know, reveal a new level of evil in human

470
00:29:38,095 –> 00:29:41,935
beings is no. It won’t reveal a new level. Like, there’ll be

471
00:29:41,935 –> 00:29:45,375
the same old level that it’s always been. It’s just a new tool to get

472
00:29:45,375 –> 00:29:48,675
into sort of, you know, manifest that sucker in the world.

473
00:29:49,535 –> 00:29:51,909
And so I look at things like Twitter, and I think of these these these

474
00:29:51,909 –> 00:29:55,750
literary folks. And I think Ogden Nash would have been

475
00:29:55,750 –> 00:29:59,289
the fourth kind of Tweeter who who tweets really, like,

476
00:29:59,590 –> 00:30:03,270
quirky not quirky. He would have been the Norm

477
00:30:03,270 –> 00:30:06,835
Macdonald of Twitter. Norm Macdonald, when he was alive, he tweeted one

478
00:30:06,835 –> 00:30:10,595
tweet every year, and everybody, like, waited for it, and then he just walked

479
00:30:10,595 –> 00:30:13,735
away. And it was, like, the most brilliant move ever

480
00:30:14,755 –> 00:30:18,270
because it’s so, like, I don’t need this.

481
00:30:19,050 –> 00:30:22,030
But, apparently, you people do, so I’ll throw you,

482
00:30:23,610 –> 00:30:27,130
like, brick top in a Yeah. In a in in a what was that movie

483
00:30:27,130 –> 00:30:30,745
way back in the day? A a a snatch. Snatch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When

484
00:30:30,745 –> 00:30:33,385
I throw a dog a bone, I don’t wanna know how it tastes. I just

485
00:30:33,385 –> 00:30:36,905
want you to say thank you. Yeah. It it’s

486
00:30:38,185 –> 00:30:42,030
I like, sorry. You might have to edit this out.

487
00:30:42,030 –> 00:30:45,630
I’ve I’ve I’ve there’s there’s one thing that I want to say and talk about,

488
00:30:45,630 –> 00:30:49,470
but it’s it keeps sort of escaping me. Okay. Well,

489
00:30:49,470 –> 00:30:52,670
just talk around talk through it, and we’ll get to it. Wait. We’ll get there.

490
00:30:52,670 –> 00:30:56,485
We’ll get there. One of the things that

491
00:30:56,485 –> 00:31:00,325
you see about that is Every day is a Monday. Yes. Every

492
00:31:00,325 –> 00:31:03,625
day So these are all, like, these are all very, like, relatable things

493
00:31:04,005 –> 00:31:07,525
Right. That people can see. And so when you see a reflection of

494
00:31:07,525 –> 00:31:11,350
yourself in someone else’s artwork or words, there is something

495
00:31:11,350 –> 00:31:14,870
that is, that does have an effect. I don’t know if that’s

496
00:31:14,870 –> 00:31:18,630
inspiring. You feel heard, related to. So there is

497
00:31:18,630 –> 00:31:22,330
also, like, the human condition Mhmm. Element of

498
00:31:22,924 –> 00:31:26,525
the so very, very similar to what you’re saying is, like, say

499
00:31:26,525 –> 00:31:30,044
Harper’s Weekly. Okay. He has a he has a residency, and

500
00:31:30,044 –> 00:31:33,405
so every issue he has for the year or whatever. And so

501
00:31:33,405 –> 00:31:36,765
people, you you start to grab fans that way, and

502
00:31:37,005 –> 00:31:40,399
Right. You grab the inside of the author as well.

503
00:31:40,399 –> 00:31:44,080
So, you

504
00:31:44,080 –> 00:31:45,779
know Well, I I think

505
00:31:50,255 –> 00:31:53,774
if you’re a guy like Ogden Nash and you’re

506
00:31:53,774 –> 00:31:57,294
writing rhyming verse and by the way, you’re getting famous for

507
00:31:57,294 –> 00:32:00,815
this because you’re getting famous during a time where, like, this is what

508
00:32:00,815 –> 00:32:04,630
people want. Right? Like, you’re giving the people what they want. Right? It’s one

509
00:32:04,630 –> 00:32:08,250
of those, right place, right time

510
00:32:08,790 –> 00:32:12,549
sort of moments. Right? You meet you meet the time. You meet the technology, which

511
00:32:12,549 –> 00:32:15,929
is radio. You meet your own

512
00:32:15,990 –> 00:32:19,830
talent. I don’t

513
00:32:20,365 –> 00:32:23,164
I’m gonna go very Joe Rogan here for a minute. I’m gonna, like, kinda lower

514
00:32:23,164 –> 00:32:26,284
my voice and stare off into the ether. You’ll hear you’ll hear it on you’ll

515
00:32:26,284 –> 00:32:29,725
hear it on the show. I’ll pull a Joe Rogan moment. I don’t think that,

516
00:32:29,725 –> 00:32:32,065
like, people

517
00:32:33,640 –> 00:32:37,240
really understand how this works, man. I think it’s just a

518
00:32:37,240 –> 00:32:38,060
big mystery.

519
00:32:40,920 –> 00:32:44,320
The the the creation of Yeah.

520
00:32:44,680 –> 00:32:48,520
The idea? Like, the creation of the idea. Like, I think it’s just,

521
00:32:48,520 –> 00:32:52,335
like, a huge no one really understands, man. Like, it’s

522
00:32:52,335 –> 00:32:55,554
just You get low?

523
00:33:00,735 –> 00:33:04,414
Oh, so that that that was terrible. Don’t don’t bother Joe with

524
00:33:04,414 –> 00:33:07,909
any of this, for listeners that we all have. No. Don’t bother Joe.

525
00:33:08,230 –> 00:33:11,909
No. I think that when time,

526
00:33:11,909 –> 00:33:15,269
technology, and talent meet each other, you’re in the right place at the right time,

527
00:33:15,269 –> 00:33:18,870
you have the right technology, and you have your talent there. Something something amazing happens,

528
00:33:18,870 –> 00:33:21,545
and I think that that was what happened for Nash. I think that for a

529
00:33:21,545 –> 00:33:25,065
lot of other poets, it doesn’t happen like that. Like Charles

530
00:33:25,065 –> 00:33:27,325
Portis, the writer, right, who wrote,

531
00:33:28,825 –> 00:33:32,125
oh, what the freaking movie with

532
00:33:33,710 –> 00:33:37,250
Rooster Cogburn in it and Maddie Ross. True Grit.

533
00:33:37,390 –> 00:33:41,150
Right? True Grit. Okay. True Grit is one of

534
00:33:41,150 –> 00:33:44,770
those books that when you look at the history of Charles Portis,

535
00:33:45,565 –> 00:33:47,505
Portis wrote in one fell swoop.

536
00:33:49,725 –> 00:33:52,945
He he had a background as a,

537
00:33:54,205 –> 00:33:57,805
oh, he had a background as a he was a

538
00:33:57,805 –> 00:34:01,025
newspaper guy. Right? And he was gonna go to London.

539
00:34:02,180 –> 00:34:05,940
And, and, he went to London for,

540
00:34:05,940 –> 00:34:08,739
like, two days and was like, I don’t wanna write from here. He went back

541
00:34:08,739 –> 00:34:12,340
home. I was like, this

542
00:34:12,340 –> 00:34:15,645
sucks. And he quit, and he told everybody he was gonna quit and write a

543
00:34:15,645 –> 00:34:19,085
novel. And most of the time, people tell you they’re gonna quit and go do

544
00:34:19,085 –> 00:34:22,385
something, like, creative. You’re like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever.

545
00:34:23,805 –> 00:34:27,405
But, who’s the guy who wrote bonfire of the vanities? Tom’s Tom Wolf. Tom

546
00:34:27,405 –> 00:34:31,219
Wolf knew him. And Tom Wolf was like, the son of a bitch. I’m

547
00:34:31,219 –> 00:34:34,580
cursing a lot of this episode. But the son of a bitch went to Arkansas,

548
00:34:34,580 –> 00:34:38,280
and he did it. He wrote a freaking novel. Wow.

549
00:34:38,739 –> 00:34:41,219
It was, like, the only novel that Charles well, not the only novel. It was,

550
00:34:41,219 –> 00:34:43,780
like, his most famous novel. I think he wrote, like, two or three more after

551
00:34:43,780 –> 00:34:47,215
that. And then that was it. Like, he lived off of, like, true

552
00:34:47,215 –> 00:34:50,735
grit and the royalties from both of the movies and, like, a

553
00:34:50,735 –> 00:34:54,495
cabin in Arkansas for, like, the rest of his life. And he didn’t do

554
00:34:54,495 –> 00:34:58,010
interviews. He didn’t talk about his book. He just

555
00:34:58,230 –> 00:35:00,790
he’s like, he pulled a JD Salinger. He just, like, went off into the woods

556
00:35:00,790 –> 00:35:04,470
and just like Sounds sounds awesome. Well, Tom Wolf was

557
00:35:04,470 –> 00:35:08,310
angry angry. He was angry because he’s like, yeah. I have

558
00:35:08,310 –> 00:35:11,895
to write all these freaking books. Like, a lot of

559
00:35:11,895 –> 00:35:15,575
books. Like, a lot of books. A lot of books, dude. So many

560
00:35:15,575 –> 00:35:19,415
page books are so big. Oh my god. A man in full is,

561
00:35:19,415 –> 00:35:23,175
like, this huge, dude. It’s huge. It’s huge. And he’s like

562
00:35:23,175 –> 00:35:26,920
that that he did. He that that’s a direct quote. That’s so so it’s

563
00:35:26,920 –> 00:35:30,360
worth it. It’s like it’s like a writer’s dream. Like, who does

564
00:35:30,360 –> 00:35:33,960
that? I think

565
00:35:33,960 –> 00:35:37,720
Ogden Nash was like that, but, like, for poets. Like, he

566
00:35:38,015 –> 00:35:41,615
so he liked baseball. He wrote poetry about baseball and

567
00:35:41,615 –> 00:35:45,375
baseball games. He liked the Baltimore Colts, and so he was able to do

568
00:35:45,375 –> 00:35:49,135
some some some, some poetry and some writing for them. He

569
00:35:49,135 –> 00:35:52,819
married once. He had one daughter. He he didn’t

570
00:35:52,940 –> 00:35:55,519
doesn’t seem as though he had any deep, dark

571
00:35:56,460 –> 00:36:00,059
stuff going on. You know? He seemed to, like, keep his stuff at home,

572
00:36:00,059 –> 00:36:03,900
which, you know, typically I guess, people of that generation, that’s where they he’s

573
00:36:03,900 –> 00:36:07,019
part of the silent generation, so that’s part of that’s kinda what they did. They

574
00:36:07,019 –> 00:36:10,755
didn’t to paraphrase for Tony Soprano, they didn’t cut

575
00:36:10,755 –> 00:36:12,455
themselves and bleed all over the place.

