The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry aka William Sydney Porter w/Tom Libby

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Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and

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this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,

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episode number 132.

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I first encountered the stories, that we are

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featuring on our show today,

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and the author today as a middle-aged child.

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Now if this sounds like a weird framing, consider that I

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was always the kind of kid that had a strong literary

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streak. For example, I first read Of Mice and Men

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by John Steinbeck, when I was 8 years old, And I cried

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like a baby when, that big autistic

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fellow died in the book, which made me

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weird, by the way. And that’s okay to say that I was weird. It’s fine.

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But such literary interests also made me open and

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opened me up to the power of storytelling, the impact of

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experience, and the capacity to mash up those two things

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in interesting and potentially restorative ways.

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Later in school, I formally studied the stories,

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from this author today in a little bit of depth. And during my learning, I

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was exposed to the, vercilimitude, there you go, I love that

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word, of understanding the subtext of context as well

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as the power of language, the magic of metaphor, and the necessity

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of veracity being and serving as the soul

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of wit. In that formal study, I was also exposed to

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ideas that I I am certain led via the many winding roads of life

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to developing some of the threads of ideas I’ve been weaving together the last few

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months in my mind. As a result of hosting conversations on

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this podcast, my extensive book and Substack reading, and,

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yes, even observing the stream of doom flow by

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via the Internet delivered to me directly

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by my phone, I have some questions that this author’s

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writing in the world served to coalesce into

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something, even these comments today.

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So today on the show, we will be pulling leadership lessons

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for leaders from one of the more unlikely short stories

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by a celebrated writer of the gilded age

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whose writing has never been out of print since

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he died, which is stunning, actually.

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Today, we are going to be covering for

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our Christmas slash winter season, the gift of the

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magi as part of 41 stories

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by O’Henry.

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Leaders. Sometimes the threads of thoughts come together to form a

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patchwork fabric of conclusions, and then you read a story or a set of

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stories by an author that confirms, whatever conclusion

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you may have independently woven together.

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And, of course, today, we are going to be covering these stories. We’re gonna be

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talking about them with my good friend

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and bon vivant of the winter season,

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Tom Libby. How are you doing, Tom? I’m hanging in

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there, man. I’m living my best life.

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Now isn’t it snowing in the northeast at this point? Like, you’re in the northeast.

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Is it snowing today? It’s not snowing today. So we have

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not to be all meteorological on you. We have this weird high

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pressure system right now sitting right on in the in the in the in

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right around, like, hovering over the the harbor, like, where Boston Harbor is, stretching

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out to just about Connecticut. So any kind of precipitation that’s hitting that

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bottom half of that is literally just going around New England. It’s the weirdest thing

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to watch on the radar screen, but, no, it’s not rain. It’s not snow right

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now. Well, that’s

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good because, where I am at, it is

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a balmy 65 degrees. So I

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think it’s 44 42 or 43 today for for me. We

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had we had, we had, like, 2 days of, like,

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like, almost 32 degree

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temperatures, and everybody locally almost lost their

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minds. Anyway. So Yeah. Fun fun fact. I I had I

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had to spend some time out in the the forest this, this past

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weekend, with, my with my brother.

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And, when we showed up to the forest, it was 18

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degrees out. It is it

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is amazing to me that, like,

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human beings don’t care about the weather.

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Like, if you look at, like, wooly mammoth death sites,

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you see, like, little sharp little arrows because, like, people just kill them and eat

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them. Yeah. Because they don’t care. They’re just like, I don’t know. That seems like

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something we should eat. Let’s it’s oh, it’s 19 below. Doesn’t

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matter. We’re gonna go get that thing. We’re

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hungry. Then they’ll keep us warm. We don’t

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care. We don’t care how cold it is out.

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Oh my gosh. Alright. Well, with that, now that we’ve

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covered our meteorological portion of the show,

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we’re going to pick up today with O. Henry’s The Gift of the Magi.

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Now this is a short story, by the author William

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Sydney Porter, aka O. Henry. It’s

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only around 5 to 6 pages long. And so what we’re gonna do is we’re

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gonna dip in, dip out of the story, and we’re going to talk about a

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lot of different areas today. We’re gonna talk about the gilded age. We’re gonna talk

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poverty and pride and vanity. We’re going to talk about Christmas.

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And, of course, we’re going to talk about the life and times of

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William Sydney order. So from

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the gift of the magi, we open.

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$1.87. That was all. And

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60¢ of it was in pennies. Pennies saved 1 and

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2 at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the

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butcher until one’s checks burned with the silent imputation of

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parsimony that such close dealing implied.

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Three times, Della counted at $1.87, and

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the next day would be Christmas. There

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was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl,

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so Della did it, which instigates the more reflection that life

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is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles with sniffles

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predominating. While the mistress of the home is gradually

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subsiding from the 1st stage to the second, take a look at the home. A

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furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar

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description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the men

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the mendicancity squat. Love that word.

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In the vestibule below was a letter box into which no letter would

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go and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring.

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Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name

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mister James Dillingham Young. Now Dillingham had

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been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was

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being paid $30 per week. Now when the income was shrunk to $20,

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the letters of Dillingham looked blurred as though they were thinking seriously of

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contracting to a modest and unassuming d.

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But wherever and whenever mister James Dillingham Young came

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home and reached his flat above, he was called Jim and greatly

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hugged by missus James Dillingham Young already introduced to you

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as Della, which is all very good.

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Della finished her cry and attended her cheeks with a powder rag. She stood by

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the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking the gray fence in

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a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas day, and she had only $1.87

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with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could

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for months with this result. $20 a week doesn’t go far. Expenses

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had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87

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to buy a present for Jim, her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent

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planning for something nice for him, something fine and rare

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and sterling, something just a little bit near to being

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worthy of the honor of being owned by

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Jim. So we’ll stop there for

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just a moment. The layers

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of gilded

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age assumptions, pre feminist, by the way,

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gilded age presumptions are layered right there in that first

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part of a gift or the gift of the magi.

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But we can’t understand William Sydney Porter without

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actually going into a little bit about who William Sydney Porter is.

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He was born September 11, 1862 and

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died June 5, 1910. He was an American writer

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known primarily for his short stories, though he also wrote poetry,

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and he peddled a little bit in nonfiction. Born

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in Greensboro, North Carolina, Porter worked at his uncle’s pharmacy after finishing

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school and became a licensed pharmacist at age 19.

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In March 18 82, he moved to Texas where he initially lived on a

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ranch and later settled in Austin where he met his first wife, Athol

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Estes. While working as a drafter in the Texas general land

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office, Porter began developing characters for his short stories. He later worked

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for the First National Bank of Austin while also publishing a weekly

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periodical, The Rolling Stone. Now

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in 18/95, he was charged with embezzlement stemming from an audit of the

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bank. Before the trial, he fled to Honduras where he began writing Cabbages and

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Kings, which was a collection of short stories in which he

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coined the term, quote, unquote, banana republic.

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Porter surrendered to US authorities when he learned his wife was dying from tuberculosis,

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By the way, a disease that his mother died of and that he was in

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he lived his entire life in fear of getting and of

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dying of, and he cared for his wife,

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his first wife, until her death in July 1897.

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As a result of returning and surrendering to the US authorities,

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William Sydney Porter, was sentenced to a 5

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year federal prison sentence for embezzling, get this, $854.8

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in March 18 98 at the Ohio Federal Penitentiary

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where he served there as a night druggist because apparently

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writing doesn’t get you very far in a federal penitentiary in

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18/98. While imprisoned, Porter

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published 14 stories under various pseudonyms, one

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being

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O’Henry. I don’t think Tom knew much about this guy or knew much

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about O’Henry before we started our

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podcast today. So you’ve had a chance a little bit to

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hear about this, Tom. What do you think about this fellow,

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William Sydney Porter? Interestingly enough, you’re you’re right. I didn’t

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really know the depth any kind of depth of his life or who he

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was already, but I have I actually had heard of this particular story.

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I don’t know why this particular story, but this this one I had I

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had heard of. I’ve known about it. I’ve I’ve, like, read passages of it

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or had discussions about certain pieces of it and stuff like that before

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today. But the reality of it was there was this is probably

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the I don’t know how you were able to pick the only story I’ve ever

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heard of from O’Henry. It’s,

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it’s interesting. But, I you know, when you ask, like, what

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do you it’s it’s funny too because I thought my first thought

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coming out of this onto this podcast was gonna be something totally different than what

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I thought about his life. Because I read the first couple of passages of this

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and was thinking to myself, how do you get a dollar 87 with having

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60 pennies? Math I I was so

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bugged out by the math here, not realizing that in in at

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this time frame, I I think we had I think our

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currency had half pennies and things like that. Yeah. Mhmm. Too. So

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you could so, technically, you could have that. So my brain was okay after I

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had to I I took a step back. Anyway, so but that’s

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where my first thought went. When I was when I read this, I was like,

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you got a dollar 87. What are you talking about? How do you have What

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are you talking about? That doesn’t make any sense. The math doesn’t work. Oh, Oh,

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Henry needs to go back to school. And then realizing that he was

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actually intelligent, you know, intelligent to the point, you know,

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of, I mean, a pharmacist at 19, which you definitely could not do today.

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No. But I I mean, I know that, you know, the

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the the manners and the processes in

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which we have to become a license to anything, doesn’t even matter. In

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insert licensure here, whether it’s pharmacist, nurse,

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plumber, electrician, it doesn’t really matter. But, you know, a 100 years

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ago or a 100 and whatever years ago,

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or 2 almost 200 years ago. Sorry. You know, they they just

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they didn’t have the same I mean, you literally could apprentice under somebody from a

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certain amount of time and get in that house on your license. So we didn’t

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have the formal schooling and testing and all that stuff that we have today. So

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I I was initially like, my first reaction was, oh my god. This guy was

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brilliant, a pharmacist in 19, thinking of what today’s pharmacists have to go

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through in order to become a and then realizing after the fact

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after thinking of it for a second and going, he probably didn’t have to do

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any of that. He didn’t have to do any of that. He didn’t have to

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do any of that. So He literally poured he literally poured bought poured

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pills in one bottle to another bottle, which is it’s I mean, that’s all he

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had to do. Right. And maybe some tinctures and some powders, things like that.

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But, like, yeah, whatever. It’s fine. I mean, it’s not like he was an alchemist.

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Right? Like, he wasn’t actually mixing this stuff together. It wasn’t so,

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but, anyway but, you know, some of the things, you know, it’s funny. Like,

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you think about just the brief description of his life that you just read a

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second ago, and you try to think about how you can take lessons

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out of it for leaders. I find interesting because of you

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like, we we’ve said this about a 100 times on this

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podcast together, Hae san. Right? Like, the more things change, the more things stay the

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same. Right? So the guy the guy has a job,

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leaves that job to go better himself. Great. Gets married.

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Awesome. Gets charged with a crime, leaves the

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country, comes back to the country. Why? Because of a girl.

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It’s like, it’s this this story has been written about a 1000

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times. Right? Like so, and then, of course,

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he faces his punishment, does his time, comes out, and then you don’t really hear

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a lot more about him after that. Like, you don’t really hear a lot more,

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of his life after after the prison sentence. Well, he

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so one of the interesting shortly after. Right? Like, if you think about it, he

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dies 1910, which is Well, one of the things and and by the way,

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this this particular volume of O. Henry’s stories,

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has a great introduction in it that goes really

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deep into, into his life. And

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one of the things that the writer of the introduction says is

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this about the jail. He says, jail was deeply traumatic

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for him, though he received favorable treatment as a pharmacist and was given reasonable freedom

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to continue writing. No one knows exactly how or why he transformed

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himself in those years into what became his internationally celebrated pen

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name, O’Henry, nor does anyone know precisely what, if

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anything, the pseudonym is supposed to mean. By the way, we have some information about

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the pseudonym later on that we’ll talk about. Clearly, the important thing is

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that it is a pseudonym. The use of the name O’Henry was a way of

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separating himself from much of the reality he had no inclination to

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deal with.

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Yeah. I mean, so we’ve never talked about

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prison on this podcast, but we might as well talk about it

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today. So I I’ve

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watched the Netflix show. I’m I’m a little bit of a fan of the

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show, locked up abroad only

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because the way I run my mouth,

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if I I ever get in trouble at a foreign country, I wanna know what

256
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I’m getting into. For sure. Like like, I

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know not to run my mouth in, like, Honduras. I just I know you just

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shut up. Just shut up. Shut shut shut gut

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your mouth. There’s no freedom of speech there.

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When the man with the nice man with the AK 47 tells you to shut

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up, you know what you do? I’m gonna shut up. Shut up

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because because because I can’t make it in Honduran

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prison. There are things I would have to do in that

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prison where I just you can’t come back from them. Yeah.

