The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton w/Neal Kalechofsky & Jesan Sorrells

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Hello, my name is

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Jesan Sorrells, and

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this is the

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Leadership Lessons

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from the Great Books

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podcast, episode

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number 184. Opening

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up from our book

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today with a well,

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with a poem and I

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quote to Edmund,

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Clara, Hugh Bentley

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A cloud was on the

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mind of men, and

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wailing went the

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weather. Yea, a sick

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cloud upon the soul.

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When we were boys together, science announced

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nonentity and art admired decay. The world was old and

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ended, but you and I were gay. Round us in antic

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order their crippled vices came lust that had lost its laughter,

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fear that had lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler that

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lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as

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proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that

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faded and death a drone that stung. The world was

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very old indeed. When you and I were young, they

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twisted even decent sin to shapes not to be named. Men

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were ashamed of honor, but we were not ashamed. Weak

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if we were, and foolish. Not thus we failed. Not thus.

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When that black bale blocked the heavens, he had no hymns from

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us. Children we were Our forts of sand were even

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as weak as we. High as they went, we piled them

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up to break that bitter sea. Fools as we

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were in motley, all jangling and absurd. When all church bells were

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silent, our cap and bells were heard. Not

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all unhelped. We held the fort, our tiny flags

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unfurled. Some giants labored in that cloud to lift it

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from the world. I find again the book we found. I feel the

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hour that flings Far out of fish shaped Pomonok Some cry

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of cleaner things and green carnation withered as in

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forest fires that pass roared in the wind. Of all the

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world 10 million leaves of grass or sane and sweet and

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sudden as a bird sings in the rain. Truth out of Tusitala

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spoke, and pleasure out of pain, Yea, cool and clear and

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sudden as a bird sings in the gray, Dunedin to Samoa

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spoke and darkness unto day. But we were young, we lived

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to see God break their bitter charms. God and the good

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Republic come riding back in arms. We have seen the

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city of Mansoul even as it rocked relieved.

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Blessed are they who did not see, but being blind

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believed. This is a tale of those old

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fears, even of these emptied hells, and none but you shall

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understand the truth, the true thing that it tells

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of what colossal gods of shame could cow men and yet

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crash of what huge devils hid the stars yet fell

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at a pistol flash the doubts that were so plain to

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chase, so dreadful to withstand. Oh, who shall understand

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but you? Yea, who shall understand the doubts that drove

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us through the night as we too talked to main and day

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had broken on the streets, Error broke upon the brain

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between us. By the peace of God, such truth can now be told.

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Yea, there is strength and striking root and good

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in growing old we have found common things at

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last, and marriage and a creed and I

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may safely write it now, and you

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may safely read.

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There are certain books

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that remind you of things you have seen

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other places. Partially

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that’s because the books themselves influence other

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mediums, but also it’s partially because we all have short

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memories. There are books that have been adapted to

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movies, and usually not well, then there are the films that

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would work better as books or stories. And of course, in our

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time of declining attention spans, dopamine driven

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distractions, and the technological hijacking of the

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brain, there are certain social media performances that

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don’t translate to any other medium at all. I’m sure Neil

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Postman would have something to say about that, and I’m

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sure that none of it would be good. But before Postman,

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there was our author who wrote the poem I read just now, who

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we are covering today. The writer of over 80 books, several

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hundred poems, 200 short stories, 4000 essays which were

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mostly newspaper columns, columns and several plays.

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This author was prolific in the way that only a man, a

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denizen, such as it were of the 19th century could be. And

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the book we are going to address ourselves to today is

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probably the most psychedelic story I’ve read by a 19th

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century author in a really, really long time.

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It starts out with the reader believing and

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contemplating and trying to accept the reality

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that he’s building in one way, and ends with we

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believing a totally, completely different

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thing. Now, of course, you could say that all

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good literature accomplishes such a dramatic

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two-step, but only rarely does a piece of

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literature accomplish such a two-step so well.

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The term that I’ve heard used for this book is so

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paradoxically, today on the show we are

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exploring meaning and what it means for leaders

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from one of the more entertaining and

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profoundly Catholic books we’ve covered on

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this show, the man who Was Thursday by the great

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Catholic apologist and prolific writer G.K.

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Chesterton. Leaders, there is no dark side in

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literature. Matter of fact, it’s all dark. The

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only thing that makes it look light or sheds any

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Light upon it is the sun. And I’m joined today

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back from back for this episode from his last

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foray into the space. During last year’s mashup

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episode where we talked about the weird

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intersections between Pink Floyd, all quiet in

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the western front, and Lord of the Rings is a

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growing friend of the show. This is the second time

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he’s been on. So that’s two more times than most, folks.

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Neil Kalakofsky, how you doing today? Neil, how’s it

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going? I’m doing great, Jesan. How are you? There’s no dark side

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of the moon, really. It’s all dark. That’s right. I

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wonder if you were going to pick that up. Yes. Oh, yes.

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You were not going to slip that by me.

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I think after reading this book, I think that

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Chesterton would have been a big fan of Pink Floyd. I think he would have.

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Yeah, I think he would have. He would have shown it to all their

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shows in a rumpled, rumpled suit, and he would have critiqued them,

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you know, with that big mustache and the, the bad combover.

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But it would have been sharp, it would have been ribald, but he would

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have gotten the paradox. He would have understood what they were trying to lean into

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or lean out. So, so. Well, the thing, and we talked about

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this a little bit last time, you know, that’s a little bit paradoxical. I think

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that’s going to be our word for today about Pink

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Floyd is that these guys were

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in some ways godless rock and rollers, and yet they were really, you

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know, crying out for faith, right? Oh, absolutely. They were

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decrying the lack of faith, the lack of humanism,

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and the. What

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I think Chesterton might have said is you’re looking in the wrong

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place. You know, you are, you’re not. You’re. You’re. You’re trying to

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find God without, you know, finding God. Right?

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Well, he would have also. He would have also. And we talked about this on

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the, the episode, the mashup episode that we did. We touched a little bit on

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this. But he would not have been a fan of

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the psychedelic experiments of Aldous

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Huxley. He would not have been a fan of any of that. He would

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have. As a matter of fact, he would have. And you could tell from the

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man who was Thursday how he goes after Nietzsche. He

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would have seen that as a direct line from Nietzschean

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worldview and would have rejected the dominoes all

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the way down the path. Right. But I

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also think he would have been shocked by how

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popular Huxley got and then how influential he got. And that probably would

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have disappointed him. I. I can imagine that would. He would have taken that badly.

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I think the fabulism, he would love. It’s the fact that it

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descends so quickly into hedonism. That’s the, you know,

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almost. Almost. Almost like there’s no red, you

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know, light at all on the. There’s just. There’s no red light.

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There’s no kaboom. Right down. It’s a kaboom.. There’s no William F.

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Buckley on the highway. It’s just. You’re going, yeah, well, saying this much

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and no more. Right, right. Yeah, it’s all the way. But, you know, you think

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of Lewis Carroll. Right, Right. Who Chesterton must have.

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He may even have crossed. I’m not

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sure of the timeline, whether they were contemporaries in any way,

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but certainly they were literary. Close enough. Literary

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contemporaries. And, you know, Lewis, Alice in Wonderland is some

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pretty wild stuff. Right. But it doesn’t descend. There’s never an

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orgy in Alice in Wonderland. Right. There’s no Eros or loving or

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anything like that. That would have been. Lewis Carroll would have just

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been completely bl. By stuff like that. And then 100 years later, you

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have Grace Slick singing White Rabbit at, you know, at Woodstock and.

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Which my neighbor was at, by the way, he was telling me. And he saw

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that performance. Really? Yeah, Just. Just

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as an aside, it was kind of funny. He sent me a clip of Grace

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Slick singing White Rabbit, and he says, I remember this like it was yesterday.

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And I wrote back. I said, I’ll bet she

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doesn’t.

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Yeah. Chesterton was born in. He was born in. He was born in

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1874. And looking up. Looking

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up on Google, just. Just because it’s interesting that you sort of. Alice in

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Wonderland sort of. I don’t know. Go ahead, tell me. Yeah, so Alice in

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Wonderland was written in. Let me go ahead and

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pull that up, because I don’t have it off the top of my head.

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Alice in Wonderland was written in 1865.

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So, yeah, I mean, a little bit earlier than Chesterton

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was born. So he not only would have. Would have. Would have been

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exposed to Carol, it would have been one of those

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background influences that was just sort of floating around there

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now, how much she would have. How much she would have, shall we say,

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embraced Lewis Carroll, for lack of a better term. We don’t know

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that. But. But yeah, he. I mean, Lewis Carroll had a long life in the

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middle of the middle of the 19th century. He was born in. Let me see,

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it was like 1836

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or something. So he had a. He had a long and all. Let me

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pull this up. He had a long lifespan. And then I’ll tell you the

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other guy who jumped to mind when I read Besides the obvious, C.S.

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Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, which. Yeah, the influence is, you

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know, jump. Jumping out at. You know, like, even in the poem you

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read. Yep, I noticed. So at some point he mentioned Dunedain,

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which. Yes. In all

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to. To be clear, I looked up on Wiki, and apparently it’s an island somewhere

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in the South Pacific. It is, but in the Lord of the Rings, the

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Dunedain were the noblemen.

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Right. Who survived the fall of Numenor and then

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come back to. To Middle Earth. And. And there’s no way

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that’s, you know, a mistake. No. No.

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Coincidence. Yeah. No. So Lewis Carroll was born

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1832. He died 1898. Okay. Alice in

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Wonderland was, like I said, was 18. Now was

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1865. G.K. Chesterton was born in 1874, died

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in 1936. Right. So while Chesterton

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overlapped a little bit with the end of Carroll’s

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life, most of Carroll’s work would have been in the

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background, probably for him. Which it’s weird to

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think about that because we tend to put these

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people on pedestals, literature, whatever. But,

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you know, like. Like his relationship. Like

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Chesterton’s relationship with. Oh, what was the

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author, the eugenicist and author. Um, Bernard

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Shaw. George Bernard Shaw. Right. So he was. He was a

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sparring partner against George Bernard Shaw for years.

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Right. And roundly opposed the Fabian Society, roundly

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opposed Fabian socialism, thought eugenics was nonsense.

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There are some, depending upon what you read in his

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Wikipedia article, there are some intimations that maybe

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he might have been anti Semitic, but maybe not. Nobody

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really knows for sure, you know, but it was one of those

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things where, you know, Carroll is in the air, Tolstoy’s in

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the air, Dostoyevsky’s in the air. And these guys are just

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reading them like. Like we read YouTubers. We’re like, oh, yeah, that’s just the

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critical drinker over there. Or that’s, you know, whoever that we’re going to on

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YouTube. I don’t know. You know, in 100 years, who knows? Who knows who’s gonna

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be. Who knows what YouTuber will rise in the back of your mind somewhere.

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Right, exactly. The other guy that jumped to

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mind, unfortunately, also known for his anti Semitism was Roald

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Dahl. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. At the end, I was getting. This

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is very Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a little bit where people are just flying

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up in the air and you know, it is.

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Yeah. And I think Dahl was much less. He must have been

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50s and 60s again, I guess. But, you know. Yeah,

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but I was, I was actually kind of.

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Yeah. Flashing on some Roald Dahl there at the end. But. And

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then I think I was telling you earlier, before the podcast, you know, some of

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this seems like the early movies of, you know, Keystone

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Cops or, you know. Yes, yes. When the

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anarchists are running around Europe, you know, I picture them running around in

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stilted fashion like they’re being filmed, you know, in 1912 or something.

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I had a Buster Keaton flashback. Yeah.

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When they’re, when the whole, the whole section occurs in the book where

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they are chasing them across the field and they’re chasing them through the town and

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it’s just like chapters, long chase and. Yeah,

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it’s Benny Hill, man. It’s. That’s it. Yes. Oh my God, I’m glad

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you brought this up like this. And I’m like, oh my God. Oh my God,

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00:15:22,197 –> 00:15:24,030
the Benny Hill music. Yakety Sax.

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That’s right. Ah. Oh. Got that song

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stuck in my head. I remember Benny Hill. Oh my God. Yeah. Like

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1980 British TV would come over and

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you could see like clips of Benny Hill, like 11:30 at night or something.

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Yeah. So this will tell you the, the. Just the age

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gap that we have. I was exposed to Benny Hill. So

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I’ll frame it this way. Before I would go to school in the mid-90s

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or I go to high school, there were two programs I’d watch. If I got

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up early on PBS, I could watch the last 10 minutes of Benny

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Hill, where usually the last 10 minutes involved some

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lady in scanty clothes running around doing some. Something. And

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then the music would come up and then I would immediately change from that

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to Sports center hosted by.

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Oh, what’s his name, the guy who’s sort of gone off the rails lately

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on MSNBC. Keith Olbermannn. Keith Olbermann and Dan Patrick.

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Those are my guys. And this is before we knew how crazy Keith

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Olbermannn was. This is before Dan Patrick had a podcast, you know,

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all this time. Right. And. And Stuart Scott would come on sometimes

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and I’d watch Stuart Scott with Dan Patrick and I would just watch Michael

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Jordan highlights and eat my cereal. And then I would go to school. Like

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that was my whole entire. That was my. That was part of my exposure to

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like Benny Hill. And now

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this. Interesting. So my nine year old, we got a bunch of chickens in

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my. On my property. And like a bunch of chickens, like not a few,

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like. Like 12 to 15. It’s ridiculous for chicken farmers. And. And

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whenever he’s chasing the chickens. Chickens around. I play the Benny Hill music.

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It’s basically Yakety Sax.

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00:17:10,930 –> 00:17:14,610
Yeah. Like he’s chasing the girl. Yeah, exactly. He’s got his hands out. Like,

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he’s got his hands out the whole nine yards. You could not put that on

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TV today. I think that would be. Benny Hill

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would be immediately canceled. Like, immediately. It wouldn’t even get out of the writers room

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before the music ended. They would be closing that show down.

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Oh, my gosh. Okay, well, getting back to the man who

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Was Thursday. Let’s. Let’s focus this for just a minute. Yes.

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So The Man Who Was Thursday was published in 1908. It is one of

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G.K. Chesterton’s more famous books associated with him.

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It was written as an adventure story, a detective story. And

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as I put it in. In my writing, in my notes here, a boisterous

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narrative with an unexpected denouement. And it is an

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00:17:59,685 –> 00:18:02,360
unexpected denouement. Like, it takes a.

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It takes an immediate left turn in the last two chapters,

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and you don’t know what he’s going to do. Like, I. I was. I was.

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I looked at the book and I go, oh, my gosh, this is so short.

295
00:18:12,360 –> 00:18:16,040
Because the chapters are short. It’s real easy to read. It’s written in a flowing

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narrative style. You get to the last two chapters, and you’re

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00:18:19,724 –> 00:18:23,450
like, how is he gonna. How’s he gonna bring it home? How is he going

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00:18:23,450 –> 00:18:26,969
to. He has to bring it home somehow. How is he going to turn this

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00:18:26,969 –> 00:18:30,764
corner? And then he turns the corner, and you wind up in this weird.

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00:18:30,764 –> 00:18:34,559
This is a psychedelic part. You wind up in this weird, psychedelic

301
00:18:34,559 –> 00:18:38,147
cul-de-sac with. With robes and dudes sitting in chairs. It’s

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00:18:38,147 –> 00:18:41,972
very much Lord of the Rings. Like, it’s very Lord of the Rings or

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00:18:41,972 –> 00:18:45,327
that hideous strength by C.S. Lewis where they’re all

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00:18:45,327 –> 00:18:48,683
sitting in robes at St. Anne’s at the end. You know, the

305
00:18:48,683 –> 00:18:52,487
victory has come. And they’re sort of. You know, they’re just

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00:18:52,487 –> 00:18:56,139
kind of reflecting on what their role in the entire saga has

307
00:18:56,139 –> 00:18:59,793
been. I was completely channeling Lewis when I was reading

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00:18:59,793 –> 00:19:02,690
that. Yeah. And it’s. And there’s no

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00:19:03,410 –> 00:19:07,010
preparation for any of that. It just sort of dumps into it, and you’re like,

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00:19:07,890 –> 00:19:11,570
oh, I. Okay. I didn’t realize it was going to be this

311
00:19:11,570 –> 00:19:15,260
kind of game. Right. The other thing about the book

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00:19:15,660 –> 00:19:19,500
is it continues to confound readers. Like, it was. So

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00:19:19,500 –> 00:19:23,220
this is 2026. When we’re recording this episode, it

314
00:19:23,220 –> 00:19:26,900
is 118 years since this book was published, which

315
00:19:26,900 –> 00:19:30,219
is weird for me to think about, but

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00:19:30,540 –> 00:19:34,140
in the 118 years, I don’t think anybody’s gotten their arms around the man who

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00:19:34,140 –> 00:19:37,660
was Thursday. That’s fair.

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00:19:38,700 –> 00:19:42,420
You know, someday you’re talking to me, but I would love to introduce

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00:19:42,420 –> 00:19:46,240
you to my friend Bill, who’s a profound. He’s. I’m pointing in that direction

320
00:19:46,240 –> 00:19:49,880
because he lives over there, you know, so your viewers can see.

321
00:19:50,040 –> 00:19:53,837
Yeah, yeah, he’s right off screen. He’s over there. Right. And Bill and

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00:19:53,837 –> 00:19:57,437
I, first of all, we belong to a C.S. Lewis Book

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00:19:57,437 –> 00:20:00,941
Club together. But he is one of the best read

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00:20:00,941 –> 00:20:04,637
people that I know, and he’s a huge Chesterton

325
00:20:04,637 –> 00:20:08,335
fan. And maybe we could do a follow up to this at

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00:20:08,335 –> 00:20:11,836
some point where he comes on and he’s just. I

327
00:20:11,836 –> 00:20:15,338
think you’ll find him just an interesting,

328
00:20:15,338 –> 00:20:18,354
profound kind of guy. Very committed

329
00:20:18,354 –> 00:20:21,661
Catholic, very, very, you know, serious

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00:20:21,661 –> 00:20:24,677
religious fellow and a deep thinker.

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00:20:25,480 –> 00:20:29,000
So I’m gonna ask him that very question,

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00:20:29,080 –> 00:20:32,560
like, basically. And I should have done this in preparation for the show, but of

333
00:20:32,560 –> 00:20:36,240
course I didn’t, which is. Bill’s hard to

334
00:20:36,240 –> 00:20:39,960
get hold of, by the way, because in keeping with Chesterton and Tolkien,

335
00:20:39,960 –> 00:20:43,690
he. He doesn’t have a cell phone. There you go. He is hard. I actually

336
00:20:43,690 –> 00:20:47,450
have to physically walk over to his house, which is like, you know, two

337
00:20:47,450 –> 00:20:50,690
and a half blocks. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of commitment.

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00:20:51,890 –> 00:20:55,570
I mean, I can’t just text him. What? Yeah.

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00:20:55,810 –> 00:20:59,530
What is this, 1908? Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are we doing? This is

340
00:20:59,530 –> 00:21:03,140
100. This is 118 years ago. He’s talked a lot

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00:21:03,140 –> 00:21:06,817
about G.K. Chesterton, and he would enjoy this. This

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00:21:06,817 –> 00:21:10,577
conversation. So at some point, putting the two of you

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00:21:10,577 –> 00:21:14,170
together will be my. I will enjoy that conversation

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00:21:14,170 –> 00:21:17,848
from. From my. From my chair to the side. But so to me, I

345
00:21:17,848 –> 00:21:21,525
can’t separate because I have such a Lord of the Rings

346
00:21:21,525 –> 00:21:25,260
thing. Lord of the Rings was a massive influence

347
00:21:25,260 –> 00:21:28,973
on me growing up. So is C.S. Lewis. It colored a lot

348
00:21:28,973 –> 00:21:32,594
of my worldview, both of them together, both as a

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00:21:32,594 –> 00:21:36,216
kid, where I kind of sort of thought Middle Earth

350
00:21:36,216 –> 00:21:39,929
was real or that I knew it wasn’t quite real, but it

351
00:21:39,929 –> 00:21:43,671
should be real, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It should be a place like

352
00:21:43,671 –> 00:21:46,964
that. Right. Seems like a better place than the one I was

353
00:21:46,964 –> 00:21:50,757
actually at to, you know, much later as an adult, where I started

354
00:21:50,757 –> 00:21:54,478
to realize the profound philosophy that. That, you know, that

355
00:21:54,478 –> 00:21:57,841
that was. Was underneath it all. And you know, certainly

356
00:21:57,841 –> 00:22:01,491
there’s some. To me, the most obvious. First of all, there’s a

357
00:22:01,491 –> 00:22:04,925
lot of literature mechanisms in here where I go, Tolkien,

358
00:22:04,925 –> 00:22:08,557
Tolkien, Tolkien. Or literally throughout, like here in your, in your

359
00:22:08,557 –> 00:22:11,646
poem. I don’t know if you can see this on the screen, but over here

360
00:22:11,646 –> 00:22:15,330
in your poem I wrote very J.R.R., right? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is,

361
00:22:15,330 –> 00:22:19,010
right, because it is, it’s. It’s the, the first of all the fact that there’s

362
00:22:19,010 –> 00:22:22,770
a poem like that, you know, in Tolkien, every once

363
00:22:22,770 –> 00:22:26,610
in a while the hobbits would just start, you know, reciting. They’re just like

364
00:22:26,610 –> 00:22:30,370
running around reciting poetry and eating second breakfast. Can you imagine like a

365
00:22:30,370 –> 00:22:33,890
modern literary work where suddenly someone just read a poem for three pages?