576
00:36:16,515 –> 00:36:19,955
You know, Gary Cooper, the strong silent type. You know, you don’t put Gary Cooper

577
00:36:19,955 –> 00:36:23,069
on a couch. You don’t wanna you don’t wanna get him talking. You want him

578
00:36:23,069 –> 00:36:26,750
to stay quiet. But I think But

579
00:36:26,750 –> 00:36:30,510
but but to add to this, what what what I wanted to add,

580
00:36:30,990 –> 00:36:34,825
is he kept at it. Yeah. He did. Like, regardless

581
00:36:35,204 –> 00:36:39,045
of it seems like he was, like, figuring out what worked,

582
00:36:39,045 –> 00:36:42,345
but, like, he just he did keep at the practice

583
00:36:42,724 –> 00:36:46,345
Yep. The actual practice of the physical sitting down and doing the writing.

584
00:36:46,565 –> 00:36:50,300
Right. The the the the putting in the work. The work. Right? Yeah. What’s

585
00:36:50,300 –> 00:36:53,200
his name in the war of art, you know, talks about this.

586
00:36:54,220 –> 00:36:57,020
I think I recommended that book to you. Oh, yeah. I read it. Yeah. Yeah.

587
00:36:57,020 –> 00:37:00,540
Yeah. Yeah. And, like, you know, he’s talking all and that’s, you know, that that

588
00:37:00,540 –> 00:37:04,375
book is Steven Pressfield. That’s, like, the greatest book ever about the

589
00:37:04,375 –> 00:37:08,214
resistance. Greatest book ever. You know? Because resistance just shows

590
00:37:08,214 –> 00:37:11,734
up everywhere. Like, this, this this business

591
00:37:11,734 –> 00:37:14,775
project I just I just killed, right, that I was telling you about before we

592
00:37:14,775 –> 00:37:18,290
hit record. Right? Like, there’s all kinds of resistance in there.

593
00:37:18,670 –> 00:37:22,510
And I’m just like, I don’t I don’t feel like dealing with this. I’m just

594
00:37:22,510 –> 00:37:26,270
gonna kill it. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s nice to get

595
00:37:26,270 –> 00:37:28,910
to a place too that you can do that with minimal,

596
00:37:30,145 –> 00:37:33,985
collateral damage. Mineral yeah. Minimal blowback. Yeah. I mean, oh, don’t

597
00:37:33,985 –> 00:37:36,405
get me wrong. There is blowback, but, like, it’s not

598
00:37:37,985 –> 00:37:40,545
You still have a place to live. I still have a place to live. Right.

599
00:37:40,545 –> 00:37:43,345
Well okay. So I have never said this on the show before, but one of

600
00:37:43,345 –> 00:37:46,730
the things that I live by and I think you and I have talked about

601
00:37:46,730 –> 00:37:49,290
this kind of a little bit offline. But one of the things that I live

602
00:37:49,290 –> 00:37:52,250
by, because I’ve got kids and a wife, and I talk about my kids sometimes

603
00:37:52,250 –> 00:37:55,609
on the show and, you know, whatever, because it’s my life.

604
00:37:55,609 –> 00:37:59,275
Right? And I think leaders

605
00:37:59,355 –> 00:38:03,055
finally, we’re getting to a leadership lesson in this show. But I think leaders

606
00:38:03,355 –> 00:38:07,035
probably should take heed from this or heed to this or pay heed to this,

607
00:38:07,035 –> 00:38:10,555
not take heed pay heed to this. But I’ve tried to construct a life where

608
00:38:10,555 –> 00:38:13,950
if I fail, my kids aren’t out on the street.

609
00:38:15,450 –> 00:38:18,830
You know? Like, if I fail, it’s on me,

610
00:38:19,530 –> 00:38:22,890
and my kid isn’t living in a cardboard box because I made a

611
00:38:22,890 –> 00:38:26,645
mistake. Like, I get it that some people can

612
00:38:26,645 –> 00:38:29,525
handle that kind of pressure, and I get it that some people, like, they thrive

613
00:38:29,525 –> 00:38:33,065
underneath that. I

614
00:38:33,765 –> 00:38:37,525
it’s not a matter of not trusting myself. It’s a matter of I

615
00:38:37,525 –> 00:38:41,250
don’t want to experience that. It’s a it’s not a matter of

616
00:38:41,250 –> 00:38:44,690
trust. I don’t I don’t want that. And in a in a world with a

617
00:38:44,690 –> 00:38:47,670
plethora of available options,

618
00:38:48,770 –> 00:38:52,130
and in the in the country that I live in, in The United States, with

619
00:38:52,130 –> 00:38:55,270
the ability to pick from those options, I can pick the option

620
00:38:55,914 –> 00:38:59,214
of not experiencing that consciously and intentionally

621
00:38:59,835 –> 00:39:03,595
and everything that goes along with that. And maybe that means to to your

622
00:39:03,595 –> 00:39:06,315
point about putting in the work, maybe that means I put in the work I’m

623
00:39:06,315 –> 00:39:09,750
looking on my I’m working on my fourth book right now. I put in my

624
00:39:09,910 –> 00:39:13,590
put in the work, and, you know, I might self publish six, seven,

625
00:39:13,590 –> 00:39:17,350
eight books before, like, anybody cares because there’s just a long

626
00:39:17,350 –> 00:39:21,030
enough timeline Mhmm. Before I, like, hit the thing because I had to

627
00:39:21,030 –> 00:39:24,805
work through all of the things I intentionally I think about this a

628
00:39:24,805 –> 00:39:28,325
lot. I I think about this a lot, particularly when I kill projects like I

629
00:39:28,325 –> 00:39:31,765
just did. They just weren’t working. It just wasn’t working. Like, why would I

630
00:39:31,765 –> 00:39:35,445
bother why would I bother putting in more effort in

631
00:39:35,445 –> 00:39:39,170
that when at the end of it, it’s just gonna

632
00:39:39,950 –> 00:39:43,230
it’s gonna suck up my whole life. It’s gonna destroy Well yeah. And and and

633
00:39:43,230 –> 00:39:46,110
and to to kinda piggyback on what you just said, it’s like it’s is that

634
00:39:46,110 –> 00:39:49,845
really how you wanna spend your time? Right. You only have so much. You know?

635
00:39:49,845 –> 00:39:52,805
And then you have family, kids, and and all this stuff, and it’s like, wow.

636
00:39:52,805 –> 00:39:55,205
It was a good idea. You know? You took it as far as it could

637
00:39:55,205 –> 00:39:59,045
go, and then also knowing when to stop is a is a

638
00:39:59,045 –> 00:40:02,740
is a huge is a huge I think, probably

639
00:40:02,740 –> 00:40:06,420
something that’s not, it’s it’s weird because there is a fine

640
00:40:06,420 –> 00:40:09,799
line between too much and not enough.

641
00:40:10,660 –> 00:40:14,420
Okay. Speaking from your particular background Mhmm. I

642
00:40:14,420 –> 00:40:17,995
don’t know if you mind me saying this in public, but as a as a

643
00:40:17,995 –> 00:40:21,755
as a it’s is it is it like a former marine or

644
00:40:21,755 –> 00:40:24,635
an ex marine? Which one is it? A former advocate? I just say, you know,

645
00:40:24,635 –> 00:40:28,255
I’m a I’m a, I used to engage in

646
00:40:28,475 –> 00:40:31,529
in lots of psychotropic

647
00:40:31,829 –> 00:40:35,510
activity. You know, I just said, yeah, I’m an alcoholic and

648
00:40:35,510 –> 00:40:38,869
drug addict in recovery. Haven’t had a drink or drug in quite some time, and,

649
00:40:39,109 –> 00:40:42,410
yeah, I used to really, really go wild. There you go. Alright.

650
00:40:42,470 –> 00:40:46,145
So as a person who engages in

651
00:40:46,145 –> 00:40:49,985
that, what is the line or did engage in that? What is the line

652
00:40:49,985 –> 00:40:53,585
between there’s you know? Like, how do you figure that out? So

653
00:40:53,665 –> 00:40:57,265
well, I mean, if you if you wanna get to the the the,

654
00:40:57,585 –> 00:41:01,210
the physiological aspect of it. Yeah. As far as

655
00:41:01,270 –> 00:41:04,710
alcoholism, how it breaks down in the body, one of the things that it breaks

656
00:41:04,710 –> 00:41:07,130
down into is, cetaldehyde.

657
00:41:08,150 –> 00:41:11,895
Cetaldehyde is let’s just call it a a a type of sugar.

658
00:41:12,295 –> 00:41:15,995
Yeah. And sugar is creates a craving for more sugar.

659
00:41:16,455 –> 00:41:20,235
And we all know this because we eat candy. And so the

660
00:41:21,175 –> 00:41:23,675
genetic makeup of the nonalcoholic

661
00:41:25,015 –> 00:41:28,680
processes acetaldehyde quickly, that

662
00:41:28,680 –> 00:41:31,980
it exits through your sweat, your urine, feces, the whole night.

663
00:41:32,520 –> 00:41:35,980
The not or the alcoholic, like, cannot

664
00:41:36,119 –> 00:41:39,915
expel acetaldehyde at the rate that it consumes it.

665
00:41:40,155 –> 00:41:43,775
So it builds up and builds up and builds up. And that’s essentially, like,

666
00:41:43,995 –> 00:41:47,515
what’s creating the compulsion to keep drinking because you’re not

667
00:41:47,515 –> 00:41:51,115
expelling acetaldehyde. So you just have this mass kind of

668
00:41:51,115 –> 00:41:54,635
like a magnet for Yeah. More alcohol. And that’s Yeah. Yeah.