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Weirdly enough, Scottish prison is also terror. No. Not Scottish. No. No.

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Norwegian prison. Norwegian prison, very clean,

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very, very white. Almost

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livable. Almost livable. But then there’s

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then there’s a Caucasian fellow with, like, face tattoos all over his face. He says

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he’s gonna kill you with, like, a pen knife tomorrow. And he’s very polite

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about it, by the way, but he’s still gonna kill you with a pen knife.

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It’s like it’s just like, oh, oh, so there’s, like, a range.

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Continue. Yeah. You, sir. You, sir, have offended me today. So tomorrow, you

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must die. Are you

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serious? Like, he’s he’s in here for

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killing somebody. He’s not joking around in,

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like, Finland. Yeah. Which is, like, the most

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like, we tend I tend to think of as an American. And my Finnish listeners,

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I apologize to you. I’m sure you’re, like, living out the wire there. I’m sure

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it’s, like, West Baltimore everywhere in Finland all the time. That’s really

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unlikely. But but

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but but where I come from, like, somebody tells you

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they’re gonna kill you. Like, they don’t it’s not usually in an antiseptic

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antiseptic environment, extra fjord where that’s gonna happen. Right?

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But I guess you gotta put a prison wherever. So I I watched the show

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locked up abroad. That way I could see these kinds of experiences. And

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so I think of the American

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penitentiary experience. And I’ve known people who have gone to jail.

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I’ve known at least 3 people in my life who have gone to jail. It

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00:18:14,060 –> 00:18:16,660
might be as high as 5, but at least 3 people for sure that went

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to jail. Right? Variety of different things.

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Not murder, just a variety of different things.

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And one of the things I remember one guy telling me when he got out,

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he said, they call it a correctional facility, but they’re not correcting

295
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anything. And in 1890,

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it must have been closer to, like, the Honduras kind of, like,

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experience than what is now, which is

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probably a little bit closer, at least in theory, to more of

299
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the Finnish experience. Right?

300
00:18:53,460 –> 00:18:57,140
William Sydney Porter went in to prison after

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trying to escape to, ironically enough, Honduras,

302
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and then came out or not came out.

303
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But for for he went for embezzlement because he, like,

304
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moved a couple of, what do you call it,

305
00:19:15,149 –> 00:19:18,830
commas around incorrectly in a bank’s in the bank’s ledgers. And weirdly

306
00:19:18,830 –> 00:19:22,450
enough, the bank in Texas, when you read about this, they

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declined to prosecute him. The bank didn’t

308
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think it was a problem, but the federal government thought that what he had done

309
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was a problem. Interesting.

310
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Interesting. And so he was traumatized by

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00:19:37,605 –> 00:19:41,365
this. Well, I mean, that’s

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especially, I think about it. Embezzlement, it means, like, you’re taking the money.

313
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Right? So you’re you’re taking the money, and you’re gonna go live live high on

314
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a a high life on on whatever money you’re you’re because

315
00:19:51,850 –> 00:19:54,930
embezzlement, for those of you who don’t know, is stealing. You’re stealing the money from

316
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some but he didn’t actually physically take the money. He made a it’s an accounting

317
00:19:58,645 –> 00:20:02,325
error. Right? Like, so It’s a clerical error. What or a clerical error. It’s right.

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00:20:02,325 –> 00:20:05,605
It’s not even an accounting error. It’s more a clerical error than a than even

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accounting, which is why the bank didn’t care. But so why

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did the government like, that’s the part that I never understood. Right? I

321
00:20:12,920 –> 00:20:16,140
didn’t under I didn’t understand this. Like, so why did the government

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00:20:16,680 –> 00:20:20,120
choose to prosecute anyway? Are they trying to make an example out of some guy

323
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who doesn’t matter to anybody? Like like, I don’t So I I I

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00:20:23,925 –> 00:20:27,145
will read you from the introduction because I was also fascinated by this.

325
00:20:30,165 –> 00:20:34,005
So here we go. The magazine did not flourish, the the Rolling Stone magazine

326
00:20:34,005 –> 00:20:35,465
that he established in Texas.

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The the author here says, Porter slated to a life of dissolution and

328
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illicit borrowing from various bank accounts. His father-in-law repaid

329
00:20:45,620 –> 00:20:49,460
his embezzlement, and the jury acquitted him on criminal charges. Okay. So it wasn’t a

330
00:20:49,460 –> 00:20:53,075
clerical error. He was actually, like, moving money around. Okay. But the federal bank

331
00:20:53,075 –> 00:20:56,835
examiners moved for a new trial. The Rolling Stone, his

332
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magazine, died in 18/95. Porter was rearrested in 18

333
00:21:00,435 –> 00:21:04,135
96 and promptly fled, first to New Orleans and then to Honduras.

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He stayed 2 years. Roughly a year later, learning that

335
00:21:08,390 –> 00:21:11,930
his wife was near death, he returned. She died a few months afterward.

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The next year, 18/98, he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to

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5 years in the penitentiary in Columbus, Ohio, where he, in fact,

338
00:21:19,830 –> 00:21:23,485
served over 3 years. So it wasn’t a clerical error. My

339
00:21:23,485 –> 00:21:26,845
bad. I am I was incorrect. I thought it was because this is the other

340
00:21:26,845 –> 00:21:30,685
thing about William Sydney Porter. There’s multiple stories about

341
00:21:30,685 –> 00:21:34,205
his life. Like, if you go to the Wikipedia, the stuff on his

342
00:21:34,205 –> 00:21:37,670
Wikipedia article is different than what’s in this introduction

343
00:21:37,670 –> 00:21:41,370
here. Oh, interesting. So

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he’s one of these authors who

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00:21:48,805 –> 00:21:50,825
He’s fascinating to me because

346
00:21:52,405 –> 00:21:55,625
he created a pseudonym to hide

347
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from the shame of going to jail, I think.

348
00:22:01,580 –> 00:22:05,280
Because back then, if you in the 18 nineties,

349
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if you were going to jail, that means you had failed. And by the

350
00:22:12,220 –> 00:22:15,644
way, going to jail in

351
00:22:17,225 –> 00:22:20,264
a country where you just come out of the civil war where you could go

352
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west to escape, like, the federal forces if you needed to. And

353
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we’ve talked about, you know, Sitting Bull and the the

354
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moving of the movement of the native tribes and all these kinds of things that

355
00:22:31,460 –> 00:22:35,300
were happening to people all at the same time after the civil war. Right? They

356
00:22:35,300 –> 00:22:38,760
were all part of oh, Henry was part of that

357
00:22:43,595 –> 00:22:46,955
massive shifting of America. Right? Well, I mean, let’s call it what it is. Right?

358
00:22:46,955 –> 00:22:50,315
It was, like, it was the forming of the wild wild west. Right? So Right.

359
00:22:50,475 –> 00:22:53,995
And and the wild wild west was something that the government had very little control

360
00:22:53,995 –> 00:22:57,840
over and Right. Till much later in history. I mean, like,

361
00:22:57,840 –> 00:23:01,280
wound indeed was 18 90. Right? So you were talking just a few

362
00:23:01,280 –> 00:23:04,960
years, after wounded knee. Is is it so that

363
00:23:05,040 –> 00:23:08,720
the the west was still no man’s land for the most

364
00:23:08,880 –> 00:23:12,340
No man’s land. Especially when the government came, you know, came to

365
00:23:12,935 –> 00:23:16,535
view it because they they they had no way of wrapping their arms around the

366
00:23:16,535 –> 00:23:19,735
whole thing anyway. So they were just kinda you know, in the way that the

367
00:23:19,735 –> 00:23:23,035
way that local governments kinda just kind of

368
00:23:24,215 –> 00:23:27,815
again, it’s the. That’s why we use that reference to things that are just going

369
00:23:27,815 –> 00:23:31,640
a little crazy when, like, when you’re talking about, you know, starting

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00:23:31,940 –> 00:23:35,380
cryptocurrency at one point was considered the wild wild west of investment. Right? Like, I

371
00:23:35,380 –> 00:23:38,820
mean Well, it still is. It is still is. It’s still is.

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Like, we use that reference for a reason. So to Right. Like, so he could

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have very easily skipped out, gone to California, New

374
00:23:46,315 –> 00:23:49,675
Mexico, whatever, and never been seen again and not have to worry about any of

375
00:23:49,675 –> 00:23:53,275
this stuff. He would they would never caught up with him. Never. And, you

376
00:23:53,275 –> 00:23:56,795
know, Honduras is one thing. New Orleans okay. New Orleans is a major port. It’s

377
00:23:56,795 –> 00:24:00,550
Louisiana. I mean, come on. But but you could

378
00:24:00,550 –> 00:24:03,930
go to I mean, he and and by the way, he had lived in Texas

379
00:24:03,990 –> 00:24:07,770
for the vast majority of his, of his adult life. Right?

380
00:24:07,990 –> 00:24:11,830
And so there’s further west than Texas. Like, you can

381
00:24:11,830 –> 00:24:14,970
go to New Mexico. I mean, you go to Arizona. All that’s just

382
00:24:15,945 –> 00:24:19,565
unfettered I mean wildest.

383
00:24:19,625 –> 00:24:23,465
Let’s be realistic here. Hey, San. It’s 2024. If you wanted

384
00:24:23,465 –> 00:24:27,225
to disappear, you could’ve you can who’s going who’s chasing you to

385
00:24:27,225 –> 00:24:30,909
Utah? Like Nobody. You know what I mean? Like, dude, we still have states

386
00:24:30,970 –> 00:24:34,009
that if you were just if you just went there and laid low, nobody would

387
00:24:34,009 –> 00:24:36,649
question you and you could just live your life and nobody would go looking for

388
00:24:36,649 –> 00:24:39,389
you. Like There’s there’s there’s a reason

389
00:24:40,250 –> 00:24:44,005
that and and by the way, I I’m

390
00:24:44,005 –> 00:24:47,784
saying this merely as a statement of fact, not a knock on anybody.

391
00:24:48,404 –> 00:24:52,164
But if you wanna be a white supremacist or quite

392
00:24:52,164 –> 00:24:55,625
frankly a black supremacist, actually, why are we being racial here?

393
00:24:56,270 –> 00:24:59,950
Idaho’s the best place to do that. I And I’m not knocking people

394
00:24:59,950 –> 00:25:03,549
from Idaho. I’m really not. There are a lot of nice people in Idaho. Des

395
00:25:03,549 –> 00:25:06,529
Moines or not Des Moines, but Boise is great. Des Moines in Iowa.

396
00:25:07,070 –> 00:25:09,710
Boise is great. I’ve been to Boise a couple times. I’ve been to Coeur d’Alene.

397
00:25:09,710 –> 00:25:13,505
I almost took a job in Coeur d’Alene. Fine. It’s a beautiful country. And,

398
00:25:17,164 –> 00:25:20,684
like, if you wanna disappear okay. So current events.

399
00:25:20,684 –> 00:25:24,205
Right? The guy who allegedly, we have to say

400
00:25:24,205 –> 00:25:27,140
allegedly, shot the UnitedHealthcare

401
00:25:27,600 –> 00:25:31,279
CEO. Right? Which, by the way, my wife works for. My

402
00:25:31,279 –> 00:25:35,120
wife work works for that company. A full disclosure

403
00:25:35,120 –> 00:25:38,880
on the Full disclosure. I knew about that shooting immediately because she got an

404
00:25:38,880 –> 00:25:42,625
email, And we both work from home, so she came running out. She

405
00:25:42,625 –> 00:25:45,184
goes, did you just see the new did you see what happened? I went, how

406
00:25:45,184 –> 00:25:48,865
would I know that happened? Nobody’s reporting on it yet. I literally googled it, and

407
00:25:48,865 –> 00:25:52,304
nothing was being reported yet. My CEO got

408
00:25:52,304 –> 00:25:56,059
shot. Like, I can’t believe this. Like and I’m like I

409
00:25:56,059 –> 00:25:59,740
was like, wow. I anyway, go ahead. So the CEO So the CEO. Right?