366
00:22:36,370 –> 00:22:40,144
No, no, no, no. The reader would be

367
00:22:40,144 –> 00:22:43,835
gone at verse two. I have to, I have to give you that. I

368
00:22:43,835 –> 00:22:47,442
did do a little wiki search or a little R and D before

369
00:22:47,442 –> 00:22:51,220
this. And here’s an interesting thing. The person to

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00:22:51,220 –> 00:22:54,568
whom he dedicated that poem is Edmund Clerihew

371
00:22:54,568 –> 00:22:58,199
Bentley. Yes. Do you know what a clerihew is? I

372
00:22:58,199 –> 00:23:01,914
have no idea what a clerihew is. Neither did I. But wiki, boom.

373
00:23:01,914 –> 00:23:05,653
Nailed it. Clerihew apparently is named after this

374
00:23:05,653 –> 00:23:09,480
guy. A four line poem. That’s autobiographical. And

375
00:23:09,480 –> 00:23:13,131
so it’s like there’s some. I was actually looking a

376
00:23:13,131 –> 00:23:16,714
few of these up. Unfortunately I don’t have them like

377
00:23:16,714 –> 00:23:20,434
right here. But you can, you can look them up. Some of them

378
00:23:20,434 –> 00:23:24,074
are cute. So of course this clerihew. Poetry examples.

379
00:23:24,074 –> 00:23:27,872
Right. And Albert Einstein, though he was divine. He made

380
00:23:27,872 –> 00:23:31,650
the world spin with a theory of time. You know, things like that. Right. Kind

381
00:23:31,650 –> 00:23:33,330
of, you know. Yeah. Quick,

382
00:23:38,450 –> 00:23:42,090
I’m just seeing these right now. Discovered radium, you

383
00:23:42,090 –> 00:23:45,930
see. She glowed with pride. Oh dear. In her lap she would

384
00:23:45,930 –> 00:23:49,730
have. She also died of radium poisoning, so she did. That’s a

385
00:23:49,730 –> 00:23:53,030
little dark, but you get the idea.

386
00:23:53,030 –> 00:23:56,390
Anyway, who knew those poems had a name? And someone invented them.

387
00:23:56,550 –> 00:24:00,085
Apparently it was this friend of Chesterton’s. So. That’s amazing.

388
00:24:00,085 –> 00:24:03,559
Yeah, that’s amazing. I. And they’re called clerihews. Yeah,

389
00:24:03,559 –> 00:24:06,790
that’s amazing. I know. I did not. I did not know that at all.

390
00:24:07,030 –> 00:24:10,333
And that’s why we. This is my gift to you, my

391
00:24:10,333 –> 00:24:13,805
friend. You impart knowledge to me. I give

392
00:24:13,805 –> 00:24:17,475
these little bon mots trivia. Well, someday

393
00:24:17,475 –> 00:24:21,243
you’ll be at a dinner conversation and you’ll

394
00:24:21,243 –> 00:24:25,073
say, Someone will say, does anyone. Does

395
00:24:25,073 –> 00:24:28,756
anyone know what a clerihew is? Like. Like you’re like you’re on an airplane,

396
00:24:28,756 –> 00:24:32,292
someone’s there. A Doctor, on this plane. Is there anyone on this plane that knows

397
00:24:32,292 –> 00:24:35,152
what a clerihew is? Turns out like we have a poet. This will save his

398
00:24:35,152 –> 00:24:37,500
life. Weirdly enough, I do.

399
00:24:38,220 –> 00:24:41,953
Strangely enough, ma’am, I. With the clerihew.

400
00:24:41,953 –> 00:24:45,592
It’s a musical instrument, I think. Yeah. Play with

401
00:24:45,592 –> 00:24:48,700
clerihew along with the harpsichord. And I failed at it. Now I’m switching to the

402
00:24:48,700 –> 00:24:51,750
piano and I’m totally better. Isn’t there a

403
00:24:51,750 –> 00:24:55,579
clerihew and Jethro Tull or something? The

404
00:24:55,579 –> 00:24:59,406
clerihew. Some guy off to the side like some

405
00:24:59,406 –> 00:25:03,117
bizarre. Oh, more like in the Grateful Dead.

406
00:25:03,117 –> 00:25:06,602
Oh, my Lord. Anyway, they. They would have had a Clair

407
00:25:06,602 –> 00:25:09,620
Huxtable for sure. Oh my gosh. I’m not going to tell you a funny Grateful

408
00:25:09,620 –> 00:25:13,020
Dead’s not on this show, but not on the show that is Grateful Dead story.

409
00:25:13,020 –> 00:25:16,720
But, but okay, so back to Chesterton, who never encountered

410
00:25:16,720 –> 00:25:20,560
the. Although it’s interesting to speculate, what would he have thought of the Dead? You

411
00:25:20,560 –> 00:25:24,320
know, I don’t know.

412
00:25:24,320 –> 00:25:27,560
You know, so, so here’s a follow up question for this. So

413
00:25:28,440 –> 00:25:32,200
I asked you this question when we were talking about All Quiet on the

414
00:25:32,200 –> 00:25:34,840
Western Front and Lord of the Rings in our mashup episode. And you, you gave

415
00:25:34,840 –> 00:25:37,480
me a very interesting answer that has stuck with me

416
00:25:39,820 –> 00:25:43,580
for a long time now. And, and this is why I have fascinating folks

417
00:25:43,580 –> 00:25:46,140
like yourself on the show, because I get to ask you good questions that you

418
00:25:46,140 –> 00:25:48,980
give me stuff and it sticks with me and it incorporates into other things that

419
00:25:48,980 –> 00:25:52,140
I think. And the question that I asked you was, at the end of this,

420
00:25:52,140 –> 00:25:55,980
towards the end of that episode, will there ever be another

421
00:25:56,300 –> 00:26:00,100
writer like Tolkien? Will. Will the English, Will English

422
00:26:00,100 –> 00:26:03,780
literature ever be able to produce another writer like Tolkien? And you said

423
00:26:03,780 –> 00:26:07,590
probably not, because Tolkien was sort of the, the

424
00:26:07,590 –> 00:26:11,270
pinnacle of the mountain of all of English culture and

425
00:26:11,270 –> 00:26:14,870
society and thought it all sort of concentrated at

426
00:26:15,030 –> 00:26:18,590
a tip of the spear into that man and his, his output.

427
00:26:18,590 –> 00:26:22,190
Okay, but when we look not, but.

428
00:26:22,190 –> 00:26:25,612
And when we look at the History of 19th century

429
00:26:25,612 –> 00:26:29,215
Literature in England, you have Lewis Carroll,

430
00:26:29,215 –> 00:26:32,998
you have Charles Dickens, you have GK Chesterton,

431
00:26:32,998 –> 00:26:36,419
you have George Bernard Shaw, you have Robert

432
00:26:36,419 –> 00:26:40,020
Louis Stevenson, you have C.S. Lewis on the tail

433
00:26:40,020 –> 00:26:43,531
end of this. And of course you have Tolkien, you

434
00:26:43,531 –> 00:26:47,223
have these lions, these literary lines. Rudyard

435
00:26:47,223 –> 00:26:51,006
Kipling, who, by the way, we haven’t covered any of

436
00:26:51,006 –> 00:26:54,788
Kipling’s work on this show yet. We sort of working

437
00:26:54,788 –> 00:26:58,388
our way around to it. We will cover. We will cover

438
00:26:58,388 –> 00:27:01,990
Rudyard Kipling coming up here fairly soon. I’m

439
00:27:01,990 –> 00:27:05,500
trying to find the right text to Bring to folks.

440
00:27:07,280 –> 00:27:11,000
But the, the, the. A. The 19th century literary tradition

441
00:27:11,000 –> 00:27:14,640
in England was so rich, it’s almost

442
00:27:14,800 –> 00:27:18,200
stunning. It’s like the height. It’s the height of a, of a

443
00:27:18,200 –> 00:27:18,800
literary.

444
00:27:23,450 –> 00:27:26,890
The man who was Thursday comes along in a weird time

445
00:27:26,970 –> 00:27:30,010
when the Boer wars have occurred,

446
00:27:30,570 –> 00:27:34,290
right? England is having a little bit of trouble

447
00:27:34,290 –> 00:27:37,970
holding onto its colonies, but it’s always had trouble because it’s England. So they don’t

448
00:27:37,970 –> 00:27:41,370
really think that it’s anything really interesting that’s happening there.

449
00:27:42,410 –> 00:27:45,890
But what is happening that’s more so interesting is the

450
00:27:45,890 –> 00:27:49,650
continent is getting ready to roil literally 12

451
00:27:49,650 –> 00:27:53,410
years later with World War. World War I. 10. 10 years later with World War

452
00:27:53,410 –> 00:27:55,870
I. Like you’re going to get into World War I. Going to be off to

453
00:27:55,870 –> 00:27:59,470
the races, right? I mean, this is the, this is the beginnings of. Or the,

454
00:27:59,470 –> 00:28:02,870
the foundation is being laid for the death of the British

455
00:28:02,870 –> 00:28:06,470
Empire, but nobody knows it at that point. Nobody

456
00:28:06,470 –> 00:28:10,190
realizes it at that point, right? So I

457
00:28:10,190 –> 00:28:13,475
say all this to say. Or I asked, I lay. That’s the

458
00:28:13,475 –> 00:28:16,875
content I laid for this question. The man who was

459
00:28:16,875 –> 00:28:20,445
Thursday. The reason is the reason we can’t get our

460
00:28:20,445 –> 00:28:24,100
arms around it and pigeonhole into some space. Is it

461
00:28:24,100 –> 00:28:27,670
because it is truly the heir to that entire English

462
00:28:27,670 –> 00:28:30,730
tradition. Was Chesterton trying to bring

463
00:28:30,730 –> 00:28:34,555
everything into this one book and say sort of. And sort

464
00:28:34,555 –> 00:28:36,425
of make a final statement?

465
00:28:39,710 –> 00:28:43,390
Well, I’m not sure I’m the, the right person

466
00:28:43,390 –> 00:28:47,030
to ask to answer that question, but I’ll give it Where’s Bill? Where’s that guy?

467
00:28:47,030 –> 00:28:50,190
Yeah, where’s Bill? Ask that same question to Bill when he comes along.

468
00:28:51,830 –> 00:28:54,950
So. But I think that

469
00:28:56,550 –> 00:29:00,230
the, the, the, the reason

470
00:29:00,230 –> 00:29:03,270
we have our. One of the reasons we have

471
00:29:03,270 –> 00:29:07,030
difficulty getting our arms around Chesterton

472
00:29:07,030 –> 00:29:09,750
is that I think we in 2026

473
00:29:11,190 –> 00:29:14,910
have difficulty. You know, there used to be

474
00:29:14,910 –> 00:29:17,950
saying there’s no second act in American life, right? Which once they know you as

475
00:29:17,950 –> 00:29:20,990
an actor, that’s it, you’re an actor forever. Once you’re a playwright, you’re a playwright

476
00:29:20,990 –> 00:29:23,940
forever. You can’t do. You can’t do different things or it’s very difficult.

477
00:29:24,900 –> 00:29:28,620
I think that that kind of is broadly true

478
00:29:28,620 –> 00:29:32,420
where particularly in the world of the Internet, we pinhole people

479
00:29:32,420 –> 00:29:36,220
as you’re this. And once someone is known as a Christian

480
00:29:36,220 –> 00:29:39,540
apologist, well, they can’t also be funny, right?

481
00:29:39,860 –> 00:29:43,300
They can’t also be indulged in, you know,

482
00:29:43,780 –> 00:29:45,780
what we would call almost psychedelic

483
00:29:47,060 –> 00:29:50,630
literature because that’s just not things that go together,

484
00:29:50,950 –> 00:29:54,630
right? So I’m saying that’s Kind of

485
00:29:54,630 –> 00:29:58,070
the. The shallow view, right? Yeah,

486
00:29:58,710 –> 00:30:01,510
that. So I think one of the reasons, and I think one of the reasons

487
00:30:01,510 –> 00:30:04,950
Tolkien actually slips by that is because

488
00:30:05,110 –> 00:30:08,710
his books are theoretically written for children.

489
00:30:09,110 –> 00:30:12,550
They’re not, of course, they’re profoundly deep works for adults.

490
00:30:12,710 –> 00:30:16,430
But he slips it in there. Right? That’s. CS Lewis does that

491
00:30:16,430 –> 00:30:20,190
with Narnia. Right. Because it’s. In some ways, we read Narnia to

492
00:30:20,190 –> 00:30:23,480
our kids because we think of them as kids stories, but of course, they’re not.

493
00:30:23,480 –> 00:30:26,960
They’re much more than that. But that was, I think, some of the

494
00:30:26,960 –> 00:30:30,240
additional genius of. Of Tolkien

495
00:30:30,800 –> 00:30:34,640
where I don’t think he sat down and said, well, here’s a way to get

496
00:30:34,640 –> 00:30:38,280
a Christian message across in a way that, you know, people will not, you

497
00:30:38,280 –> 00:30:42,120
know, object to immediately in this world of, you know, material anarchy that I see

498
00:30:42,120 –> 00:30:45,320
all around me. I don’t. I don’t think he sat down and thought that, but

499
00:30:45,320 –> 00:30:47,040
it was part of his genius to kind of

500
00:30:49,280 –> 00:30:52,800
develop the delivery mechanism in such a. You know,

501
00:30:52,880 –> 00:30:55,480
I’ve read the Lord. I. I know I have a Lord of the Rings shaped

502
00:30:55,480 –> 00:30:57,320
head, so I talk about it a lot, but I read it as a kid.

503
00:30:57,320 –> 00:30:59,800
I read it as a young adult. I’ve read it as an adult. I’ve read

504
00:30:59,800 –> 00:31:03,520
it very recently. I’ve read it to my kids,

505
00:31:03,520 –> 00:31:06,320
with my kids. So the.

506
00:31:07,040 –> 00:31:10,477
I. So I think that that’s part of it. I think he doesn’t. It’s

507
00:31:10,477 –> 00:31:13,950
difficult to put him in a pigeonhole, and he’s not famous

508
00:31:13,950 –> 00:31:17,644
enough in the way that Tolkien is. Just so, you know, they’re

509
00:31:17,644 –> 00:31:21,487
not going to make a movie out of the man who called, you know, the

510
00:31:21,487 –> 00:31:24,690
man who was Thursday. Yeah, yeah. Right.

511
00:31:25,650 –> 00:31:29,370
Whereas, you know, the Tolkien works are so famous that they kind

512
00:31:29,370 –> 00:31:33,010
of blow away a lot of those sort of. Well, I’m not sure I.

513
00:31:33,170 –> 00:31:37,010
What pigeonhole do I put this in? Kind of. Kind of. Objection. So

514
00:31:38,610 –> 00:31:42,360
that’s one reason. I think the other reason is something that you touched

515
00:31:42,360 –> 00:31:45,780
on, which is he’s so very British. Right. To me. So I was

516
00:31:45,780 –> 00:31:49,274
telling you earlier I had this characterization of

517
00:31:49,274 –> 00:31:52,929
Chesterton. I want to save it for the show. Here it is. I

518
00:31:52,929 –> 00:31:56,666
think if you took CS Lewis and Winston Churchill and put

519
00:31:56,666 –> 00:32:00,078
them together, you’d get G.K. Chesterton. Right.

520
00:32:01,760 –> 00:32:05,486
I think that’s my image of G.K. Chesterton. And by

521
00:32:05,486 –> 00:32:09,120
the way, I didn’t realize until actually after I

522
00:32:09,120 –> 00:32:12,846
read the book, he was a big guy. He was almost £300.

523
00:32:12,846 –> 00:32:16,260
Yeah. Oh, yeah. He was a big boy. Oh, yeah. He was A big boy.

524
00:32:16,260 –> 00:32:19,860
Which makes me wonder about Sunday, because, correct me if I’m wrong, but Sunday’s a

525
00:32:19,860 –> 00:32:23,500
big. Sunday’s a big. Yes, yes, yes. That’s how he’s.

526
00:32:23,580 –> 00:32:27,420
That’s how he’s described as sort of this. This sort of all encompassing.

527
00:32:27,740 –> 00:32:31,020
Yeah, like. Like at the end, he’s almost like. Right.

528
00:32:31,420 –> 00:32:35,222
It’s. It’s like the. The kid in again, in Roald Dahl. Who’s

529
00:32:35,222 –> 00:32:38,945
the kid who. Who, like. Or somebody takes the bubble down

530
00:32:38,945 –> 00:32:42,270
and they end up blowing up to Violet Beauregarde or

531
00:32:42,270 –> 00:32:46,100
something. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like three times

532
00:32:46,100 –> 00:32:48,740
her size or something like that. So.

533
00:32:49,860 –> 00:32:53,460
So I think also, though, we’re just.

534
00:32:54,020 –> 00:32:57,820
That is a vanished archetype, the Winston

535
00:32:57,820 –> 00:33:01,580
Churchill, you know, the guy who. Who first

536
00:33:01,580 –> 00:33:04,820
of all was grounded in certain

537
00:33:04,900 –> 00:33:08,740
moral certitudes, but also could get along with just about

538
00:33:08,740 –> 00:33:12,340
anyone. Right. Always had the

539
00:33:12,340 –> 00:33:16,060
right thing to say at the right time, you know. You know, like, Churchill’s

540
00:33:16,060 –> 00:33:18,980
famous, you know, the. The woman who says, you know,

541
00:33:20,100 –> 00:33:23,940
Mr. Churchill, if you were my husband, I would poison you. And he said,

542
00:33:23,940 –> 00:33:26,740
madame, if you were my wife, I would drink it. I would drink it.

543
00:33:31,060 –> 00:33:34,860
Well, it’s like that. Yeah. Who could pull a line like that off today? I’m.

544
00:33:34,860 –> 00:33:38,580
Come on. You know. You know, I don’t see Tom Cruise nailing a line

545
00:33:38,580 –> 00:33:41,420
like that in a movie. No, no, no. The problem is. The problem is all

546
00:33:41,420 –> 00:33:44,980
those guys are on Twitter. That’s the problem. They’re all on Twitter.

547
00:33:45,060 –> 00:33:48,780
Yeah, that’s it. Yeah. Maybe that’s what. Yeah, for the. For the. For the

548
00:33:48,780 –> 00:33:52,020
great. The zap. So. But.

549
00:33:52,820 –> 00:33:56,500
So I think that’s. It’s partly that he’s just. I mean, he’s almost

550
00:33:56,580 –> 00:34:00,370
like, you know, like a Roman senator. He’s so far back and

551
00:34:00,370 –> 00:34:04,130
so archetypal that you can’t. He’s almost

552
00:34:04,130 –> 00:34:07,850
not like. Not a real person. You know, we don’t see people like that

553
00:34:07,850 –> 00:34:11,690
anymore. Well, and it’s interesting that you talk about his weight and

554
00:34:11,690 –> 00:34:15,410
sort of the rumpledness that Chesterton had, and then we’ll. We’ll

555
00:34:15,410 –> 00:34:17,730
go. We’ll head back to the book here because I want to turn the corner,

556
00:34:17,730 –> 00:34:20,290
sort of talk about some other themes that I want to talk about today. But

557
00:34:20,290 –> 00:34:22,650
it’s interesting you talk about his weight, his rumpledness.

558
00:34:24,090 –> 00:34:27,290
You know, he struggled with gout and gluttony and those kinds of things.

559
00:34:28,950 –> 00:34:32,310
And we live in a post television era, like one of the.

560
00:34:32,790 –> 00:34:36,630
One of the. I would love to write a substack essay on this

561
00:34:36,630 –> 00:34:39,310
because I’ve been thinking about this off and on for the last four or five

562
00:34:39,310 –> 00:34:42,470
years, how no one really is

563
00:34:42,470 –> 00:34:46,310
appreciating how much that box in your house

564
00:34:46,390 –> 00:34:50,070
called a television has gotten pulled apart in the last 15

565
00:34:50,150 –> 00:34:53,625
years. It’s got pulled apart by streaming, it’s been

566
00:34:53,625 –> 00:34:57,232
pulled apart by different distribution channels. It’s

567
00:34:57,232 –> 00:35:00,684
been pulled apart by the death of attention, it’s been

568
00:35:00,684 –> 00:35:03,905
pulled apart by the transition of advertising and

569
00:35:03,905 –> 00:35:07,435
marketing technology, and it’s primarily been pulled

570
00:35:07,435 –> 00:35:11,194
apart by the creation of the Internet. The second you could

571
00:35:11,194 –> 00:35:14,799
have an infinite number of channels, and the second that

572
00:35:14,799 –> 00:35:18,327
infinite number of channels was attached to what in the

573
00:35:18,327 –> 00:35:21,701
future will be an AI template in your pocket, which is

574
00:35:21,701 –> 00:35:24,924
currently a template in your pocket. Once that was

575
00:35:24,924 –> 00:35:28,608
attached, once those two things came together from thank

576
00:35:28,608 –> 00:35:32,445
you, Steve Jobs. The explosion that was going to happen was,

577
00:35:32,445 –> 00:35:35,668
was, was, was for the television, a thermonuclear

578
00:35:35,668 –> 00:35:39,273
explosion. Now, don’t get me wrong, the physical object

579
00:35:39,273 –> 00:35:43,033
still exists on your wall, sure. But what it meant when jfk.