669
00:41:54,635 –> 00:41:58,270
Yeah. Got a big chunk of, like, sugar. Yeah. So there is

670
00:41:58,270 –> 00:42:01,790
no I mean, that’s the I think that’s the the issue with, you know, addicts

671
00:42:01,790 –> 00:42:05,470
is, like, the line is nonexistent. Right. You know? And then after a

672
00:42:05,470 –> 00:42:09,164
while, it was just the line was like a coffin. Right. Right.

673
00:42:09,224 –> 00:42:12,204
Right. Yeah. Well and, actually, that’s interesting because I was

674
00:42:13,464 –> 00:42:16,924
I was telling my daughter who’s dealing with a friend of hers

675
00:42:17,545 –> 00:42:21,385
who is displaying addictive behavior around one of

676
00:42:21,385 –> 00:42:24,350
those socially acceptable addictive areas of,

677
00:42:25,130 –> 00:42:28,970
of, well, he’s a young

678
00:42:28,970 –> 00:42:32,730
man. So pornography. That’s socially acceptable. But oh, well

679
00:42:32,730 –> 00:42:35,850
well well and you say, because you and I come from a generation where it

680
00:42:35,850 –> 00:42:39,475
was hard to get, it was dirty, like all that stuff. Right? Like we

681
00:42:39,475 –> 00:42:43,315
all have that those, but now, like the first exposure that young

682
00:42:43,315 –> 00:42:46,755
men have to pornography is at eight years old. That’s

683
00:42:46,755 –> 00:42:50,355
insane. That’s absolutely insane. And it’s

684
00:42:50,355 –> 00:42:54,059
because we’re putting the phones in their hands. Like, I I I

685
00:42:54,059 –> 00:42:57,020
was at a restaurant the other day. I’ll tell you the story. I was at

686
00:42:57,020 –> 00:43:00,859
the restaurant the other day with my family. We’re sitting in

687
00:43:00,859 –> 00:43:04,619
the booth. It’s after church. Yes. I do go to church. He

688
00:43:04,619 –> 00:43:08,464
free the lord forgives me for all of my cursing. Thank you for asking.

689
00:43:11,244 –> 00:43:14,845
And, I’m sitting in the booth and I’m

690
00:43:14,845 –> 00:43:18,525
talking to my wife and talking to my kids, whatever. And we’re

691
00:43:18,525 –> 00:43:22,210
looking over into my right, at a longer table or

692
00:43:22,210 –> 00:43:25,970
four top table. Right? That’s been pushed to four top tables that pushed together.

693
00:43:25,970 –> 00:43:29,030
There’s this little kid, these two little kids.

694
00:43:29,490 –> 00:43:33,250
And, there’s a mom and a dad. Looks like it’s two families, like, eating out

695
00:43:33,250 –> 00:43:36,984
together after after church, whatever. And there’s a baby and mother stuff. Okay.

696
00:43:36,984 –> 00:43:40,525
Cool. And the little girl who can’t be more than

697
00:43:41,705 –> 00:43:45,545
three, has in front of her an

698
00:43:45,545 –> 00:43:48,905
iPhone, and she’s watching Big

699
00:43:48,905 –> 00:43:52,720
Hero six on the iPhone.

700
00:43:52,720 –> 00:43:55,600
And the and the little boy next to her, who I don’t think was a

701
00:43:55,600 –> 00:43:59,200
brother. I don’t think they were related. But the little boy next to her is

702
00:43:59,200 –> 00:44:03,040
watching, like, some Minecraft thing, and he can’t be any older than her. He’s

703
00:44:03,040 –> 00:44:06,765
like, maybe two, three. That’s where it

704
00:44:06,765 –> 00:44:10,205
starts. Like, people blame the drug dealers. I I was reading a drug

705
00:44:10,205 –> 00:44:13,724
dealer’s substack one time, and he made a good point. He’s

706
00:44:13,724 –> 00:44:17,325
like, people blame the drug dealers for the drugs that wind up in your kids’

707
00:44:17,325 –> 00:44:21,100
veins, but you’re the ones that put the iPhones in the kids’

708
00:44:21,100 –> 00:44:24,860
hands. It’s you, not me. I didn’t do that. I didn’t show I

709
00:44:24,860 –> 00:44:28,460
showed up way the hell later down the road. Yeah. Or you created the

710
00:44:28,460 –> 00:44:31,535
situation in which they felt escape

711
00:44:32,395 –> 00:44:36,155
was the, you know, the only so, you know Right. And so we now

712
00:44:36,155 –> 00:44:39,994
have a problem in this country with where children younger

713
00:44:39,994 –> 00:44:43,675
and younger, both male and females, by the way. For males, it’s eight, the

714
00:44:43,675 –> 00:44:47,520
first exposure. For women, it’s like for girls, it’s like nine to ten.

715
00:44:48,940 –> 00:44:52,700
That’s the first exposure. And then from there, like, you’re off to

716
00:44:52,700 –> 00:44:56,300
the races. Right? And so my daughter’s dealing with with a kid who’s, like, coming

717
00:44:56,300 –> 00:44:58,460
to her and saying, hey. You know, I got this problem, and I don’t know

718
00:44:58,460 –> 00:45:02,285
how to handle it. Right? And I was talking

719
00:45:02,285 –> 00:45:05,484
with my with my daughter about how to handle this because she was like, why

720
00:45:05,484 –> 00:45:08,045
don’t you go talk to him? I’m like, I don’t know this kid. You don’t

721
00:45:08,045 –> 00:45:11,345
want me to do that. That’s not that’s not the right one.

722
00:45:11,565 –> 00:45:15,184
Yeah. Like, where where is this kid’s parents?

723
00:45:15,565 –> 00:45:19,300
Yeah. They’re like, it’ll get addressed, but a whole bunch of

724
00:45:19,300 –> 00:45:22,660
other stuff will get addressed too. It’ll get addressed too. That’s right. That’s right. It’s

725
00:45:22,660 –> 00:45:25,620
gonna be a whole heap of help into that heathen. It’s gonna say that kind

726
00:45:25,620 –> 00:45:28,740
of day. And so my daughter and I are going back and forth about it,

727
00:45:28,740 –> 00:45:32,085
and we’re talking about it. This relates to the line piece. I told her, listen.

728
00:45:32,165 –> 00:45:34,345
There’s a line you can’t cross with this kid because

729
00:45:36,405 –> 00:45:39,285
you may wanna help him because you have a helping heart and you wanna be

730
00:45:39,285 –> 00:45:42,964
helpful and blah blah blah. You’re a nice person. Right? But

731
00:45:42,964 –> 00:45:46,779
if he and I told her what to do about some research and getting

732
00:45:46,779 –> 00:45:49,500
other people involved and blah blah blah. I was like, if he doesn’t take advantage

733
00:45:49,500 –> 00:45:52,539
of any of that, because he’s, like, 14 or whatever. If he doesn’t take advantage

734
00:45:52,539 –> 00:45:56,299
of any of that, he doesn’t want to be helped. Mhmm. And

735
00:45:56,299 –> 00:46:00,015
he has to hit bottom. And if he doesn’t

736
00:46:00,015 –> 00:46:03,855
know where bottom is and because it’s pornography, there is no

737
00:46:03,855 –> 00:46:07,395
bottom. It’s just an abyss. It’s just an abyss.

738
00:46:08,415 –> 00:46:12,175
Now we can assert because adults will say, who have come out of

739
00:46:12,175 –> 00:46:15,760
porn addiction, they will assert that the bottom is only

740
00:46:15,760 –> 00:46:19,119
fans or prostitution or something or, you know, whatever.

741
00:46:19,119 –> 00:46:22,960
Right? But there’s a long way to go between,

742
00:46:22,960 –> 00:46:26,805
like, 14 and that. And I said, if he doesn’t hit

743
00:46:26,805 –> 00:46:30,565
his own bottom, if he doesn’t figure out where his own line is, you

744
00:46:30,565 –> 00:46:34,325
cannot help him. You can’t be there for that. You

745
00:46:34,325 –> 00:46:38,085
have to back away from that. Yeah. I mean, until it’s it’s

746
00:46:38,085 –> 00:46:41,785
really it’s it’s just, the individual just

747
00:46:42,320 –> 00:46:45,700
acknowledging how they are spiritually bankrupt.

748
00:46:46,320 –> 00:46:49,760
Right. And how are you gonna do that if you’re 14? Yeah. You don’t know.

749
00:46:49,760 –> 00:46:52,900
You don’t have the only I have no idea what any of those words mean.

750
00:46:53,520 –> 00:46:57,350
Right. Right. And so

751
00:46:57,600 –> 00:47:00,135
and she was like, well, why don’t you just tell him that? Like, that that’s

752
00:47:00,135 –> 00:47:03,855
not gonna I’m not the guy to deliver that message. I’m I appreciate

753
00:47:03,855 –> 00:47:06,615
the fact that you’re coming to me and that you trust me to, like, do

754
00:47:06,615 –> 00:47:10,135
that. But at the end of the day, this kid, he’s gonna have to go

755
00:47:10,135 –> 00:47:12,615
to his mom and dad. And there’s some other dynamics with the mom and dad.

756
00:47:12,615 –> 00:47:16,030
I can’t get into all of it specifically, but, you know, there’s some other dynamics

757
00:47:16,030 –> 00:47:19,490
there. But at the end of the day, there still has to be a line

758
00:47:19,710 –> 00:47:22,510
for that kid, and he has to find it. And he has to figure out

759
00:47:22,510 –> 00:47:25,710
what’s on the other side of that and not make a conscious commitment and not

760
00:47:25,710 –> 00:47:28,724
go over to the other side. At least that’s what I think. Think. Now I

761
00:47:28,724 –> 00:47:32,404
might be wrong. And, you know, I’ve

762
00:47:32,404 –> 00:47:35,305
I’ve flirted with my fair share of addictive behaviors,

763
00:47:36,404 –> 00:47:40,170
in my time. But Well I don’t know. It’s

764
00:47:40,250 –> 00:47:43,690
but I hung out with my friend Seth this, past weekend, and he was like,

765
00:47:43,690 –> 00:47:46,730
ah, I don’t know. And I’ve been hanging out. I’ve been partying with Seth, not,

766
00:47:46,730 –> 00:47:49,369
you know, last couple years, but Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been I’ve known him since I

767
00:47:49,369 –> 00:47:53,145
was 15 years old. You know, we got down, and it was and he was

768
00:47:53,145 –> 00:47:56,505
he was like, I’m going to bed, man. He’s like, I he’s like, I just

769
00:47:56,745 –> 00:48:00,585
at a certain point, I just can’t drink anymore. And I was like, you

770
00:48:00,585 –> 00:48:04,025
asshole. You’re you know? Like, that’s awesome. That’s all I ever wanted. You

771
00:48:04,025 –> 00:48:07,705
know? And he started laughing and went to bed. I was like, dude, you

772
00:48:07,705 –> 00:48:10,500
gotta you struck the lottery. Right.

