The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury – w/ Jesan Sorrells and Ryan J. Stout

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Okay, so we started at

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3556.

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Okay, cool. All right.

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Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode

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number 163, Martian Chronicles

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with Ryan J. Stout

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in three, two, one.

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Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells and this

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is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,

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episode number 163.

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So I was sitting at my local Walgreens

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drugstore recently, waiting for my prescription to be

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filled. And as I sat there watching

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people frantically moving back and forth behind

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the counter, no longer four feet above everybody else, they seem

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to have jettisoned that now with, with modern pharmacies,

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as I was watching them, you know, go back and forth, I also was

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completing the last pages of the book that we

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are covering today. Upon completion

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of this book, I, I put it down, or I closed the cover

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and sort of in a grumble, sort of with

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maybe with a sigh, I just, I, I kind of thought, or I, or I

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said, well, that was very Cold War ish.

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And then I got up, I approached the counter, I let a

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22 year old with a nose ring hand me a bag with my prescription

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in it, and I went on my merry way.

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Now, I’m not objecting to nose rings, nor am I objecting to Walgreens. And why

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am I telling you this story? Well, I’m telling you the story because

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today’s book, I couldn’t find a way to talk about it, a

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way to get into it without consulting a friend of mine

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who’s been on the show before. And

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that person sort of gave me some ideas, gave

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me some thoughts that I’m going to be bringing here to my analysis or

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to, to analysis of this book today. Part

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of what defeated my attempts at analysis of this book’s themes for leaders was the

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fact that this book, as do all of the books on our show, this

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book comes from a very specific moment in history. It

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is a moment that has passed, but the

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moment’s ripples, or the ripple of the moment continue to

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echo down through the pond of history to us,

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even now, today.

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Yet despite mixing metaphors, which I just did there, I am not

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convinced that this book, this quote unquote fix up novel,

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won’t be viewed one day, maybe 25 years

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from now, maybe 30 years from now. But I’m not convinced that it won’t be

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viewed one day as merely part of

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the mass of flotsam and jetsam pushed out by the tide

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coming in on the back half of the end of the last

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long 20th century.

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Today, on this episode of the podcast, we will rescue from the

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flotsam and jetsam of the late 20th century.

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Themes for leaders from a book that is quite

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frankly, I think, already fading away in our

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collective wisdom in America

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and our collective cultural memory in the West. A book that was once

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highly influential but gets mentioned less and

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less more often as time goes on.

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We’re going to be covering the Martian Chronicles

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by Ray Bradbury. Leaders.

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It is good to renew one’s wonder, said the philosopher.

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Space travel has again made children

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of us all. And of

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course, as usual today, we will be joined on our show by

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our co hosts, rejoining us from episode number 143 where

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we tried to make sense of the poetry of the great

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American free verse genius Ogden Nash, back

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from his root in service of the people as a

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carrier for the United States Postal Service,

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back from that that duty, such as it were.

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Ryan J. Stout Good afternoon, Ryan. How are

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you doing today? I could not be better, thank you kindly. Been looking forward to

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this and

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yeah, yeah, surprised

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to fall pretty deeply into to

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the book pretty readily. So

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let’s start off with that. Normally we would start off with, you know, maybe

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some reading some pieces from the book or some clips from the book. This book

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is of course, as are most of the books on our show, under

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copyright. So we will be reading sparingly from it. But there are a few

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stories that we do want to talk about and we do want to discuss. We

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will summarize certain sections of the book. There’s a couple of stories that

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Ryan wants to really reference and wants to really get dig into and we’ll do

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that. There’s a couple that I really want to dig into and we’ll, we’ll do

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that. But to open up our show or to open up sort of where

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we’re going to go today or set the tone maybe for where we’re going to

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go today. I’d like to hear from Ryan. What do you, what do you

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think about the Martian Chronicles? You said that this was, this

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was a really fast read for you. You kind of moved through it very quickly.

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But I’m assuming you read it at one point in time in your life and

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now you’re reading it at another. So talk to us a little bit about the

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Martian Chronicles, about your experiences with, with Ray Bradbury

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because you weren’t, you were not our co host when we did Fahrenheit 451.

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That was John Hill. But a man is as well

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versed as you in, in reading it in literature. You had to have run

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across Bradbury. Before the thing that.

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So it’s.

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He’s a truth seeker. And

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a lot of times artists, authors.