580
00:35:43,033 –> 00:35:46,794
This is where I mentioned Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves

581
00:35:46,794 –> 00:35:50,370
to Death. Right. Postman didn’t want to talk about digital. He didn’t,

582
00:35:50,370 –> 00:35:54,050
he didn’t care about any of that. His, his whole focus was on what TV

583
00:35:54,450 –> 00:35:58,290
meant for reality. That’s why Amusing Ourselves to Death is such an amazing book written

584
00:35:58,290 –> 00:36:01,650
back in 1985. But Postman noted that,

585
00:36:02,610 –> 00:36:06,170
and I’m going to tie the suggestion in a minute, but noted that what TV

586
00:36:06,170 –> 00:36:09,410
meant was images mattered more

587
00:36:10,370 –> 00:36:14,220
than the medium. Right. So the medium

588
00:36:14,220 –> 00:36:17,859
is the message, for sure. Marshall McLuhan, he backed that up.

589
00:36:17,859 –> 00:36:21,016
But both of those things were intricately,

590
00:36:21,016 –> 00:36:24,524
intricately tied together. And so you couldn’t

591
00:36:24,524 –> 00:36:28,208
have a sweaty Richard Nixon on TV in 1960. You know,

592
00:36:28,208 –> 00:36:32,020
you had to have JFK pack on the pancake makeup. Sure.

593
00:36:32,100 –> 00:36:35,133
Fast forward to our era. One of the most

594
00:36:35,133 –> 00:36:38,545
notorious changes I’ve seen in the last two

595
00:36:38,545 –> 00:36:42,054
years is how we have gone from as a culture, at

596
00:36:42,054 –> 00:36:45,848
least on Internet culture, the online culture,

597
00:36:45,848 –> 00:36:48,787
from being very, very positive about

598
00:36:48,787 –> 00:36:51,916
everybody’s body to now Ozempic-face.

599
00:36:52,560 –> 00:36:56,279
Right. And we’ve done that in two years. All of a sudden, body positivity

600
00:36:56,279 –> 00:37:00,080
went out the door because Ozempic is here.

601
00:37:00,080 –> 00:37:03,920
Right, right. And so body positivity wasn’t really body positivity.

602
00:37:04,080 –> 00:37:07,920
It was, I don’t have a get rich or get

603
00:37:07,920 –> 00:37:11,700
weight loss quick over system so that I can show up as

604
00:37:11,700 –> 00:37:15,420
an image, which is what we have primarily made our mode of

605
00:37:15,900 –> 00:37:18,540
messaging since the rise of television.

606
00:37:20,620 –> 00:37:23,900
I don’t have that tool to go to that mode and so I’m going to

607
00:37:23,900 –> 00:37:26,780
be positive and I’m going to shape what the tool says about. Right.

608
00:37:27,180 –> 00:37:30,900
Chesterton, to your point, this is why that

609
00:37:30,900 –> 00:37:34,700
archetype no longer exists. Because of tv, because of the Internet,

610
00:37:35,020 –> 00:37:38,720
and because of Ozempic. That, that, that, that. I don’t care

611
00:37:38,720 –> 00:37:42,480
how quippy he is. If he’s £300, right. You can’t put

612
00:37:42,480 –> 00:37:46,240
that guy, you know, he’ll. He won’t make it. Yep, he won’t make

613
00:37:46,240 –> 00:37:48,760
it. Yeah. And that’s a real,

614
00:37:50,920 –> 00:37:54,360
That’s a real shame. It’s.

615
00:37:55,560 –> 00:37:59,160
In some, in some ways, you know, Hassan, I feel like we’re

616
00:37:59,160 –> 00:38:03,010
describing the modern Tower of Babel that is just

617
00:38:03,010 –> 00:38:06,770
building itself higher and higher and eventually is going to come crashing

618
00:38:06,770 –> 00:38:10,490
down. The, The. Because the. I

619
00:38:10,490 –> 00:38:13,330
mean, you know, I guess

620
00:38:14,690 –> 00:38:18,450
your viewers will, Will get, Get the, the idea. I’m not a huge

621
00:38:18,450 –> 00:38:22,210
fan of a lot of modern culture. I just, I

622
00:38:22,210 –> 00:38:25,410
find it horrific, most of it.

623
00:38:25,810 –> 00:38:29,396
And the. To me, what I mourn most is the

624
00:38:29,396 –> 00:38:33,129
death of books. But behind the books has to be the writer,

625
00:38:33,129 –> 00:38:36,863
and behind the writer has to be the culture that produces

626
00:38:36,863 –> 00:38:40,358
the novelist. The idea that the writer was rewarded.

627
00:38:40,358 –> 00:38:43,933
Chesterton was probably rewarded from a young age for

628
00:38:43,933 –> 00:38:47,744
being quippy and for being sharp and for having the bon mot

629
00:38:47,744 –> 00:38:51,555
and for, you know, or however you pronounce it. But I don’t

630
00:38:51,555 –> 00:38:55,051
speak French. Amongst my many defects, that’s one of

631
00:38:55,051 –> 00:38:58,545
them. And the. But there was a time where that was, you

632
00:38:58,545 –> 00:39:02,140
know, sort of lauded because. But, you know, you mentioned Twitter, so would.

633
00:39:02,140 –> 00:39:05,940
Would the Chesterton of today have been on Twitter? The problem is I

634
00:39:05,940 –> 00:39:09,620
can’t distinguish the Chesterton on Twitter from the bot on

635
00:39:09,620 –> 00:39:13,410
Twitter. Right. I could be talking to, To a, you

636
00:39:13,410 –> 00:39:17,201
know, to nothing. And the, the. That just leads to

637
00:39:17,201 –> 00:39:20,712
chaos. I, I don’t know. You know, was it, Was it

638
00:39:20,712 –> 00:39:24,503
Chesterton, it just made that witty observation

639
00:39:24,503 –> 00:39:28,199
about Marco Rubio or was it, you know, an AI whose

640
00:39:28,199 –> 00:39:31,989
server is somewhere in Tierra del Fuego? I mean, I

641
00:39:31,989 –> 00:39:35,593
have no idea. So it’s, It’s. There’s a lot about

642
00:39:35,593 –> 00:39:39,384
modern culture that I, you know, it’s hard to see.

643
00:39:39,384 –> 00:39:42,780
And maybe this will let me. If you want to lead us back to the

644
00:39:42,780 –> 00:39:45,260
book. It’s hard to see the way out

645
00:39:46,300 –> 00:39:50,060
where we go from here to you. Oh, okay. We got to

646
00:39:50,140 –> 00:39:53,960
a, you know, a kind of better place. Um, one last thing.

647
00:39:53,960 –> 00:39:56,360
And I, we do want to get back to the book, but, you know, I

648
00:39:56,360 –> 00:39:59,240
sort of dabble in the side with some writing and,

649
00:40:00,120 –> 00:40:02,840
And I wrote a.

650
00:40:03,880 –> 00:40:07,240
I’M writing a screenplay, a movie screenplay

651
00:40:07,560 –> 00:40:11,301
that is in the 80s. I traveled around a bit. I’m just

652
00:40:11,301 –> 00:40:14,989
going to make this super quick, I promise. But it does tie back. And I

653
00:40:14,989 –> 00:40:18,612
started my travels in Amsterdam, literally landing 1986, no idea

654
00:40:18,612 –> 00:40:22,366
where I was, very little money, one way ticket to speak the language,

655
00:40:22,366 –> 00:40:25,989
you know, and I’m setting the, the opening movie. I’m writing this

656
00:40:25,989 –> 00:40:29,678
actually for my daughter who said, gee, you should write something

657
00:40:29,678 –> 00:40:33,230
because I’ve been telling her stories of these travels forever.

658
00:40:33,390 –> 00:40:36,790
Yeah. So I’m doing it in the form of a fictionalized movie script. And it

659
00:40:36,790 –> 00:40:40,430
starts off with the fictional me in the travel bureau, which, which was a true.

660
00:40:40,430 –> 00:40:44,270
Actually happened standing there in the travel bureau. And I

661
00:40:44,270 –> 00:40:47,990
won’t take you through it except to say, you know, there’s a voiceover saying,

662
00:40:47,990 –> 00:40:51,450
okay, I have no money or very little money. I don’t, I don’t speak the

663
00:40:51,450 –> 00:40:54,610
language. I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where I’m sleeping that night.

664
00:40:55,010 –> 00:40:56,370
And it was better.

665
00:40:59,170 –> 00:41:02,960
And it was. And, and the, the point of the story is me bumbling

666
00:41:02,960 –> 00:41:06,505
through Europe for eight months, which actually happened.

667
00:41:06,505 –> 00:41:10,123
Right. But nothing bad, you know, Nothing bad. Yeah, it’s all

668
00:41:10,123 –> 00:41:13,883
fun. I saw, I met some really interesting people, had some great

669
00:41:13,883 –> 00:41:17,641
times, and that’s what I was trying to convey to, to my daughter,

670
00:41:17,641 –> 00:41:21,403
which is, I think it might have been better and I think we may have

671
00:41:21,403 –> 00:41:25,161
created something in the Internet and social media. Parts of it

672
00:41:25,161 –> 00:41:28,851
are great. Like I can look up G.K. Chesterton on Wiki and in five

673
00:41:28,851 –> 00:41:32,540
seconds, you know, learn more about, learn what a clerihew is.

674
00:41:32,540 –> 00:41:34,580
You know, I had no idea 24 hours ago.

675
00:41:36,020 –> 00:41:37,300
And, But

676
00:41:39,700 –> 00:41:43,430
I kind of think the negatives maybe outweigh the positives. I don’t, I

677
00:41:43,430 –> 00:41:45,670
don’t think you’re, I don’t think you’re alone in thinking that.

678
00:41:47,510 –> 00:41:51,270
Yeah. And, well, I think Chesterton might

679
00:41:51,270 –> 00:41:54,150
have something for us. So back to the book, back to them.

680
00:41:55,110 –> 00:41:58,150
The man who Was Thursday. So we’re gonna go into chapter two.

681
00:41:58,549 –> 00:42:02,279
Okay. The Secret of Gabriel Syme in, in

682
00:42:02,279 –> 00:42:06,048
my edition. It’s on page 10. I’m gonna go down to

683
00:42:06,048 –> 00:42:09,816
the bottom of it here, and I’m going to go into an

684
00:42:09,816 –> 00:42:13,295
argument that Chesterton was having with,

685
00:42:13,295 –> 00:42:17,065
with a couple of people. And this is where I sort

686
00:42:17,065 –> 00:42:20,639
of began to understand a little, or at least I

687
00:42:20,639 –> 00:42:24,310
thought I began to understand what it is that,

688
00:42:24,310 –> 00:42:27,886
that Chesterton was trying to pull off with,

689
00:42:27,886 –> 00:42:31,075
with this book. So Gabriel Syme is a, is a

690
00:42:31,075 –> 00:42:34,747
detective. I’m going to sort of lay the lay the

691
00:42:34,747 –> 00:42:38,420
groundwork here. He’s a detective and he’s on

692
00:42:38,420 –> 00:42:41,414
an investigation of an anarchist, an

693
00:42:41,414 –> 00:42:45,086
anarchist named at this point named Gregory,

694
00:42:45,086 –> 00:42:48,757
right? And Gregory presents himself as being

695
00:42:48,757 –> 00:42:52,524
erudite, as being polite, as being formal. You

696
00:42:52,524 –> 00:42:55,908
know, all the things that I said about, you

697
00:42:55,908 –> 00:42:59,193
know, 19th century British culture come

698
00:42:59,193 –> 00:43:02,575
together right in, in, in, in, in Gregory.

699
00:43:03,140 –> 00:43:06,840
And Gregory’s trying to explain to Syme after they have a

700
00:43:06,840 –> 00:43:10,617
poetry battle in the first chapter what exactly it is that

701
00:43:10,617 –> 00:43:14,080
this idea of anarchism is about. So I’m going to read a

702
00:43:14,080 –> 00:43:17,544
couple of different sections from here as Gregory’s

703
00:43:17,544 –> 00:43:21,163
answers to to Syme on page 10, and I quote, it does seem to

704
00:43:21,163 –> 00:43:24,785
have a moral underneath all its gaiety, assented Sime.

705
00:43:24,785 –> 00:43:28,562
But may I ask you two questions? You need not fear to give me

706
00:43:28,562 –> 00:43:32,183
information, because as you remember, you very wisely

707
00:43:32,183 –> 00:43:35,489
extorted from me a promise not to tell the police. A

708
00:43:35,489 –> 00:43:39,268
promise I shall certainly keep. So is it in mere curiosity

709
00:43:39,268 –> 00:43:42,967
that I make my queries? First of all, what is it really all

710
00:43:42,967 –> 00:43:46,271
about? What is it you object to? You want to abolish

711
00:43:46,271 –> 00:43:49,892
government? To abolish God, said Gregory, opening the

712
00:43:49,892 –> 00:43:53,591
eyes of a fanatic. We do not only we not only want to upset a

713
00:43:53,591 –> 00:43:57,054
few despotisms and police regulations, that sort of

714
00:43:57,054 –> 00:44:00,595
anarchism does exist, but it is a mere branch of the non

715
00:44:00,595 –> 00:44:04,372
conformists. We dig deeper and we blow you higher. We wish

716
00:44:04,372 –> 00:44:07,836
to deny all those arbitrary distinctions of vice and

717
00:44:07,836 –> 00:44:11,537
virtue, honor and treachery upon which mere rebels base

718
00:44:11,537 –> 00:44:14,995
themselves. The silly sentimentalists of the French

719
00:44:14,995 –> 00:44:18,494
Revolution talked of the rights of man. We hate rights as we hate

720
00:44:18,494 –> 00:44:22,192
wrongs. We have abolished right and wrong and right and left, added

721
00:44:22,192 –> 00:44:26,022
Sime with simple eagerness. I hope you will abolish them too. They are

722
00:44:26,022 –> 00:44:29,787
much more troublesome to me. You spoke of a second question, snapped

723
00:44:29,787 –> 00:44:33,553
Gregory. With pleasure, resumed Sime. In your all your present acts

724
00:44:33,553 –> 00:44:37,350
and surroundings there is a scientific attempted secrecy. I have an

725
00:44:37,350 –> 00:44:40,010
aunt lived over a shop, but this is the first time I have found people

726
00:44:40,010 –> 00:44:43,810
living from preference under a public house. You have a heavy

727
00:44:43,810 –> 00:44:47,610
iron door. You cannot pass it without submitting to the humiliation of calling yourself Mr.

728
00:44:47,610 –> 00:44:50,570
Chamberlain. You surround yourself with steel instruments

729
00:44:51,530 –> 00:44:55,010
which make the place, if I may say so, more impressive than homelike. May I

730
00:44:55,010 –> 00:44:58,010
ask why, after taking all this trouble to barricade yourselves in the bowels of the

731
00:44:58,010 –> 00:45:01,690
earth, you then parade your whole secret by talking about anarchism to every

732
00:45:01,690 –> 00:45:04,860
silly woman in Saffron Park? Gregory

733
00:45:04,860 –> 00:45:08,700
smiled. The answer is simple, he said. I told you I

734
00:45:08,700 –> 00:45:12,396
was a serious anarchist. And you do not believe me. Nor do they believe me.

735
00:45:12,396 –> 00:45:16,192
Unless I took them into this infernal room, they would not believe me.

736
00:45:16,192 –> 00:45:19,858
Sime smoked thoughtfully and looked at him with interest. Gregory

737
00:45:19,858 –> 00:45:23,391
went on, Now pause. This is the key piece right here. This is when I

738
00:45:23,391 –> 00:45:26,926
thought, Chesterton, you’re onto something. The history of the

739
00:45:26,926 –> 00:45:30,659
thing might amuse you. He said, when I first. When first I became one of

740
00:45:30,659 –> 00:45:34,156
the new anarchists, I tried all kinds of respectable disguises. I

741
00:45:34,156 –> 00:45:37,653
dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops in our anarchist

742
00:45:37,653 –> 00:45:41,024
pamphlets and superstition and a vampire and priests of prey. I

743
00:45:41,024 –> 00:45:44,773
certainly understood from them that bishops are strange and terrible

744
00:45:44,773 –> 00:45:48,524
old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. I was misinformed when, on

745
00:45:48,524 –> 00:45:52,339
my first appearing in an episcopal gaiters in a drawing room, I cried out

746
00:45:52,339 –> 00:45:55,899
in a voice of thunder, down, down, presumptuous human reason. They

747
00:45:55,899 –> 00:45:58,761
found out in some way that I was not a bishop at all. I was

748
00:45:58,761 –> 00:46:02,370
nabbed at once. Then I made up as a millionaire. But I defended

749
00:46:02,370 –> 00:46:06,090
capital with so much intelligence that a fool could see I was quite poor.

750
00:46:06,730 –> 00:46:10,410
Then I tried being a major. Now I am a humanitarian myself. But

751
00:46:10,410 –> 00:46:13,770
I have, I hope, enough intellectual breadth to understand the position of those who,

752
00:46:14,010 –> 00:46:16,970
like Nietzsche, admire violence,

753
00:46:17,770 –> 00:46:21,530
the proud, mad war of nature and all that, you know.

754
00:46:21,930 –> 00:46:25,450
I threw myself into the major. I drew my sword and waved it about constantly.

755
00:46:25,450 –> 00:46:29,290
I called out blood abstractedly, like a man calling for wine. I often said, let

756
00:46:29,290 –> 00:46:33,090
the weak perish. It is the law. Well, well, it seems

757
00:46:33,090 –> 00:46:36,810
majors don’t do this. I was nabbed again. At last I went in despair

758
00:46:36,810 –> 00:46:40,130
to the president of the Central Anarchist Council, who is the greatest man in Europe.

759
00:46:40,930 –> 00:46:44,610
What is his name? Asked Sime. You would not know it said, answered Gregory. That

760
00:46:44,610 –> 00:46:48,410
is his greatness. Caesar and Napoleon put all their genius into being heard

761
00:46:48,410 –> 00:46:52,090
of, and they were heard of. He puts all his genius into not being

762
00:46:52,090 –> 00:46:55,890
heard of, and he is not heard of. But you cannot be for five

763
00:46:55,890 –> 00:46:58,970
minutes in the room with him without feeling that Caesar and Napoleon would have been

764
00:46:58,970 –> 00:47:02,680
children in his hands. He was silent and even pale for a moment and

765
00:47:02,680 –> 00:47:06,400
then resumed. But whenever he gives advice, there’s always

766
00:47:06,400 –> 00:47:09,760
something as startling as an epigram and yet as practical as the bank of England.

767
00:47:09,840 –> 00:47:13,440
I said to him, what disguise will hide me from the world? What can I

768
00:47:13,600 –> 00:47:17,360
find more respectable than bishops and majors? He looked at me with his

769
00:47:17,360 –> 00:47:21,080
large but indecipherable face. You want a safe disguise, do

770
00:47:21,080 –> 00:47:24,720
you? You want a dress which will guarantee you harmless. A dress in which no

771
00:47:24,720 –> 00:47:27,950
one would ever look for a bomb. I nodded.

772
00:47:28,430 –> 00:47:32,030
He suddenly lifted his lion’s voice. Why

773
00:47:32,110 –> 00:47:35,910
then dress up as an anarchist? You fool. He roared, so that the

774
00:47:35,910 –> 00:47:39,270
room shook. Nobody will ever expect you to do anything

775
00:47:39,270 –> 00:47:42,950
dangerous then. And he turned his broad back on me

776
00:47:42,950 –> 00:47:46,670
without another word. I took his advice and have never

777
00:47:46,670 –> 00:47:50,390
regretted it. I preached blood and murder to those women day and

778
00:47:50,390 –> 00:47:53,710
night. And by God, they would let me wheel

779
00:47:54,190 –> 00:47:55,390
their perambulators.

780
00:48:01,710 –> 00:48:04,590
This hide in plain sight is the. Yes.

781
00:48:05,390 –> 00:48:08,830
This is the crux of the man who was Thursday.

782
00:48:09,550 –> 00:48:13,244
Let’s talk about anarchists. Okay. In

783
00:48:13,244 –> 00:48:16,979
the year of our Lord 2026, we proclaim that we have no

784
00:48:16,979 –> 00:48:20,799
anarchists. And yet. And yet, anarchists were a real

785
00:48:20,799 –> 00:48:24,360
problem in the late 19th century and well into the

786
00:48:24,360 –> 00:48:28,008
middle quarter of the 20th century. Their actions

787
00:48:28,008 –> 00:48:31,481
inspired politicians, activists, feminists,

788
00:48:31,481 –> 00:48:34,956
artists, poets, philosophers, the crazy and of

789
00:48:34,956 –> 00:48:38,431
course, the power hungry. The assassination of

790
00:48:38,431 –> 00:48:42,253
Archduke Franz Ferdinand kicked off the first World

791
00:48:42,253 –> 00:48:45,729
War. And the trials of the murderers Leopold and

792
00:48:45,729 –> 00:48:49,030
Loeb. The crime of the century in 1924 further

793
00:48:49,030 –> 00:48:52,852
cemented the ideas, the ideas of burning everything

794
00:48:52,852 –> 00:48:56,239
down, of anarchists into popular culture. The

795
00:48:56,239 –> 00:49:00,050
analogy that we have to draw here is a very simple one.