773
00:48:12,880 –> 00:48:16,720
It’s like, well, you’ve I didn’t know that you’re trying to, like, not

774
00:48:16,720 –> 00:48:18,099
stop. Right.

775
00:48:20,960 –> 00:48:24,755
You know? It’s Well, at what point okay. So and we’ll we’ll wrap

776
00:48:24,755 –> 00:48:27,714
this conversation. We’ll go back to the poetry, and we’ll sort of talk about leadership

777
00:48:27,714 –> 00:48:30,914
lessons from this. But I wanna ask you another question. I’ve wanted to ask you

778
00:48:30,914 –> 00:48:34,595
this for a while. So we see the

779
00:48:34,595 –> 00:48:38,210
digital dopaminergic world. Like, you recognize all of

780
00:48:38,210 –> 00:48:42,050
it. Like, the thing that drew you into addiction is

781
00:48:42,050 –> 00:48:45,410
the same reason why you’re probably not on social media. I would imagine both those

782
00:48:45,410 –> 00:48:49,250
impulses either run parallel to each other or are close. Well,

783
00:48:49,250 –> 00:48:52,845
it well, it what drew me to addiction

784
00:48:53,085 –> 00:48:56,705
I remember the first time I drank, I mean, I just remember,

785
00:48:56,845 –> 00:48:59,825
oh my god, dude. All my problems are solved.

786
00:49:00,285 –> 00:49:03,645
Right. Well I just remember thinking, like, dude, I’m gonna do this every day and

787
00:49:03,645 –> 00:49:07,330
everything’s fine. Right. She’s like 15 years old. Right. And

788
00:49:07,330 –> 00:49:10,690
just the whole life sucked. You know, my dad was a maniac and

789
00:49:10,690 –> 00:49:14,450
narcissistic and, you know, stuff. So that that was kind of the, you know, the

790
00:49:14,450 –> 00:49:15,910
escape and you know?

791
00:49:19,085 –> 00:49:22,805
And then but you’re what’s the question? Well, my my my thought is

792
00:49:23,085 –> 00:49:26,845
so as a person who recognizes and has worked through all that.

793
00:49:26,845 –> 00:49:30,365
Right? Oh, alright. You know, you can’t you’re looking you are

794
00:49:30,365 –> 00:49:34,040
now operating as a as a as a man in your approaching your

795
00:49:34,040 –> 00:49:37,260
fifties, as we were saying before we were recording, in a different kind of context.

796
00:49:37,320 –> 00:49:40,520
But you’re looking around, and you’re sitting in a restaurant just like I was this

797
00:49:40,520 –> 00:49:44,280
weekend, and you’re seeing a three year old who’s got an

798
00:49:44,280 –> 00:49:47,425
iPhone in front of her because

799
00:49:47,725 –> 00:49:51,405
that’s the thing that’s gonna distract

800
00:49:51,405 –> 00:49:55,005
her while the adults are having a conversation. But the problem

801
00:49:55,005 –> 00:49:58,525
is the people who put the content in that iPhone I see. No. I I

802
00:49:58,525 –> 00:50:02,020
see what you said. They’re designing it to push certain buttons inside of her that

803
00:50:02,020 –> 00:50:05,800
are gonna land later on for her on, like, Snapchat

804
00:50:06,020 –> 00:50:09,400
or some other godforsaken place. And then from there, it’s gonna go wherever.

805
00:50:10,260 –> 00:50:12,680
Once I hit about, I wanna say, twelve

806
00:50:14,385 –> 00:50:17,525
once I was, like, twelve years sober Mhmm.

807
00:50:18,465 –> 00:50:21,605
Like and I had some of my faculties

808
00:50:21,825 –> 00:50:24,725
back. And

809
00:50:25,820 –> 00:50:29,580
and I I don’t know. I just started to now I understand what you’re saying.

810
00:50:29,580 –> 00:50:33,180
Yeah. Because it just became it it was almost like

811
00:50:33,180 –> 00:50:36,620
wildflowers. Right. Because, so now you

812
00:50:36,620 –> 00:50:40,265
have iPhones getting smaller and smaller and more

813
00:50:40,265 –> 00:50:43,944
advanced, tablets. Yeah. The

814
00:50:43,944 –> 00:50:47,565
level of, platforms that people had exposure to.

815
00:50:48,105 –> 00:50:51,640
Then you have how, gambling

816
00:50:51,800 –> 00:50:55,640
I was just watching the gambling thing happen for, like, the last, you know, decade

817
00:50:55,640 –> 00:50:59,240
and be like, wow. This is gonna be this is gonna be interesting. And then

818
00:50:59,560 –> 00:51:03,180
Yeah. The marijuana is legal in a lot of places. And

819
00:51:03,480 –> 00:51:07,175
and so just to Like, what do you even think about that? That’s

820
00:51:07,175 –> 00:51:11,015
a whole side question there. But, anyway, sorry. Well, I I mean, I can I

821
00:51:11,015 –> 00:51:14,855
can tell my my aunt Elaine, who’s 77 years old, asked me the other

822
00:51:14,855 –> 00:51:18,695
day? She’s like, I don’t wanna she’s like, I am, like, I’m sad.

823
00:51:18,695 –> 00:51:22,450
Like, I don’t my husband’s dead. Like, I she’s like, I I

824
00:51:22,450 –> 00:51:25,910
wanna like, what’s it you know, is it I wanna go to a a dispensary.

825
00:51:25,970 –> 00:51:29,650
It’s legal. I wanna I wanna see what’s going on because and so

826
00:51:29,650 –> 00:51:33,490
then there’s the ask there there’s like that. You have, so it’s it’s all

827
00:51:33,650 –> 00:51:37,205
and a lot of it is just intention. Yeah. You know? And it

828
00:51:37,505 –> 00:51:41,265
it yeah. It’s it’s intention. So that’s that’s like, we were

829
00:51:41,265 –> 00:51:44,865
saying before, like, I’m not the the girl as I dropped that girl

830
00:51:44,865 –> 00:51:48,065
off, she was like, will you go bowling with me again? And I was like,

831
00:51:48,065 –> 00:51:51,460
sure. And then, you know, never

832
00:51:51,620 –> 00:51:54,840
but but it’s like, I don’t wanna go

833
00:51:55,460 –> 00:51:58,820
so so so the the it’s it’s really paying

834
00:51:58,820 –> 00:52:02,575
attention to the, you know, to the

835
00:52:02,575 –> 00:52:06,335
troubled areas. Yeah. You know you know, like Well, and there seem to be

836
00:52:06,335 –> 00:52:09,615
there seem to be so many places. The girl I was bartending. I met her

837
00:52:09,615 –> 00:52:13,235
at a bar. She was drinking pretty heavy on her day off.

838
00:52:13,375 –> 00:52:17,120
Like, I didn’t need to ask her out. No. No. No. No. No. That

839
00:52:17,120 –> 00:52:20,480
was probably That’s the only person in six months since I lived here that I

840
00:52:20,480 –> 00:52:24,320
hung out with outside of, like, family members. So for the evening, it was great.

841
00:52:24,320 –> 00:52:28,000
Never see her again. But Right. But also but

842
00:52:28,000 –> 00:52:31,615
it’s having it’s having the wherewith. But yeah. Well

843
00:52:31,735 –> 00:52:35,355
and I think it’s gonna become more and more difficult, particularly for

844
00:52:35,655 –> 00:52:38,155
the younger folks of us who are in our audience.

845
00:52:39,335 –> 00:52:42,315
I I do. I have I have a lot of

846
00:52:47,070 –> 00:52:47,890
I wonder

847
00:52:50,750 –> 00:52:53,490
how strong

848
00:52:55,950 –> 00:52:59,755
that ability to, well, first, the

849
00:52:59,755 –> 00:53:03,195
ability to recognize the gateway that’s going to get you down that

850
00:53:03,195 –> 00:53:06,875
road and then the ability to walk away from it

851
00:53:06,875 –> 00:53:10,415
or close that door. I wonder how good that’s gonna be in

852
00:53:12,490 –> 00:53:16,010
the in the future, like, twenty years from now. In the

853
00:53:16,010 –> 00:53:19,369
lates the the the younger millennial generation, folks who are,

854
00:53:19,369 –> 00:53:23,210
like, forty to thirty, right, or forty to thirty

855
00:53:23,210 –> 00:53:26,965
four. And then the Gen Z ers, the eighteen to thirty four year olds right

856
00:53:26,965 –> 00:53:30,485
now. I just I wonder. And then the

857
00:53:30,485 –> 00:53:34,325
generation behind them, who my youngest daughter was part of that generation and

858
00:53:34,325 –> 00:53:37,740
my youngest boy who’s, you know, eight, Like, the

859
00:53:37,740 –> 00:53:41,580
world that they are going to be stepping into is gonna

860
00:53:41,580 –> 00:53:45,280
be a world where, to your point, it’s like wildflowers. All these gateways are open

861
00:53:45,820 –> 00:53:49,484
just like wildflowers. Like, for you and I, you know,

862
00:53:49,484 –> 00:53:53,005
at the tail end of gen gen x, the tail end of the thirteenth

863
00:53:53,005 –> 00:53:56,204
generation, there were only certain doors that were open, and we knew what they were.