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I believe Stephen King

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references his muse as an, an angry,

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short, angry Irishman

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or something wearing a derby, having a cigar in his mouth,

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constantly yelling at him that his. He, he’s owed

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pages. Yeah, he’s a. And so that.

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But also a truth seeker. And so

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when you’re able to combine so many

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themes of the human condition and

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spread it literally across almost a galaxy

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anyway, because they reference. It’s not just, it’s not just Mars,

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there’s. It encapsulates

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Jupiter and Saturn and exploration

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and like I didn’t know that much

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about this book. I love how it’s laid out in essays. I love that

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form of storytelling where you’re getting the insight into.

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You could go long form and you

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get insight into say the macro and

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then you have short snippets of these,

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a paragraph or two which kind of dive into

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the, the micro of

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philosophy and behavior and how it fits into the

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larger picture and how all those things are essentially connected.

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You can’t, can’t really remove an

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entire section of history from life and say, well,

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we didn’t need that. Let’s just connect, you know, the

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1900s to, to. To the 19, you know,

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75 or something like that or 1900 to 1975. So.

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And interestingly enough,

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thematically we’re, we’re seeing a lot of things that have been

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repeating I think in, in, in more recent times,

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very recent times. And,

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and I think

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it’s impossible to not

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see the see self reflection in

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this work. I like the simple language. I

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like that it’s direct, it seems the first thing.

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So the cold world, the Cold war.

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I think I got through the first couple of paragraphs and I was like, this

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is clearly a book that was written in the 50s, right? 40s or 50s

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by the language. It seemed

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behaviorally that it was

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just, you know, very specific to that period of time.

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And you know, Bradbury excelled

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at expressing that and

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exemplifying that period of time as well thematically throughout the book.

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Well, and so one of the things we explored on our introductory

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episode, which I’d recommend you go and listen to episode 162

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that’s out there right now. One of the things that

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Bradbury was looking for in this novel. Well,

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no, so he was challenged, right, by his editor to write a novel

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that would be what was called or was termed

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a fix up novel. Right. And so a fix up novel is

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a book that is what we would call now on the

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other side of the Joan Didions and the Hunter Thompsons and the Gay Talises

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and the Truman Capotes of the world, what we would call

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a nonfiction novel, right, which is a collection of essays that

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focuses around a particular theme or a particular set of themes

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back in the 40s and 50s that sort of didn’t

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exist other than in fiction. And Bradbury, I believe

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in the Wikipedia article about this, Bradbury was quoted as saying

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that immediately the book that came back to him was

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Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson, Right.

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And he really liked that book. And so he wanted to do. He was like,

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he thought in his mind, I don’t know, that I could ever do something that

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was. That was that good, right? And so Martian Chronicles was his attempt to do

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something that was that good. The other thing that we see in Martian

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Chronicles is that these stories which were published in the 40s, before

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they were all collected together in the 50s, were later on

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utilized in different mediums in the 50s and 60s.

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So a couple of these stories showed up

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on the great old time radio show called

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X Minus One was one of those. One of those science fiction stories.

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Dimension X was another one. And so these were radio shows,

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radio operas, and Ray Bradbury would write for those or he would

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adapt stories, right, that he had already published in other books

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or in other forms for these radio shows.

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And later on when radio shows transferred to television for some of

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these television shows, and then later on he would even mine his own work

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in other areas for the show that was on in the.

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Oh, gosh, it was in the 80s, I believe, the Ray Bradbury Theater,

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which, by the way, you can check out on Amazon prime for free.

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Well, not free. I mean, if you have a Prime account, you’re already paying Jeff

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Bezos his money, so you might as well be getting something out of it.

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But my point is, Bradbury was this. Ray Bradbury

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as a writer was this font of

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knowledge and information because he didn’t go to college, right? He, you know, he got

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his college at a local library and that’s where he figured out how to write.

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And so you look at Martian Chronicles and you’re right, it’s

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written in a very simple and a very

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easy manner, but it’s also got some

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deceptively deep themes in it. So

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what would you say are some of the themes, maybe some of the major

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themes in the Martian Chronicles?

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You know, I probably would have said something differently

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than I’m going to say right now if

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I just. The human, the arrogance of

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this arrogance is baked

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into human nature. And

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I got a lot of, it’s okay for me,

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but it’s not okay for you.

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And

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there’s one particular part, and I. I

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mentioned it earlier in

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the. The off season.