796
00:49:00,530 –> 00:49:03,930
And anarchists back in the day were what terrorists are to the

797
00:49:03,930 –> 00:49:06,370
postmodern mind now.

798
00:49:07,570 –> 00:49:11,090
Men who have no other desire but to deconstruct or

799
00:49:11,090 –> 00:49:14,930
burn down the world around them. And when I was reading

800
00:49:14,930 –> 00:49:18,360
this book, quote came to me, very famous quote, actually,

801
00:49:18,840 –> 00:49:22,480
from the 2008 film the Dark Knight. And

802
00:49:22,480 –> 00:49:26,160
it’s rather instructive here, so I’m going to read the whole quote. This is

803
00:49:26,160 –> 00:49:29,840
where Alfred Pennyworth, played by the great Michael

804
00:49:29,840 –> 00:49:33,240
Caine, and Bruce Wayne, played. Played by

805
00:49:33,560 –> 00:49:37,320
Christian Bale, are watching a video of

806
00:49:37,320 –> 00:49:40,680
this new villain that has shown up in Gotham

807
00:49:41,240 –> 00:49:43,080
City. A man who.

808
00:49:44,880 –> 00:49:48,568
Chesterton would like this. A man who laughs as he burns everything down.

809
00:49:48,568 –> 00:49:52,247
And I quote from Bruce Wayne. Targeting me won’t get their money

810
00:49:52,247 –> 00:49:56,065
back. He’s talking about mobsters. I knew the mob wouldn’t go down

811
00:49:56,065 –> 00:49:59,745
without a fight. But this is different.. They crossed the line,

812
00:49:59,745 –> 00:50:03,027
Alfred Pennyworth. You crossed the line first, sir. You

813
00:50:03,027 –> 00:50:06,060
squeezed them, you hammered them to the point of

814
00:50:06,060 –> 00:50:09,851
desperation. And in their desperation, they turned to a man

815
00:50:09,851 –> 00:50:13,338
they didn’t fully understand, Bruce Wayne. Criminals

816
00:50:13,338 –> 00:50:16,901
aren’t complicated, Alfred. You just have to figure out

817
00:50:16,901 –> 00:50:20,614
what he’s after. Mr. Pennyworth. With all due respect, Mr.

818
00:50:20,620 –> 00:50:24,020
Wayne, perhaps this is a man you don’t fully understand either.

819
00:50:25,060 –> 00:50:28,100
A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for

820
00:50:28,100 –> 00:50:31,180
the local government. They were trying to Buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing

821
00:50:31,180 –> 00:50:34,980
them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in

822
00:50:34,980 –> 00:50:38,730
a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So we went

823
00:50:38,730 –> 00:50:42,370
looking for the stones. But in six months, we

824
00:50:42,370 –> 00:50:46,170
never met anybody who traded with him. One day I

825
00:50:46,170 –> 00:50:49,650
saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine.

826
00:50:50,530 –> 00:50:52,450
The bandit had been throwing them away.

827
00:50:54,370 –> 00:50:56,370
Bruce Wayne. So why steal them,

828
00:50:58,290 –> 00:51:01,010
Alfred? And this is the killer line here.

829
00:51:02,450 –> 00:51:05,990
Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because

830
00:51:05,990 –> 00:51:08,830
some men aren’t looking for anything logical.

831
00:51:10,270 –> 00:51:13,750
Because some men aren’t looking for anything

832
00:51:13,750 –> 00:51:17,150
logical like money. They can’t be

833
00:51:17,150 –> 00:51:20,350
bought or bullied, reasoned or

834
00:51:20,350 –> 00:51:23,230
negotiated with some men.

835
00:51:24,910 –> 00:51:27,070
Some men just want to watch the world burn.

836
00:51:30,120 –> 00:51:33,960
Let me ask you a question. Go ahead. Do you think Osama bin Laden

837
00:51:34,040 –> 00:51:37,800
really thought he was going to destroy America

838
00:51:37,800 –> 00:51:41,560
by killing 3,000 people on 9 11?

839
00:51:42,040 –> 00:51:45,800
Or he just wanted to watch those towers burn? I

840
00:51:45,800 –> 00:51:49,400
think Osama bin Laden thought two things and that’s a great question.

841
00:51:53,000 –> 00:51:56,710
I think he thought two things just like the Joker or the Dark Knight thought

842
00:51:56,710 –> 00:52:00,350
two things. And I think they are twin tracks upon which the

843
00:52:00,350 –> 00:52:03,430
train of anarchy or terrorism or chaos runs.

844
00:52:05,590 –> 00:52:09,350
The first thing he thought was that the United States was a weak

845
00:52:09,350 –> 00:52:12,310
horse. He actually said this. They always think that.

846
00:52:12,630 –> 00:52:15,790
Always. And, and he didn’t care that

847
00:52:15,790 –> 00:52:19,372
history has consistently proven that we

848
00:52:19,372 –> 00:52:23,164
are not. He didn’t care about GDP. He didn’t

849
00:52:23,164 –> 00:52:26,641
care about military prowess. He didn’t

850
00:52:26,641 –> 00:52:30,224
care about any of the on paper reasons why

851
00:52:30,224 –> 00:52:33,490
we’re not. He didn’t care. He said the

852
00:52:33,490 –> 00:52:37,178
lesson that Osama Bin Laden was seeking to

853
00:52:37,178 –> 00:52:40,655
deliver on one rail of that track was the

854
00:52:40,655 –> 00:52:43,919
same lesson that the Viet Cong taught

855
00:52:43,919 –> 00:52:47,711
everybody back in the 60s and 70s that if you

856
00:52:47,711 –> 00:52:51,294
just culturally outlast the Americans,

857
00:52:51,294 –> 00:52:55,086
they will go home. And that makes them weak.

858
00:52:55,650 –> 00:52:59,490
That’s the first thing Osama bin Laden thought. The second

859
00:52:59,650 –> 00:53:03,410
thing Osama Bin Laden thought was that.

860
00:53:05,010 –> 00:53:08,770
And again, because he’s a fanatic. This is the fanaticism

861
00:53:09,810 –> 00:53:13,180
he thought. Islam has been around

862
00:53:14,380 –> 00:53:17,980
for 1400 years.

863
00:53:17,980 –> 00:53:21,620
By this point the Americans have only been

864
00:53:21,620 –> 00:53:25,100
around 200 and some odd years. Right?

865
00:53:25,820 –> 00:53:28,460
We’re eternal, they’re not.

866
00:53:29,500 –> 00:53:33,020
We win at the end of the day. So all we have to do is

867
00:53:33,020 –> 00:53:36,620
play an eternity game with weak willed and cowardly

868
00:53:36,620 –> 00:53:40,240
people and we’ll win. And

869
00:53:40,240 –> 00:53:43,960
that’s the mistake that the anarchists and the terrorists and the people who

870
00:53:43,960 –> 00:53:47,560
want to watch the world burn always make. Because fanatics

871
00:53:47,880 –> 00:53:51,720
can never understand. They don’t have a theory of mind of

872
00:53:51,720 –> 00:53:55,160
other people. They only have a Theory of mind of themselves.

873
00:53:55,480 –> 00:53:59,000
And they project that. Narcissism. Oh, God, yes.

874
00:53:59,000 –> 00:54:02,680
Extreme narcissism. Oh God, yes. And I think it is also often

875
00:54:02,680 –> 00:54:06,240
wrapped up in the artist’s personality as well. I mean, everyone knows that

876
00:54:06,240 –> 00:54:09,710
Hitler was a failed artist and that was part of the thing that,

877
00:54:09,870 –> 00:54:13,670
that drove him. You know, Stalin was a failed

878
00:54:13,670 –> 00:54:17,470
theologian. He was, he was in the seminary for a while. The, the,

879
00:54:18,830 –> 00:54:21,950
I guess when you start shooting people, they, they move you out. That’s the. They

880
00:54:21,950 –> 00:54:25,710
kind of, they kind of let you go. Maybe this isn’t for you. Yeah, the.

881
00:54:27,070 –> 00:54:30,830
But. So the idea that there. But,

882
00:54:30,830 –> 00:54:34,520
but, but I think that that that culture clash or that

883
00:54:34,520 –> 00:54:38,200
that misunderstanding goes both ways and that’s, that’s what makes that line from that movie

884
00:54:38,200 –> 00:54:41,880
so compelling because I think the civilized person has a great deal

885
00:54:41,880 –> 00:54:45,080
of difficulty understanding someone who

886
00:54:46,360 –> 00:54:50,120
really just wants to rip everything down. The civilization,

887
00:54:50,360 –> 00:54:54,200
fun of it, sometimes the civilized person. And this is what I.

888
00:54:54,360 –> 00:54:57,000
So I turned 21

889
00:54:58,360 –> 00:55:02,170
three weeks after September 11th. And

890
00:55:02,170 –> 00:55:04,970
a lot of guys from my generation, 20 years ago

891
00:55:06,650 –> 00:55:10,410
went to Afghanistan and went to Iraq. I know a

892
00:55:10,410 –> 00:55:13,130
lot of those guys. A lot of those guys are my friends. They went and

893
00:55:13,130 –> 00:55:16,570
they came back and they’ve told me what they saw when they went.

894
00:55:18,490 –> 00:55:21,530
And on the one hand, we can do the hand wringing thing that we always

895
00:55:21,530 –> 00:55:24,890
do in America about war. Like we’re doing it right now as we go around

896
00:55:24,890 –> 00:55:28,610
and around with Iran, we’re doing the hand wringing thing again. And

897
00:55:28,610 –> 00:55:31,970
by the way, that’s one of the negative lessons that we learned about Vietnam. From

898
00:55:31,970 –> 00:55:35,690
Vietnam, we can always hand wring and scream about a quagmire. I got into an

899
00:55:35,690 –> 00:55:37,610
argument the other day about a guy who’s like, this is just going to be

900
00:55:37,610 –> 00:55:41,290
a quagmire. I’m like, we’re three days in or we’re three weeks in.

901
00:55:41,930 –> 00:55:45,530
I know that’s the astonishing thing to me where you

902
00:55:45,530 –> 00:55:49,170
say, well, we’re winning in every single way you can win a war.

903
00:55:49,170 –> 00:55:52,730
And it’s three weeks and you’re already declaring it a

904
00:55:52,730 –> 00:55:55,650
quagmire. And you’re already declaring it a quagmire. Number one, there’s no boots on the

905
00:55:55,650 –> 00:55:59,380
ground. Ground. Number two, like, even if there are boots, if we do put

906
00:55:59,380 –> 00:56:03,100
boots on the ground, you can’t. The conditions for a quagmire don’t.

907
00:56:03,100 –> 00:56:06,820
What are you talking about? Because. And we’re wandering far from Chesterton here,

908
00:56:06,820 –> 00:56:10,140
I realize, and we will get back. But I think at the back of that

909
00:56:10,140 –> 00:56:13,820
is the. Wouldn’t it Be great if it was a quagmire. We

910
00:56:13,900 –> 00:56:17,576
want it to be a quagmire. Boy, that. Or the, or

911
00:56:17,576 –> 00:56:21,125
the, or the fanciful desire that exists on both the political

912
00:56:21,125 –> 00:56:24,813
right and the political left in our country for everything to be

913
00:56:24,813 –> 00:56:28,480
clean and effortless. Yes. And, and, and add to

914
00:56:28,480 –> 00:56:32,159
that also what we were talking about earlier, this bizarre

915
00:56:32,159 –> 00:56:35,764
world we find ourselves in 2024, where we want everything

916
00:56:35,764 –> 00:56:39,292
wrapped up in like an hour long TV show. Well, it’s been an

917
00:56:39,292 –> 00:56:42,900
hour, so I think the war should be over. Jack,

918
00:56:43,140 –> 00:56:46,980
Jack Ryan should have gotten the bad guys. He should have all been shot. Didn’t.

919
00:56:46,980 –> 00:56:50,820
Yeah, didn’t they get the bad guy yet? Yeah, didn’t, didn’t the black. Yeah, didn’t

920
00:56:50,820 –> 00:56:54,500
the black widow like beat up on all the 6 foot 5, 250 pound

921
00:56:54,500 –> 00:56:57,940
dudes with her legs and like, aren’t we all done by this point? Like it’s,

922
00:57:00,420 –> 00:57:03,921
this is all part and parcel of the ongoing cultural

923
00:57:03,921 –> 00:57:07,672
discussion you and I have been having. And we do want to

924
00:57:07,672 –> 00:57:11,505
get back to Chesterton. But I think, I guess to loop this

925
00:57:11,505 –> 00:57:15,256
back to Chesterton, it’s important, I think if people

926
00:57:15,256 –> 00:57:19,090
read this book to realize anarchists in 1908, they were

927
00:57:19,090 –> 00:57:22,839
a real thing. They weren’t just people with handlebar

928
00:57:22,839 –> 00:57:26,257
mustaches, sort of, you know, you know, Keystone

929
00:57:26,257 –> 00:57:29,841
Copping their way around the world. They would, you

930
00:57:29,841 –> 00:57:33,509
know, they. By the way, two, two American presidents

931
00:57:33,509 –> 00:57:37,343
were shot by anarchists. One died, one died right away,

932
00:57:37,343 –> 00:57:40,844
McKinley. And who was the other one was Cleveland.

933
00:57:41,170 –> 00:57:44,450
Was it Taft or Cleveland? I think it was Cleveland. It was Cleveland. Cleveland.

934
00:57:45,490 –> 00:57:48,810
And you know, whether was he an anarchist? Like he had an A on his

935
00:57:48,810 –> 00:57:51,930
forehead. I don’t know about that. But he, you know, he didn’t have a, he

936
00:57:51,930 –> 00:57:55,290
was one of these people who just wanted to rip down.

937
00:57:56,250 –> 00:57:59,690
He didn’t have a coherent political

938
00:57:59,850 –> 00:58:03,210
philosophy that said I shoot the president and then good things happen.

939
00:58:03,530 –> 00:58:07,249
Right? No, it was just rip down the world

940
00:58:07,249 –> 00:58:11,010
around you. And there was

941
00:58:11,010 –> 00:58:12,970
a real thing to that. And

942
00:58:15,530 –> 00:58:17,130
I think Chesterton was.

943
00:58:19,600 –> 00:58:23,440
It’s easy to see these people as buffoonish today, but you

944
00:58:23,440 –> 00:58:27,040
know, they were really dangerous. They did really dangerous things.

945
00:58:27,600 –> 00:58:31,440
They were, they were, they were dangerous men in those times.

946
00:58:31,520 –> 00:58:34,720
And the spirit of anarchy, which

947
00:58:35,120 –> 00:58:38,920
you’ll appreciate this in some, in some form or another, which is the

948
00:58:38,920 –> 00:58:42,600
spirit of Cain, right? From Genesis, you know,

949
00:58:42,600 –> 00:58:46,060
Genesis 5. Right. It’s that same spirit. It’s a spirit of

950
00:58:46,060 –> 00:58:49,900
envy, it’s the spirit of jealousy, it’s a spirit of resentment, it’s a spirit

951
00:58:49,900 –> 00:58:53,620
of, of Entitlement. Osama bin Laden, to go back to this

952
00:58:53,620 –> 00:58:57,180
example for just a minute, believed he was entitled to the

953
00:58:57,180 –> 00:59:00,860
Islamic empire that he thought he deserved. And if he

954
00:59:00,860 –> 00:59:04,380
didn’t have it, he was going to kick down every toy around him. There you

955
00:59:04,380 –> 00:59:08,215
go. Just like the Joker in the Dark Knight believes he’s entitled to the

956
00:59:08,215 –> 00:59:11,985
chaos that he foments. He’s entitled to that. Another great moment in

957
00:59:11,985 –> 00:59:15,820
movie is when the convicts are on the boat and the Joker, like, gives him

958
00:59:15,820 –> 00:59:19,590
a bomb to, like, blow up the boat with the civilians, or they could blow

959
00:59:19,590 –> 00:59:23,100
up their own boat. And the one convict. And this is sort of the. And

960
00:59:23,100 –> 00:59:26,740
this is where now you get into, like, progressive ideas of humanity

961
00:59:26,740 –> 00:59:30,445
versus actual humanity. You know, the convict on the boat gets up and

962
00:59:30,445 –> 00:59:34,215
takes the, the, you know, the, the explosive device away from the, the

963
00:59:34,215 –> 00:59:37,920
warden or whatever the trigger away from the warden on the boat who’s

964
00:59:37,920 –> 00:59:41,480
getting ready to do the thing, right? Blow up the other. Blow up the other

965
00:59:41,480 –> 00:59:43,760
boat. And he’s like, I’m gonna do what you should have done 10 minutes ago,

966
00:59:43,760 –> 00:59:46,160
right? And he sits down and he does nothing, right? He gets to be the

967
00:59:46,160 –> 00:59:49,840
hero in that moment, but because he recognizes that

968
00:59:49,840 –> 00:59:53,440
even though I’m a violent criminal, there’s certain places I can’t even go

969
00:59:53,440 –> 00:59:56,760
to, which is very much a progressive post

970
00:59:56,840 –> 01:00:00,440
20th century. Post, post 20th century. A progressive post

971
01:00:00,440 –> 01:00:04,160
World War II way of looking at the world, it’s the.

972
01:00:04,160 –> 01:00:07,960
It’s the outcome of the Nuremberg trials. We’re the good guys. We put the

973
01:00:07,960 –> 01:00:11,640
bad guys on trial. We don’t appeal to God because why would we do that?

974
01:00:11,720 –> 01:00:15,360
Instead, we appeal to a secular morality. Secular morality will

975
01:00:15,360 –> 01:00:18,360
judge you, but it won’t provide any

976
01:00:19,320 –> 01:00:22,520
meaning because secular morality is based off of this

977
01:00:22,520 –> 01:00:26,160
reductionist mindset, this materialist, reductionist mindset. And

978
01:00:26,160 –> 01:00:29,920
Chesterton, in talking about Nietzsche, and this is

979
01:00:29,920 –> 01:00:33,720
what I hooked on in that section where he puts the words of

980
01:00:33,720 –> 01:00:37,320
Nietzsche into Gregory’s

981
01:00:37,320 –> 01:00:41,080
mouth, the anarchist’s mouth. He was drawing

982
01:00:41,080 –> 01:00:44,780
a philosophical line between. Drawing a philosophical line

983
01:00:44,780 –> 01:00:48,500
from nihilism directly to anarchy. If you believe in

984
01:00:48,500 –> 01:00:52,220
nothing, if you believe the Nietzschean lie, then

985
01:00:52,220 –> 01:00:55,980
the only clearing at the end of the path for you is burning

986
01:00:55,980 –> 01:00:59,820
the world down. That’s the only clearing. Here’s a interesting bit of

987
01:00:59,820 –> 01:01:02,300
trivia I want to lay on you. You might find this

988
01:01:03,900 –> 01:01:07,620
so in the. You mentioned Cain and this made me

989
01:01:07,620 –> 01:01:11,430
think of the Bible. Do you know the, the Bible story? Of course

990
01:01:11,430 –> 01:01:15,190
you do. The Noah Bible story where God comes to Noah and

991
01:01:15,190 –> 01:01:18,990
says the world is filled with lawless Violence, basically think

992
01:01:18,990 –> 01:01:22,030
of it as another term for anarchy and I’m going to send another flood and,

993
01:01:22,030 –> 01:01:25,230
you know, these are the things going to happen. Do you know what the word

994
01:01:25,230 –> 01:01:29,070
in Hebrew is for lawless violence? No,

995
01:01:29,070 –> 01:01:31,870
I don’t. Hamas.

996
01:01:35,950 –> 01:01:39,310
The same term that the.

997
01:01:39,550 –> 01:01:43,270
Hamas, the, the Islamic movement. Now, that doesn’t mean that

998
01:01:43,270 –> 01:01:47,030
in. That’s not why they picked the term. It’s an. They’re. They,

999
01:01:47,030 –> 01:01:50,470
they came in there in Arabic, it’s an acronym that stands for

1000
01:01:50,470 –> 01:01:53,990
Islamic Liberation Movement, but it happens to be the exact same

1001
01:01:53,990 –> 01:01:57,830
word. Now, if you don’t see a little bit of a wow

1002
01:01:57,830 –> 01:02:01,590
moment in that, because that word’s been around

1003
01:02:01,590 –> 01:02:02,830
for three, 500 years.

1004
01:02:06,160 –> 01:02:09,876
So there’s, there is something going on in the, there’s something

1005
01:02:09,876 –> 01:02:13,459
we’re missing as modern Western folks, but I also think there’s

1006
01:02:13,459 –> 01:02:17,245
something. Oh, no, no, no. I, I’m going to look that up, but I’m going

1007
01:02:17,245 –> 01:02:21,029
to go on this premise. So there’s something we’re missing as modern

1008
01:02:21,029 –> 01:02:24,612
Western folks. And I think guys like Jordan Peterson, Jonathan

1009
01:02:24,612 –> 01:02:28,262
Peugeot, there’s a certain, there’s a certain line of folks that

1010
01:02:28,262 –> 01:02:31,980
are trying to draw us back to it. And I think Chesterton was early on

1011
01:02:31,980 –> 01:02:35,630
this Jung was kind of in the middle. And now we’ve got other, other

1012
01:02:35,630 –> 01:02:39,349
folks. I already mentioned Peugeot, I mentioned Jordan Peterson

1013
01:02:39,349 –> 01:02:42,932
and others even to a certain degree, Lex Fridman, although he’s

1014
01:02:42,932 –> 01:02:46,770
kind of shaky, but who are trying to bring us back to this thread. And

1015
01:02:46,770 –> 01:02:50,610
it’s the thread that we keep missing. And the thread is the

1016
01:02:50,610 –> 01:02:54,410
thread of the logos, the thread of the word. Right. And so

1017
01:02:54,410 –> 01:02:58,230
the word can be used to, obviously to create, but the word can also

1018
01:02:58,230 –> 01:03:01,910
be used to, to your point about Hamas, interestingly enough, to

1019
01:03:01,910 –> 01:03:05,030
destroy. Words have meaning.