864
00:53:56,204 –> 00:53:59,005
Yeah. You had to search for them. You did a search for them. You did

865
00:53:59,005 –> 00:54:02,525
a little bit of work. Risky. It was kinda fun. You know? It was like

866
00:54:02,525 –> 00:54:06,060
an adventure. Yeah. But now, like, you can see that crap on

867
00:54:06,060 –> 00:54:08,700
YouTube or on and I’m I’m putting a lot of a lot of it. I

868
00:54:08,700 –> 00:54:11,099
am. I’m putting a lot of it here on social media because that’s the thing

869
00:54:11,099 –> 00:54:14,720
that we’re just exposing people to right away, but it leads to

870
00:54:15,414 –> 00:54:18,154
all of this other crap. Like, if you wanna know why

871
00:54:19,174 –> 00:54:22,535
this is not anything that I can prove, it’s just a theory I

872
00:54:22,535 –> 00:54:25,275
have, I think the ADD and the ADHD,

873
00:54:27,335 –> 00:54:31,060
diagnoses that started two generations ago came about because

874
00:54:31,200 –> 00:54:34,580
kids were eating sugary cereals when they were

875
00:54:35,040 –> 00:54:37,940
kids. And so the sugar jacked them up,

876
00:54:38,880 –> 00:54:42,444
got their biochemistry all wackadoo. They go into

877
00:54:42,444 –> 00:54:45,825
schools, particularly young men, low impulse control anyway,

878
00:54:46,444 –> 00:54:50,204
lack of responsibility anyway. And now we’re diagnosing young men with

879
00:54:50,204 –> 00:54:53,585
ADHD, ADA and and add. We’re giving them Adderall.

880
00:54:55,210 –> 00:54:58,970
Adderall then begins to lose its power, right,

881
00:54:58,970 –> 00:55:02,330
couple of generations in, and now they’re moving from Adderall to

882
00:55:02,330 –> 00:55:06,090
speed to whatever. Right? And these

883
00:55:06,170 –> 00:55:09,845
and we don’t we don’t connect those this is what RFK Jr. Is basically talking

884
00:55:09,845 –> 00:55:13,125
about. We don’t connect all that stuff together in our society. We just go, oh,

885
00:55:13,125 –> 00:55:15,285
this is an island here. Oh, this is an island here. Oh, this is an

886
00:55:15,285 –> 00:55:18,325
island here. Or to your point about wildflowers, I’ll just run through the field and

887
00:55:18,325 –> 00:55:22,109
pick all these wildflowers of options, and it’ll be fine. Or I’ll give them

888
00:55:22,109 –> 00:55:25,790
to my kid, and it’ll be fine, or they’ll never notice. No. They do notice.

889
00:55:25,790 –> 00:55:29,550
Like, they they are gonna notice. And I don’t know and I

890
00:55:29,550 –> 00:55:33,165
won’t live long enough to see, because I’m in my forties. I won’t live long

891
00:55:33,165 –> 00:55:36,845
enough to see all the all of the I won’t

892
00:55:36,845 –> 00:55:40,605
live long enough to see the results of all of this down the road. I’m

893
00:55:40,605 –> 00:55:44,365
not gonna if I live to twenty seventy, I’m gonna count

894
00:55:44,365 –> 00:55:48,080
myself lucky. And well,

895
00:55:48,080 –> 00:55:51,520
I mean, I’ll like, 90 at that point. Did you did you see the latest

896
00:55:51,520 –> 00:55:54,820
did you see the latest information about the pyramids in Giza?

897
00:55:55,520 –> 00:55:58,660
Somebody somebody texted me that, a a friend of mine.

898
00:55:59,375 –> 00:56:02,255
And he he’s like, you need to watch this. And I have watched We’re getting

899
00:56:02,255 –> 00:56:05,954
way closer to whatever we’re doing, meaning absolutely nothing.

900
00:56:07,454 –> 00:56:10,895
And everyone acknowledging, like, dude, everything that everyone is

901
00:56:10,895 –> 00:56:14,510
doing is completely irrelevant. And we all just want to

902
00:56:14,510 –> 00:56:18,190
stop. Okay? Everybody calm down. Just stop. That’s what

903
00:56:18,190 –> 00:56:21,950
it that’s what it kind of, like, feels like to me. There’s

904
00:56:21,950 –> 00:56:25,630
gonna be a moment of, like, Well and, you know,

905
00:56:25,630 –> 00:56:29,405
look. If if to go full Joe Rogan, you know, if there’s

906
00:56:29,405 –> 00:56:31,905
good stuff in those pyramids, man, like, we gotta

907
00:56:33,965 –> 00:56:36,865
Gotta get there. We gotta get there. We gotta pull that thing out.

908
00:56:38,365 –> 00:56:41,965
Alright. Wild, though. It’s pretty wild. The information is pretty wild,

909
00:56:41,965 –> 00:56:44,880
Ben. I’ll tell you what. I’ll I’ll take a look at that video. I’ve been

910
00:56:44,880 –> 00:56:48,020
kind of like I’ve been busy with other stuff. I’m busy killing businesses and stuff.

911
00:56:48,080 –> 00:56:51,840
So I gotta I gotta get back to, I gotta get back to that.

912
00:56:51,840 –> 00:56:54,720
By the way, the reason why I picked the poem every day is Monday is

913
00:56:54,720 –> 00:56:58,495
because literally this entire quarter of this entire business quarter, the first quarter

914
00:56:58,495 –> 00:57:02,335
of twenty twenty five, I’ve been waking up literally almost every day with

915
00:57:02,335 –> 00:57:06,115
the quarter, with the exception of Sundays, going, hey. Monday,

916
00:57:06,575 –> 00:57:07,875
what do you got for me?

917
00:57:11,620 –> 00:57:15,300
Yeah. That’ll that’ll do it. That’ll do it. Well, and that well,

918
00:57:15,300 –> 00:57:18,600
that’s the thing too about the relatability and the human condition,

919
00:57:19,380 –> 00:57:23,220
whether it was intentional for his readers. But if you’re writing copy, you’re trying to

920
00:57:23,220 –> 00:57:26,935
connect with other people, And probably underneath a lot of all of

921
00:57:26,935 –> 00:57:30,555
this is of wanting that’s, you know, essentially what people wanna do

922
00:57:30,695 –> 00:57:33,595
is to connect in with with another person. So

923
00:57:34,615 –> 00:57:37,435
it it’s it’s

924
00:57:39,279 –> 00:57:42,019
in in such a, like, unintimate era

925
00:57:42,880 –> 00:57:46,400
of American culture. Right. You know, during the

926
00:57:46,400 –> 00:57:49,759
wartime, 20 so, you know, that this

927
00:57:49,759 –> 00:57:52,579
is kind of the beginning of of a almost,

928
00:57:53,705 –> 00:57:56,985
I don’t know, bringing whimsy into the home or lightheartedness or or

929
00:57:57,225 –> 00:58:00,425
I’m not I’m not sure who was going on in the poetry in the twenties,

930
00:58:00,425 –> 00:58:04,185
thirties, forties in, in, in in mass

931
00:58:04,185 –> 00:58:07,485
publications, but I can’t imagine that it was fun loving.

932
00:58:08,230 –> 00:58:11,990
Oh. Because this was, you know, that that’s we we talked

933
00:58:11,990 –> 00:58:15,670
about Tennyson, and and and that’s Yeah.

934
00:58:15,670 –> 00:58:18,090
Well, I mean, you just came out of you just came out of the Victorian

935
00:58:18,150 –> 00:58:21,965
era, you know, in in England. And to

936
00:58:21,965 –> 00:58:25,805
your point, I mean, it all was post World War one. Everybody wanted to be

937
00:58:25,805 –> 00:58:29,565
happy, you know, roaring twenties, all that. But at

938
00:58:29,565 –> 00:58:33,325
the same time in Europe, like, they’re putting themselves back together out of

939
00:58:33,325 –> 00:58:36,820
the, in the twenties, out of the nightmare of the Somme,

940
00:58:37,360 –> 00:58:41,120
and Verdun. You know, the German German

941
00:58:41,120 –> 00:58:44,960
culture is completely falling apart because the Weimar Republic can’t

942
00:58:44,960 –> 00:58:47,115
hold on to anything. They they can’t even

943
00:58:49,115 –> 00:58:52,635
they can’t find a government with two hands and a flashlight, and that’s an insult

944
00:58:52,635 –> 00:58:55,755
to both their hands and the flashlight. Like, they just they were they were in

945
00:58:55,755 –> 00:58:59,515
trouble left and right, because of internal German politics and

946
00:58:59,515 –> 00:59:03,240
just things they couldn’t get their arms around. And, of course, in communist Russia,

947
00:59:04,900 –> 00:59:07,480
you know, Stalin had taken over and was busy

948
00:59:08,579 –> 00:59:11,240
was busy was busy killing a bunch of people,

949
00:59:12,259 –> 00:59:15,480
and consolidating consolidating his power after the death of Lenin.

950
00:59:15,984 –> 00:59:19,765
So you had a lot of dynamics in a multipolar world,

951
00:59:21,265 –> 00:59:24,224
that were about to come together. They didn’t know that at the time, but were

952
00:59:24,224 –> 00:59:26,165
about to come together with World War two.

953
00:59:27,755 –> 00:59:31,400
And and the end of the the official end, which was what World War two

954
00:59:31,400 –> 00:59:35,160
was, the official end of the old aristocratic, monarchal world

955
00:59:35,160 –> 00:59:39,000
order. And people in Europe weren’t ready for

956
00:59:39,000 –> 00:59:42,440
that, and people in America were like, dude, we showed

957
00:59:42,440 –> 00:59:46,145
up. We dumped, like, what, a million men, you

958
00:59:46,145 –> 00:59:49,445
know, into, into the war.

959
00:59:49,985 –> 00:59:53,425
It all worked out, and then we came home. We got to walk around and

960
00:59:53,425 –> 00:59:57,125
look at European capitals that we’d never seen because we’re farm boys from Kansas.

961
00:59:57,265 –> 00:59:59,730
And And then we came home, and now we’re done with you people.

962
01:00:00,750 –> 01:00:04,450
Like, go away. We wanna party. Oh, and Calvin Coolidge was president.

963
01:00:04,829 –> 01:00:08,430
Cool cow. Guy who never smiled, never spoke more than two

964
01:00:08,430 –> 01:00:11,535
words, and had nothing to say. And it was probably our closest thing we’ve ever

965
01:00:11,535 –> 01:00:15,375
had to an actual libertarian as president. He signed nothing. He did

966
01:00:15,375 –> 01:00:19,055
nothing. He said nothing. Just hung on golf all the

967
01:00:19,055 –> 01:00:21,855
time. And it wasn’t as if he had, like, a bunch of aids like Joe

968
01:00:21,855 –> 01:00:25,295
Biden did. No. No. No. No. He didn’t have a treaty Palace Of Versailles running

969
01:00:25,295 –> 01:00:28,480
on the Potomac. He didn’t have that crap. He had no aids. He’s like, yeah.