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Well, Sam Park. And also one of the things I really

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loved was the use

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of double meanings, or double

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entendre, if you will, of names. And

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it’s not on the nose. He could have at any point,

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everyone could have been referenced as,

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for instance, Father Peregrine. Yeah,

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Peregrine means the tendency to wander.

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And then you have the peregrine falcon and also

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Spender. And so

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carefully selecting who

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he used as. As a character to

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create more depth.

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And I think that helped. It helped me

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relate to the characters

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or at least see them as like a

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complete person. And

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yeah, that chapter was really upsetting.

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Well, let’s pull that out. So in my edition, because there’s

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multiple editions of the Martian Chronicles, and so the edition that I have was published,

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I believe, was put together in the late 90s.

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And one of the interesting things about this novel is

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while the stories are, they do read as

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being in a particular time frame. Right.

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They are also or can be read as being timeless. And

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so one of the things that was interesting when it was first published was the

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dates were all projected forward to the late 1990s and

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the early 2000s. And then when it was republished

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or re. Released in the late 1990s, the dates were pushed

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forward into. Pushed forward 25 years to where we

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are today. And so I anticipate that when Martian Chronicles is

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reissued probably next year, because next year is

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2026, the dates will be pushed forward

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yet another 25 years.

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And so that’s an interesting sort of

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twist, right, on this novel, which

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on the one hand, does allow it to be timeless, but then on the other

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hand allows you to sort of see the. Allows you to

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sort of see the. The threads on the baseball. Right. Allows you to see the

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thread, see the movement. The story that Ryan is

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referencing, the. The short story in the Martian Chronicles is from November,

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or in my version, it’s from November 20, New November 2005. Twenty years

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ago, the off season. And a man named Sam

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Parkhill, who landed earlier

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on Mars with a group of folks who.

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Who came to. Who came to Mars as part of the

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second exploration of Mars.

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Sam is a proprietor now. He’s no longer an astronaut. He’s a

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proprietor of a. Of a hot dog

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stand on the edge of the desert where he believes the

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tourists will be coming. When human beings do finally arrive again

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to continue to tame Mars. And that’s another theme that’s

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in this book. And it’s one that Bradbury plays with

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quite a bit. One of the ones that I find to be more disturbing, actually.

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And it’s this idea that we believe

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arrogantly, to your point, about human arrogance being baked in. We

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00:17:08,490 –> 00:17:12,050
believe arrogantly as humans that we will just go out and shape and

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mold any place into our image and it will just fall to our feet.

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And Bradbury starts from the premise, and you see this in all of the

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stories in Martian Chronicles, particularly the early ones where the Martians are

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both there and not there at the same time.

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Bradbury starts from the premise that Mars

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will change us more than we will change it

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and that Mars will shape us and that there are things on

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Mars that will impact us rather than

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us impacting them. That our arrogance is

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as nothing to Mars as

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an ant’s arrogance is nothing to us on our planet.

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So Bradbury starts from this theme. He starts from this premise and by

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off season, as a story plays around

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with this arrogance. And so it opens with Sam, you know, sweeping out

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his. His location and ranting about

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Captain Wilder, who stopped him from killing Spender all those years ago.

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And, and his wife is of course

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nagging at him because that’s the kind of wife that Sam

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00:18:23,190 –> 00:18:26,390
would marry. And then, and then

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there’s then. And then the Martians try to do something that’s totally and

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completely illogical and out of, out of step,

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right? They, they. They present themselves

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to. To Mr. Parkill, to Sam, and they

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try to send him, or they try to make him an emissary

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00:18:45,720 –> 00:18:49,360
from, from. From them, right, to

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00:18:49,360 –> 00:18:52,200
the other. To the other humans. And the,

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00:18:53,560 –> 00:18:57,320
the apotheosis of the story really, really

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00:18:57,400 –> 00:19:00,800
comes when. Well, when they attempt to

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00:19:00,800 –> 00:19:04,200
communicate with Sam. And so I’ll read this just very small

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piece right here. He says,

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I’m outnumbered, Elma. He cried. They’ll kill me. He threw out

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00:19:11,760 –> 00:19:15,120
the anchor. He was trying to escape from the Martians that were trying to visit

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00:19:15,120 –> 00:19:18,840
him on a ship, right? It was no use. The sail flittered down,

294
00:19:18,840 –> 00:19:22,480
folding unto itself, sighing. The ship stopped. The wind

295
00:19:22,480 –> 00:19:26,200
stopped. Travel stopped. Mars stood still as the majestic

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00:19:26,200 –> 00:19:28,880
vessels of the Martians drew around and hesitated over him.