1020
01:03:06,470 –> 01:03:10,316
Words have meaning. Yes. And I think that, and

1021
01:03:10,316 –> 01:03:13,961
I think this does loop back to, to The Man Who

1022
01:03:13,961 –> 01:03:17,604
Was Thursday, I think, ultimately without

1023
01:03:17,604 –> 01:03:20,844
God, you know, as you say, you know, the

1024
01:03:20,844 –> 01:03:24,588
Nuremberg trials, we’re going to punish you

1025
01:03:24,588 –> 01:03:28,433
because you violated some secular, you know,

1026
01:03:28,433 –> 01:03:32,278
morality that we’re kind of inventing in real

1027
01:03:32,278 –> 01:03:36,023
time here, you know, as opposed to, you know,

1028
01:03:36,023 –> 01:03:39,769
you know, you have broken the, the law of God.

1029
01:03:39,769 –> 01:03:43,616
You know, as you point out, you know, the Nazis

1030
01:03:43,616 –> 01:03:47,462
could legitimately say, well, you made these

1031
01:03:47,462 –> 01:03:50,580
law, our laws said it was fine. Right.

1032
01:03:51,140 –> 01:03:54,940
So that’s, and that’s what Hannah Arendt. So we covered

1033
01:03:54,940 –> 01:03:58,700
Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt’s reporting on the trial of Adolf

1034
01:03:58,700 –> 01:04:01,780
Eichmann in 1965, I believe it was

1035
01:04:02,420 –> 01:04:06,099
in, in Jerusalem, right, Where the Mossad Went. They

1036
01:04:06,099 –> 01:04:09,940
snatched him from some South American somewhere, Argentina, I think it

1037
01:04:09,940 –> 01:04:13,780
was. Yeah, they did snatch a grab, the Mossad did, which is, you know,

1038
01:04:13,780 –> 01:04:17,340
what they’re notorious for, and. And put him on trial in the

1039
01:04:17,340 –> 01:04:20,300
dock in. In Jerusalem. And she

1040
01:04:20,300 –> 01:04:24,020
documented exactly what you’re talking about. And one of the

1041
01:04:24,020 –> 01:04:27,380
points she made, which got her into a lot of trouble with

1042
01:04:27,780 –> 01:04:31,460
Holocaust survivors in America. And they. And actually, it’s

1043
01:04:31,460 –> 01:04:35,260
interesting that the grandsons and granddaughters of Holocaust

1044
01:04:35,260 –> 01:04:38,660
survivors still have a problem with Hannah Arendt for bringing this up, but she’s not

1045
01:04:38,820 –> 01:04:42,580
wrong. There was no appeal made to a

1046
01:04:42,580 –> 01:04:46,220
religious violation

1047
01:04:47,180 –> 01:04:50,860
or even a moral violation. The only

1048
01:04:51,020 –> 01:04:54,820
reason, not the only reason, but the reason why the Eichmann trial was

1049
01:04:54,820 –> 01:04:58,460
so interesting is because there was. There was a lot of tap dancing in Jerusalem,

1050
01:04:58,460 –> 01:05:01,980
of all places around that moral

1051
01:05:01,980 –> 01:05:05,740
violation. And instead we’re merely going to punish this man

1052
01:05:05,820 –> 01:05:09,670
for the precedent or under the precedent set

1053
01:05:09,670 –> 01:05:12,950
at the Nuremberg trials, which is. Oh, you were just following

1054
01:05:12,950 –> 01:05:16,738
orders. Well, the orders were immoral. So we’re going to punish

1055
01:05:16,738 –> 01:05:20,540
you for following immoral orders. You should have known better. And Adolf

1056
01:05:20,540 –> 01:05:24,281
Eichmann, and she writes about his psychology in Eichmann in Jerusalem.

1057
01:05:24,281 –> 01:05:27,594
Go listen to the episode we did last year. Go read the book. I would

1058
01:05:27,594 –> 01:05:31,274
encourage every leader here to read it, but she writes about how when you

1059
01:05:31,274 –> 01:05:34,893
look at Eichmann, if you do a psychological profile at Eichmann, he was

1060
01:05:34,893 –> 01:05:38,575
just a civil service bureaucrat. Yeah. He came across like a. Like a

1061
01:05:38,575 –> 01:05:42,244
mid-level marketing manager. Not. No, no, knock on marketing

1062
01:05:42,244 –> 01:05:44,960
managers. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let’s be very, very, very clear.

1063
01:05:44,960 –> 01:05:48,400
Right. Listening to this. Let’s be very, very clear. Like,

1064
01:05:48,960 –> 01:05:52,680
you know, when I look at Tom Libby, though, you know,

1065
01:05:52,680 –> 01:05:56,240
and the light catches him just so. Okay, all right.

1066
01:05:57,920 –> 01:06:01,200
I am so kidding. Stop, stop,

1067
01:06:01,520 –> 01:06:04,720
stop. Tom. Tom’s a good man. Tom doesn’t deserve that.

1068
01:06:05,600 –> 01:06:09,360
Tom’s a great guy. The. The thing with

1069
01:06:09,360 –> 01:06:12,800
Eichmann is. And the thing. And by the way, I think this is going to

1070
01:06:12,800 –> 01:06:15,840
be a real problem with AI is

1071
01:06:16,320 –> 01:06:20,120
you will have orders from nowhere. Right. Orders with

1072
01:06:20,120 –> 01:06:23,920
nobody behind them. Right. Because no appeal can be made.

1073
01:06:24,080 –> 01:06:27,760
And thus decisions were made, but not by me. That’s its

1074
01:06:27,760 –> 01:06:30,520
own form of. And I’m going to draw a parallel here.

1075
01:06:31,240 –> 01:06:34,775
Bureaucratized anarchy. Sure. And

1076
01:06:34,775 –> 01:06:38,574
how do you put AI in jail? How do

1077
01:06:38,574 –> 01:06:42,068
you fire AI? How do you solve

1078
01:06:42,068 –> 01:06:45,880
AI? How do you. How do you. We’re very much consumed

1079
01:06:45,880 –> 01:06:49,480
with. How do we prevent AI from getting control of. Name your weapon

1080
01:06:49,480 –> 01:06:53,250
here or name your military system here. I’M less concerned about

1081
01:06:53,250 –> 01:06:56,770
that. I’m more concerned about how do you.

1082
01:06:57,810 –> 01:07:01,010
How do you prevent the human in the loop

1083
01:07:01,570 –> 01:07:05,410
from consciously abandoning accountability and responsibility?

1084
01:07:06,370 –> 01:07:09,974
Because it’s just easier. Because we’ve

1085
01:07:09,974 –> 01:07:13,802
proven it over the last eight years. It’s just easier

1086
01:07:13,802 –> 01:07:17,194
to sort of say, I was following orders, shrug my

1087
01:07:17,194 –> 01:07:21,020
shoulders, and be a mini anarchist myself. And we, by

1088
01:07:21,020 –> 01:07:24,759
the way, we have evidence of mini anarchism. We have

1089
01:07:24,759 –> 01:07:28,498
mini anarchism in our, in our families, we have mini

1090
01:07:28,498 –> 01:07:31,628
anarchism in our communities. We have many

1091
01:07:31,628 –> 01:07:35,367
anarchists in our workplaces. You know, we, we have

1092
01:07:35,367 –> 01:07:39,107
people who. Without a, a, a, a, a Chesterton’s fence

1093
01:07:39,107 –> 01:07:42,499
of morality, right. Based on God, which is what

1094
01:07:42,499 –> 01:07:46,152
Chesterton would say you need to base it on whether

1095
01:07:46,152 –> 01:07:49,369
it’s your Catholic conception, your Jewish

1096
01:07:49,369 –> 01:07:52,830
conception. He probably wouldn’t be in favor of the Islamic

1097
01:07:52,830 –> 01:07:56,630
conception, but he would be probably begrudgingly be like, okay, at least it’s something. You

1098
01:07:56,630 –> 01:07:59,870
have to have a conception of a higher transcendent power that puts a fence around

1099
01:07:59,870 –> 01:08:03,430
you. Otherwise, so,

1100
01:08:03,670 –> 01:08:06,670
you know, let it go. It’s not what I do for a living. Right. I

1101
01:08:06,670 –> 01:08:09,910
work on a lot of grants for a lot of different projects. And I’m gonna,

1102
01:08:09,910 –> 01:08:13,610
I’m not gonna go into any detail because I

1103
01:08:13,610 –> 01:08:16,370
like to say I’m under so many NDAs, I can’t even talk in my sleep.

1104
01:08:16,610 –> 01:08:20,450
But the. I can tell you that there

1105
01:08:20,450 –> 01:08:24,210
are a lot of projects that are currently trying to find their way

1106
01:08:24,210 –> 01:08:26,130
through the

1107
01:08:28,690 –> 01:08:32,490
how to use AI in a medical context in such a

1108
01:08:32,490 –> 01:08:36,290
way that it’s not making, say, the ultimate

1109
01:08:36,290 –> 01:08:39,930
medical decision, but it kind of is.

1110
01:08:40,250 –> 01:08:43,930
Right? So. And you can see it.

1111
01:08:44,090 –> 01:08:47,730
You can see it eroding. In the time that I’ve been doing this, I’m watching

1112
01:08:47,730 –> 01:08:51,250
it eroding. There used to be a very fixed line, like it had to come

1113
01:08:51,250 –> 01:08:55,050
down to, essentially, is the AI giving you advice

1114
01:08:55,050 –> 01:08:58,610
like, gee, that sounds like a cough. Right? So

1115
01:08:58,610 –> 01:09:02,450
there’s a lot of people have wearables, right? I don’t happen to have

1116
01:09:02,450 –> 01:09:04,750
them. I have nothing against it. I just don’t happen to wear one.

1117
01:09:06,430 –> 01:09:10,110
And that wearable is continually transmitting information about

1118
01:09:10,110 –> 01:09:13,234
the wearer. And sometimes it will say the, the

1119
01:09:13,234 –> 01:09:16,886
information will be, wow, your heart rate seems to be

1120
01:09:16,886 –> 01:09:20,621
like 260. That’s really high. You might want to go to an

1121
01:09:20,621 –> 01:09:24,190
ER, you know, to see what’s going. That’s unusually

1122
01:09:24,190 –> 01:09:27,344
high. Yeah, yeah, that, that’s for, for those

1123
01:09:27,344 –> 01:09:31,180
listening at home, that’s high. Yeah. Yeah. All

1124
01:09:31,180 –> 01:09:35,020
right. So if your heart rate is 260 and you’re listening to this,

1125
01:09:35,100 –> 01:09:38,860
go to the emergency room, turn this off and go directly. Turn

1126
01:09:38,860 –> 01:09:42,620
this off and go directly to the er. Right. But so the,

1127
01:09:42,620 –> 01:09:46,380
the, in that. And that sort of advice giving, which is generally

1128
01:09:46,380 –> 01:09:49,580
okay, and goes down a certain track through the fda, which is a

1129
01:09:49,660 –> 01:09:53,260
relatively easy track to get down. And then

1130
01:09:53,260 –> 01:09:57,060
there are ones where the, you might say, well, your heart rate

1131
01:09:57,060 –> 01:10:00,110
is 260, you should take this pill.

1132
01:10:00,670 –> 01:10:04,310
It’s a little closer to telling you, giving you

1133
01:10:04,310 –> 01:10:07,310
something. And then finally it’s not too far from that to

1134
01:10:08,270 –> 01:10:12,030
your heart rate is 260. And I can inject this

1135
01:10:12,030 –> 01:10:15,870
medication into you and I’m going to do it without you

1136
01:10:15,950 –> 01:10:18,350
saying yes or no, or a doctor saying yes or no.

1137
01:10:19,870 –> 01:10:23,710
That’s doable today. It’s not out there to my knowledge anyway,

1138
01:10:23,710 –> 01:10:27,380
but it’s, you gotta wonder when we’ll

1139
01:10:27,380 –> 01:10:30,140
cross that line. So

1140
01:10:31,420 –> 01:10:33,820
I am watching with trepidation

1141
01:10:35,820 –> 01:10:37,820
the development of

1142
01:10:39,660 –> 01:10:43,340
the casual acceptance of euthanasia.

1143
01:10:44,060 –> 01:10:46,860
Sure, yeah. With growing horror.

1144
01:10:48,700 –> 01:10:52,040
And it’s one of those areas where

1145
01:10:53,640 –> 01:10:56,760
both the Jewish rabbi

1146
01:10:57,240 –> 01:11:01,080
and the Christian evangelists should make a common cause.

1147
01:11:03,080 –> 01:11:06,640
Because when the

1148
01:11:06,640 –> 01:11:10,160
AI is infused

1149
01:11:10,160 –> 01:11:13,960
with that sort of ability

1150
01:11:14,440 –> 01:11:17,520
to pattern, recognize

1151
01:11:17,520 –> 01:11:19,920
ruthlessly to an end

1152
01:11:22,000 –> 01:11:25,600
and can then advise humans in what to

1153
01:11:25,600 –> 01:11:28,640
do, humans with no

1154
01:11:29,520 –> 01:11:30,640
guardrails

1155
01:11:33,040 –> 01:11:36,720
are going to follow what the AI

1156
01:11:37,360 –> 01:11:40,880
says. And we talk a lot as Christians,

1157
01:11:40,960 –> 01:11:43,840
particularly in the last 50 years. We talked a lot

1158
01:11:44,930 –> 01:11:48,490
in the bookends of Roe v. Wade. We talked a lot about

1159
01:11:48,490 –> 01:11:52,130
abortion and beginning of life issues in this country.

1160
01:11:53,090 –> 01:11:56,850
And I believe it is becoming more critical. I

1161
01:11:56,850 –> 01:12:00,650
think it will become more critical over the next 25 years to begin

1162
01:12:00,650 –> 01:12:02,770
to talk about end of life issues.

1163
01:12:04,690 –> 01:12:08,290
What if this person doesn’t even realize they’re talking to an AI? Right.

1164
01:12:08,450 –> 01:12:12,010
And this is going to go directly to suffering. This is going to go

1165
01:12:12,010 –> 01:12:15,250
directly to meaning, this is going to go directly to

1166
01:12:15,970 –> 01:12:19,730
autonomy and agency. All of these areas

1167
01:12:20,050 –> 01:12:22,450
that make us really uncomfortable.

1168
01:12:24,610 –> 01:12:27,330
And we don’t want to think about it, we don’t want to talk publicly about.

1169
01:12:28,050 –> 01:12:31,490
And yet we have governments. I’m looking at you, Canada.

1170
01:12:31,810 –> 01:12:35,570
I’m looking at you. State of New York. I’m looking at you. Soon to

1171
01:12:35,570 –> 01:12:39,010
be Oregon and California. I’m looking directly at you all. Now

1172
01:12:39,940 –> 01:12:43,380
we have lawmakers who are saying, well, we’ll just

1173
01:12:43,620 –> 01:12:47,380
sort of set the guard, set up the rails here and you all can do

1174
01:12:47,380 –> 01:12:50,940
it. I’m sure it will be fine. I’m sure it will be fine. And, and

1175
01:12:50,940 –> 01:12:54,700
that’s just another example of, in my mind, it’s just another Example of

1176
01:12:54,700 –> 01:12:56,500
anarchy. It’s just another example of.

1177
01:13:00,180 –> 01:13:03,980
Chesterton opposed anarchy because, yes, anarchy comes

1178
01:13:03,980 –> 01:13:07,640
directly from nihilism at a social level. I

1179
01:13:07,640 –> 01:13:11,120
think he would also approach or oppose anarchy because

1180
01:13:11,120 –> 01:13:14,720
anarchy at a personal level leads

1181
01:13:14,720 –> 01:13:18,520
to the deception of autonomy, the deceptive idea that

1182
01:13:18,520 –> 01:13:22,240
you are an autonomous being that can make their own choices even out to death.

1183
01:13:23,120 –> 01:13:26,840
And it removes at the

1184
01:13:26,840 –> 01:13:30,520
smallest level the Tolkien level or even the CS

1185
01:13:30,520 –> 01:13:33,920
Lewis level. It removes from individuals the ability to behave

1186
01:13:33,920 –> 01:13:37,020
heroically. Why would I behave heroically if I can just

1187
01:13:38,300 –> 01:13:42,020
like on Futurama, that great cartoon from Matt Groening, I could just go

1188
01:13:42,020 –> 01:13:45,340
into a suicide booth on the street corner and just be gone. I don’t think

1189
01:13:45,340 –> 01:13:47,620
we’re far away from it. I’ve never watched. Is that term, Is that a thing

1190
01:13:47,620 –> 01:13:50,020
in it? Oh, yeah, that was a thing in the cartoon. Yeah. Gray and called

1191
01:13:50,020 –> 01:13:53,740
it like, like 15, 20 years ago now. Yeah, that’s one of the jokes in

1192
01:13:53,740 –> 01:13:57,180
the. That’s one of the jokes in that cartoon. You can just. There’s suicide booths

1193
01:13:57,180 –> 01:14:00,860
on every corner and if you want, you just. You just go, oh, my gosh.

1194
01:14:00,860 –> 01:14:04,700
Yeah, oh, dear. Yeah, oh dear. Well, but I mean, we’re not

1195
01:14:04,700 –> 01:14:07,140
that far away from. We’re not that far away from that conception

1196
01:14:08,340 –> 01:14:11,380
and being advised and nudged by AI. Right.

1197
01:14:11,940 –> 01:14:15,300
Isn’t there a booth that you could. I’m not making this up.

1198
01:14:15,620 –> 01:14:19,140
That will basically fill with nitrogen gas and kill you.

1199
01:14:20,420 –> 01:14:23,780
I think that’s. I think someone in suicide, someone in Switzerland died

1200
01:14:24,660 –> 01:14:27,270
from that matter. Well, and I’m seeing.

1201
01:14:28,470 –> 01:14:31,990
I don’t want to go too far down this road, but I’m seeing that it’s

1202
01:14:31,990 –> 01:14:34,710
just, It’s a. It’s a concern that I have. It’s a growing concern. And when

1203
01:14:34,710 –> 01:14:37,030
I read books like the man who Was Thursday,

1204
01:14:38,390 –> 01:14:41,990
and then I look at how little we have sort of updated our moral code

1205
01:14:42,790 –> 01:14:45,030
in the last 120some odd years,

1206
01:14:46,790 –> 01:14:50,550
but we’ve updated our technology to make us. To help us

1207
01:14:50,550 –> 01:14:54,250
do immoral things faster and better. Right,

1208
01:14:54,810 –> 01:14:57,570
and where is that morality going to come from? And who is going to speak

1209
01:14:57,570 –> 01:15:00,890
up for it? And that, of course, is the role of the apologist. That’s. That’s

1210
01:15:00,890 –> 01:15:04,650
the role of Chesterton is speak up for that morality and,

1211
01:15:05,290 –> 01:15:09,130
and, and to. Well, again, I’m going

1212
01:15:09,130 –> 01:15:12,730
to bring up William F. Buckley here to stand to thwart history and yell stop.

1213
01:15:14,570 –> 01:15:16,170
As loudly as you possibly can.

1214
01:15:18,950 –> 01:15:22,390
All right, back to the book. Back to. Back to the book. The man who

1215
01:15:22,390 –> 01:15:26,190
Was Thursday. So I’m going to go to chapter five The

1216
01:15:26,190 –> 01:15:29,870
Feast of Fear. The Feast of Fear is an interesting little

1217
01:15:29,870 –> 01:15:33,590
Bond Mott where Sime goes

1218
01:15:33,590 –> 01:15:37,030
to a breakfast, a breakfast of anarchists

1219
01:15:37,590 –> 01:15:41,390
that is being held in a restaurant on

1220
01:15:41,390 –> 01:15:44,910
a balcony overlooking Leicester Leicester

1221
01:15:44,910 –> 01:15:48,170
Square. I’m probably mispronouncing that terribly. And

1222
01:15:51,050 –> 01:15:54,650
he sees several archetypes

1223
01:15:54,650 –> 01:15:58,450
while he’s at this breakfast. And

1224
01:15:58,450 –> 01:16:02,050
I want to run through a few of them to

1225
01:16:02,050 –> 01:16:05,690
sort of draw a. Draw a parallel.