970
01:00:28,480 –> 01:00:32,319
Just I don’t know. Go in. Like, the country will run itself. It’ll

971
01:00:32,319 –> 01:00:36,000
be fine. I I like

972
01:00:36,000 –> 01:00:39,760
it. Of course. It’s the dream. Calvin

973
01:00:39,760 –> 01:00:43,305
Coolidge. But, you know, then he was replaced by Herbert Hoover, who was much

974
01:00:43,305 –> 01:00:45,565
more progressive, progressive Republican,

975
01:00:47,145 –> 01:00:50,525
who looked at all that and said, well, we need to progress,

976
01:00:51,225 –> 01:00:54,500
which is always a danger. I just remember,

977
01:00:55,680 –> 01:00:59,380
Hoover don’t miss Oh, yeah. In the Great Depression.

978
01:00:59,440 –> 01:01:03,200
Yeah. That’s what I remember. Mister Inocencio. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

979
01:01:03,200 –> 01:01:06,660
Yeah. Well and and people people piss on Hoover a lot,

980
01:01:07,065 –> 01:01:10,665
but that’s because progressives write history books. They do. Progressives

981
01:01:10,665 –> 01:01:14,505
write the history books. And so, you know, you can’t

982
01:01:14,505 –> 01:01:18,345
have you can’t say the truth about Roosevelt, which is a lot

983
01:01:18,345 –> 01:01:20,605
of his policies in the thirties.

984
01:01:22,890 –> 01:01:26,650
The reason that they pulled they pulled us out of the depression is

985
01:01:26,650 –> 01:01:29,710
because the world World War two came along. That’s why.

986
01:01:30,809 –> 01:01:34,410
And because you basically took the federal government basically hoovered

987
01:01:34,410 –> 01:01:37,789
up literally all the money that was available,

988
01:01:38,915 –> 01:01:42,755
in the country. I mean, Roosevelt was notorious during World

989
01:01:42,755 –> 01:01:46,355
War two for saying there will be no wartime billionaires. Like,

990
01:01:46,355 –> 01:01:49,415
nobody’s gonna make any money. We’re gonna have it all,

991
01:01:50,510 –> 01:01:53,710
because the new deal wasn’t working and he tried to pack the courts and blah

992
01:01:53,710 –> 01:01:56,910
blah blah blah blah. And the reason they’re called the great the great depression is

993
01:01:56,910 –> 01:02:00,450
called great is because it lasted so long here in The United States,

994
01:02:00,589 –> 01:02:03,809
whereas in the rest of the world, the I mean, yes.

995
01:02:04,315 –> 01:02:07,855
The stock market crashed in what was it? Thirty two?

996
01:02:08,075 –> 01:02:11,675
Yeah. And then, and

997
01:02:11,675 –> 01:02:14,815
then things were over by, like, ’34 in the rest of the world

998
01:02:16,650 –> 01:02:20,190
because they found the one thing that cures depression. That’s

999
01:02:20,250 –> 01:02:24,010
shooting people. Yeah.

1000
01:02:24,010 –> 01:02:27,450
But don’t let me give anybody any tips. Alright. Back to the book. Back

1001
01:02:27,450 –> 01:02:30,809
to back to the poetry of Ogden

1002
01:02:30,809 –> 01:02:34,385
Nash. There were giants in those

1003
01:02:34,385 –> 01:02:37,445
days, or maybe there weren’t.

1004
01:02:39,265 –> 01:02:42,725
When people bandy about bright things, they like to attribute

1005
01:02:42,785 –> 01:02:46,420
them to celebrities celebrated for their witticism, hoping

1006
01:02:46,420 –> 01:02:49,320
thereby both to gain prestige and forestall criticism.

1007
01:02:50,100 –> 01:02:53,780
Thus, many people in London have had their dispositions soured by

1008
01:02:53,780 –> 01:02:57,460
being cornered by other people and told stories attributed to

1009
01:02:57,460 –> 01:03:01,035
mister Shaw or Noel Coward. Well, over

1010
01:03:01,035 –> 01:03:04,635
here, people tell an anecdote either hygienic or spotty, but they

1011
01:03:04,635 –> 01:03:08,395
attribute it to Dorothy Parker, only they usually cozily refer

1012
01:03:08,395 –> 01:03:11,755
to her as Dottie. I have never heard an

1013
01:03:11,755 –> 01:03:15,460
anecdote attributed to William Henry Harrison or Rutherford b

1014
01:03:15,460 –> 01:03:19,220
Hayes. So let us respectfully attribute to the following tidbits to their

1015
01:03:19,220 –> 01:03:22,980
posthumous praise. When William Henry Harrison faced

1016
01:03:22,980 –> 01:03:26,500
a knotty problem, he didn’t wonder what general k Smith or Earl

1017
01:03:26,500 –> 01:03:30,005
Browder do. He simply recounted the story of the two jealous

1018
01:03:30,005 –> 01:03:33,845
Indian Rainees who met on elephant back. And one Rainee stroked

1019
01:03:33,845 –> 01:03:37,605
her coiffure and said, here’s a pretty hairdo. And the other Rainee

1020
01:03:37,605 –> 01:03:40,920
stroked her elephant and said, here’s a pretty how to do.

1021
01:03:42,100 –> 01:03:45,540
And once, when Rutherford b Hayes found himself losing at

1022
01:03:45,540 –> 01:03:49,380
backgammon, why he casually upset the board and asked, did

1023
01:03:49,380 –> 01:03:52,900
you hear about lord Louis Montbatten? He asked a soldier in

1024
01:03:52,900 –> 01:03:56,605
Burma, are you Indochinese? And the soldier said, no, sir. I

1025
01:03:56,605 –> 01:04:00,144
say outdo Alabama. Kindly,

1026
01:04:00,684 –> 01:04:04,144
I do not attribute these anecdotes to the undersigned.

1027
01:04:04,684 –> 01:04:08,480
Kindly attribute them to these two hitherto

1028
01:04:08,540 –> 01:04:12,060
unsung statesmen who are dead and probably won’t

1029
01:04:12,060 –> 01:04:12,560
mind.

1030
01:04:17,420 –> 01:04:19,920
Had to do that one because you kinda like,

1031
01:04:21,455 –> 01:04:25,135
one of the things you note about poetry and you note about people and

1032
01:04:25,135 –> 01:04:28,975
prose, back in the, back in the, back in the, quote, unquote, good old

1033
01:04:28,975 –> 01:04:32,495
days, is that people were very, how can I put

1034
01:04:32,495 –> 01:04:36,130
this, direct in their communication?

1035
01:04:37,390 –> 01:04:40,990
Dare I say they were almost racial in

1036
01:04:40,990 –> 01:04:44,750
their in their communication in ways that we

1037
01:04:44,750 –> 01:04:48,590
do not tolerate now. And so if I try to write that poem

1038
01:04:48,590 –> 01:04:52,405
now, short of reciting

1039
01:04:52,405 –> 01:04:54,984
it on the podcast, I’d probably be booted from polite society.

1040
01:05:02,510 –> 01:05:06,349
The guy the guy today Yeah. Earlier, he he was he

1041
01:05:06,349 –> 01:05:10,030
was like, if the coaches he said when he was playing football when he was

1042
01:05:10,030 –> 01:05:13,490
a kid Mhmm. Like Pop Warner football, the coaches

1043
01:05:14,349 –> 01:05:17,355
would bite the kid children’s noses

1044
01:05:18,134 –> 01:05:21,815
if they weren’t, like, running fast enough or something, and they had to, like,

1045
01:05:21,815 –> 01:05:25,515
squeal super loud for the coaches to let go.

1046
01:05:26,214 –> 01:05:29,530
I was like, two for one, man?

1047
01:05:29,830 –> 01:05:33,670
What? Yeah. That’s that’s, Okay. Well, let’s okay. Let’s

1048
01:05:33,670 –> 01:05:37,270
talk a little bit about that because because I think the seventies was probably the

1049
01:05:37,270 –> 01:05:40,630
last time, maybe the eighties. It was probably the last time you could probably casually

1050
01:05:40,630 –> 01:05:43,110
abuse a kid. Oh, this guy was, like, 60 years old. So this is, like,

1051
01:05:43,110 –> 01:05:45,965
a while ago. This is a while ago. Yeah. Yeah. It checks out. So yeah.

1052
01:05:45,965 –> 01:05:48,285
Yeah. Yeah. No. That checks out. That that tracks. I mean, he would have been

1053
01:05:48,285 –> 01:05:51,885
doing pop order in the sixties and seventies. Yeah. Okay. So yeah.

1054
01:05:51,885 –> 01:05:55,725
Like, up until about the eighties in this country, you could just casually abuse

1055
01:05:55,725 –> 01:05:59,520
a kid that wasn’t yours, and no one would, like, say anything. And and I’m

1056
01:05:59,520 –> 01:06:03,360
not talking about, like, oh, hey. Pick up that piece of trash on the street

1057
01:06:03,360 –> 01:06:06,160
or, oh, hey. I’m gonna tell your mom on you. We’re not talking about, like,

1058
01:06:06,160 –> 01:06:10,000
that kind of, like, neighborly, like, watching people. Dude, I had strangers slap

1059
01:06:10,000 –> 01:06:13,835
me. When I was little, I had a fucking stranger because I did something

1060
01:06:13,835 –> 01:06:17,355
stupid. They were like, what’d you do? And I was like, oh, shit. I probably

1061
01:06:17,355 –> 01:06:20,255
shouldn’t have done that. So

1062
01:06:21,835 –> 01:06:24,734
are we I’m gonna ask you as a non parent.

1063
01:06:25,860 –> 01:06:29,140
Love that being a non parent is. As a non parent, as a person who

1064
01:06:29,140 –> 01:06:32,900
is not you know, got little Ryan Stouts running

1065
01:06:32,900 –> 01:06:34,600
around, at least not that you’re aware of,

1066
01:06:37,060 –> 01:06:40,680
what do you think about this? Should should I have the ability as a parent

1067
01:06:41,105 –> 01:06:44,704
to, like, go straighten somebody else’s kid

1068
01:06:44,704 –> 01:06:47,845
out, or or is it a better society because we don’t do that?