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00:19:30,080 –> 00:19:33,400
Earth man. A voice called from the high seat. Somewhere a

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00:19:33,400 –> 00:19:36,800
silvering mask moved. Ruby rimmed lips glittered with the words

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00:19:37,440 –> 00:19:41,160
I didn’t do anything. Sam looked at all the faces. 100 and

300
00:19:41,160 –> 00:19:44,480
all that surrounded him. There weren’t that many Martians Left on Mars.

301
00:19:44,720 –> 00:19:48,480
100150 all told. And most of them were here now,

302
00:19:48,480 –> 00:19:52,330
on the dead seas in their resurrected ships by their dead chest cities, one

303
00:19:52,330 –> 00:19:56,090
of which had just fallen like some fragile vass hit by a pebble. The

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00:19:56,090 –> 00:19:59,690
silverine masks glinted. It was all a mistake, he pleaded,

305
00:19:59,690 –> 00:20:03,450
standing out of his ship. His wife slumped behind him in the

306
00:20:03,450 –> 00:20:07,210
deeps of the hold like a dead woman. I came to Mars like any honest,

307
00:20:07,210 –> 00:20:11,050
enterprising businessman. I took some surplus material from a rocket that crashed and I

308
00:20:11,050 –> 00:20:13,770
built me the finest little stand that you ever saw. Right there on that land

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00:20:14,090 –> 00:20:16,890
by the crossroads. You know where it is. You’ve got to admit, it’s a good

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00:20:16,890 –> 00:20:20,660
job of building. Sam laughed, staring around. And that Martian I know he

311
00:20:20,660 –> 00:20:23,660
was a friend of yours came. His death was an accident, I assure you. All

312
00:20:23,660 –> 00:20:26,100
I wanted to do was have a hot dog stand, the only one on Mars,

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00:20:26,100 –> 00:20:29,820
the first and most important one, you understand how it is. I was going

314
00:20:29,820 –> 00:20:33,380
to serve the best darn hot dogs there with chili and onions and

315
00:20:33,380 –> 00:20:37,100
orange juice. And he’s

316
00:20:37,100 –> 00:20:40,100
from New York. He’s from New York City.

317
00:20:41,620 –> 00:20:44,900
And I cannot think of a more American

318
00:20:45,140 –> 00:20:47,640
thing, a more New York City,

319
00:20:49,800 –> 00:20:53,640
Bronx thing to do is

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00:20:53,880 –> 00:20:57,240
to go to another planet and be like, this is

321
00:20:57,560 –> 00:21:01,360
mine. And how American are hot

322
00:21:01,360 –> 00:21:03,720
dogs? And

323
00:21:08,520 –> 00:21:11,930
his wife, Elena. Who? Elma. No,

324
00:21:11,930 –> 00:21:13,730
Alma. Alma, yeah. Who?

325
00:21:16,530 –> 00:21:20,210
To your point, yes, that is it.

326
00:21:20,290 –> 00:21:23,170
It makes, it looks perfect sense. It makes perfect sense.

327
00:21:23,810 –> 00:21:27,650
And Elma is almost. She’s the voice

328
00:21:27,650 –> 00:21:31,330
of reason trying to. Trying to like,

329
00:21:31,330 –> 00:21:35,170
hey, dude, hey, hey, you know Sam, you know,

330
00:21:35,170 –> 00:21:37,500
this is. And

331
00:21:39,020 –> 00:21:42,860
the jumping to conclusions, his complete

332
00:21:42,860 –> 00:21:43,420
denial

333
00:21:46,780 –> 00:21:50,580
of the effect that not

334
00:21:50,580 –> 00:21:53,980
only he is having on the planet and the Martians,

335
00:21:54,220 –> 00:21:58,060
but the human race, you know, this land is your land. This land is

336
00:21:58,060 –> 00:22:00,540
my land. And

337
00:22:02,380 –> 00:22:06,070
you think when he’s surrounded by the 100 Martians, you

338
00:22:06,070 –> 00:22:09,870
think they’re gonna behave instead they, they

339
00:22:09,870 –> 00:22:13,590
hand over the deed to the land, essentially. Right,

340
00:22:13,590 –> 00:22:17,150
Exactly. They, they. They do the thing that.