410
00:25:59,740 –> 00:26:03,179
Right. Yeah. So the the the Italian

411
00:26:03,179 –> 00:26:06,940
fellow, the alleged shooter, then you can go

412
00:26:06,940 –> 00:26:10,735
find his name. He probably should have not gone to

413
00:26:10,735 –> 00:26:14,095
a McDonald’s in in Pennsylvania. Yeah. He

414
00:26:14,095 –> 00:26:17,635
probably should have gone to the Great Smoky Mountains

415
00:26:17,855 –> 00:26:21,309
following in the example of remember

416
00:26:21,549 –> 00:26:25,309
I know Tom will remember this. The Olympic Park bomber. Not Richard Jewell,

417
00:26:25,309 –> 00:26:28,750
not the guy who was accused of being the Olympic Park bomber, who actually wasn’t

418
00:26:28,750 –> 00:26:32,590
and his life got all messed up. But Laddiesel made a movie

419
00:26:32,590 –> 00:26:36,345
about him. The guy who actually did the bombing this is something that’s a

420
00:26:36,345 –> 00:26:39,865
little known about this guy. He disappeared for,

421
00:26:39,865 –> 00:26:43,705
like, 10 years Yeah. Into the Great Smoky Mountains of North

422
00:26:43,705 –> 00:26:47,340
Carolina. And the only reason the FBI got him was because

423
00:26:47,340 –> 00:26:51,020
he walked out to get, like, a newspaper or something or,

424
00:26:51,020 –> 00:26:54,780
like, turkey jerky. Went to, like, a gas station.

425
00:26:54,780 –> 00:26:58,620
He just walked out of the woods. And if he never walked out of the

426
00:26:58,620 –> 00:27:02,445
woods, the phippies, the FBI would have never caught him.

427
00:27:02,445 –> 00:27:06,205
Yeah. And this is and this is North Carolina. This isn’t the west. This isn’t

428
00:27:06,205 –> 00:27:09,965
Idaho. To your point, Porter

429
00:27:09,965 –> 00:27:13,790
could have gone he could have gone and hid somewhere. Could have gone

430
00:27:13,790 –> 00:27:17,510
in the mountains, you know, and still done his writing, by the

431
00:27:17,510 –> 00:27:21,270
way. Okay. So would have so would have been able to, to to write.

432
00:27:21,270 –> 00:27:24,470
And it probably would have, by the way, helped for his tuberculosis, which he did.

433
00:27:24,470 –> 00:27:27,075
Well, that’s that was one of the interesting things I found out about him. He

434
00:27:27,075 –> 00:27:30,835
lived in fear of dying of tuberculosis, and eventually, he

435
00:27:30,835 –> 00:27:34,375
died of cirrhosis, heart failure, and

436
00:27:35,154 –> 00:27:38,850
tuberculosis. He was he was pretty young when he died too. Was it 48?

437
00:27:39,169 –> 00:27:42,049
Yeah. He was in his he was in his late forties. Yeah. But he didn’t

438
00:27:42,049 –> 00:27:45,809
he didn’t hit until and we’ll talk a little bit about that too.

439
00:27:45,809 –> 00:27:49,650
But he didn’t hit as a as an author until he

440
00:27:49,650 –> 00:27:53,415
was in his late thirties. Yeah. So he really only had, like, maybe

441
00:27:53,415 –> 00:27:57,255
7, 8 years of just, like, ridiculous production and

442
00:27:57,255 –> 00:28:01,015
just sort of wrote himself to death Mhmm. In an attempt to escape from

443
00:28:01,015 –> 00:28:04,615
the shame of that, that prison

444
00:28:04,615 –> 00:28:07,115
sentence, you know, being arrested. Alright.

445
00:28:09,310 –> 00:28:12,910
There’s some lessons that leaders can glean from the life and times of William Sidney

446
00:28:12,910 –> 00:28:16,050
Porter. Maybe the lesson is this, escape to the west.

447
00:28:17,790 –> 00:28:21,615
Yeah. Well, I think I think part of it is, like, I I

448
00:28:21,615 –> 00:28:25,375
think there there is a slight lesson here too that’s a little bit more in-depth,

449
00:28:25,375 –> 00:28:29,055
which is, like, no matter how much you run from something, if the problem

450
00:28:29,055 –> 00:28:32,335
still persists, you’re gonna have to face it at some point or another. Right? Like,

451
00:28:32,335 –> 00:28:36,100
that that’s essentially what he did. He left and he faced the music, but only

452
00:28:36,100 –> 00:28:39,240
when he had to come back to help, you know, to help his wife. But,

453
00:28:39,300 –> 00:28:42,900
I mean, we’ve all kind of been there, done that. Right? You and it’s it’s

454
00:28:43,060 –> 00:28:46,740
that doesn’t have to be something this, you know, this this,

455
00:28:48,545 –> 00:28:52,005
the word escapes me. But it it doesn’t have to be this this

456
00:28:52,065 –> 00:28:55,105
bad. Right? Like, where you committed a crime that you’re coming back to pay for

457
00:28:55,105 –> 00:28:58,305
the crime. Like, sometimes, it’s a decision that you just don’t make right at the

458
00:28:58,305 –> 00:29:01,919
moment because you don’t wanna make it for whatever reason it is. Right. You just

459
00:29:01,919 –> 00:29:05,679
move on past it. If it’s still sitting there taunting you,

460
00:29:05,679 –> 00:29:09,360
you gotta come back to it at some point, or it’s it’s gonna be your

461
00:29:09,360 –> 00:29:13,200
demise. Right? Like, that’s we and if you’ve ever been in the

462
00:29:13,200 –> 00:29:16,995
leadership position, I think you’ll understand what I’m saying right now.

463
00:29:16,995 –> 00:29:20,835
Because, like, that, you know, not addressing, the the elephant

464
00:29:20,835 –> 00:29:24,515
in the room, not addressing a problem that’s going to continuous like, continue to be

465
00:29:24,515 –> 00:29:28,280
a problem, not addressing things that are gonna be the downfall of your company if

466
00:29:28,280 –> 00:29:31,480
you don’t take care of it. At some point, you have to go back and

467
00:29:31,480 –> 00:29:35,100
do it. So I guess I don’t know. That I that does a little bit

468
00:29:35,400 –> 00:29:38,920
more to it than There’s an old school well, there’s an old school word. You’ll

469
00:29:38,920 –> 00:29:42,620
like this word because you and I are roughly in the same sort of

470
00:29:42,735 –> 00:29:46,434
area where we un where we we were raised with certain English terms

471
00:29:46,735 –> 00:29:50,035
that have now fallen out of favor. Comeuppance.

472
00:29:50,735 –> 00:29:54,415
Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Like,

473
00:29:54,415 –> 00:29:57,850
you’re gonna get your comeuppance. Like, you just are. You

474
00:29:57,850 –> 00:30:01,390
know, long have I feared that my comeuppance would show up, and it did.

475
00:30:02,250 –> 00:30:06,010
You know? Yeah. It always it always does invariably. I was I was

476
00:30:06,010 –> 00:30:09,735
told at very young age, you know, as, you know, as I was going through

477
00:30:09,735 –> 00:30:12,555
the ranks and and starting to become more,

478
00:30:13,735 –> 00:30:17,575
authoritative in in certain roles, somebody much

479
00:30:17,575 –> 00:30:21,270
older than me that was I I actually managed them,

480
00:30:21,270 –> 00:30:24,310
and they they were so they were a subordinate of mine, but they were much,

481
00:30:24,310 –> 00:30:27,370
much, much older than me. At the time, I was probably in my mid twenties,

482
00:30:27,510 –> 00:30:30,970
and they were, like, 58 or 59, the Oh, wow. Closer retirement.

483
00:30:31,590 –> 00:30:35,155
And he said something to me that just stuck forever, and

484
00:30:35,155 –> 00:30:38,995
now I’m understanding it even more. Even though being at

485
00:30:38,995 –> 00:30:42,675
his age level, and I love this guy, by the way. Even though he was

486
00:30:42,675 –> 00:30:46,115
a subordinate, I viewed him more like a mentor even though I was supposed to

487
00:30:46,115 –> 00:30:49,610
be his boss. Yeah. And, but because of that

488
00:30:49,610 –> 00:30:52,809
that age gap and his experience and and,

489
00:30:53,450 –> 00:30:56,669
it it it I anyway, he said to me,

490
00:30:58,169 –> 00:31:01,210
you know, be be nice to people on the way up because you’re gonna meet

491
00:31:01,210 –> 00:31:04,571
them again on the way down. And I never I

492
00:31:04,571 –> 00:31:08,305
I always did it because he told me to do that, and it

493
00:31:08,305 –> 00:31:10,705
stuck with me that it’s a good it’s an it’s a good thing to do.

494
00:31:10,705 –> 00:31:14,465
Like, treat people with respect and, like, you know, it doesn’t matter how powerful you

495
00:31:14,465 –> 00:31:17,950
get or how much authority you get, like, you know, whatever. And now that I’m

496
00:31:17,950 –> 00:31:21,710
in the back end of my career, I’m thinking of that going, I’m glad I

497
00:31:21,710 –> 00:31:25,550
did that. Like, because there’s a lot of people that used to

498
00:31:25,550 –> 00:31:29,310
work for me that were much younger, and now they’re now they’re on the way

499
00:31:29,310 –> 00:31:32,190
up, and now I can reach out to them for help. I get like, they

500
00:31:32,190 –> 00:31:35,855
don’t they don’t think twice about about giving me, you know, the time of

501
00:31:35,855 –> 00:31:39,535
day to be helpful to, like I was like and so now I’m thinking of

502
00:31:39,535 –> 00:31:42,995
that advice saying, I’m glad I took that advice.

503
00:31:43,615 –> 00:31:47,395
Like Yeah. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Yep. Yep.

504
00:31:48,179 –> 00:31:51,779
Absolutely. Alright. Back to the short story.

505
00:31:51,779 –> 00:31:55,539
Back to The Gift of the Magi. By the way, you can this is an

506
00:31:55,539 –> 00:31:59,220
open source short story, so you can get this anywhere you

507
00:31:59,220 –> 00:32:03,055
want on the Internet and check this out just in time

508
00:32:03,115 –> 00:32:06,415
for the holidays. Alright. Back to the story.

509
00:32:07,755 –> 00:32:11,595
There was a pure glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you’ve seen

510
00:32:11,595 –> 00:32:15,400
pure glass in an $8 flat. A very thin, very agile

511
00:32:15,400 –> 00:32:18,860
person may, by observing his reflection in rapid sequence of longitudinal

512
00:32:18,920 –> 00:32:22,060
stripes, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks.

513
00:32:22,440 –> 00:32:25,420
Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

514
00:32:26,465 –> 00:32:29,425
Suddenly, she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining

515
00:32:29,425 –> 00:32:32,945
brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within 20

516
00:32:32,945 –> 00:32:36,325
seconds. Rapidly, she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

517
00:32:37,825 –> 00:32:41,205
Now there were 2 possessions of the James Dillingham

518
00:32:41,265 –> 00:32:45,010
Youngs in which they both took mighty pride. 1 was Jim’s

519
00:32:45,010 –> 00:32:48,770
gold watch, which has been his father’s and his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair.

520
00:32:48,770 –> 00:32:52,370
Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the air shaft, Della would

521
00:32:52,370 –> 00:32:56,145
have let her hair hang out the window someday to dry just to depreciate her

522
00:32:56,145 –> 00:32:59,825
majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the

523
00:32:59,825 –> 00:33:03,585
janitor with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out

524
00:33:03,585 –> 00:33:06,965
his watch every time he passed just to see him look at his beard

525
00:33:07,105 –> 00:33:10,570
from envy. So now Della’s

526
00:33:10,570 –> 00:33:14,270
beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters.

527
00:33:14,410 –> 00:33:17,870
It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her.

528
00:33:18,490 –> 00:33:21,929
And then she did it up again nervously and quickly once she faltered for a

529
00:33:21,929 –> 00:33:25,545
minute and stood still while a tear or 2 splashed on the

530
00:33:25,545 –> 00:33:29,305
worn red carpet, on with her old brown jacket,

531
00:33:29,305 –> 00:33:33,145
on with her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant

532
00:33:33,145 –> 00:33:36,105
sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to

533
00:33:36,105 –> 00:33:39,470
the street. Where she stopped, the sign

534
00:33:39,470 –> 00:33:43,309
read, Mademoiselle Solfournier, hair goods of all

535
00:33:43,309 –> 00:33:46,669
kinds. One flight up, Della ran and collected herself panting.

536
00:33:46,669 –> 00:33:50,190
Madam, large, too white, chili, hardly looked the

537
00:33:50,190 –> 00:33:53,625
Solfournier. Will you buy my hair? Asked

538
00:33:53,625 –> 00:33:57,184
Della. I buy hair, said madame. Take your hat off, and let’s have a sight

539
00:33:57,184 –> 00:34:00,924
of the looks of it. Down rippled the brown cascade.

540
00:34:01,465 –> 00:34:04,924
$20, said madame, lifting the mask with a practiced

541
00:34:04,985 –> 00:34:08,790
hand. Give it to me quick, said Della. Oh, and

542
00:34:08,790 –> 00:34:12,389
the next 2 hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hash

543
00:34:12,389 –> 00:34:15,770
metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s

544
00:34:16,150 –> 00:34:16,650
present.