1069
01:06:48,545 –> 01:06:51,904
Oh, well. Because, see, here’s here’s the reason I’m asking a non parent this

1070
01:06:51,904 –> 01:06:55,424
because you have to live with the results of my raising my children. You have

1071
01:06:55,424 –> 01:06:58,790
to live with those results. Like, if I screw up raising my kids,

1072
01:06:59,330 –> 01:07:02,950
you’re the future employer or the future, like, jailer

1073
01:07:03,250 –> 01:07:06,950
or in your case, the future whatever, like, teacher.

1074
01:07:07,010 –> 01:07:09,890
Like, you’re that person who shows up with that kid’s future. And if that kid’s

1075
01:07:09,890 –> 01:07:12,925
not appropriately ready for you, it’s a real problem for you.

1076
01:07:13,385 –> 01:07:16,985
Well, I mean, today is today is is a little weird

1077
01:07:16,985 –> 01:07:20,745
because, I mean, there’s probably parents. You can be

1078
01:07:20,745 –> 01:07:24,580
like, yo, your kid was gonna, like, push this kid this

1079
01:07:24,580 –> 01:07:28,260
baby into a waterfall. And to

1080
01:07:28,260 –> 01:07:31,460
stop them, I had to, like, throw them both on the ground. And there’s probably

1081
01:07:31,460 –> 01:07:34,900
parents who you did what to my kid? Right. You know what I mean? So

1082
01:07:34,900 –> 01:07:38,414
they would just see it’s just that you know, it’s like the it’s like the

1083
01:07:38,414 –> 01:07:42,035
the parents who their kids getting d’s.

1084
01:07:42,654 –> 01:07:46,335
And they’re like, what’s going on at school? And so what’s going on at home?

1085
01:07:46,335 –> 01:07:50,019
Are you Right. Creating the hope our home. Right. You know?

1086
01:07:50,019 –> 01:07:53,779
So Yeah. He’s watching a little too much Big Hero six on his iPhone.

1087
01:07:53,779 –> 01:07:57,220
That’s what’s going on at home. That’s the tie in from that. Well,

1088
01:07:57,220 –> 01:08:00,019
actually, to close that story that I told you about the kids at the at

1089
01:08:00,019 –> 01:08:03,000
the table. So we’re sitting there. We’re eating, whatever.

1090
01:08:04,099 –> 01:08:07,805
And the one little girl, she, like, gets down off of

1091
01:08:07,805 –> 01:08:11,405
the high chair or whatever. It’s one of those, like, plastic,

1092
01:08:11,405 –> 01:08:15,185
like, high chair support things they put in the chairs, right, at restaurants.

1093
01:08:15,484 –> 01:08:18,925
So she, like, climbs out. This kid’s, like, three. She climbs out. She picks a

1094
01:08:18,925 –> 01:08:22,490
fork up off the ground and gives it to her brother. And I looked at

1095
01:08:22,490 –> 01:08:24,090
my wife, and I I saw it out of the corner of my eye. I

1096
01:08:24,090 –> 01:08:25,609
looked at my wife out of the corner of my eye and I go, well,

1097
01:08:25,609 –> 01:08:28,970
that’s gonna be a problem. I don’t think it’s gonna be with that fork. That’s

1098
01:08:28,970 –> 01:08:32,729
disgusting. It’s a terrible restaurant. I mean, it’s good food, but,

1099
01:08:32,729 –> 01:08:36,455
like, not Newton the floor place. And it’s a hard concrete, like,

1100
01:08:36,835 –> 01:08:40,435
polished concrete floor. Right? Well, the kid, the girl little girl

1101
01:08:40,435 –> 01:08:44,274
climbs back up into the seat, and the

1102
01:08:44,274 –> 01:08:48,020
seat is, like, sliding slowly off of the chair. And the kid’s, like,

1103
01:08:48,020 –> 01:08:51,780
leaning back while she’s, like, glued to heroes. And none of the other parents are

1104
01:08:51,780 –> 01:08:55,560
paying attention. And my wife who, like, looks at the little girl,

1105
01:08:55,860 –> 01:08:59,620
and she’s, like, sitting over to the left of me, so she’s in the booth,

1106
01:08:59,620 –> 01:09:03,104
so she can’t do anything. And my other daughter is not paying attention. She’s like,

1107
01:09:04,625 –> 01:09:08,145
And my wife’s like, oh, Hasan. Hasan. You gotta get the kid. You gotta get

1108
01:09:08,145 –> 01:09:11,024
the kid. And the second, like, she had it out of her mouth, like, I

1109
01:09:11,024 –> 01:09:14,699
go I literally, like, slid. Like, I shot

1110
01:09:14,699 –> 01:09:18,460
out like Superman, and I reach over, and the kid’s, like, falling.

1111
01:09:18,460 –> 01:09:22,159
And I grabbed the kid, and I grabbed the, like, the, like,

1112
01:09:22,300 –> 01:09:26,139
the high chair seat thing. And the kid’s like, what? What?

1113
01:09:26,139 –> 01:09:29,055
What? What? What? What? What? What? You know? She’s like, ball whatever. She doesn’t cry

1114
01:09:29,055 –> 01:09:32,854
or anything. She’s just like, what? What? What? What? What? What? And I, like, put

1115
01:09:32,854 –> 01:09:35,734
her up, and I I skinned my knee, and I scraped my knee across there,

1116
01:09:35,734 –> 01:09:39,575
ruined my jeans or whatever. It was fine. And I put the kid back

1117
01:09:39,575 –> 01:09:43,180
in the seat. And the father, like, sees, like, what

1118
01:09:43,180 –> 01:09:46,780
happened, but he didn’t have enough time to reach across the other kid to, like,

1119
01:09:46,780 –> 01:09:50,060
get her. And so I get the kid. I put it back up, whatever. The

1120
01:09:50,060 –> 01:09:53,600
father’s out of the chair, and he’s like, oh my god. Thank you. Like,

1121
01:09:53,765 –> 01:09:57,605
you avoided, like, my kid having brain damage or whatever. And, like, the

1122
01:09:57,605 –> 01:10:00,885
lady behind me I know. And the lady behind me, she goes, are you okay?

1123
01:10:00,885 –> 01:10:04,485
Like, are you alright? I’m like, ma’am, I’m fine. Like, I’m

1124
01:10:04,485 –> 01:10:07,900
good. Help that kid

1125
01:10:07,900 –> 01:10:11,580
today. Right? Because that kid isn’t that kid wasn’t paying attention. The kid was

1126
01:10:11,580 –> 01:10:15,200
so dialed into the thing they were doing,

1127
01:10:16,060 –> 01:10:19,035
and the other adults weren’t paying attention. And it’s just like it’s

1128
01:10:20,315 –> 01:10:23,275
how much more could that I mean, that because they could’ve been like, life could’ve

1129
01:10:23,275 –> 01:10:27,035
been ruined if I hadn’t, like, moved. It’s it’s yeah. It just it

1130
01:10:27,035 –> 01:10:30,175
becomes the convenience of of,

1131
01:10:31,275 –> 01:10:34,895
of, automatons raising children. Right.

1132
01:10:35,690 –> 01:10:38,550
And And I shook the guy’s hand, and I was like, dude, we gotta watch

1133
01:10:38,550 –> 01:10:41,270
out for each other. Like, you gotta pay we gotta pay attention. And to his

1134
01:10:41,270 –> 01:10:45,110
credit, he did. I mean, he did, like, take the highchair stupid thing out,

1135
01:10:45,110 –> 01:10:48,635
and he did take away the phone line. Okay. They done. You’re done. You gotta

1136
01:10:48,635 –> 01:10:52,235
pay attention to what the hell you’re doing. Okay. That was such an

1137
01:10:52,235 –> 01:10:56,075
inspiration. Right. Yeah. But that’s an example of just, like, I’m not

1138
01:10:56,075 –> 01:10:59,595
exactly parenting that kid, but I’m, like, in a

1139
01:10:59,595 –> 01:11:03,159
society where, like, if that kid smacks their head on the

1140
01:11:03,159 –> 01:11:07,000
polished concrete at three, like, that

1141
01:11:07,000 –> 01:11:09,739
ruins like, her entire life is done.

1142
01:11:11,320 –> 01:11:15,159
So, we were watching Maybe she’ll be fine. Maybe it all works out

1143
01:11:15,159 –> 01:11:18,355
in the end or whatever, but let’s not even go down there. Right? But we’re

1144
01:11:18,355 –> 01:11:21,735
we’re watching my brother and I were watching the inauguration. Yeah.

1145
01:11:21,955 –> 01:11:25,635
And so Trump has looked there like, mister president, we have

1146
01:11:25,635 –> 01:11:29,015
the whatever, army

1147
01:11:29,235 –> 01:11:32,950
or marine, in South Korea. Yeah. And and,

1148
01:11:33,270 –> 01:11:36,470
and he’s like, oh, you know, drops like a bunch of good looking guys, blah

1149
01:11:36,470 –> 01:11:39,830
blah blah. And he’s like, hey. Do you want do you wanna say anything? And

1150
01:11:39,830 –> 01:11:43,450
it kinda, like, took him by surprise. And then their their leader was like,

1151
01:11:44,375 –> 01:11:47,195
no. We we stay hard for you, sir.

1152
01:11:49,815 –> 01:11:53,355
And I know that some marine things stay hard. Like, that’s but,

1153
01:11:53,895 –> 01:11:57,655
you know, the guy’s on his heels, and then he just says he stays. And

1154
01:11:57,655 –> 01:12:01,260
so what I was thinking about, I was like, yeah. It sounds wildly

1155
01:12:01,260 –> 01:12:05,020
inappropriate in context. And then I was thinking about it, and I’m also thinking

1156
01:12:05,020 –> 01:12:08,860
about the dog, Chewy, that lives here. Yeah. Chewy

1157
01:12:08,860 –> 01:12:11,975
stays hard. And when I so and

1158
01:12:12,355 –> 01:12:16,035
this is is is in alignment with what you’re talking about.