341
00:22:18,910 –> 00:22:22,390
And the analogy or the parallel. Not the analogy, the

342
00:22:22,390 –> 00:22:26,230
parallel that I draw is this, to your point about him being from the

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00:22:26,230 –> 00:22:29,950
Bronx, what if the Native American tribes in Manhattan

344
00:22:31,640 –> 00:22:35,240
had understood the concept of ownership enough to have a deed

345
00:22:36,200 –> 00:22:39,400
when the Europeans showed up from

346
00:22:39,720 –> 00:22:42,920
England or from Denmark or from

347
00:22:43,320 –> 00:22:46,760
France or wherever the heck they were coming from transatlantically

348
00:22:47,800 –> 00:22:51,240
and had handed the deed for Manhattan

349
00:22:51,880 –> 00:22:55,720
over to the English and then

350
00:22:55,720 –> 00:22:59,340
just left? And this is the thing Bradbury’s playing

351
00:22:59,340 –> 00:23:03,020
with. This is, this is the. This is. And by the way, Bradbury’s

352
00:23:03,020 –> 00:23:06,660
writing in the mid 20th century for an incredibly well, incredibly

353
00:23:06,660 –> 00:23:10,260
sorry. A culture that actually knew its

354
00:23:10,260 –> 00:23:13,580
history. And don’t get me wrong, there’s always been dumb people in our culture who

355
00:23:13,580 –> 00:23:17,380
don’t know history whatever. Please. There was ever a halcyon era of this,

356
00:23:18,020 –> 00:23:20,980
but the, the. Well, I won’t say there was never. Yes, there was ever a

357
00:23:20,980 –> 00:23:24,790
halcyon era. And it was a matter of degree. The number of

358
00:23:24,790 –> 00:23:28,510
people who would have caught the allusion in that story to the

359
00:23:28,510 –> 00:23:32,110
Native American tribes at Manhattan would have been huge.

360
00:23:32,270 –> 00:23:36,110
Among his reading public, particularly among the reading

361
00:23:36,110 –> 00:23:38,830
public that really valued science fiction.

362
00:23:39,790 –> 00:23:43,510
Bradbury was the first author, along with Isaac Asimov, Arthur

363
00:23:43,510 –> 00:23:46,830
C. Clarke, and of course the great dean of science fiction,

364
00:23:46,830 –> 00:23:50,680
Robert Heinlein, who really

365
00:23:50,760 –> 00:23:54,520
took science fiction and moved it from being a genre of mere

366
00:23:54,520 –> 00:23:58,280
kids stuff like Edgar rice Burroughs or H.G. wells

367
00:23:58,680 –> 00:24:02,320
to being something that was more serious and more literary without

368
00:24:02,320 –> 00:24:05,800
Heinlein and Bradbury and Asimov. And

369
00:24:05,960 –> 00:24:09,080
you don’t have Philip K. Dick, you don’t have Charles Gibson,

370
00:24:09,720 –> 00:24:13,490
you don’t have any of those guys. Right. Even

371
00:24:13,490 –> 00:24:16,610
down to today. You don’t have Neal Stephenson, who’s, Who’s writing

372
00:24:16,930 –> 00:24:20,770
science fiction novels that are like Bibles, just

373
00:24:21,650 –> 00:24:25,490
squirting them out like Chiclets. Right. You don’t have that.

374
00:24:25,490 –> 00:24:28,930
Right. And so these ideas that,

375
00:24:29,089 –> 00:24:32,770
that Bradbury’s playing with were ideas designed

376
00:24:32,770 –> 00:24:36,370
to bring along. To sneak along science fiction

377
00:24:36,370 –> 00:24:40,080
and move it from the bottom pulp shelf into the top, the

378
00:24:40,080 –> 00:24:43,880
top shelf of, of of literature in, in the mid 20th century.

379
00:24:44,520 –> 00:24:48,360
By the way, the story ends, just so you know, and this is no spoiler

380
00:24:48,360 –> 00:24:51,480
alert. Book’s been out for 80 years. You can go find this. But

381
00:24:52,200 –> 00:24:55,840
the story ends with the first, the first major

382
00:24:55,840 –> 00:24:59,480
apocalypse that occurs in the book. That’s what I.