545
00:34:28,745 –> 00:34:32,344
One of the things that jumps out to you about, William Sydney

546
00:34:32,344 –> 00:34:36,045
Porter’s writing, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s Cabbages and Kings,

547
00:34:36,440 –> 00:34:39,800
whether it’s, Gift of the Magi, or any of the

548
00:34:39,800 –> 00:34:42,700
stories that take place in New York City.

549
00:34:44,760 –> 00:34:48,120
One of the things that jumps out to you about O. Henry’s stories is

550
00:34:48,120 –> 00:34:51,955
that while he is a writer of the

551
00:34:51,955 –> 00:34:55,554
Gilded Age, when everyone is getting rich, off of

552
00:34:55,554 –> 00:34:58,915
oil, off of the back end of the industrial revolution, when

553
00:34:58,915 –> 00:35:02,755
literally people are selling everything they possibly can, even,

554
00:35:02,755 –> 00:35:06,119
interestingly enough, General Grant, in his,

555
00:35:06,599 –> 00:35:10,200
administration, at least his first one and potentially into a second one,

556
00:35:10,200 –> 00:35:13,579
selling even the White House. Literally, anything that was nailed down

557
00:35:13,880 –> 00:35:16,539
between or that wasn’t nailed down between

558
00:35:18,625 –> 00:35:22,145
18/70 and, like, 1910 was

559
00:35:22,145 –> 00:35:25,825
literally being sold in America, which is, by the way, part of the

560
00:35:25,825 –> 00:35:28,565
reason why Woodrow Wilson proposed,

561
00:35:29,905 –> 00:35:32,945
the creation of the amendment that

562
00:35:33,650 –> 00:35:37,090
or the proposed the amendment that created the IRS in

563
00:35:37,090 –> 00:35:40,390
1913 and why Woodrow Wilson

564
00:35:40,610 –> 00:35:44,150
proposed that the as his pitch

565
00:35:44,370 –> 00:35:48,150
for the amendment that would create the IRS, I believe that that is the

566
00:35:48,665 –> 00:35:52,105
16th amendment. He also said

567
00:35:52,105 –> 00:35:55,625
that that amendment would never be

568
00:35:55,625 –> 00:35:57,325
used for any more than millionaires.

569
00:35:59,224 –> 00:36:02,685
Because everyone, you know, was trying to become 1.

570
00:36:03,309 –> 00:36:06,510
One of the things that you see in the gilded age, one of the things

571
00:36:06,510 –> 00:36:10,270
that you see during this time of immense avarice and

572
00:36:10,270 –> 00:36:12,770
greed that is driving the country,

573
00:36:14,109 –> 00:36:17,195
one of the things that you see is immense poverty

574
00:36:17,735 –> 00:36:20,955
on the other side of that. And O’Henry’s stories

575
00:36:22,215 –> 00:36:24,235
focused on poverty.

576
00:36:26,535 –> 00:36:29,915
We see at least in New York City stories, we see that

577
00:36:31,830 –> 00:36:35,590
reflected in O’Henry’s life on the embezzlement charge that he had. O’Henry

578
00:36:35,590 –> 00:36:39,270
spent a lot of his life, pursuing money and trying to

579
00:36:39,270 –> 00:36:42,250
attain, financial security

580
00:36:43,510 –> 00:36:45,370
for himself and for his family.

581
00:36:47,465 –> 00:36:51,145
But there was also a sense of trauma underneath this that o

582
00:36:51,145 –> 00:36:54,985
Henry was able to tap into. There’s this idea from Kevin

583
00:36:54,985 –> 00:36:58,745
Hart that you gotta laugh at my pain. Right? You gotta you gotta

584
00:36:58,745 –> 00:37:02,285
find entertainment in my trauma. And

585
00:37:03,980 –> 00:37:07,180
just like there’s a thin line between love and hate, there’s also a thin line

586
00:37:07,180 –> 00:37:10,700
between tragic the tragedy of trauma, particularly the trauma

587
00:37:10,700 –> 00:37:14,160
related to want and the humor inherent in it.

588
00:37:17,135 –> 00:37:20,734
Most of our stories today and I I just did a shorts

589
00:37:20,815 –> 00:37:24,655
just recorded a shorts episode that you should listen to before this one about why

590
00:37:24,655 –> 00:37:28,494
men don’t read literary novels. But one of the or

591
00:37:28,494 –> 00:37:32,160
increasingly men don’t read literary novels. One of the challenges of our

592
00:37:32,160 –> 00:37:35,680
time is that our trauma, just like in the gilded

593
00:37:35,680 –> 00:37:39,280
age, is everywhere all over the place all of the

594
00:37:39,280 –> 00:37:42,880
time. We can see our trauma on TikTok. We could see our trauma on Instagram.

595
00:37:42,880 –> 00:37:46,724
We could see everybody else’s trauma too. And the

596
00:37:46,724 –> 00:37:49,224
trauma that would have been tragedy in the past,

597
00:37:50,565 –> 00:37:54,405
is no longer fodder for story, particularly not at a

598
00:37:54,405 –> 00:37:58,164
mass entertainment level, which is why most of the stories that

599
00:37:58,164 –> 00:38:01,920
we see in our mass entertainment, and I’m talking about movies or

600
00:38:01,920 –> 00:38:05,620
even streaming television shows, most of the entertainment

601
00:38:06,800 –> 00:38:10,560
these these days, at least in my opinion, doesn’t even rise to the

602
00:38:10,560 –> 00:38:14,405
level of a William Sydney Porter short story. Most

603
00:38:14,405 –> 00:38:17,845
of the things that we see are flat, boring, derivative, are

604
00:38:17,845 –> 00:38:20,744
remarkably unsurprising and uninspiring.

605
00:38:22,085 –> 00:38:25,545
And by the way, I think that’s a shame. I think it’s a shame because

606
00:38:26,510 –> 00:38:30,349
the uniqueness of trauma is now no longer being used as

607
00:38:30,349 –> 00:38:33,569
fodder for story the way o Henry did.

608
00:38:35,550 –> 00:38:39,390
I think this is a real challenge, but I also think it’s a

609
00:38:39,390 –> 00:38:41,250
challenge for leadership. And so

610
00:38:44,405 –> 00:38:47,125
this is going to put us in mind of a particular colleague of ours. It’s

611
00:38:47,125 –> 00:38:49,765
just when I wrote this, I was like, oh, he’s gonna think about this person

612
00:38:49,765 –> 00:38:53,245
when I bring this up. A particular co shared colleague of ours. But let’s talk

613
00:38:53,245 –> 00:38:55,225
a little bit about storytelling, Tom.

614
00:38:57,540 –> 00:39:00,100
Well, I mean, it’s interesting. So I I went back and listened to a bunch

615
00:39:00,100 –> 00:39:03,540
of our episodes that we’ve done together. We haven’t actually ever directly addressed

616
00:39:03,540 –> 00:39:07,380
storytelling. We’ve we’ve gone around it and inside

617
00:39:07,380 –> 00:39:10,840
it and underneath it and through it, but directly the the

618
00:39:11,125 –> 00:39:14,965
directly talking about the actual act of storytelling itself. Like, how do you structure

619
00:39:14,965 –> 00:39:18,325
a narrative? What is the thing that feeds that narrative underneath? Is it trauma? Is

620
00:39:18,325 –> 00:39:21,925
it tragedy? Is it humor? Is it triumph? Is it drama? We

621
00:39:22,005 –> 00:39:25,305
we’ve talked a lot about the things around it, but the actual,

622
00:39:25,990 –> 00:39:29,750
like, act of putting together a story, we’ve never we’ve never talked about, like,

623
00:39:29,750 –> 00:39:33,050
the the nuts and bolts of that. So how can leaders

624
00:39:33,430 –> 00:39:37,270
leverage let’s start with this question. How can leaders leverage personal trauma the

625
00:39:37,270 –> 00:39:39,850
way O. Henry did to put together a compelling story?

626
00:39:43,105 –> 00:39:46,944
Well, that that’s, that’s an awful lot to unpack there, Hayes. It is.

627
00:39:46,944 –> 00:39:50,625
It is. I I think I I think before you even get

628
00:39:50,625 –> 00:39:54,405
into that question, you need to understand

629
00:39:56,430 –> 00:39:58,849
some dynamics first. Right? Me meaning,

630
00:40:00,910 –> 00:40:04,750
I think one of the I was I was a probably I don’t

631
00:40:04,750 –> 00:40:08,130
know. I was 18 or 19 years old. I was driving, and I saw this

632
00:40:08,454 –> 00:40:11,974
billboard that said and it it read this quote

633
00:40:11,974 –> 00:40:15,815
that that nobody was ever be able to prove who exactly it

634
00:40:15,815 –> 00:40:18,714
came from, but everyone believes it came from,

635
00:40:19,655 –> 00:40:23,360
Albert Einstein, which was, perception

636
00:40:23,360 –> 00:40:27,040
is greater than reality. One of the reasons I think that one of the

637
00:40:27,040 –> 00:40:30,800
thing one of the reasons that I think that you’re you’re feeling the

638
00:40:30,800 –> 00:40:34,640
way you are about about narratives and storytelling and the lack

639
00:40:34,640 –> 00:40:38,365
thereof compared to 18, you know, the 1800s and the gilded age or

640
00:40:38,365 –> 00:40:42,125
whatever. I I think that we forget, and sometimes

641
00:40:42,125 –> 00:40:45,885
we forget that 2 people

642
00:40:45,885 –> 00:40:49,664
can view the exact same situation and walk away with it 2 completely

643
00:40:49,724 –> 00:40:53,160
different perceptions of how that situation impacts their life.

644
00:40:53,380 –> 00:40:57,060
Right? And Mhmm. And so so to what so

645
00:40:57,060 –> 00:41:00,820
somebody who decides to look at a tragedy and

646
00:41:00,820 –> 00:41:04,500
turn it into entertainment because my pain can be laughter,

647
00:41:04,500 –> 00:41:07,975
and what I suffered through could if I if

648
00:41:07,975 –> 00:41:11,655
I if I present my suffering in the right

649
00:41:11,655 –> 00:41:15,255
way, I could potentially prevent somebody else from suffering from the same

650
00:41:15,255 –> 00:41:18,615
thing because they they they then will take the lighter side of

651
00:41:18,615 –> 00:41:22,390
that, of that of that scenario. Right? Somebody’s

652
00:41:22,450 –> 00:41:25,990
a a death, a a car accident,

653
00:41:26,289 –> 00:41:29,970
cancer, drug addiction, whatever that whatever that

654
00:41:29,970 –> 00:41:33,815
trauma is that you’ve experienced, there are people that can

655
00:41:33,815 –> 00:41:37,194
take those traumas and turn them into great stories, and there are people that

656
00:41:37,335 –> 00:41:40,474
internalize those traumas until it turns out to be something

657
00:41:40,775 –> 00:41:44,615
disastrous. Mhmm. And in that case, I think of somebody with for the sake

658
00:41:44,615 –> 00:41:48,170
of argument, somebody like Robin Williams. Right? Sure. Okay. He he

659
00:41:48,170 –> 00:41:51,930
externalized so much of his internal pain. But because it

660
00:41:51,930 –> 00:41:55,690
was internal and nobody ever saw it, it it was the end of it.

661
00:41:55,690 –> 00:41:58,605
He he took his own life because of it. Right? So it was like Right.

662
00:41:58,685 –> 00:42:02,525
So I I think when you start understanding the dynamics of people and

663
00:42:02,525 –> 00:42:06,065
you start understanding how those those things

664
00:42:08,765 –> 00:42:12,525
how you perceive those things are going to impact your narrative or how

665
00:42:12,525 –> 00:42:16,100
your storytelling is. Right? So all that being

666
00:42:16,100 –> 00:42:19,800
said, if you’re talking strictly about the structure,

667
00:42:20,260 –> 00:42:23,860
then, sure, you need an intro, and you need a this, and you need a

668
00:42:24,260 –> 00:42:27,620
sure. I mean, all that stuff is is is pretty simple, and and and the

669
00:42:27,620 –> 00:42:31,005
audience can go look it up. There’s there’s nothing brilliant about

670
00:42:31,005 –> 00:42:34,465
about the structure of how a story should be presented.