1226
01:16:09,210 –> 01:16:12,530
At one corner of the square they’re projected a kind of angle of a prosperous

1227
01:16:12,530 –> 01:16:16,290
but quiet hotel, the bulk of which belonged to a street. Behind in the wall

1228
01:16:16,290 –> 01:16:19,830
there was one large French window, probably the window of a large coff room. And

1229
01:16:19,830 –> 01:16:23,390
outside this window, almost literally overhanging the square, was a formidably buttressed

1230
01:16:23,390 –> 01:16:27,070
balcony big enough to contain a dining table. In fact, it did contain a

1231
01:16:27,070 –> 01:16:30,870
dining table, or more strictly, a breakfast table. And round the breakfast table,

1232
01:16:31,670 –> 01:16:34,750
glowing in the sunlight at evidence to the street, were a group of noisy and

1233
01:16:34,750 –> 01:16:38,510
talkative men, all dressed in the insolence of fashion, with

1234
01:16:38,510 –> 01:16:42,190
white waistcoats and expensive buttonholes. Some of their jokes can almost

1235
01:16:42,190 –> 01:16:45,870
be heard across the square. Then the grave secretary gave his

1236
01:16:45,870 –> 01:16:49,580
unnatural smile and saim knew that this boisterous breakfast party was

1237
01:16:49,580 –> 01:16:52,380
the secret conclave of the European

1238
01:16:52,620 –> 01:16:56,460
dynamiters. Then, as time continued

1239
01:16:56,460 –> 01:16:58,900
to stare at them, he saw something that he had not seen before. He had

1240
01:16:58,900 –> 01:17:02,540
not seen it literally because it was too large to see.

1241
01:17:03,340 –> 01:17:06,260
At the nearest end of the balcony, blocking up a great part of the perspective,

1242
01:17:06,260 –> 01:17:09,620
was the back of a great mountain of a man. When Sime had seen him,

1243
01:17:09,620 –> 01:17:12,180
his first thought was that the weight of him must break down the balcony of

1244
01:17:12,180 –> 01:17:15,800
stone. His vastness did not lie only in the fact that he was abnormally tall

1245
01:17:15,800 –> 01:17:19,520
and quite incredibly fat. This man was

1246
01:17:19,520 –> 01:17:23,280
planned enormously in his original proportions, like a statue carved

1247
01:17:23,280 –> 01:17:27,000
deliberately, as colossal. His head, crowned with white hair, as

1248
01:17:27,000 –> 01:17:30,000
seen from behind, looked bigger than a head ought to be.

1249
01:17:30,720 –> 01:17:34,320
The ears that stood out from look larger than human ears.

1250
01:17:34,320 –> 01:17:38,080
He was enlarged terribly to scale, and the sense of size

1251
01:17:38,080 –> 01:17:41,800
was so staggering that when Symes saw him, all the other figures seemed

1252
01:17:41,800 –> 01:17:45,480
quite suddenly to dwindle and become dwarfish. They were still

1253
01:17:45,480 –> 01:17:49,080
sitting there as before, with their flowers and frock coats. But now it looked as

1254
01:17:49,080 –> 01:17:51,800
if the big man was entertaining five children to tea.

1255
01:17:54,280 –> 01:17:58,000
Simon never thought of asking whether the monstrous man who almost filled and broke the

1256
01:17:58,000 –> 01:18:01,160
balcony was the great president of whom the others stood in awe. He knew it

1257
01:18:01,160 –> 01:18:04,560
was so with an unaccountable measure, with an unaccountable but

1258
01:18:04,560 –> 01:18:08,400
instantaneous certainty. Simon Dean was one of those men who were open to all

1259
01:18:08,400 –> 01:18:12,240
the more nameless psychological influences In a degree a little dangerous to mental

1260
01:18:12,240 –> 01:18:15,960
health. Utterly devoid of fear and physical dangers, he was a great

1261
01:18:15,960 –> 01:18:19,480
deal too sensitive to the smell of spiritual evil.

1262
01:18:20,440 –> 01:18:24,000
Twice already that night, little unmeaning things had peeped out at him almost

1263
01:18:24,000 –> 01:18:27,720
pruriently and given him a sense of drawing nearer and nearer to the headquarters of

1264
01:18:27,720 –> 01:18:31,440
hell. And this sense became overpowering as

1265
01:18:31,440 –> 01:18:33,880
he drew nearer to the great president.

1266
01:18:35,720 –> 01:18:39,260
Then I’m going to skip down here for just a second. In the presence of

1267
01:18:39,260 –> 01:18:43,060
the president, the whole company looked sufficiently commonplace. Nothing about them caught the eye

1268
01:18:43,060 –> 01:18:46,540
at first, except that by the President’s caprice they had been dressed up with a

1269
01:18:46,540 –> 01:18:49,900
festive respectability which gave the meal the look of a wedding breakfast.

1270
01:18:50,300 –> 01:18:54,140
One man indeed stood out at even a superficial glance. He, at least,

1271
01:18:54,140 –> 01:18:57,860
was the common or garden dynamiter. He wore indeed the

1272
01:18:57,860 –> 01:19:00,940
high white collar and satin tie that were the uniform of the occasion. But out

1273
01:19:00,940 –> 01:19:04,460
of this collar there sprang a head quite unmanageable and quite unmistakable,

1274
01:19:04,540 –> 01:19:08,300
a bewildering bush of brown hair and a beard

1275
01:19:08,300 –> 01:19:12,020
that almost obscured the eyes like those of a sky terrier. But the eyes

1276
01:19:12,020 –> 01:19:15,380
did look out of the tangle, and they were the sad eyes of some Russian

1277
01:19:15,460 –> 01:19:19,060
serf. The effect of this figure was not terribly like that of the president, but

1278
01:19:19,060 –> 01:19:22,820
it had every diableri that can come from the utterly grotesque.

1279
01:19:23,460 –> 01:19:26,540
If out of that stiff tie and collar there had come abruptly the head of

1280
01:19:26,540 –> 01:19:30,180
a cat or dog, it could not have been a

1281
01:19:30,180 –> 01:19:32,590
more idiotic contrast.

1282
01:19:34,350 –> 01:19:37,630
And he goes through every single one of the dynamiters

1283
01:19:39,550 –> 01:19:43,230
and describes their physicality. And there’s a. There’s a link

1284
01:19:44,350 –> 01:19:47,950
that Chesterton is making here from physicality and physical

1285
01:19:47,950 –> 01:19:51,150
structure all the way into respectability.

1286
01:19:51,550 –> 01:19:53,790
And this is an interesting point because

1287
01:19:56,270 –> 01:19:59,630
Chesterton was a classicist, just like every great Englishman was

1288
01:20:00,330 –> 01:20:03,770
of his era. And we as Americans in the 21st

1289
01:20:03,850 –> 01:20:07,610
century claim that we do not see class, claim

1290
01:20:07,610 –> 01:20:11,130
that we do not acknowledge class, and yet we are all classicists

1291
01:20:12,250 –> 01:20:15,610
to one level or another. Yeah, sure,

1292
01:20:15,929 –> 01:20:19,610
Bill Gates runs around wearing a grandpa sweater and, you know,

1293
01:20:19,610 –> 01:20:23,290
chino slacks, right? But no one’s going to mistake

1294
01:20:23,290 –> 01:20:26,170
him for being your grandpa wearing chino slacks.

1295
01:20:28,520 –> 01:20:32,120
And with that being said, the great thing of

1296
01:20:32,120 –> 01:20:35,840
America, the great thing that we can construct on, I think, is that

1297
01:20:35,840 –> 01:20:39,120
everybody here wants to be middle class, but no one in

1298
01:20:39,120 –> 01:20:42,720
Chesterton time wanted to be. Everyone wanted to be upper

1299
01:20:42,720 –> 01:20:46,440
class. And that is where anarchists hid. They

1300
01:20:46,440 –> 01:20:50,160
hid in the upper classes, which, of

1301
01:20:50,160 –> 01:20:53,570
course, Chesterton’s making. Did they hide there or did the upper classes produce them?

1302
01:20:54,680 –> 01:20:58,400
Well, I think Chesterton’s offering the question. I think

1303
01:20:58,400 –> 01:21:02,120
he’s, he’s, he’s, he’s asserting a problem with

1304
01:21:02,120 –> 01:21:05,840
class and money. And that’s the chicken or the

1305
01:21:05,840 –> 01:21:09,559
egg question that he doesn’t know the answer to. I mean, you look

1306
01:21:09,559 –> 01:21:12,920
at the Bolsheviks, right? A lot of them were intellectual

1307
01:21:13,000 –> 01:21:16,600
bourgeoisie types. They were not the proletariat. Correct.

1308
01:21:16,680 –> 01:21:20,240
Yeah. There’s. Do you know the Basketball Diaries by Jim Carroll? Did you ever read

1309
01:21:20,240 –> 01:21:23,760
that? Yeah, they made it into a movie. There’s a great line in that somewhere

1310
01:21:23,760 –> 01:21:27,320
where Jim Carroll, for like five seconds thinks he’s a

1311
01:21:27,320 –> 01:21:30,680
communist. And he comes to his father and he says, I’m a proletariat. And the

1312
01:21:30,680 –> 01:21:34,400
father says, I’m the proletariat. And he goes, and I think those guys

1313
01:21:34,400 –> 01:21:38,000
are crazy. He goes, let me tell you who the

1314
01:21:38,000 –> 01:21:40,600
proletariat is. This guy right here. This guy right here.

1315
01:21:42,280 –> 01:21:46,120
So I think that partially what produces your anarchists

1316
01:21:47,400 –> 01:21:51,110
and to a certain extent your terrorists, you know, I’m thinking maybe a little bit

1317
01:21:51,110 –> 01:21:54,630
about like Patty Hearst here is privilege in a way, because

1318
01:21:55,030 –> 01:21:58,750
material stuff is boring. In the end, you get bored. You

1319
01:21:58,750 –> 01:22:02,150
know, it’s. There’s only so much TV you can watch. There’s only so many,

1320
01:22:02,310 –> 01:22:05,750
you know, I guess, you know,

1321
01:22:05,910 –> 01:22:09,110
great, you know, cars you can drive and

1322
01:22:09,830 –> 01:22:13,350
so on and so forth. And there’s a hollowness at the

1323
01:22:13,350 –> 01:22:16,850
center of it. And I think people seek to

1324
01:22:17,170 –> 01:22:20,210
fill that hollowness. I think this is one of the. I know we keep getting

1325
01:22:20,210 –> 01:22:24,010
dragged back to the modern world. We’re trying to go back to 1908, but one

1326
01:22:24,010 –> 01:22:27,370
of the horrible things about the modern world is people are filled with

1327
01:22:27,370 –> 01:22:31,090
entertainment all the time and they’re bored silly, you know, and

1328
01:22:31,330 –> 01:22:35,130
they’re looking, they almost don’t know anymore what it is

1329
01:22:35,130 –> 01:22:38,450
to feel anything. And so they go to these ridiculous

1330
01:22:38,450 –> 01:22:42,170
extremes, like, I’m going to blow something up just because it

1331
01:22:42,170 –> 01:22:45,610
sort of, you know, I’m gonna feel something when I do it. And.

1332
01:22:46,890 –> 01:22:50,530
But even back in the beginning of the 20th century, you

1333
01:22:50,530 –> 01:22:54,330
tended to find, you know, your anarchists and

1334
01:22:54,330 –> 01:22:58,090
your revolutionaries and your bomb throwers kind of among

1335
01:22:58,090 –> 01:23:01,610
the upper classes and.

1336
01:23:02,170 –> 01:23:05,730
But you’re bang on about America today. I mean, I don’t think anybody

1337
01:23:05,730 –> 01:23:09,540
really wants to be, except for a very few

1338
01:23:10,180 –> 01:23:13,780
wants to be. No. You know, I like to say the, the, the goal is

1339
01:23:13,780 –> 01:23:17,500
rich, not famous. Right. You don’t want to be known. Right. The edge of the

1340
01:23:17,500 –> 01:23:20,420
Internet. I think Fame is a curse. So,

1341
01:23:21,460 –> 01:23:23,460
yeah, yeah, I think you’re onto something there.

1342
01:23:25,380 –> 01:23:29,220
And, you know, said on a podcast, everyone. Everyone. Yeah,

1343
01:23:29,220 –> 01:23:32,820
that’s right. Yeah. Well, so, well,

1344
01:23:32,820 –> 01:23:36,660
there’s fame and then there’s. There’s influence, right? That’s, that’s,

1345
01:23:36,660 –> 01:23:40,450
that’s the distinction with the difference, right? So I’m not

1346
01:23:40,450 –> 01:23:44,170
podcasting to be an influencer. I’m not even podcasting to be famous. I’m

1347
01:23:44,170 –> 01:23:48,010
podcasting because I like having interesting conversations with people and

1348
01:23:48,250 –> 01:23:51,370
having other people listen in on those and get some insights and move on with

1349
01:23:51,370 –> 01:23:53,130
the rest of their lives. That’s why we’re here.

1350
01:23:55,610 –> 01:23:59,290
I think that. And it’s interesting when you talk about anything

1351
01:23:59,290 –> 01:24:03,050
that’s an ism or an ist, a theory or an idea

1352
01:24:03,700 –> 01:24:06,340
that always captures people with enough

1353
01:24:07,940 –> 01:24:11,740
wealth to be comfortable. So the example that proves the

1354
01:24:11,740 –> 01:24:15,380
rule is Virginia Woolf, right? Virginia Woolf was wealthy enough

1355
01:24:15,700 –> 01:24:19,060
to be a feminist and to complain

1356
01:24:19,379 –> 01:24:22,820
and to deconstruct and all of that.

1357
01:24:24,900 –> 01:24:28,660
And of course, she was wealthy enough to resist attempts to improve

1358
01:24:28,660 –> 01:24:32,410
her talent and resist critiques of her talent.

1359
01:24:33,850 –> 01:24:36,090
And, and you can see sort of

1360
01:24:37,530 –> 01:24:41,090
not really an archetype, but the beginning of the archetype of the Virginia

1361
01:24:41,090 –> 01:24:44,410
Woolf feminist in Ford Maddox Ford’s

1362
01:24:44,490 –> 01:24:48,210
parades end, right? And he ran

1363
01:24:48,210 –> 01:24:52,050
into a lot of those folks. So did Hemingway, by the way. A

1364
01:24:52,050 –> 01:24:55,900
lot of those people, right. And so that

1365
01:24:55,900 –> 01:24:59,300
specific type that you’re talking about, even today in our era,

1366
01:24:59,540 –> 01:25:03,260
resists critique, resists correction, and

1367
01:25:03,260 –> 01:25:07,100
has enough money to be able to. Rob Henderson talks about this. The

1368
01:25:07,100 –> 01:25:10,620
great blogger and good writer talks about

1369
01:25:10,620 –> 01:25:14,260
luxury beliefs. They have enough money to be able to

1370
01:25:14,260 –> 01:25:17,940
adopt these beliefs of how the world. You can believe

1371
01:25:17,940 –> 01:25:21,580
crazy things, Right? Because you never experience the consequences of the crazy

1372
01:25:21,580 –> 01:25:25,330
things. The problem is, and this is what Chesterton objects to

1373
01:25:25,330 –> 01:25:28,850
in the anarchists, is that the average

1374
01:25:28,850 –> 01:25:32,370
people don’t have the protections that you have based on your

1375
01:25:32,370 –> 01:25:36,010
wealth. And so what happens when you throw a bomb is an

1376
01:25:36,010 –> 01:25:39,570
average person gets blown up. So going back to just one more time,

1377
01:25:39,570 –> 01:25:43,410
Osama bin Laden came from wealth, right?

1378
01:25:43,890 –> 01:25:47,330
Not a surprise. Not a surprise. Crazy wealth.

1379
01:25:47,330 –> 01:25:51,080
Yeah, crazy wealth, right? Most of

1380
01:25:51,080 –> 01:25:54,880
the folks. And of course, wealth is, Is, Is proximal, right? Most

1381
01:25:54,880 –> 01:25:58,400
of the folks who are, quite frankly, the true believers in

1382
01:25:58,400 –> 01:26:02,240
Hamas or any other anarchist movement,

1383
01:26:03,360 –> 01:26:06,960
those people have enough money to survive. And

1384
01:26:06,960 –> 01:26:10,560
they’re not living in Gaza, by the way. They’re living in Qatar.

1385
01:26:10,640 –> 01:26:14,160
Yeah. So there was, There was something about this,

1386
01:26:15,280 –> 01:26:18,320
and I can’t go searching through the book right now, but he was talking about

1387
01:26:18,320 –> 01:26:22,150
exactly that, that Chesterton was where essentially,

1388
01:26:22,310 –> 01:26:25,950
you know, the, the people that pay the price for these. He didn’t call them

1389
01:26:25,950 –> 01:26:29,470
luxury beliefs, but is the average. Is the. The average

1390
01:26:29,470 –> 01:26:33,190
person. Right. I’ll find it. Maybe if I don’t find it here

1391
01:26:33,430 –> 01:26:36,870
while we’re talking, I’ll find it later and I’ll send it to you. But

1392
01:26:38,550 –> 01:26:42,270
I, you know, you also see this quite a bit in, in, you

1393
01:26:42,270 –> 01:26:46,070
know, the terrorist groups of the. The 60s and 70s, which were

1394
01:26:46,070 –> 01:26:49,350
before your time. But, but, you know, I was scared of every time I got

1395
01:26:49,350 –> 01:26:53,190
on an airplane, even as a kid. Right. They were.

1396
01:26:53,670 –> 01:26:57,350
The interesting things is they all started off as sort of some kind of

1397
01:26:57,350 –> 01:27:00,630
national or some, what they would say social justice or national

1398
01:27:00,950 –> 01:27:04,310
justice movement. And they all ended up being criminal gangs in the end.

1399
01:27:04,390 –> 01:27:08,190
Chesterton talks about this at some point that it just becomes. It just

1400
01:27:08,190 –> 01:27:11,710
becomes mere criminality in the end. You know, the

1401
01:27:11,710 –> 01:27:15,390
IRA started on what. I’m not versed enough in

1402
01:27:15,390 –> 01:27:19,220
the politics of England and Ireland to say whether they were just or

1403
01:27:19,220 –> 01:27:23,060
not just. I’m not, I’m not the person to, To. To get

1404
01:27:23,060 –> 01:27:26,740
into all that. But I think by the end it was more like,

1405
01:27:26,740 –> 01:27:30,460
well, we need money, so let’s go rob a bank, you know, as opposed to,

1406
01:27:30,700 –> 01:27:34,500
you know, that bank is. We’re robbing that bank because it’s, you

1407
01:27:34,500 –> 01:27:37,180
know, the bank of England or, you know, something. Something like that.

1408
01:27:38,460 –> 01:27:40,860
It’s in here somewhere. I saw it and I meant to mark it, and of

1409
01:27:40,860 –> 01:27:44,430
course I didn’t. That’s okay. You’ll search the book. As I bring up

1410
01:27:44,670 –> 01:27:47,870
an additional sort of example to back this up. Frank Miller,

1411
01:27:48,590 –> 01:27:51,710
who was the comic book writer back in the 1980s and artist,

1412
01:27:52,110 –> 01:27:55,630
he did a bunch of work on Daredevil. He also resurrected Batman

1413
01:27:56,030 –> 01:27:59,790
in the 80s, which eventually became the Batman that we now know as

1414
01:27:59,790 –> 01:28:03,270
Batman, the grim, gritty Batman. That was Frank Miller’s

1415
01:28:03,270 –> 01:28:06,750
contribution to the mythos. But. Oh, yeah,

1416
01:28:07,310 –> 01:28:09,390
but in the Dark Knight Returns,

1417
01:28:11,520 –> 01:28:15,280
Frank Miller talks about, or he sets up a scene right, in that.

1418
01:28:15,280 –> 01:28:19,000
In that graphic novel where Superman is

1419
01:28:19,000 –> 01:28:22,840
reflecting, by the way, Superman is a government agent fully, completely

1420
01:28:22,840 –> 01:28:26,680
co opted by the US Government. But, but Superman

1421
01:28:26,680 –> 01:28:30,320
is reflecting. Clark Kent is reflecting on the.

1422
01:28:30,400 –> 01:28:33,880
The subcommittee hearings that were held about superheroes, right, that

1423
01:28:33,880 –> 01:28:37,570
eventually stripped all the superheroes of their identity, right? And they

1424
01:28:37,570 –> 01:28:40,930
called up Bruce Wayne, right? And as

1425
01:28:40,930 –> 01:28:44,210
Superman thinks in, in retrospect, you know, Bruce

1426
01:28:44,370 –> 01:28:48,170
sat up there, as Bruce Wayne would do, and the

1427
01:28:48,170 –> 01:28:51,970
senators asked him, you know, what’s the difference between you and a

1428
01:28:51,970 –> 01:28:55,170
criminal? And I’M paraphrasing this. You can go find it. The Dark Knight Returns. It’s

1429
01:28:55,170 –> 01:28:59,010
a great little sequence. And Superman thinks Bruce laughed his

1430
01:28:59,010 –> 01:29:02,750
scary laugh like he always does. And Bruce said, senator,

1431
01:29:03,300 –> 01:29:07,140
we’ve always been criminals. Like we’re never

1432
01:29:07,140 –> 01:29:10,940
not. And then he walked out of that Senate subcommittee. And he could

1433
01:29:10,940 –> 01:29:14,660
have made all the moms and the kids happy, but that Bruce wasn’t going to

1434
01:29:14,660 –> 01:29:16,980
do that. And then he got into his race car. The right thing to say,

1435
01:29:16,980 –> 01:29:20,380
or the. Or what they wanted to hear. Right? That’s right. And Bruce got into

1436
01:29:20,380 –> 01:29:23,140
his race car and drove away. Right.

1437
01:29:23,940 –> 01:29:27,780
And that’s the fundamental difference between. And this is what we.