1159
01:12:16,035 –> 01:12:19,175
Okay? Yeah. It’s like, at some point,

1160
01:12:20,835 –> 01:12:24,515
I because I think I felt like I was always

1161
01:12:24,515 –> 01:12:28,100
on edge. Yeah. She’s just I kind of, like, regressed

1162
01:12:28,239 –> 01:12:32,080
and calm down. And now now after, like, a year or two

1163
01:12:32,080 –> 01:12:35,540
of, like, really chilling out, I’m seeing

1164
01:12:37,679 –> 01:12:40,960
the benefit of the idea of, like, stay

1165
01:12:41,199 –> 01:12:44,585
like, I’m of the age

1166
01:12:44,585 –> 01:12:48,025
and the disposition that I see and what for

1167
01:12:48,025 –> 01:12:50,205
myself that I need to be

1168
01:12:52,585 –> 01:12:56,280
in line with the behavior you just ex it it Yeah. Exhibited. Yeah. Let’s

1169
01:12:56,280 –> 01:12:59,800
be aware. Like, I did I’m I’m able-bodied Right.

1170
01:12:59,880 –> 01:13:03,559
Relatively intelligent. Like, I should be someone who’s in the community that

1171
01:13:03,559 –> 01:13:07,159
is, like, aware. Right. And so I think

1172
01:13:07,159 –> 01:13:11,005
that’s a, I think it’s a level of responsibility

1173
01:13:11,465 –> 01:13:14,685
that has kind of, like, dwindled with generations.

1174
01:13:15,225 –> 01:13:18,665
Yeah. And there is something,

1175
01:13:18,665 –> 01:13:22,265
like, kind of this feels good,

1176
01:13:22,265 –> 01:13:25,210
almost, like, romantically that there are

1177
01:13:26,710 –> 01:13:30,390
individuals who are out in the world just doing the right

1178
01:13:30,390 –> 01:13:34,230
thing. And, I mean, we’re not we’re not we’re

1179
01:13:34,230 –> 01:13:38,045
relying on that person to save our child when they’re falling

1180
01:13:38,045 –> 01:13:41,805
backwards, but just knowing that, I don’t

1181
01:13:41,805 –> 01:13:45,485
know, that not everyone’s bad. Yeah. That

1182
01:13:45,485 –> 01:13:49,085
somebody will somebody’s got your back. Right? Like,

1183
01:13:49,085 –> 01:13:52,230
even if you’ve never met that person, you have no relationship with them.

1184
01:13:54,550 –> 01:13:58,150
Like, we have to and,

1185
01:13:58,150 –> 01:14:01,190
look, I’m not telling this story. I didn’t tell this story for collapse. I wanna

1186
01:14:01,190 –> 01:14:03,590
be very, very clear on it. I don’t want collapse. I don’t want congratulations. And

1187
01:14:03,590 –> 01:14:06,885
that way I told it. I told it because it serves both parts of it

1188
01:14:07,125 –> 01:14:10,885
serve as an example for what we’re talking about here today, and it happened recently.

1189
01:14:10,885 –> 01:14:14,184
So it’s the most fresh thing, right, like, in my mind right now.

1190
01:14:15,525 –> 01:14:19,364
But, you know, like, a month from now

1191
01:14:19,525 –> 01:14:22,005
actually, more than a month from now, like, two weeks from now, I’m not gonna

1192
01:14:22,005 –> 01:14:24,870
bring you that. And, like, if somebody’s kid is, like,

1193
01:14:25,810 –> 01:14:28,550
I don’t know, barreling down the street, right,

1194
01:14:29,970 –> 01:14:33,590
you know, on a runaway, I don’t know, shopping cart or something.

1195
01:14:33,970 –> 01:14:37,755
Right? Like and I see they’re gonna run over,

1196
01:14:37,755 –> 01:14:41,135
like, some neighbor’s dog somewhere. Like, I’m gonna go chase that cart.

1197
01:14:41,915 –> 01:14:44,395
I’m gonna go full pal mail out. I’m gonna go chase that car and go

1198
01:14:44,395 –> 01:14:48,155
get that kid. Or, you

1199
01:14:48,155 –> 01:14:51,055
know, I’m I’m the knucklehead who

1200
01:14:52,730 –> 01:14:54,890
if I see somebody pulled over by the side of the road, it looks like

1201
01:14:54,890 –> 01:14:58,730
they need help. Like, I’m gonna I’m gonna help them. And and and,

1202
01:14:58,730 –> 01:15:01,370
by the way, like, I’m not, again, I’m not trying to be a hero. This

1203
01:15:01,370 –> 01:15:04,810
is not that. This is that person needs help. That person’s in

1204
01:15:04,810 –> 01:15:08,575
society. Go help them. Right? Because eventually, at a

1205
01:15:08,575 –> 01:15:12,415
certain point, I’m going to need someone to stop

1206
01:15:12,415 –> 01:15:16,255
by the side of the road to help me. I’m gonna need somebody when

1207
01:15:16,255 –> 01:15:19,875
I’m not there, right, on the soccer field and my kid does something

1208
01:15:20,270 –> 01:15:24,050
either stupid or not paying attention or just, like, whatever, la dee da,

1209
01:15:24,270 –> 01:15:27,790
to reach over and grab that kid. You know, like, you know, keep them from,

1210
01:15:27,790 –> 01:15:30,930
like, falling, you know, wherever. Right?

1211
01:15:32,412 –> 01:15:35,435
And I’ve got remarkably good reflexes too. Like, so the I mean, I might as

1212
01:15:35,435 –> 01:15:38,555
well use them. Like, they’re they’re they’re remarkably good. One day, I’ll tell you a

1213
01:15:38,555 –> 01:15:41,995
story of something happened at a Super Bowl party. It was insane, but one of

1214
01:15:41,995 –> 01:15:44,580
the ladies there, she was like, oh, you saved the drink and the kid.

1215
01:15:47,860 –> 01:15:51,700
I didn’t get a drop on your nice white carpet. Soft hands,

1216
01:15:51,700 –> 01:15:54,760
ma’am. We had soft hands for years. Oh, that’s beautiful.

1217
01:15:56,100 –> 01:15:58,600
But, like, I’ve reached that point in my life where

1218
01:16:01,545 –> 01:16:03,945
like, I can see that thing, and I can go get it. I can I

1219
01:16:03,945 –> 01:16:07,405
can go ahead go help that person? If I can enter like Yeah.

1220
01:16:08,425 –> 01:16:12,185
You know, the the the Bill Gates speech that he gave about

1221
01:16:12,345 –> 01:16:15,725
yeah. So after you graduate, instead of running around the world

1222
01:16:16,610 –> 01:16:20,150
and, you know, curing or helping with the termite

1223
01:16:20,290 –> 01:16:24,130
infestation in South Africa or Africa, be sure

1224
01:16:24,130 –> 01:16:27,970
that the, you know, the the termites eating your parents’

1225
01:16:27,970 –> 01:16:31,565
porch Right. Yeah. It’s like, you know, it’s put your seat belts on

1226
01:16:31,565 –> 01:16:35,405
first. So Right. It a lot of this so this

1227
01:16:35,405 –> 01:16:38,925
is this is pretty recently. This was, like, the kinda coming out of

1228
01:16:38,925 –> 01:16:41,825
Cincinnati thing is like, oh, wait, man. I have a huge responsibility

1229
01:16:42,685 –> 01:16:46,030
Mhmm. To everyone else in my life

1230
01:16:46,410 –> 01:16:50,170
Right. To, you know, follow through through and be a

1231
01:16:50,170 –> 01:16:53,770
good outstanding citizen and and, like, take all of the

1232
01:16:53,770 –> 01:16:55,390
things that I probably,

1233
01:16:57,210 –> 01:17:00,795
been unrightfully putting at the top of the list or or

1234
01:17:00,795 –> 01:17:04,175
something like just just having the proportions a little bit

1235
01:17:05,275 –> 01:17:08,795
off. Mhmm. And now kind of, like, that’s what makes

1236
01:17:08,795 –> 01:17:12,300
me Yeah. That’s what these

1237
01:17:12,300 –> 01:17:16,139
poems make me think of, that life is not to be taken so

1238
01:17:16,139 –> 01:17:19,599
freaking seriously. We get all, like,

1239
01:17:20,619 –> 01:17:24,320
clammed up over little thing. I mean, you’re talking about, like,

1240
01:17:24,619 –> 01:17:28,385
wine and a podcast, and it’s like, wait.

1241
01:17:28,385 –> 01:17:32,145
You’re supposed to well, you’re having wine and talking about fun loving things, and it’s

1242
01:17:32,145 –> 01:17:35,985
like, this is what happened. A person had a a breakdown? You

1243
01:17:35,985 –> 01:17:39,605
know what I mean? So we’re we’re we’re we’re we’re assigning too much,

1244
01:17:43,160 –> 01:17:47,000
clout to aspects and areas of our lives. And while I was speaking of myself,

1245
01:17:47,000 –> 01:17:50,700
my life that is not necessarily benefiting it it for the long

1246
01:17:51,480 –> 01:17:55,320
for the kinda like the long haul. Yeah. Some things weren’t

1247
01:17:55,320 –> 01:17:58,965
meant to carry that much weight. Yeah. And and kind of,

1248
01:17:58,965 –> 01:18:02,804
like, figuring, you know, what is what, what works for you.

1249
01:18:02,804 –> 01:18:06,405
Yeah. I mean, that’s that’s the relatability and, like, that’s what I’m

1250
01:18:06,405 –> 01:18:09,685
kinda taking off all of these. You know? You can read it and see how

1251
01:18:09,685 –> 01:18:13,380
aspects of my life apply to what he’s speaking about. And

1252
01:18:13,380 –> 01:18:17,060
then you know? And we’re so you’re talking about the leadership lessons. We’re sitting here.

1253
01:18:17,060 –> 01:18:20,760
We’re talking about it and talking about ways to apply

1254
01:18:21,140 –> 01:18:24,199
these seemingly ancillary behaviors.

1255
01:18:26,675 –> 01:18:30,195
Mhmm. Interactions throughout the day is is, as

1256
01:18:30,195 –> 01:18:33,895
advantageous to moving forward, you know, in our in our lives and

1257
01:18:34,035 –> 01:18:37,875
and applying it instead of just like, hey. It’s really nice when Avda Nash

1258
01:18:37,875 –> 01:18:40,035
was really nice in that poem. You know? There’s

1259
01:18:41,520 –> 01:18:43,199
There’s always something more. And,

1260
01:18:45,440 –> 01:18:49,219
yeah. And so doctor Drew says, you know, the best exercise

1261
01:18:49,280 –> 01:18:50,579
is the one you’ll do.

1262
01:18:53,760 –> 01:18:57,555
I like that as the close. So with that,

1263
01:18:57,555 –> 01:19:00,535
well, we’re out.