671
00:42:35,085 –> 00:42:38,525
But when you start talking about the underlying tones and the narratives and the context

672
00:42:38,525 –> 00:42:42,045
and all that stuff and how you how you want it to be

673
00:42:42,045 –> 00:42:45,630
received, I think you have to go

674
00:42:45,850 –> 00:42:49,690
start backwards. I think you have to start with your audience. Start with the

675
00:42:49,690 –> 00:42:53,290
audience. What are you trying to convey to them? What

676
00:42:53,290 –> 00:42:56,570
emotional state are you trying to get them to feel when you when they read

677
00:42:56,570 –> 00:43:00,025
whatever it is you’re writing? Your storytelling is going to

678
00:43:00,025 –> 00:43:01,885
be again, so

679
00:43:03,465 –> 00:43:06,985
storytelling seems to always come from a place of a couple of

680
00:43:06,985 –> 00:43:10,745
things. Trauma is absolutely one of it, one of

681
00:43:10,745 –> 00:43:14,579
them. Adventure is another like, you

682
00:43:14,579 –> 00:43:18,359
you you just had this wild adventure that that you deemed a success

683
00:43:18,420 –> 00:43:22,180
because of x, whatever the hell that happens. So now you wanna write a story

684
00:43:22,180 –> 00:43:25,859
about it. It like, so there’s a handful of

685
00:43:25,859 –> 00:43:29,435
things like that, whether it’s trauma or adventure or success

686
00:43:29,815 –> 00:43:33,255
or overcoming adversity, like, some sort of

687
00:43:33,255 –> 00:43:36,715
adversity. Any of those things can be the foundation of the story,

688
00:43:37,255 –> 00:43:40,615
but none of them matter unless you know who you’re telling the story

689
00:43:40,615 –> 00:43:44,170
to. So Right. Yeah. The the you know? And, again, we

690
00:43:44,170 –> 00:43:46,809
we can we can bounce in and out of,

691
00:43:47,589 –> 00:43:51,109
literature versus marketing. Sometimes they’re the same. But

692
00:43:51,109 –> 00:43:54,410
literature versus marketing versus just I mean,

693
00:43:54,875 –> 00:43:58,234
in our culture, storytelling was a verbal thing. You didn’t write any of these things

694
00:43:58,234 –> 00:44:01,595
down. It was just how could you tell the story and and the

695
00:44:01,595 –> 00:44:04,734
mannerisms and the and the the the the verbalization

696
00:44:05,275 –> 00:44:08,690
and how you how you accentuate certain words

697
00:44:08,690 –> 00:44:12,150
mattered. And, like, there’s even from even from a a verbal

698
00:44:12,210 –> 00:44:15,890
storytelling perspective, there’s ways to tell the story that

699
00:44:15,890 –> 00:44:19,615
that you wanna make an impact at at certain points so that you get

700
00:44:19,615 –> 00:44:22,955
a a particular message conveyed. Right? So but, again,

701
00:44:23,415 –> 00:44:27,095
that still goes back to knowing your audience. You need to know

702
00:44:27,175 –> 00:44:30,535
Right. Telling the story to a bunch of 5 year olds is very different than

703
00:44:31,220 –> 00:44:34,660
you could probably tell the same exact story to a bunch of 5 year olds

704
00:44:34,660 –> 00:44:38,339
and a bunch of 50 year olds, and it would sound like 2 different

705
00:44:38,339 –> 00:44:42,180
story. It’ll sound like 2 different 2 completely different things, but it’s the same it

706
00:44:42,260 –> 00:44:45,880
it’s based on the same act action or activity or or trauma.

707
00:44:46,019 –> 00:44:49,755
Right? Right. It’s again, I I I

708
00:44:49,755 –> 00:44:53,435
I think it’s I think personal

709
00:44:53,435 –> 00:44:57,195
trauma first of all, none of us are going to escape it. Let’s just get

710
00:44:57,195 –> 00:44:59,940
that right out out of the question. Like, get that right out of the Yeah.

711
00:45:00,020 –> 00:45:02,900
No matter how well off you think you are, no matter how great a childhood

712
00:45:02,900 –> 00:45:06,579
you had, no matter how none of us will escape personal trauma. You

713
00:45:06,579 –> 00:45:10,020
are going to face some sort of personal adversity in your life

714
00:45:10,020 –> 00:45:13,160
regardless of who you are and where you are in the, you know,

715
00:45:13,805 –> 00:45:17,485
economic, socioeconomic scale. It doesn’t it doesn’t matter.

716
00:45:17,485 –> 00:45:20,845
Money doesn’t protect you, neither does, title or,

717
00:45:21,165 –> 00:45:24,205
or any other factor that you can think of that you’re do you think of

718
00:45:24,205 –> 00:45:27,425
somebody else’s life is better than yours or yours is better than somebody else’s?

719
00:45:27,770 –> 00:45:31,369
Personal trauma is going to happen in one way, shape, or form. So taking that

720
00:45:31,369 –> 00:45:35,210
into consideration and how you leverage that as, you know,

721
00:45:35,210 –> 00:45:38,730
as a leader, I think,

722
00:45:38,730 –> 00:45:42,490
again, knowing your audience, knowing your subordinates, knowing your the the

723
00:45:42,490 –> 00:45:45,945
people that you are leading, knowing your followers is going to be

724
00:45:45,945 –> 00:45:49,305
really drastically important when you come

725
00:45:49,305 –> 00:45:52,984
to how you’re gonna leverage that trauma to motivate

726
00:45:52,984 –> 00:45:56,690
them, move them to do whatever that whatever that is. But I definitely

727
00:45:56,690 –> 00:45:59,890
think it’s possible. I think you just need to know yourself and know your audience

728
00:45:59,890 –> 00:46:03,730
really well. Well, there are there are only 5 stories. Like,

729
00:46:03,730 –> 00:46:06,609
we’ve known this since Shakespeare. I say this all the time. Well, not all the

730
00:46:06,609 –> 00:46:09,569
time. This is the first time I’m saying this on the podcast in this sort

731
00:46:09,569 –> 00:46:13,195
of form. But I say it I used to say it a lot in trainings.

732
00:46:13,195 –> 00:46:16,555
Right? When I would do training on, or deliver training content on,

733
00:46:16,795 –> 00:46:20,635
leadership development and storytelling and leadership and narrative or conflict and

734
00:46:20,635 –> 00:46:24,359
narrative. Right? There’s there’s only 5 stories. Right? So to

735
00:46:24,359 –> 00:46:27,900
your point, there’s a quest story, which is always an adventure story. Right?

736
00:46:29,240 –> 00:46:33,000
I went off and did something. I discovered something. I I, you know,

737
00:46:33,000 –> 00:46:36,460
I discovered fire and brought it back to people. Okay. So there’s a quest story,

738
00:46:36,705 –> 00:46:39,905
you know, that, you know, went out and picked up that,

739
00:46:40,305 –> 00:46:42,005
branch that was hit by lightning.

740
00:46:44,385 –> 00:46:48,065
Kind of awesome. We’re gonna be able to cook our food now. Then

741
00:46:48,065 –> 00:46:51,690
you have after a quest story, you have,

742
00:46:51,930 –> 00:46:55,610
a romance. Now it’s interesting. We almost never tell romantic

743
00:46:55,610 –> 00:46:58,970
stories at work, obviously, because we all wanna avoid sexual

744
00:46:58,970 –> 00:47:02,810
harassment. But romantic stories at work or

745
00:47:02,810 –> 00:47:06,535
in a leadership context are always the kinds of stories that begin with I like

746
00:47:06,535 –> 00:47:08,855
this or I like that or I had a passion about this or I had

747
00:47:08,855 –> 00:47:12,235
a passion about that. Anytime as a leader or a follower

748
00:47:12,535 –> 00:47:16,375
you’re using the word passion to describe something that’s happening, you’re talking about a

749
00:47:16,375 –> 00:47:19,990
love story. Then you have, your 3rd kind of

750
00:47:19,990 –> 00:47:23,030
story is your, is your,

751
00:47:23,750 –> 00:47:27,589
your kinda your to the point that we’re talking about your tragedy. Right? Now

752
00:47:27,589 –> 00:47:31,305
tragedy could be an adventure too. Right? But tragedy

753
00:47:31,305 –> 00:47:35,065
is usually a or or we can sometimes call I sometimes call this a conflict

754
00:47:35,065 –> 00:47:38,745
story. But, tragedy is I hate this

755
00:47:38,745 –> 00:47:42,480
person or this person hates me, particularly at

756
00:47:42,480 –> 00:47:46,240
work, or I was right about this project, and now these people are

757
00:47:46,240 –> 00:47:49,280
gonna get there, to use the word we used in the last segment, these people

758
00:47:49,280 –> 00:47:53,060
are gonna get their comeuppance, and I’m gonna laugh shouting Freud. You know?

759
00:47:53,360 –> 00:47:56,900
Then the the next kind of story you have is a

760
00:47:58,025 –> 00:48:01,545
is sort of a combination of the quest

761
00:48:01,545 –> 00:48:05,305
story, the conflict story, and the romantic story. Right? But it’s more of a

762
00:48:05,305 –> 00:48:08,745
persuasive story. It’s the to your point about motivation, it’s the kind of story that

763
00:48:08,745 –> 00:48:12,460
you tell with all of those elements that’s trying to push people to do something.

764
00:48:12,520 –> 00:48:15,420
And then the 5th kind of story, which we tell the least often,

765
00:48:16,359 –> 00:48:20,040
but we only ever tell it when when we ourselves are new to a

766
00:48:20,040 –> 00:48:23,579
role, is the stranger in a strange land story.

767
00:48:23,880 –> 00:48:27,255
I don’t know what’s happening here. I’m a stranger. This is all

768
00:48:27,255 –> 00:48:30,555
weird. And why am I here?

769
00:48:31,015 –> 00:48:34,775
Like, I’m glad you brought fire, but, like, I was in the cave, 2 caves

770
00:48:34,775 –> 00:48:37,675
over. I never heard of you. Right? Why am I here?

771
00:48:39,175 –> 00:48:42,040
I don’t know why all we always turn into cavemen when we do this. We

772
00:48:42,040 –> 00:48:45,560
always turn because there all 3 all 3 caves

773
00:48:45,560 –> 00:48:48,600
down. I I was I heard somebody had fire. I can’t really see what it

774
00:48:48,600 –> 00:48:51,480
was. What’s this fire thing? It seemed like it’s still like a good idea to

775
00:48:51,480 –> 00:48:54,440
show up at the time. Well, you know what? And it’s funny. These are these

776
00:48:54,440 –> 00:48:58,204
are story styles. Right? And I think Right. So what what are the things that

777
00:48:58,204 –> 00:49:01,884
that motivate people? And you can make there’s there’s

778
00:49:01,884 –> 00:49:05,565
so many books about, like, motivational factors and what motivations

779
00:49:05,565 –> 00:49:09,180
are. They all get boiled down to 2 things. It’s it’s

780
00:49:09,420 –> 00:49:13,259
self preservation or the preservation of others. Like, that that’s really

781
00:49:13,420 –> 00:49:16,619
that’s it. No matter what else you could say oh, no. No. There’s people are

782
00:49:16,619 –> 00:49:19,740
motivated by money. No. No. No. But what does money give you? Money when you

783
00:49:19,740 –> 00:49:22,884
get a lot of money, you have self preservation. Like, you’re Right. And you have

784
00:49:22,884 –> 00:49:25,545
the ability to help your family and friends, which is the preservation

785
00:49:28,085 –> 00:49:31,765
of others. Right? Like, it’s it it it just what

786
00:49:31,765 –> 00:49:35,590
motivates us as human beings is is are basically

787
00:49:35,590 –> 00:49:39,050
those 2 things. It, like, it so all of those stories,

788
00:49:39,350 –> 00:49:42,230
usually, if you read them well, if you read them and you read enough of

789
00:49:42,230 –> 00:49:45,990
them, you’ll start seeing underlying tones of where the self preservation comes

790
00:49:45,990 –> 00:49:49,724
in or the preservation of others. Right. And so so,

791
00:49:49,724 –> 00:49:53,565
again, when when you’re talking about storytelling and and what the components of it

792
00:49:53,565 –> 00:49:57,405
or how you how you start to master it, it’s

793
00:49:57,645 –> 00:50:01,405
you have to determine to your point a few seconds ago,

794
00:50:01,405 –> 00:50:04,980
what style is the story going to be? Yeah. What is going to

795
00:50:04,980 –> 00:50:08,580
be the, you know, what do you know your audience well

796
00:50:08,580 –> 00:50:11,960
enough that you know to face them with one of those styles

797
00:50:12,260 –> 00:50:16,020
in in one of those motivating factors, either self preservation or

798
00:50:16,020 –> 00:50:19,694
the preservation of others? So those those are the component. Like I said earlier, I

799
00:50:19,694 –> 00:50:23,055
was joking a little bit, like, the structure of it. Like, you know, you have

800
00:50:23,055 –> 00:50:25,535
to have an intro. You have to have this. You have to have an outro.

801
00:50:25,535 –> 00:50:29,125
Like, oh, yeah. Like, anybody can look that up. That’s easy porn. Right?