1438
01:29:27,780 –> 01:29:31,580
In the Dark Knight quote that I brought forward. Right. If

1439
01:29:31,580 –> 01:29:35,420
you’re going to go battle with anarchists, if you’re going to go

1440
01:29:35,980 –> 01:29:39,820
battle with demons. Right. If you’re going. To. Let’s

1441
01:29:39,820 –> 01:29:43,220
go on Nietzsche for just a minute. If you’re going to stare into the abyss

1442
01:29:43,220 –> 01:29:46,980
and allow the abyss to stare back through you, if you’re going to actually do

1443
01:29:46,980 –> 01:29:50,540
that, not philosophically, but practically, well,

1444
01:29:51,580 –> 01:29:54,940
you have to get down in the dirt with these people. And again,

1445
01:29:55,470 –> 01:29:59,310
this is where, as when I’m thinking about the dark side of leadership,

1446
01:29:59,310 –> 01:30:03,070
and I guess maybe that’s the sub. The subtext of this episode today,

1447
01:30:03,550 –> 01:30:07,150
Chesterton understood what the dark side of that was and what that

1448
01:30:07,150 –> 01:30:10,670
actually meant, as anybody does who understands what good

1449
01:30:10,670 –> 01:30:14,110
is. So in order to understand good, you have to understand

1450
01:30:14,270 –> 01:30:17,990
evil and you have to be willing to accept what evil is. And I think

1451
01:30:17,990 –> 01:30:20,510
a lot of people in our time play footsie with evil,

1452
01:30:21,800 –> 01:30:25,520
just like the Germans played footsie with the Russians about oil and natural gas for

1453
01:30:25,520 –> 01:30:28,880
years and years. And they were somehow magically shocked that Vladimir Putin invaded

1454
01:30:28,880 –> 01:30:32,720
Ukraine and their. Their natural gas supply got cut off. You were playing

1455
01:30:32,720 –> 01:30:36,080
footsie with him for 15 years. What did you. Who did you think you were

1456
01:30:36,080 –> 01:30:39,640
dealing with? Like, what are we talking about? But average people

1457
01:30:41,080 –> 01:30:44,440
don’t. They’re unwilling to accept

1458
01:30:45,640 –> 01:30:48,290
that there’s that level of depravity

1459
01:30:49,330 –> 01:30:52,970
inside of people. And then here’s the other thing they are

1460
01:30:52,970 –> 01:30:56,650
unwilling to accept. And maybe they should be unwilling to accept. I’m not saying

1461
01:30:56,650 –> 01:31:00,450
average people have to go this far, but you have to

1462
01:31:00,450 –> 01:31:04,170
be. You have to be willing to accept what it is that

1463
01:31:04,170 –> 01:31:07,730
it takes to actually root out that depravity. Right. And

1464
01:31:07,970 –> 01:31:11,770
we’re under this, our impression in the west that good will win because

1465
01:31:11,770 –> 01:31:15,470
it’s so easy on tv. The good guys always win. Yeah. That

1466
01:31:15,470 –> 01:31:18,990
it’s really costless and Bloodless and doesn’t involve actual

1467
01:31:18,990 –> 01:31:22,750
sacrifice. And that, you know, it’s. It’s.

1468
01:31:22,750 –> 01:31:26,390
It’s quite astonishing. And in some ways, you could almost argue that that is

1469
01:31:27,510 –> 01:31:31,270
the way that we are being attacked

1470
01:31:31,590 –> 01:31:35,030
is essentially our own values used

1471
01:31:35,190 –> 01:31:38,310
to just do Jiu Jitsu us on us in a way.

1472
01:31:39,430 –> 01:31:43,230
Right. And it’s. Yeah,

1473
01:31:43,230 –> 01:31:46,670
it’s. It’s the. The. I. I have. I have one.

1474
01:31:48,510 –> 01:31:52,190
One political maxim that, that, that I, I kind of

1475
01:31:52,190 –> 01:31:55,750
keep to, you know, in the back of my mind at all times. And it

1476
01:31:55,750 –> 01:31:59,310
goes like this. If someone says they want to kill you, believe them.

1477
01:32:00,030 –> 01:32:03,830
Right? Yeah. Right. It’s very simple. They do want to kill you. They do

1478
01:32:03,830 –> 01:32:07,230
want to kill you. Yeah. Let me kill you. That’s right. Yeah, they do. They’re

1479
01:32:07,230 –> 01:32:10,970
not just expressing some cultural difference. No.

1480
01:32:10,970 –> 01:32:14,810
They want you dead. They want you dead. They want you dead. Yeah. And

1481
01:32:14,810 –> 01:32:17,970
actually, I, I have a very. I agree with that political

1482
01:32:17,970 –> 01:32:21,010
maxim and. And not only. And I go a step further.

1483
01:32:21,570 –> 01:32:25,410
Okay, well, I’ll accommodate you, but I’m not gonna. Gonna

1484
01:32:25,410 –> 01:32:29,170
just. And it’s interesting that you brought up Jiu Jitsu. I do Jiu Jitsu, Right.

1485
01:32:29,170 –> 01:32:32,930
We’re doing Jiu Jitsu for many years. And one of the two

1486
01:32:32,930 –> 01:32:36,730
principles that’s sort of involved in that hobby, such as it

1487
01:32:36,730 –> 01:32:40,070
was, were because I don’t compete professionally. I have zero interest in doing that.

1488
01:32:40,390 –> 01:32:44,070
I like. I like challenging the professionals and giving them fits,

1489
01:32:44,230 –> 01:32:47,590
but I don’t feel like it needs to go compete myself.

1490
01:32:47,910 –> 01:32:51,630
But what you find out in. I

1491
01:32:51,630 –> 01:32:54,070
learned a lot of lessons in Jiu Jitsu, and I always talk about at least

1492
01:32:54,070 –> 01:32:57,510
once on the show every episode because it’s so. Been so impactful

1493
01:32:57,670 –> 01:33:01,470
and here we are. But you have to get

1494
01:33:01,470 –> 01:33:04,800
in close, and the enemy gets a vote.

1495
01:33:05,440 –> 01:33:08,600
And if you’re afraid to. If you’re afraid to get in close, and if you’re

1496
01:33:08,600 –> 01:33:12,400
afraid that if you want it to all work out optimally

1497
01:33:12,400 –> 01:33:15,920
for yourself, you’re foolish. Yeah. You’re just

1498
01:33:15,920 –> 01:33:18,800
foolish. Right. So, like, I’ll see.

1499
01:33:19,520 –> 01:33:22,400
This drives my wife crazy, but people will talk about.

1500
01:33:24,720 –> 01:33:27,640
And we talk about this in my Jiu Jitsu gym, but, like, my wife will

1501
01:33:27,640 –> 01:33:30,800
be like, oh, well, you know, this person over here, da, da, da, da, or

1502
01:33:30,800 –> 01:33:33,720
whatever, that person over there not. Could you take them? She doesn’t ask you that

1503
01:33:33,720 –> 01:33:36,480
kind of way, but she’s like, well, if things happen, like, what are you going

1504
01:33:36,480 –> 01:33:40,280
to do? Like, it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. I’m not. I’m not worried

1505
01:33:40,280 –> 01:33:43,240
about what they are going to do. I’m not worried about the 250 pound guy

1506
01:33:43,240 –> 01:33:47,080
who’s like 2% body fat. I’m not worried about what he’s going to do. I’m

1507
01:33:47,080 –> 01:33:50,760
worried about what I’m going to do in that situation because he’s going to get

1508
01:33:50,760 –> 01:33:54,520
a vote. That, by the way, in, in one of the things I love

1509
01:33:54,520 –> 01:33:58,260
about. I mean, you and I both love basketball, right? Yeah. In the NBA, I

1510
01:33:58,260 –> 01:34:01,700
think when an NBA player is playing at the top of his game, I don’t

1511
01:34:01,700 –> 01:34:04,900
think he even sees the defense. Oh, I don’t think he

1512
01:34:05,460 –> 01:34:09,140
doesn’t matter what they’re doing. No, it doesn’t matter. It’s. It’s almost

1513
01:34:09,220 –> 01:34:12,100
part of the. And this is kind of like a less, you know, it’s not,

1514
01:34:12,100 –> 01:34:14,340
you’re not, you know, try to kill the other person. You’re just trying to beat

1515
01:34:14,340 –> 01:34:18,100
them. But the. I think that’s one of the most amazing

1516
01:34:18,100 –> 01:34:21,860
things when you see players get into that zone where I

1517
01:34:21,860 –> 01:34:25,310
don’t think they’re even seeing the other, other team. I don’t even care,

1518
01:34:25,550 –> 01:34:29,070
you know. Right. It’s called the. Right. It’s called the.

1519
01:34:29,870 –> 01:34:33,190
I heard this term used. I think I’m using it correctly. Or it’s called the

1520
01:34:33,190 –> 01:34:36,590
zone of proximal development. Right. Where, where.

1521
01:34:36,670 –> 01:34:40,270
Or, or I call it, I call it the flow zone. Right,

1522
01:34:40,270 –> 01:34:43,710
Right. So if I’m going with somebody and I’m not thinking and things are just

1523
01:34:43,710 –> 01:34:44,030
going,

1524
01:34:48,350 –> 01:34:52,080
Yeah. Oh, he just like made this thing suck for me on this joint. Well,

1525
01:34:52,080 –> 01:34:55,680
it doesn’t matter because I’m going to do this thing over to here. Like I’m

1526
01:34:55,680 –> 01:34:58,920
thinking of. I was just in a role a few days ago. It is a

1527
01:34:58,920 –> 01:35:02,720
small anecdote. Just enrolled a few days ago with somebody who’s significantly smaller than

1528
01:35:02,720 –> 01:35:06,320
me and female, but she’s of a higher rank, so she’s a real problem to

1529
01:35:06,320 –> 01:35:10,040
deal with. And so all of the natural things that I

1530
01:35:10,040 –> 01:35:13,840
would do, the natural advantages that I would have of size, of weight,

1531
01:35:13,840 –> 01:35:16,640
of speed or whatever, I have to put all those, I have to put all

1532
01:35:16,640 –> 01:35:18,720
those. I do have to put all those aside because otherwise it’s not going to

1533
01:35:18,720 –> 01:35:22,280
be competitive for her. Right. And so we’re going. And she did. She put this,

1534
01:35:22,280 –> 01:35:24,760
like, she put this. It doesn’t matter what it’s called. It’s called a baseball choke.

1535
01:35:24,760 –> 01:35:28,360
But she put this choke on me and I’m watching this happen in real

1536
01:35:28,360 –> 01:35:32,120
time. Like I watched her put the hand in. I watched her sink it and

1537
01:35:32,120 –> 01:35:34,280
she’s like trying to sink it and trying to sink it and try to sink

1538
01:35:34,280 –> 01:35:37,600
it. I’m thinking, well, this currently

1539
01:35:37,680 –> 01:35:41,360
sucks, but I could go over there

1540
01:35:41,360 –> 01:35:44,640
on that side of her. Right. So all I have to do is just survive

1541
01:35:44,640 –> 01:35:48,310
this amount of suck here to get to the other

1542
01:35:48,310 –> 01:35:51,430
side over there. Let me work my way over there.

1543
01:35:54,870 –> 01:35:57,310
I know. We’re ripping all over the place. Yeah, we are ripping all over the

1544
01:35:57,310 –> 01:35:59,830
place. Do you want. Do you ever watch Seinfeld? Do you ever see the one?

1545
01:35:59,910 –> 01:36:03,750
Oh, my gosh. I am the biggest fan of Seinfeld ever. And yes,

1546
01:36:03,750 –> 01:36:07,030
I know. During the karate with the little children.

1547
01:36:07,430 –> 01:36:11,070
Children. He goes, jerry,

1548
01:36:11,070 –> 01:36:14,080
you. Jerry, fight the belt. You fight the belts.

1549
01:36:17,040 –> 01:36:20,200
I know. I love that episode. Oh, my gosh. It was so good. Oh, my

1550
01:36:20,200 –> 01:36:23,920
gosh. Yeah. And it’s interesting. So, like, when he was doing that, when.

1551
01:36:23,920 –> 01:36:27,360
When that episode came on, I was actually involved in

1552
01:36:27,360 –> 01:36:31,000
taekwondo at the time. So I was. I was. I was. And oh, my God,

1553
01:36:31,000 –> 01:36:34,800
that got passed around. Oh, my God, that episode got passed around our gym. It

1554
01:36:34,800 –> 01:36:38,610
was ridiculous. It’s a classic. Absolute classic.

1555
01:36:39,730 –> 01:36:42,170
I’m going to pull this back to Chesterton, because I know that’s where you want

1556
01:36:42,170 –> 01:36:45,650
to go. What do you think Chesterton would have thought of the Batman

1557
01:36:45,810 –> 01:36:46,610
Chronicles?

1558
01:36:52,530 –> 01:36:56,210
I think Chesterton would have been disappointed because

1559
01:36:57,570 –> 01:37:01,410
for as much as the

1560
01:37:01,810 –> 01:37:05,490
conceptual ideas that we’ve weighed on Batman

1561
01:37:05,970 –> 01:37:09,250
put on Batman, the ways in which they work to defeat

1562
01:37:09,250 –> 01:37:12,890
nihilism, they aren’t Christian. At the end of the

1563
01:37:12,890 –> 01:37:16,410
day. They’re not. They don’t. They don’t uphold a Christian

1564
01:37:16,410 –> 01:37:19,730
ethic. They uphold strength. They uphold brutality.

1565
01:37:19,810 –> 01:37:23,650
Christian superhero. I think the closest that

1566
01:37:23,650 –> 01:37:27,490
you get. And you’re asking, I’m a comic book guy. I’ve been a comic

1567
01:37:27,490 –> 01:37:31,090
book guy for a long, long time. Yeah, yeah, me too. I mean. Yeah,

1568
01:37:32,490 –> 01:37:36,170
yeah. Way back. I think the closest you get is Superman. And

1569
01:37:36,250 –> 01:37:40,050
the joke about Superman is it’s. It’s a Jesus archetype made by two Jewish

1570
01:37:40,050 –> 01:37:42,810
kids from Cleveland. That’s right. Yeah. So.

1571
01:37:44,170 –> 01:37:47,930
But does. Does. Has there ever been a superhero that, like, professed

1572
01:37:47,930 –> 01:37:51,610
a belief in God? What about the. So

1573
01:37:51,930 –> 01:37:55,770
this was a little after my time, but wasn’t there the watch.

1574
01:37:55,770 –> 01:37:59,130
Wasn’t there, the Watcher? Wasn’t he sort of godlike in his sort of, like, ability

1575
01:37:59,130 –> 01:38:02,710
to. Yes. So you’re talking about Iwatu and the Watchers in.

1576
01:38:02,710 –> 01:38:04,230
In Marvel Comics. Yeah,

1577
01:38:06,710 –> 01:38:10,350
kind of. But comics have always been partially

1578
01:38:10,350 –> 01:38:13,670
because of the Jewish influence in comics. Partially. But also

1579
01:38:13,670 –> 01:38:17,150
partially because you’re attracting artists and

1580
01:38:17,150 –> 01:38:20,750
creatives who tend to Be more anarchic. Not

1581
01:38:20,750 –> 01:38:24,470
religious types. Not religious types. Right. So they tend to shy away

1582
01:38:24,470 –> 01:38:26,670
from that. Also,

1583
01:38:28,350 –> 01:38:32,110
I think that if you have

1584
01:38:32,110 –> 01:38:35,750
a character and again, the closest that you get is truth, justice in the

1585
01:38:35,750 –> 01:38:39,550
American way with Superman, that’s the closest you’re going to get in

1586
01:38:39,550 –> 01:38:42,390
our denater time. That’s the closest you’re going to get. I feel like there’s a

1587
01:38:42,390 –> 01:38:46,190
hole there that could be filled by someone who

1588
01:38:46,190 –> 01:38:49,830
wanted to create a character. Well, the challenges

1589
01:38:49,830 –> 01:38:53,570
in our time at the business level,

1590
01:38:53,570 –> 01:38:57,290
comic books don’t make any money now. They just don’t. They’re. They’re.

1591
01:38:57,450 –> 01:39:00,770
They’re. What do you call it? They’re either side things or they’re part of a

1592
01:39:00,770 –> 01:39:04,170
side business or if you have them as an independent. And there are tons of

1593
01:39:04,170 –> 01:39:07,410
independent creators that are still making comics and digital, but digital

1594
01:39:07,410 –> 01:39:10,450
distribution, sort of. Not sort of digital distribution,

1595
01:39:10,450 –> 01:39:14,170
destroyed the comic book model basically. Then

1596
01:39:14,170 –> 01:39:17,770
you have the dynamic of bad artists. So we went

1597
01:39:17,770 –> 01:39:21,250
through in the mid 2000s when I jumped out of comics,

1598
01:39:21,810 –> 01:39:24,530
you could see art changing. So Marvel Comics,

1599
01:39:25,490 –> 01:39:29,050
once they got acquired by Disney, actually even before that, they

1600
01:39:29,050 –> 01:39:32,770
stopped accepting submissions from independent artists. So there was a

1601
01:39:32,770 –> 01:39:36,250
time in the 90s and I submitted to Marvel where if you were a good

1602
01:39:36,250 –> 01:39:38,930
enough artist, you could submit to Marvel and get picked up off the street. You

1603
01:39:38,930 –> 01:39:41,650
didn’t have to go to a convention. You just sent in your samples.

1604
01:39:42,840 –> 01:39:45,880
I think was. Tom Brute was the editor in chief at the time of that.

1605
01:39:45,880 –> 01:39:49,440
Of that outfit. And you. You would have somebody look at your

1606
01:39:49,440 –> 01:39:53,160
samples, they would call back. They would just like if you submitted a

1607
01:39:53,160 –> 01:39:56,840
manuscript in writing. So they had gatekeepers, you could submit. And I

1608
01:39:56,840 –> 01:40:00,520
knew guys who submitted. There was a guy who worked at a printing company across

1609
01:40:00,520 –> 01:40:03,920
the street from me who I went and did some. Some art classes with him

1610
01:40:03,920 –> 01:40:07,720
and he taught me some stuff about drawing. He submitted to Marvel Comics, I don’t

1611
01:40:07,720 –> 01:40:11,400
remember if he ever got accepted or not, but Marvel dc, then you had Image

1612
01:40:11,400 –> 01:40:15,180
came along, you know, Jim Lee, Mark Silvestri, Todd to Todd

1613
01:40:15,180 –> 01:40:18,900
McFarlane and Rob Liefeld, all those boys all came along and blew up

1614
01:40:19,220 –> 01:40:22,980
sort of the. The big two idea. But those guys

1615
01:40:22,980 –> 01:40:26,660
were all genuine artists. They had genuine chops. Even

1616
01:40:26,660 –> 01:40:29,660
Rob Liefeld, who I didn’t particularly care for. I did not particularly care for his

1617
01:40:29,660 –> 01:40:33,180
art style compared to what happened in the mid-2000s with art

1618
01:40:33,180 –> 01:40:36,820
in comics. He was a frickin. He was a stud

1619
01:40:38,180 –> 01:40:41,830
that all collapsed, which allowed manga and

1620
01:40:41,830 –> 01:40:45,470
other influences to come into Western comic art.

1621
01:40:45,710 –> 01:40:49,350
And that just is totally manga. And the collapse of the

1622
01:40:49,350 –> 01:40:53,150
distribution system have totally ruined American comics. And then you have

1623
01:40:53,150 –> 01:40:56,790
a third factor in there, which is the Disney vacation of everything. So the second

1624
01:40:56,790 –> 01:40:58,590
Marvel sold to Disney,

1625
01:41:01,070 –> 01:41:04,710
all of their properties fell underneath the

1626
01:41:04,710 –> 01:41:08,560
mouse house. And no one in the mouse house. No

1627
01:41:08,560 –> 01:41:11,800
one is talking about God. No one.

1628
01:41:12,760 –> 01:41:16,600
Because why would they. They can, they could, they could do a theme park

1629
01:41:16,600 –> 01:41:19,560
without God, which is the whole point, by the way. Everything supports the theme parks,

1630
01:41:19,560 –> 01:41:23,080
which is what people don’t really realize. Yeah. You do a billion dollar Avengers movies,

1631
01:41:23,080 –> 01:41:26,680
but you sell far more tickets to the, to the theme parks. The theme parks

1632
01:41:26,680 –> 01:41:30,320
are what drive that business. It’s

1633
01:41:30,320 –> 01:41:34,130
amazing. Yeah. Still, I wonder if there’s not

1634
01:41:34,130 –> 01:41:37,010
a. Not a niche there for someone. But the.

1635
01:41:37,730 –> 01:41:38,770
Because the

1636
01:41:41,410 –> 01:41:45,130
struggle of the religious

1637
01:41:45,130 –> 01:41:48,890
man seems. Or woman. I didn’t mean to make it just

1638
01:41:48,890 –> 01:41:51,490
about men seems

1639
01:41:53,890 –> 01:41:56,930
really. Well, it seems like

1640
01:41:57,840 –> 01:42:01,600
fertile ground for a superhero. Right. Who struggle with,

1641
01:42:02,240 –> 01:42:06,040
you know, their. The morality of. First

1642
01:42:06,040 –> 01:42:09,200
of all, there’s the, the struggle. You know, one of the things I always liked

1643
01:42:09,200 –> 01:42:12,920
about like X Men, for example, is, you know, just being different. Right. You’re

1644
01:42:12,920 –> 01:42:16,760
just. It’s sort of like you’re the. You’re the. Well, it went back to

1645
01:42:16,760 –> 01:42:20,560
every kid in high school who was like different. Right. And you

1646
01:42:20,560 –> 01:42:23,130
know, and then you say, well, what if you took that kid which is. Gave

1647
01:42:23,130 –> 01:42:25,850
him superpowers? I’m sure he would be fine.