802
00:50:29,375 –> 00:50:32,870
Triangle. Exactly. But

803
00:50:32,870 –> 00:50:36,630
but, like, the the the true, like, the true mastery of

804
00:50:36,630 –> 00:50:40,390
that Venn diagram, right, which is, like, the the the style overlapping the

805
00:50:40,390 –> 00:50:44,150
motivation, overlapping the the the delivery piece of it, and

806
00:50:44,150 –> 00:50:47,610
perfecting all three of those things, that centerpiece of the Venn diagram.

807
00:50:48,444 –> 00:50:52,285
There’s I think

808
00:50:52,285 –> 00:50:56,045
everybody has the capability of hitting it. I think everybody has the capability

809
00:50:56,045 –> 00:50:58,704
of hitting the mark. It’s just a matter of

810
00:50:59,645 –> 00:51:03,490
where we are like, what we’re what our our goals are trying to hit

811
00:51:03,490 –> 00:51:07,170
with it. Think about your think about a 5 year old trying to convince you

812
00:51:07,170 –> 00:51:10,470
to take him to the store to get candy. If he

813
00:51:10,690 –> 00:51:14,529
tries and fails at that often enough, he’s eventually gonna master that. He’s

814
00:51:14,529 –> 00:51:18,355
gonna get it. He’s they’re gonna get it. And they I I’m telling you.

815
00:51:18,974 –> 00:51:21,935
They’ll figure it out eventually. Well, one of the things one of the things I

816
00:51:21,935 –> 00:51:25,775
always tell folks is the best person in the

817
00:51:25,775 –> 00:51:29,295
history of the world at sales is a is a 5 to 7 year

818
00:51:29,295 –> 00:51:32,790
old. Absolutely. I agree. Best person in the history of the world at

819
00:51:32,790 –> 00:51:36,309
sales. Because all they have to do this is all a 5 to 7 year

820
00:51:36,309 –> 00:51:40,150
old, all things being equal, of course, in a in a in a

821
00:51:40,150 –> 00:51:43,910
robust situation where they are free to pursue themselves. Okay.

822
00:51:43,910 –> 00:51:47,755
Cool. Not talking about traumatic situations or situations of,

823
00:51:47,755 –> 00:51:51,275
like, criminal danger or anything like that. Okay. Yeah. Middle

824
00:51:51,275 –> 00:51:55,115
class. Right? 5 to 7 year old middle class kid in America

825
00:51:55,115 –> 00:51:58,715
is the best salesman in the world because all they have to do, this is

826
00:51:58,715 –> 00:52:02,369
all they have to do, is watch you all

827
00:52:02,369 –> 00:52:06,130
day. They got nothing else going on. They literally have nothing else going

828
00:52:06,130 –> 00:52:09,270
on. They go to watch their target all day because they know you have something,

829
00:52:09,490 –> 00:52:12,369
and they know that you are the thing in the way to get it. And

830
00:52:12,369 –> 00:52:15,250
all they have to do is just watch you. That’s it. Just all they just

831
00:52:15,250 –> 00:52:18,155
observe. And they and they learn, and they know their audience.

832
00:52:20,855 –> 00:52:24,455
That’s it. That’s right. They know their audience. They know their audience, and they know

833
00:52:24,455 –> 00:52:27,115
that and they know that they don’t have to come up with complicated

834
00:52:27,975 –> 00:52:31,710
concepts or ideas or complicated questions to get the answers

835
00:52:31,710 –> 00:52:34,750
that they want. No. That that can we go to the store to buy me

836
00:52:34,750 –> 00:52:38,510
candy? No. Not right now. But why? I I’m a little busy right now. I

837
00:52:38,510 –> 00:52:41,470
don’t have the time. But why are you busy? Well, because I have to do

838
00:52:41,470 –> 00:52:45,170
this. Like, they they ask the simplest questions until they just beat you down,

839
00:52:46,175 –> 00:52:49,075
and you don’t have a good enough reason to say no anymore.

840
00:52:49,855 –> 00:52:53,075
Their their discovery process is ruthless. Exactly.

841
00:52:55,375 –> 00:52:59,215
Exactly. Uh-huh. Well, the other piece is they have and this is the thing

842
00:52:59,215 –> 00:53:02,940
that, like, adults in sales or adults who are telling

843
00:53:02,940 –> 00:53:06,780
stories forget. That 5 to 7 year old has literally

844
00:53:06,780 –> 00:53:10,300
nothing to lose. Right. They’ve already done the cost

845
00:53:10,300 –> 00:53:13,600
benefit analysis ratio. Like, if I can get this person to say yes,

846
00:53:14,060 –> 00:53:17,835
I’m gonna get candy or watch TV or play video games or whatever the heck

847
00:53:17,835 –> 00:53:21,595
it is that I want. And if they say no, well, I’m just stuck

848
00:53:21,595 –> 00:53:24,715
in the same situation I was in right now, which is I have no candy.

849
00:53:24,715 –> 00:53:28,075
I have no video games, and I and I have no TV. So, like, how

850
00:53:28,075 –> 00:53:31,830
is this how’s what’s the downside to me? Right? It doesn’t set them

851
00:53:31,830 –> 00:53:35,670
backwards. It does not no. And they have a good understanding of time

852
00:53:35,670 –> 00:53:39,500
because for them, on a longer I mean, time is infinite. It’s never

853
00:53:39,750 –> 00:53:43,355
I mean, there’s no there’s no hurry. Time’s

854
00:53:43,355 –> 00:53:46,875
infinite. They have all the time in the world. Yeah. They’re gonna live forever. What?

855
00:53:46,875 –> 00:53:48,335
You’re the one that’s got a problem.

856
00:53:50,235 –> 00:53:53,990
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I

857
00:53:53,990 –> 00:53:57,290
always used to say with my kids, like, particularly my 2 youngest, like

858
00:53:58,069 –> 00:54:01,910
actually, my 3 youngest. My oldest child is a little bit different, but my 3

859
00:54:01,910 –> 00:54:04,390
youngest always used to say that is the most I mean, like, if I could

860
00:54:04,390 –> 00:54:08,184
have bottled that, my god, like, I would ruth I could

861
00:54:08,184 –> 00:54:11,145
have sold anything. I could have sold anything. I could have sold water to a

862
00:54:11,145 –> 00:54:14,825
well. Yeah. And and most of that is to your to your point, most of

863
00:54:14,825 –> 00:54:18,285
that is just the the the lack of fear of failure.

864
00:54:18,905 –> 00:54:22,345
Right? They just they don’t None. They don’t have the fear of failure, so they

865
00:54:22,345 –> 00:54:25,780
just they just go. They just go, and they do, and they go, and they

866
00:54:25,780 –> 00:54:29,140
ask, and they think that they don’t they don’t over they don’t overthink anything. Nope.

867
00:54:29,140 –> 00:54:32,760
They don’t they don’t, there’s no, you know, there’s no hesitation.

868
00:54:32,980 –> 00:54:36,515
There’s no like, that’s the that’s their biggest strength. It is

869
00:54:36,515 –> 00:54:40,095
the the the lack of fear of failure. They just don’t have it.

870
00:54:40,555 –> 00:54:44,075
Well, why would they feel failure? Nothing bad has ever happened to them. Of what?

871
00:54:44,075 –> 00:54:47,615
That’s the exactly. That’s my point. That’s why they make salespeople

872
00:54:47,675 –> 00:54:51,119
because, you know, the salespeople that you hire, that you say by the way, if

873
00:54:51,119 –> 00:54:54,960
you don’t hit your quota, you’re fired. They have a fear of failure. Right

874
00:54:54,960 –> 00:54:56,900
out the gate, you get a fear of failure.

875
00:55:01,280 –> 00:55:04,735
Yeah. Okay. So you need by the

876
00:55:04,735 –> 00:55:08,415
way, the the the the story about money is a 6 story. It’s either a

877
00:55:08,415 –> 00:55:12,095
rags to riches story or riches to rag story. Yeah. Right.

878
00:55:12,095 –> 00:55:15,055
Those are those are those are your those are your 2, those are your 2

879
00:55:15,055 –> 00:55:18,630
stories those are your 2 story or 2 variations of that of that story there.

880
00:55:18,630 –> 00:55:22,230
Okay. Back to the book. Back to the short story here, the gift of the

881
00:55:22,230 –> 00:55:24,650
magi. Gonna pick it up here.

882
00:55:26,230 –> 00:55:29,849
Gonna kinda move move quickly through this because we wanna get to the denouement

883
00:55:30,390 –> 00:55:34,155
here, and we have a, oh, we have a window here that’s

884
00:55:34,155 –> 00:55:37,615
rapidly closing, but it’s okay.

885
00:55:40,155 –> 00:55:43,935
So Della’s ransacking the store for Jim’s present. She found it at last.

886
00:55:44,300 –> 00:55:47,740
It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other

887
00:55:47,740 –> 00:55:50,720
like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside

888
00:55:50,859 –> 00:55:54,540
out. It was a platinum fob chain, simple and chaste in design, properly

889
00:55:54,540 –> 00:55:57,760
proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by mereutricious

890
00:55:58,140 –> 00:56:01,915
ornamentation as all good things should do. It was even worthy

891
00:56:01,915 –> 00:56:05,435
of the watch. As soon as she saw it, she knew it must be Jim’s.

892
00:56:05,435 –> 00:56:08,895
It was like him. Quietness and value. The description applied to both.

893
00:56:09,675 –> 00:56:13,435
$21 they took for they took from her for it as she hurried home

894
00:56:13,435 –> 00:56:17,069
with the 87¢. With that chain on its watch, Jim might be

895
00:56:17,069 –> 00:56:20,829
properly anxious about the time at any company. Grand as the watch

896
00:56:20,829 –> 00:56:24,029
was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather

897
00:56:24,029 –> 00:56:27,734
strap that he used in place of a chain. When Della

898
00:56:27,734 –> 00:56:31,494
reached home, her intoxication gave way to a little prudence and reason. She got out

899
00:56:31,494 –> 00:56:34,855
her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made

900
00:56:34,855 –> 00:56:38,535
by generosity added to love, which is always a tremendous

901
00:56:38,535 –> 00:56:41,275
task, dear friends, a mammoth task.

902
00:56:42,250 –> 00:56:46,090
Within 40 minutes, her head was covered with tiny, close line curls that made her

903
00:56:46,090 –> 00:56:49,610
look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her

904
00:56:49,610 –> 00:56:53,450
reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically. If Jim doesn’t kill

905
00:56:53,450 –> 00:56:55,955
me, she said to herself before he takes a second look at me, he’ll say

906
00:56:55,955 –> 00:56:58,915
I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do? Oh, what

907
00:56:58,915 –> 00:57:02,515
could I do with a dollar 87¢? At 7

908
00:57:02,515 –> 00:57:04,915
o’clock, the coffee was made and the frying pan was on the back of the

909
00:57:04,915 –> 00:57:08,369
stove hot and ready to cook the chops. Jim was never

910
00:57:08,369 –> 00:57:11,890
late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat in the corner of

911
00:57:11,890 –> 00:57:14,529
the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard her step on

912
00:57:14,529 –> 00:57:17,809
the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white just for a

913
00:57:17,809 –> 00:57:21,615
moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest

914
00:57:21,615 –> 00:57:25,315
everyday things, and now she whispered, please, god, make him think I am still pretty.

915
00:57:26,815 –> 00:57:30,415
The door opened, and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and

916
00:57:30,415 –> 00:57:34,255
very serious. Poor fellow. He was only 22 and to be burdened with a

917
00:57:34,255 –> 00:57:37,819
family. He needed a new overcoat, and he was without gloves.

918
00:57:39,000 –> 00:57:42,839
Jim stepped stopped inside the door as immovable as a setter at the scent of

919
00:57:42,839 –> 00:57:46,440
a quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in

920
00:57:46,440 –> 00:57:50,005
them she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not

921
00:57:50,005 –> 00:57:53,285
anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had

922
00:57:53,285 –> 00:57:57,125
been prepared for. He simply stared her fixedly with that peculiar expression

923
00:57:57,125 –> 00:58:00,665
on his face. Now I’m gonna

924
00:58:00,965 –> 00:58:02,744
skip one thing here

925
00:58:06,880 –> 00:58:10,580
and go down to this part. You’ve cut off your hair, asked Jim, laboriously,

926
00:58:10,720 –> 00:58:14,560
as if she had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest

927
00:58:14,560 –> 00:58:18,205
mental labor. Cut it off and sold it, said Della. Don’t you like me,

928
00:58:18,205 –> 00:58:21,985
Jim? Just as well, anyhow? I’m mean without my hair, ain’t I?

929
00:58:22,685 –> 00:58:26,445
Jim looked around the room curiously. You say your hair is gone,

930
00:58:26,445 –> 00:58:28,785
he said with an air of almost of idiocy.

931
00:58:30,080 –> 00:58:33,700
You didn’t look for it, said Della. It’s sold. I tell you, sold and gone.

932
00:58:33,840 –> 00:58:37,280
It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the

933
00:58:37,280 –> 00:58:40,900
hairs of my head were numbered, she went on with a sudden serious sweetness,

934
00:58:40,960 –> 00:58:44,744
but nobody could ever count my love out my love for you. Shall

935
00:58:44,744 –> 00:58:48,345
I put the chops on, Jim? Out of his

936
00:58:48,345 –> 00:58:52,105
prance, Jim seemed quickly to wake. He unfolded his Della. For

937
00:58:52,105 –> 00:58:55,865
10 seconds, let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the

938
00:58:55,865 –> 00:58:59,290
other direction. $8 a week or 1,000,000 a

939
00:58:59,290 –> 00:59:03,130
year. What is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong

940
00:59:03,130 –> 00:59:06,589
answer. The Magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them.

941
00:59:06,810 –> 00:59:09,630
This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

942
00:59:11,375 –> 00:59:14,974
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table. Don’t

943
00:59:14,974 –> 00:59:18,734
make any mistake, Dell, he said about me. I don’t think there’s anything in the

944
00:59:18,734 –> 00:59:22,175
way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like

945
00:59:22,175 –> 00:59:25,753
my girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package, you

946
00:59:25,753 –> 00:59:29,309
may see why you had me going a while at first.

947
00:59:29,309 –> 00:59:32,865
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper, and

948
00:59:32,865 –> 00:59:36,421
then an ecstatic scream of joy. And then, alas, a quick

949
00:59:36,421 –> 00:59:39,885
feminine change to hysterical tears in Wales, necessitating the

950
00:59:39,885 –> 00:59:43,345
immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat,

951
00:59:44,125 –> 00:59:47,965
for there lay the combs, the set of combs side and back

952
00:59:47,965 –> 00:59:51,725
that Della had worshiped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure

953
00:59:51,725 –> 00:59:55,570
tortoise shell with jeweled rims, just the shade to wear in the beautiful

954
00:59:55,570 –> 00:59:59,330
vanished hair. They were expensive combs she knew, and her heart had

955
00:59:59,330 –> 01:00:03,090
simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And

956
01:00:03,090 –> 01:00:06,869
now they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned to the coveted adornments

957
01:00:07,170 –> 01:00:10,825
were gone. But she hugged them to her

958
01:00:10,825 –> 01:00:13,625
bosom, and at length, she was able to look up with dim eyes and smile

959
01:00:13,625 –> 01:00:17,225
and say, my hair grows so fast, Jim. And the dolla leaped up like a

960
01:00:17,225 –> 01:00:20,665
little singed cat and cried, oh. Jim had not yet seen his beautiful

961
01:00:20,665 –> 01:00:24,200
present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull

962
01:00:24,200 –> 01:00:27,420
precious metal seemed to flash with the reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

963
01:00:27,880 –> 01:00:30,840
Isn’t it a dandy gem? I hunted all over town to find it. You’ll have

964
01:00:30,840 –> 01:00:33,640
to look at the time a 100 times a day now. Give me your watch.

965
01:00:33,640 –> 01:00:37,425
I want to show you what it looks like on it. Instead of

966
01:00:37,425 –> 01:00:39,905
obeying, Jim tumbled down the couch and put his hands into the back of his

967
01:00:39,905 –> 01:00:43,505
head and smiled. Dell, he said, let’s put our Christmas

968
01:00:43,505 –> 01:00:47,045
presents away and keep them a while. It’s too nice to use just a present.

969
01:00:47,505 –> 01:00:51,220
I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And

970
01:00:51,220 –> 01:00:54,520
now suppose you put the chops on.

971
01:01:03,155 –> 01:01:06,755
To our point earlier, by the way, O’Henry was once

972
01:01:06,755 –> 01:01:10,275
asked by a humorist named Irvin Cobb, an

973
01:01:10,275 –> 01:01:13,734
unreconstructed southern humorist in,

974
01:01:14,755 –> 01:01:18,515
oh gosh, in the in the 19 tens in a restaurant just before he

975
01:01:18,515 –> 01:01:22,010
died, where he got his stories from. And

976
01:01:22,010 –> 01:01:25,470
O’Henry infamously said this. He said, oh,

977
01:01:25,610 –> 01:01:28,350
everything. There are stories in everything.

978
01:01:29,530 –> 01:01:33,185
And then he proceeded to pick up a menu, according to the story

979
01:01:33,185 –> 01:01:37,025
as it goes, and he created a story out of the menu in the

980
01:01:37,025 –> 01:01:40,805
diner he was having breakfast at with

981
01:01:40,865 –> 01:01:41,365
Erwin.

982
01:01:50,049 –> 01:01:53,809
Connection is what we chase in the Internet era, and connection is what we

983
01:01:53,809 –> 01:01:57,650
chased and have chased preview in previous eras in this country. Connection is

984
01:01:57,650 –> 01:02:01,445
nothing new. But it used to be person to person connection, person to

985
01:02:01,445 –> 01:02:03,225
person connection through stories.

986
01:02:05,205 –> 01:02:08,505
O’Henry’s stories have never been out of print, and I mentioned this already,

987
01:02:08,805 –> 01:02:10,265
since his death in 1910.

988
01:02:12,590 –> 01:02:15,710
He only attained fame, by the way, and he’d been writing short stories since he

989
01:02:15,710 –> 01:02:19,470
was 19. But he only attained fame for writing short stories at the

990
01:02:19,470 –> 01:02:22,990
age of 39, and, literally, he worked himself to

991
01:02:22,990 –> 01:02:24,850
death, worked and drank.

992
01:02:26,845 –> 01:02:30,525
However, the year before his death in 19 09, he gave an interview to the

993
01:02:30,525 –> 01:02:33,345
New York Times in which he talked about,

994
01:02:34,365 –> 01:02:38,125
the pen name o Henry, and this is directly from his words. He

995
01:02:38,125 –> 01:02:41,900
says, it was during these New Orleans days that I adopted my pen name

996
01:02:41,900 –> 01:02:45,740
of O’Henry. I said to a friend, quote, I’m going to send

997
01:02:45,740 –> 01:02:48,619
out some stuff. I don’t know if it amounts to much, so I wanna get

998
01:02:48,619 –> 01:02:52,160
a literary alias. Help me pick out a good one.

999
01:02:53,355 –> 01:02:56,875
He suggested that we get a newspaper and pick a name from the first list

1000
01:02:56,875 –> 01:03:00,555
of notables that we found in it. In the society columns, we found the

1001
01:03:00,555 –> 01:03:04,315
account of a fashionable ball. Here we have our notables, said he.

1002
01:03:04,315 –> 01:03:07,650
We looked down the list, and my eye lighted on the name Henry. That’ll do

1003
01:03:07,650 –> 01:03:10,210
for a last name, said I. And now for a first name, I want something

1004
01:03:10,210 –> 01:03:13,890
short. None of your 3 syllable names for me. Why don’t you

1005
01:03:13,890 –> 01:03:17,650
use a plain initial then letter then, asked my friend. Good,

1006
01:03:17,650 –> 01:03:21,490
said I. O is about the easiest letter written, and o

1007
01:03:21,490 –> 01:03:25,225
it is. A newspaper once wrote and asked

1008
01:03:25,225 –> 01:03:28,905
me what the o stands for. I replied, quote, o stands

1009
01:03:28,905 –> 01:03:32,665
for Oliver, the French for Oliver. And several of

1010
01:03:32,665 –> 01:03:36,345
my stories accordingly appeared in that paper under the name

1011
01:03:36,345 –> 01:03:37,405
Oliver Henry.

1012
01:03:44,160 –> 01:03:48,000
This story, The Gift of the Magi, has, as Tom mentioned

1013
01:03:48,000 –> 01:03:51,615
all the way at the beginning of our episode, is one of his

1014
01:03:51,615 –> 01:03:55,455
more memorable stories. It has been turned into

1015
01:03:55,455 –> 01:03:59,135
stage plays. It has been turned into movies. It has been a part of

1016
01:03:59,135 –> 01:04:02,975
other stories. And, again, has never been out of print since his death

1017
01:04:02,975 –> 01:04:06,430
in 1910. Matter of fact, it’s become so much

1018
01:04:07,049 –> 01:04:10,730
a trope. The woman who cuts off her hair to

1019
01:04:10,730 –> 01:04:14,510
buy combs or sorry, to buy a to buy a watch fa or watch chain

1020
01:04:14,730 –> 01:04:18,410
and the man who sells his watch to buy combs. And, oh, they don’t talk

1021
01:04:18,410 –> 01:04:22,095
to each other, And, oh, hilarity ensues. This is

1022
01:04:22,095 –> 01:04:25,695
this has become a trope of comedy. It’s become a trope of

1023
01:04:25,695 –> 01:04:28,995
tragedy, and it’s become a trope of drama because O’Henry,

1024
01:04:29,295 –> 01:04:32,880
William Sydney Porter, realized initially

1025
01:04:34,220 –> 01:04:37,840
that there was a story inside of this trope.

1026
01:04:39,340 –> 01:04:43,100
There was a story that was worth telling that needed to be

1027
01:04:43,100 –> 01:04:46,785
laid out. O’Henry

1028
01:04:46,845 –> 01:04:49,805
was also a social part of the part of the movement of the Gilded Age.

1029
01:04:49,805 –> 01:04:53,405
He was a I wouldn’t say he was a social justice crusader. He

1030
01:04:53,405 –> 01:04:56,925
wasn’t. He was a probably he would probably would have classified himself as a

1031
01:04:56,925 –> 01:05:00,720
fairly progressive individual, not the way we think of progressive now, but

1032
01:05:00,720 –> 01:05:04,420
progressive in terms of social reform. Right? And many of his stories,

1033
01:05:05,520 –> 01:05:09,200
as they reflected the poverty of the time, they also reflected the growing

1034
01:05:09,200 –> 01:05:12,500
consumerism of the time, which we can see in The Gift of the Magi

1035
01:05:12,960 –> 01:05:16,545
and which is particularly ironic for it being

1036
01:05:16,765 –> 01:05:20,305
a story that is focused around the Christmas season.

1037
01:05:20,605 –> 01:05:23,325
As a matter of fact, when I was reading this, and Tom and I talked

1038
01:05:23,325 –> 01:05:26,845
about A Christmas Carol, it is the anti Christmas Carol

1039
01:05:26,845 –> 01:05:30,590
story. It’s an anti Dickens story. Even

1040
01:05:30,590 –> 01:05:34,270
though I would say O. Henry probably got us close in an

1041
01:05:34,270 –> 01:05:37,890
American context to capturing

1042
01:05:38,030 –> 01:05:41,295
the, the Dickensian

1043
01:05:41,435 –> 01:05:44,495
aspect of being an American

1044
01:05:45,195 –> 01:05:47,135
in the gilded age.

1045
01:05:50,075 –> 01:05:53,920
Short story, short episode today. Don’t can’t really do a lot

1046
01:05:53,920 –> 01:05:57,700
with this. Tom, final thoughts on o Henry,

1047
01:05:58,240 –> 01:06:01,840
on the gift of the Magi, what leaders can learn from all

1048
01:06:01,840 –> 01:06:05,505
this before we close out. Well, I think

1049
01:06:05,505 –> 01:06:07,924
the biggest lesson to me here is

1050
01:06:09,905 –> 01:06:13,664
the like, I got I feel like it’s

1051
01:06:13,664 –> 01:06:16,565
broken record here. But, like, as a leader,

1052
01:06:17,609 –> 01:06:21,450
knowing your audience is important. Right? And in this case, knowing

1053
01:06:21,609 –> 01:06:25,450
like, being able to you know them by talking to

1054
01:06:25,450 –> 01:06:29,210
them, talking through problems with them, getting understanding from them, things that you

1055
01:06:29,210 –> 01:06:32,785
like things that if this this couple had done in the first place, they

1056
01:06:32,785 –> 01:06:36,625
wouldn’t had this major, you know, swap off as you

1057
01:06:36,625 –> 01:06:39,665
would speak. Now, by the way Right. I’m still thinking the person that got out

1058
01:06:39,745 –> 01:06:43,125
you know, really made out in this deal is is, is Della because

1059
01:06:43,425 –> 01:06:47,250
she’s right. Her hair will grow back, and she will use the combs. He

1060
01:06:47,250 –> 01:06:50,690
sold the watch. That chain is useless to him from now forever. Like

1061
01:06:51,010 –> 01:06:54,770
so, I mean, you know, I think, again, if you

1062
01:06:54,770 –> 01:06:58,610
look at if you’re going to if you’re going

1063
01:06:58,610 –> 01:07:02,425
to make a decision based on your gut or based

1064
01:07:02,425 –> 01:07:06,105
on lack of information, make sure it’s a decision you can come back

1065
01:07:06,105 –> 01:07:09,705
from like she did. She cut her hair, and she which, by the

1066
01:07:09,705 –> 01:07:12,505
way, I also thought selling it for $20 was

1067
01:07:14,130 –> 01:07:17,329
where did that number come from? Because I think it’s the same today. I think

1068
01:07:17,329 –> 01:07:20,210
if a woman sold her a a length of it, they’re not gonna get more

1069
01:07:20,210 –> 01:07:23,410
than $20 for it either. So I I just thought that was interesting on a

1070
01:07:23,410 –> 01:07:27,170
side note. But, anyway But the the prices of hair are immune to

1071
01:07:27,170 –> 01:07:30,815
inflationary pressures. But her decision making

1072
01:07:30,955 –> 01:07:34,795
process, in my opinion, was better than his because she was

1073
01:07:34,795 –> 01:07:38,395
only impacting, first of all, something that was gonna impact only

1074
01:07:38,395 –> 01:07:42,010
her and only impacting something that she

1075
01:07:42,010 –> 01:07:45,710
knew would was gonna be a short term disadvantage or a short term

1076
01:07:45,850 –> 01:07:47,790
short some some sort of short term,

1077
01:07:49,610 –> 01:07:53,290
impact that that it was going to her hair’s gonna grow back. He

1078
01:07:53,370 –> 01:07:57,220
Right. Made a decision based on no factor, no data, no information, no

1079
01:07:57,555 –> 01:08:01,015
he went on his gut and had nothing to show for it in the end.