1648
01:42:27,530 –> 01:42:31,290
I know what I would have done. Yeah. And that’s. And that’s

1649
01:42:31,290 –> 01:42:33,770
the Peter Parker Spider man. Much ass would have been kicked.

1650
01:42:34,730 –> 01:42:38,330
Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s right. Well,

1651
01:42:38,330 –> 01:42:42,090
that’s the, that’s the Peter Parker Spider man archetype that Steve Ditko

1652
01:42:42,250 –> 01:42:45,850
and. And Jack Kirby and Stan Lee came up with

1653
01:42:47,450 –> 01:42:51,020
actually where Steve Ditko the Jack Kirby. But I mean,

1654
01:42:54,060 –> 01:42:57,260
I think you’re right. I think there is a hole in the market there.

1655
01:42:57,740 –> 01:43:00,420
I don’t know how you fill it. I don’t know if comic books are the

1656
01:43:00,420 –> 01:43:03,020
correct plug for that hole.

1657
01:43:04,220 –> 01:43:08,060
Partially because to your point.

1658
01:43:09,420 –> 01:43:13,140
Well, not even to your point. I don’t know if it’s the correct plug

1659
01:43:13,140 –> 01:43:16,590
to fit that hole because I’m not quite sure sure that

1660
01:43:17,470 –> 01:43:19,870
there’s a market there anymore among

1661
01:43:20,670 –> 01:43:23,550
individuals who are, who are in the, in the.

1662
01:43:25,070 –> 01:43:28,350
In the formative years where comics work.

1663
01:43:28,830 –> 01:43:32,550
So the formative years were like. My father gave me my first comic book when

1664
01:43:32,550 –> 01:43:36,110
I was. I never talked about this on the show before. You seen enough? Huh?

1665
01:43:36,510 –> 01:43:38,990
Or some odd episodes. I never talked about this before. Might as well talk about

1666
01:43:38,990 –> 01:43:42,790
it now. But. But my father Gave me my first comic when

1667
01:43:42,790 –> 01:43:46,390
I was eight years old.

1668
01:43:46,710 –> 01:43:50,030
Seven. Eight years old. It was a. It was a Spider man. I can’t remember

1669
01:43:50,030 –> 01:43:53,430
which number. I’m sure it was illustrated by Todd McFarlane. I’m sure it was.

1670
01:43:53,670 –> 01:43:57,110
Or one of the guys that came in pre Todd McFarlane into the marvel. I

1671
01:43:57,110 –> 01:44:00,230
wish I had a copy of that freaking comic book. It’d be worth tons now.

1672
01:44:01,270 –> 01:44:03,910
But that was the first comic book that I ever got,

1673
01:44:04,870 –> 01:44:08,190
and I can tell you, I’m a Gen

1674
01:44:08,190 –> 01:44:11,440
Xer. So we were the last

1675
01:44:11,440 –> 01:44:15,080
generation that really experienced comic book culture as a

1676
01:44:15,080 –> 01:44:18,600
subculture of nerds and geeks and people

1677
01:44:18,600 –> 01:44:21,840
who, like, were doing something that was way off. Right,

1678
01:44:22,160 –> 01:44:25,199
exactly. Doing things that was way off. Those who are listening, I’m holding up my

1679
01:44:25,199 –> 01:44:28,560
hand as a proud member of the. The nerd and geek club. The Nerd and

1680
01:44:28,560 –> 01:44:32,320
Geek club, exactly. And what we saw in our generation,

1681
01:44:32,320 –> 01:44:35,950
in our 20s, our late teens and 20s, was the switchover over

1682
01:44:36,350 –> 01:44:40,110
and more women started coming in. Popular culture started coming in.

1683
01:44:40,510 –> 01:44:44,270
You know, I, I don’t go to conventions, but

1684
01:44:44,270 –> 01:44:48,070
you see the cosplaying at conventions and more

1685
01:44:48,070 –> 01:44:51,630
and more normal people are showing up. And then of course, again, Marvel

1686
01:44:51,630 –> 01:44:55,270
gets Disney and starts putting out good movies. And

1687
01:44:55,270 –> 01:44:58,150
by good, I mean not the kind of trash you would have seen in the

1688
01:44:58,150 –> 01:45:01,990
80s. You actually started to put together movies that can actually be released. Like

1689
01:45:01,990 –> 01:45:05,700
the first time I saw Captain America and the first time I

1690
01:45:05,700 –> 01:45:09,380
watched Iron man, that first, like Marvel phase one movies, I thought,

1691
01:45:09,780 –> 01:45:13,620
holy hell, they’re actually going to pull it off. They’re actually going to do it.

1692
01:45:14,100 –> 01:45:17,860
Now the challenge is they actually did do it. And then of course, they drained

1693
01:45:17,860 –> 01:45:21,140
all the water out of the pool, because that’s what you do with your Disney.

1694
01:45:21,460 –> 01:45:24,980
Sure, but, but with all of that,

1695
01:45:25,060 –> 01:45:28,740
I thought, I thought comics would at least run parallel to that. Nope,

1696
01:45:30,260 –> 01:45:33,730
it’s all dead. So. So the formative years now of folks

1697
01:45:33,890 –> 01:45:37,730
are formed by the myths in the movies. Not the myths in

1698
01:45:37,730 –> 01:45:41,450
a 32 page or 16 page or 22 page flimsy

1699
01:45:41,450 –> 01:45:45,290
magazine. Plus, if you don’t have distribution, how

1700
01:45:45,290 –> 01:45:48,170
are you going to get them into people’s hands? Because part of the joy of

1701
01:45:48,170 –> 01:45:52,010
comics is you could go to the grocery and you experience this. You could go

1702
01:45:52,010 –> 01:45:55,850
to the drugstore, you could go to the grocery store. They were in the back

1703
01:45:55,850 –> 01:45:59,510
of the magazine rack. You didn’t have dedicated shops. Like when I was a kid,

1704
01:45:59,510 –> 01:46:03,110
I had dedicated shops. I was part of that revolution. The shops are almost

1705
01:46:03,110 –> 01:46:06,870
all gone. Like, there’s no dedicated Comic book. There’s none. But there’s

1706
01:46:06,870 –> 01:46:10,630
very few dedicated comic book shops still around that are actually

1707
01:46:10,630 –> 01:46:14,110
doing business and surviving. So it’s like record

1708
01:46:14,110 –> 01:46:17,790
shops. I mean, there’s a few around, and you hear people going

1709
01:46:17,790 –> 01:46:21,550
back to vinyl, but it’s. It’s a. It’s a. It’s. It’s. It’s

1710
01:46:21,550 –> 01:46:25,270
the crazy few. It’s not. Yeah, well, vinyl sales crossed

1711
01:46:25,270 –> 01:46:28,950
a billion dollars a couple of weeks ago. Are you kidding me? I’m

1712
01:46:28,950 –> 01:46:32,750
kidding. That is good news, man. I love the idea of vinyl

1713
01:46:32,750 –> 01:46:36,470
coming up, because the commonality between those things was this. There was a

1714
01:46:36,470 –> 01:46:40,150
culture of it, right? You and I, if we had known each other as kids,

1715
01:46:40,150 –> 01:46:43,870
would have been sitting over comic books going, oh, man, look, you know, look at

1716
01:46:43,870 –> 01:46:47,670
this. Right? And the same thing with. With. With records, you would

1717
01:46:47,670 –> 01:46:51,000
listen to the records as with your friends,

1718
01:46:51,560 –> 01:46:55,360
you know, and, you know, for example, in this room

1719
01:46:55,360 –> 01:46:58,240
I’m sitting in, you don’t do that anymore. In this room I’m sitting in are

1720
01:46:58,240 –> 01:47:02,080
three sets of headphones. You have headphones on your head. Right? Okay. I

1721
01:47:02,080 –> 01:47:05,720
will listen to music later by myself, you know,

1722
01:47:05,960 –> 01:47:09,800
and. But it used to be a very communal experience,

1723
01:47:10,360 –> 01:47:14,160
and you all sat. And the record itself, the

1724
01:47:14,160 –> 01:47:17,930
vinyl record and the sleeve that it came in was part of that

1725
01:47:18,010 –> 01:47:21,450
really cool experience. You know, I think you and I have talked about this before,

1726
01:47:21,450 –> 01:47:24,370
so we don’t have to go too deeply into it. But, I mean, you know,

1727
01:47:24,370 –> 01:47:27,930
I remember sitting around the Sgt. Peppers album and going,

1728
01:47:28,570 –> 01:47:32,410
why is George’s hand pointing to that particular piece

1729
01:47:32,410 –> 01:47:36,090
of text on the back where they printed the lyrics? You know, why is Paul

1730
01:47:36,090 –> 01:47:39,770
the one turned around? You know? You know, you debated all these things

1731
01:47:39,770 –> 01:47:43,000
endlessly, and there was. There was. There was a lot of. Lot of

1732
01:47:43,560 –> 01:47:45,160
friendship, and

1733
01:47:48,200 –> 01:47:51,520
I want to avoid the word culture, but it keeps coming. That came out of

1734
01:47:51,520 –> 01:47:55,280
it, and now it’s all been sort of swept away.

1735
01:47:55,280 –> 01:47:58,920
But I’m really. I wonder maybe if some of it is

1736
01:47:58,920 –> 01:48:02,760
coming back. When you say that vinyl sales passed a billion dollars, maybe that’s

1737
01:48:02,760 –> 01:48:05,560
a harbinger of good things to come. So

1738
01:48:07,240 –> 01:48:11,000
let’s wrap up this episode. This is. Okay. All right, man. It was Thursday.

1739
01:48:11,160 –> 01:48:14,720
GK Chesterton, I’m going to ask you a couple questions here, Neil.

1740
01:48:18,000 –> 01:48:21,120
I think that. But I will say that. No, but I will say this. I’ll

1741
01:48:21,120 –> 01:48:23,960
start my closing comments with this idea. I want to piggyback off of what you

1742
01:48:23,960 –> 01:48:27,720
just said. Sure. So one of the

1743
01:48:27,720 –> 01:48:31,120
very reason. One of the reasons I do this podcast for many reasons,

1744
01:48:31,360 –> 01:48:35,040
but a Big reason is I believe in the subversive

1745
01:48:35,040 –> 01:48:38,320
power of books. And

1746
01:48:39,100 –> 01:48:42,900
comic books are subversive. Don’t get me wrong. So are kids, cartoons.

1747
01:48:42,900 –> 01:48:46,460
Oh, my God, the suppressiveness. And Looney Tunes is unbelievable. But.

1748
01:48:47,500 –> 01:48:51,260
But books at the end of the day travel across

1749
01:48:51,500 –> 01:48:55,020
time to people, right? So I read a book now

1750
01:48:55,500 –> 01:48:59,340
at. In my late 40s. That book travels across

1751
01:48:59,420 –> 01:49:03,180
time on my shelf with an idea in it. And

1752
01:49:03,340 –> 01:49:07,190
my kid, who’s my youngest kid, who’s now nine, 30 years from now, picks up

1753
01:49:07,190 –> 01:49:10,390
that book and he gets a totally different set of ideas, but it’s still there.

1754
01:49:10,710 –> 01:49:13,270
The book is the most subversive document we’ve got.

1755
01:49:14,310 –> 01:49:17,910
And you talk about culture. Books, vinyl records,

1756
01:49:19,030 –> 01:49:22,630
and then the digital and podcasts, they become this

1757
01:49:22,710 –> 01:49:26,310
thing that connects people. Because at the end of the day,

1758
01:49:28,230 –> 01:49:31,190
we need mediums

1759
01:49:32,280 –> 01:49:36,120
to get across messages of restoration and

1760
01:49:36,360 –> 01:49:40,040
messages of rebuilding. And these subversive mediums

1761
01:49:40,040 –> 01:49:43,720
can do that, particularly if the dominant culture. To our point, on our show today,

1762
01:49:43,720 –> 01:49:47,560
this has been a running theme, particularly if our dominant culture is denatured

1763
01:49:47,720 –> 01:49:51,360
or has been deconstructed by people who

1764
01:49:51,360 –> 01:49:55,120
followed the logic of anarchism and now are done with it.

1765
01:49:55,120 –> 01:49:58,600
I think anarchism is a spent force. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think the

1766
01:49:58,600 –> 01:50:02,080
spirit is still there. That’ll always be there. It’s part of the human condition.

1767
01:50:02,480 –> 01:50:06,000
But I think the. I think the support

1768
01:50:06,080 –> 01:50:09,760
for it and the ideas of it are beginning a downward. A

1769
01:50:09,760 –> 01:50:13,240
downward spiral. And what is coming up, what is

1770
01:50:13,240 –> 01:50:16,760
ascending is rebuilding and restoration because we’ve

1771
01:50:16,760 –> 01:50:19,800
deconstructed enough. And that’s one of the other reasons why I do this show. Because

1772
01:50:19,800 –> 01:50:23,120
we’ve deconstructed enough, we have to know how to build now. We have to figure

1773
01:50:23,120 –> 01:50:26,800
it out. Right. I love that

1774
01:50:26,800 –> 01:50:30,360
concept of ideas traveling through time. Oh,

1775
01:50:30,600 –> 01:50:34,320
and the book is. The book is the best technology we’ve ever created to have

1776
01:50:34,320 –> 01:50:36,200
that happen, it’s genius.

1777
01:50:38,120 –> 01:50:41,640
So in the spirit of that, if my grandchild

1778
01:50:41,720 –> 01:50:44,040
20 years from now is listening to this podcast.

1779
01:50:45,560 –> 01:50:49,280
Go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep. And read the

1780
01:50:49,280 –> 01:50:52,040
Lord of the Rings. And read the Lord of the Rings. That’s right. Yes, that’s

1781
01:50:52,040 –> 01:50:55,380
right. Not in that order.

1782
01:50:55,940 –> 01:50:59,620
Not in that order. What

1783
01:50:59,700 –> 01:51:02,660
should leaders, business leaders, civic leaders,

1784
01:51:04,660 –> 01:51:07,780
leaders who have managed to get to the end of the podcast with us, this

1785
01:51:07,780 –> 01:51:10,900
part here, you know, our wanderings.

1786
01:51:12,180 –> 01:51:15,980
What should they take from the man who was Thursday? What’s the big lesson

1787
01:51:15,980 –> 01:51:18,740
to take from that? What can they apply to their leadership lives?

1788
01:51:23,130 –> 01:51:26,730
Oh, dear. I have to Answer this. Oh, yes. So this is, this is your,

1789
01:51:26,890 –> 01:51:29,050
this is, this is the penultimate question for the guest.

1790
01:51:32,090 –> 01:51:35,770
So I think you asked me this last time and I did never, never despair.

1791
01:51:36,010 –> 01:51:39,850
Right. Yeah, was my answer. That’s, that’s the message of, of the Lord of

1792
01:51:39,850 –> 01:51:43,690
the Rings. The message to me. And

1793
01:51:44,010 –> 01:51:47,130
I don’t know if this will help a, you know,

1794
01:51:48,300 –> 01:51:52,020
a business leader deciding, you know, what to invest in next week or anything like

1795
01:51:52,020 –> 01:51:55,780
that, but generally is without God

1796
01:51:55,780 –> 01:51:59,260
there is only anarchy. And the, I think

1797
01:51:59,260 –> 01:52:03,060
Chesterton presented that in

1798
01:52:03,060 –> 01:52:06,900
a fun, I think he was having

1799
01:52:06,900 –> 01:52:10,740
fun in the man who Was Thursday. I

1800
01:52:10,740 –> 01:52:13,660
don’t think he meant it to be taken all completely seriously,

1801
01:52:14,420 –> 01:52:18,260
but that things fall apart

1802
01:52:18,260 –> 01:52:21,780
quickly once you get away from, from God.

1803
01:52:22,340 –> 01:52:26,100
And you know, I’m not trying to offer that up

1804
01:52:26,100 –> 01:52:29,780
as business advice. I think that that’s, but

1805
01:52:30,420 –> 01:52:34,180
you know, a good business is, is like a,

1806
01:52:34,180 –> 01:52:37,700
it’s like a well lived life. You know, you, you want to

1807
01:52:38,180 –> 01:52:41,950
have a purpose and you want it to adhere to certain

1808
01:52:42,110 –> 01:52:45,670
rules. And I think ultimately

1809
01:52:45,670 –> 01:52:49,310
if you look for what

1810
01:52:49,390 –> 01:52:53,110
rules, you know, you’re trying to make your business or

1811
01:52:53,110 –> 01:52:55,230
your life adhere to, I think.

1812
01:53:00,270 –> 01:53:03,790
Whatever your conception of God might be, I think looking there is your best, first

1813
01:53:03,790 –> 01:53:07,160
place to start, to start looking. I think as we were saying earlier,

1814
01:53:07,400 –> 01:53:09,880
you know, I said this to my daughter the other day and I realized it’s

1815
01:53:09,880 –> 01:53:13,640
a long answer to your short question. But you know, if

1816
01:53:13,640 –> 01:53:17,440
you look to the Internet to find your morality

1817
01:53:17,440 –> 01:53:20,840
or your, your sense of right and wrong or even whether you should

1818
01:53:21,640 –> 01:53:25,400
invest in Tesla or not invest in Tesla, heaven

1819
01:53:25,400 –> 01:53:29,040
help you, man, because there is only anarchy out

1820
01:53:29,040 –> 01:53:32,490
there. You’re not going to get your answer because it’s,

1821
01:53:32,890 –> 01:53:35,450
because there’s, that’s the howling winds of chaos.

1822
01:53:36,810 –> 01:53:40,170
So you have to have that internal sense of,

1823
01:53:40,490 –> 01:53:44,210
you know, again, I’m trying to, I’m answering your question

1824
01:53:44,210 –> 01:53:47,330
in real time, so forgive me if I’m going on a bit, but you know,

1825
01:53:47,330 –> 01:53:50,450
one of the things that we have in business, for example, you and I have

1826
01:53:50,450 –> 01:53:53,930
this, my wife and I talk about this a lot, which is you’re always,

1827
01:53:54,090 –> 01:53:57,840
you’re hiring people, you’re firing people, you’re, you’re, you’re constantly, of course, it’s,

1828
01:53:58,070 –> 01:54:01,030
it’s really all about people in the end. And ultimately

1829
01:54:01,350 –> 01:54:05,110
usually when you’re making a decision about a person, you’re basing that

1830
01:54:05,110 –> 01:54:08,950
on kind of, I mean, yes, you can have the resume in

1831
01:54:08,950 –> 01:54:12,550
front of you and yes, you can say, oh, they went to 15 Ivy League

1832
01:54:12,550 –> 01:54:15,670
schools and they did this and they did that. But

1833
01:54:16,070 –> 01:54:19,830
ultimately it’s really a gut decision really with people. And

1834
01:54:19,830 –> 01:54:22,710
there’s, you know, there’s something, what I, what I call basically your

1835
01:54:23,670 –> 01:54:26,610
spider sense, right, which basically says,

1836
01:54:27,810 –> 01:54:30,610
do I want to be in business with this person? And

1837
01:54:31,810 –> 01:54:35,530
most of. There’s a few instances where I did not follow

1838
01:54:35,530 –> 01:54:39,330
that advice and I came to regret it. And off camera sometime

1839
01:54:39,330 –> 01:54:43,010
I will tell you that that’s true from many years ago. So it’s

1840
01:54:43,010 –> 01:54:46,130
nothing recent, nothing recent at all, decades back.

1841
01:54:47,010 –> 01:54:50,530
But there are many times where I did follow that advice and I found

1842
01:54:50,530 –> 01:54:53,990
generally it always, it always worked. But you know,

1843
01:54:54,230 –> 01:54:58,070
what we call spider sense or I

1844
01:54:58,070 –> 01:55:01,470
just had a feeling about someone I think is another way of

1845
01:55:01,470 –> 01:55:03,350
expressing something about their

1846
01:55:05,270 –> 01:55:08,470
really that there was something you had in common with them

1847
01:55:09,430 –> 01:55:11,270
that resonated. And

1848
01:55:13,110 –> 01:55:16,790
if you want to put a religious interpretation

1849
01:55:16,790 –> 01:55:19,930
on that, I don’t think that’s so

1850
01:55:20,170 –> 01:55:23,370
excellent. There you go, my friend. That’s the best I can come up with.

1851
01:55:23,610 –> 01:55:27,410
That’s. No, that’s actually, that’s actually very, very good. No, that’s. That’s

1852
01:55:27,410 –> 01:55:31,250
actually very, very good. I usually let the guest the have

1853
01:55:31,250 –> 01:55:35,010
the last word on that. So I want to thank Neil for

1854
01:55:35,010 –> 01:55:38,490
coming on our show today and talking with us about the man who Was Thursday

1855
01:55:38,490 –> 01:55:42,130
by GK Chesterton. Go out and pick up that book and come to your

1856
01:55:42,130 –> 01:55:45,970
own conclusions. And with that, well, we’re

1857
01:55:45,970 –> 01:55:46,250
out.