1080
01:08:01,075 –> 01:08:04,214
Right. So I so, again, what leaders are taking out of this,

1081
01:08:05,075 –> 01:08:08,835
god only knows. I’m just trying I’m pulling I’m literally, you know, pulling at straws

1082
01:08:08,835 –> 01:08:12,295
here. But, you know, but I didn’t think of it in that in that perspective.

1083
01:08:12,760 –> 01:08:16,439
Again, 2 leaders, same situation. I have to make a decision based on my gut.

1084
01:08:16,439 –> 01:08:19,500
I have to make a decision based on my gut. Can I make a decision

1085
01:08:20,040 –> 01:08:23,260
that has an a short term impact

1086
01:08:23,560 –> 01:08:27,080
enough that we can come back from it without anything else

1087
01:08:27,080 –> 01:08:30,665
happening? Am I gonna make a short term impact that I

1088
01:08:30,665 –> 01:08:33,864
can’t pull back and I can’t come back from? And I’m just gonna run with

1089
01:08:33,864 –> 01:08:36,824
it and live or die. I’m gonna live and die by my own. I’m gonna

1090
01:08:36,824 –> 01:08:39,864
I’m gonna follow my own sword. I’m gonna live and die by it. And if

1091
01:08:39,864 –> 01:08:43,560
I fail, company fails. We go and we move on. It is what it is.

1092
01:08:43,560 –> 01:08:47,160
It ends. But you see what I’m saying? Like, I Yeah. Yeah. No. Well enough.

1093
01:08:47,160 –> 01:08:51,000
But I think that that this does tell us a little something about how you

1094
01:08:51,000 –> 01:08:53,739
think through, how you think through a process matters.

1095
01:08:55,255 –> 01:08:58,935
I think that that is reflected in Jim’s reaction at the end

1096
01:08:58,935 –> 01:09:02,775
there where he’s just like, right. Gonna lay back

1097
01:09:02,775 –> 01:09:06,455
on the couch. Hands behind his head. Yeah. Behind his

1098
01:09:06,455 –> 01:09:08,635
head. I’m gonna live with my decision.

1099
01:09:11,949 –> 01:09:15,469
Well, and sometimes as a leader, like, I think about this

1100
01:09:15,469 –> 01:09:19,010
often. Right? So hindsight is always 2020.

1101
01:09:19,310 –> 01:09:23,149
Always. Always. And one of the failures we have

1102
01:09:23,149 –> 01:09:26,210
in our current era over the last 25 years

1103
01:09:27,285 –> 01:09:31,125
because of the Internet. Right? Because nothing ever dies and is allowed to

1104
01:09:31,125 –> 01:09:34,645
sort of fall into a space of forgetting. We’re constantly second

1105
01:09:34,645 –> 01:09:38,425
guessing leaders’ decisions of the past

1106
01:09:38,885 –> 01:09:42,404
based off current information that we had that leaders didn’t have access

1107
01:09:42,404 –> 01:09:44,990
to. The biggest example of this is

1108
01:09:46,170 –> 01:09:49,550
George Bush and 911 and,

1109
01:09:50,090 –> 01:09:53,770
you know, making the decision to go to war in Iraq and weapons of

1110
01:09:53,770 –> 01:09:57,470
mass destruction and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Right?

1111
01:09:59,005 –> 01:10:02,705
And we judge him harshly, and we judge people who are in his administration

1112
01:10:02,925 –> 01:10:06,765
harshly, right, wrong, or indifferently. We judge them

1113
01:10:06,765 –> 01:10:10,365
harshly because we have information that we

1114
01:10:10,365 –> 01:10:13,820
claim they should have had access to, but we have absolutely

1115
01:10:14,119 –> 01:10:17,960
no certainty that they did. We can speculate. We can say they

1116
01:10:17,960 –> 01:10:21,320
should have known. We can say they absolutely did know. My favorite

1117
01:10:21,320 –> 01:10:25,080
conspiracy theorists always say, of course, they knew. There’s no way they could possibly

1118
01:10:25,080 –> 01:10:28,804
have not known. But that’s all speculation on our part

1119
01:10:28,864 –> 01:10:32,465
based off of after action reports and after the fact

1120
01:10:32,465 –> 01:10:35,605
information. It’s just like with COVID.

1121
01:10:36,385 –> 01:10:39,284
I don’t fault anybody who made a who made decisions

1122
01:10:40,610 –> 01:10:43,590
between, like, quite frankly, February of 2020

1123
01:10:45,409 –> 01:10:49,250
and June of 2020. Because you’re making decisions in real time in

1124
01:10:49,250 –> 01:10:52,610
that little that little gap of 90 to a 100

1125
01:10:52,610 –> 01:10:56,385
days, you’re making decisions in real time, and you have no clue

1126
01:10:56,685 –> 01:10:59,965
what is happening. Now after that, it gets into a little bit of a different

1127
01:10:59,965 –> 01:11:02,705
gray area there. But for that one spot,

1128
01:11:04,605 –> 01:11:08,429
I really I mean, now did

1129
01:11:08,429 –> 01:11:11,570
they not release all the information that they’ve had to the public?

1130
01:11:12,269 –> 01:11:15,949
For sure. And even whether it’s 911 or

1131
01:11:15,949 –> 01:11:19,789
COVID, even the quote, unquote hidden information that the

1132
01:11:19,789 –> 01:11:23,605
public should have known, whatever that may mean, is still

1133
01:11:23,844 –> 01:11:27,045
I hate to say this. You may wanna pay attention to this. Mark this. It’s

1134
01:11:27,045 –> 01:11:30,885
still limited information. Yeah. It’s still limited. And

1135
01:11:30,885 –> 01:11:34,725
so, again Agree. Went back on the couch. Subject to interpretation too.

1136
01:11:34,725 –> 01:11:38,179
It’s subject to interpretation. That’s all. If if you if it if it’s

1137
01:11:38,179 –> 01:11:41,960
not just having information doesn’t make it factual.

1138
01:11:42,420 –> 01:11:45,940
Right. Right? Like, having information, you still need to digest

1139
01:11:45,940 –> 01:11:49,460
it or dissect it or verify it,

1140
01:11:49,460 –> 01:11:53,075
validate it. All kind of like, you can’t just say, I I have a phone

1141
01:11:53,075 –> 01:11:56,035
in my hand. You guys can’t see this because it’s blurry. I have a phone

1142
01:11:56,035 –> 01:11:59,075
in my hand, and you could for all you it could be it could be

1143
01:11:59,075 –> 01:12:02,675
a brick. I don’t know. You don’t know anything.

1144
01:12:02,675 –> 01:12:06,035
I I don’t know. Again, to your point, I I think it’s easy to

1145
01:12:06,035 –> 01:12:09,680
vilify people after the fact. It’s easy. Yeah. Yeah. And I and and it’s some

1146
01:12:09,800 –> 01:12:13,240
it’s something that we’ve done throughout history, by the way. This has nothing to do

1147
01:12:13,240 –> 01:12:16,920
with the in the, the Internet error. We’ve done it throughout history that

1148
01:12:16,920 –> 01:12:20,755
we’ve vilified people after the fact because we just you

1149
01:12:20,755 –> 01:12:24,035
know, to your point, I I think everything you said was absolutely absolutely dead on.

1150
01:12:24,035 –> 01:12:27,715
It’s easier it’s easier to be critical when you have more information than the

1151
01:12:27,715 –> 01:12:30,755
person that made the decision in the first place. That’s right. It’s very easy to

1152
01:12:30,755 –> 01:12:34,510
be critical. What’s not easy to do is take it from

1153
01:12:34,510 –> 01:12:37,730
their perspective now knowing what you know Mhmm.

1154
01:12:39,150 –> 01:12:42,990
Doing the same like, you’re you’re gonna make the same decisions. Like, that’s

1155
01:12:42,990 –> 01:12:46,110
the other thing. If you can if you can honestly look back at somebody and

1156
01:12:46,110 –> 01:12:49,755
say, now that I know what I know, if in

1157
01:12:49,755 –> 01:12:53,355
the moment, I probably still would have done the same thing that you do,

1158
01:12:53,355 –> 01:12:56,715
then then you can’t vilify them, but we continue to do that. We continue to

1159
01:12:56,715 –> 01:13:00,155
vilify people for making decisions based on information they they currently have and not

1160
01:13:00,155 –> 01:13:03,930
information that we have. It’s it’s Right. Bizarre. It is it’s a bizarre

1161
01:13:04,150 –> 01:13:07,750
kinda natural thing that we do. Well, it’s a fundamental lack of,

1162
01:13:08,070 –> 01:13:11,510
it’s a fundamental lack of humility, I think. And I think it’s a a

1163
01:13:11,510 –> 01:13:15,324
species of hubris and

1164
01:13:15,324 –> 01:13:18,764
narcissism Yeah. That we Yeah. Because we’re all perfect when we have the right

1165
01:13:18,764 –> 01:13:21,085
information. Oh, yeah. Everybody. Yeah. Like

1166
01:13:22,445 –> 01:13:25,405
Well, and this is what we’re gonna do. I I have I have a strong

1167
01:13:25,405 –> 01:13:28,980
suspicion that we are going to outsource our decision making to our a our

1168
01:13:28,980 –> 01:13:32,739
coming AI systems because we are looking for the

1169
01:13:32,739 –> 01:13:36,420
perfect decision that will always work out everywhere

1170
01:13:36,420 –> 01:13:40,125
across all time and will have no downsides at all. Particularly in the

1171
01:13:40,125 –> 01:13:43,565
west, we’re looking for this, in America in particular. Other

1172
01:13:43,565 –> 01:13:47,405
places, your your level of looking for perfection will vary based on

1173
01:13:47,405 –> 01:13:51,245
your cultural your particular cultural things. But we are we are

1174
01:13:51,245 –> 01:13:55,020
desperately searching for that perfect decision with

1175
01:13:55,020 –> 01:13:58,460
no downsides. And tragically, to your point

1176
01:13:58,460 –> 01:14:02,300
earlier, in the segment, we were talking about stories, we live in a

1177
01:14:02,300 –> 01:14:05,820
fallen world. It will never happen. There will

1178
01:14:05,820 –> 01:14:09,175
always be a downside. And our

1179
01:14:10,275 –> 01:14:13,715
our our machine learning tools, which they are only tools just like that fire in

1180
01:14:13,715 –> 01:14:17,475
the cave I mentioned previously, our machine learning tools

1181
01:14:17,475 –> 01:14:21,155
will only ever be as good as the human inputs who are

1182
01:14:21,155 –> 01:14:22,695
putting the information in.

1183
01:14:25,380 –> 01:14:28,360
And I think that’s a I think that’s a good spot to end for today.

1184
01:14:30,340 –> 01:14:34,100
Merry Christmas, happy New Year, and happy holidays for

1185
01:14:34,100 –> 01:14:37,856
us here at the Leadership Lessons from the

1186
01:14:37,856 –> 01:14:40,515
Great Books podcast. And with that, well,

1187
01:14:41,856 –> 01:14:42,676
we’re out.