383
00:24:59,480 –> 00:25:03,320
Yeah, yeah, but the apocalypse observed

384
00:25:03,320 –> 00:25:06,830
not from on Earth, but the apocalypse observed for

385
00:25:06,830 –> 00:25:10,510
Mars. And of course, Elma, in all her

386
00:25:10,510 –> 00:25:14,110
helpfulness, picks up a toothpick, starts

387
00:25:14,110 –> 00:25:17,830
picking her teeth and says, well, you know, this will be a really bustling,

388
00:25:17,910 –> 00:25:21,190
A really bustling location, a really bustling place

389
00:25:21,670 –> 00:25:22,870
in about a million years.

390
00:25:26,070 –> 00:25:29,830
And before that, Sam is going on. He’s like, I

391
00:25:29,830 –> 00:25:33,450
think directly he says, think of it. A hundred thousand

392
00:25:33,450 –> 00:25:37,090
Mexicans just kind of out of

393
00:25:37,090 –> 00:25:40,010
nowhere and then inciting. That’s the particular race.

394
00:25:41,530 –> 00:25:43,530
And the only time that

395
00:25:46,090 –> 00:25:49,930
it is, at least this is how I read it. Like

396
00:25:49,930 –> 00:25:52,890
the godlessness of the Earth people.

397
00:25:53,930 –> 00:25:57,730
Yes. And the spiritual connectivity to. To the land

398
00:25:57,730 –> 00:26:01,330
and each other on Mars is.

399
00:26:04,050 –> 00:26:07,890
Is why I would think people would want to go there

400
00:26:08,050 –> 00:26:11,170
because they’re escaping Earth because Of X, Y and Z. Right.

401
00:26:12,450 –> 00:26:16,210
Capitalism or social unrest or,

402
00:26:16,770 –> 00:26:20,490
you know, whatever people want their. I think there’s freedom. They

403
00:26:20,490 –> 00:26:23,580
talk about freedom early in the book. And,

404
00:26:24,380 –> 00:26:27,740
and to leave a dying

405
00:26:27,900 –> 00:26:31,180
planet to

406
00:26:32,940 –> 00:26:36,220
kill another planet in

407
00:26:36,700 –> 00:26:40,540
what, a. In a fraction of the time? Well,

408
00:26:40,540 –> 00:26:43,100
it opens up the question for me on this book.

409
00:26:44,700 –> 00:26:48,540
And, and, and, you know, the question is, and I think this is the

410
00:26:48,540 –> 00:26:51,960
core question, forget, are we alone in the

411
00:26:51,960 –> 00:26:55,560
universe? Forget the whole Carl Sagan, big brain, Neil

412
00:26:55,560 –> 00:26:58,480
DeGrasse Tyson, are we alone in the universe? Question.

413
00:27:01,520 –> 00:27:05,120
That’s boring. The core question for me is, are we

414
00:27:05,120 –> 00:27:08,600
alone in the neighborhood? Like, the

415
00:27:08,600 –> 00:27:12,000
neighborhood has nine planets. It’s a small

416
00:27:12,080 –> 00:27:15,920
neighborhood. I’m not really worried about what’s happening

417
00:27:15,920 –> 00:27:19,620
on Alpha Centauri, just like I don’t think anybody on Office Centauri is

418
00:27:19,620 –> 00:27:23,380
worried about what’s happening here. If there is anybody there to worry,

419
00:27:23,380 –> 00:27:26,180
even if they have a conception of worry in the same human way that I

420
00:27:26,180 –> 00:27:29,900
worry, why would they? Right. Okay. I’m

421
00:27:29,900 –> 00:27:33,660
more concerned or interested, depending upon your perspective

422
00:27:34,220 –> 00:27:34,620
on

423
00:27:38,460 –> 00:27:41,980
Jupiter’s not. Or. I’m more interested in the idea, and

424
00:27:42,380 –> 00:27:46,150
I think Bradbury was as well. I’m more interested in the idea of,

425
00:27:46,380 –> 00:27:50,140
of is Jupiter empty

426
00:27:51,340 –> 00:27:55,140
or is there something there? Because the neighbor

427
00:27:55,140 –> 00:27:58,900
who’s the, the neighbor who’s in the projects next door to

428
00:27:58,900 –> 00:28:02,660
me worries me more than the neighbor that lives in Kansas that

429
00:28:02,660 –> 00:28:06,420
I’ve never met. And this is also part of the

430
00:28:06,420 –> 00:28:09,860
conceit that, that Bradbury, that Bradbury

431
00:28:09,860 –> 00:28:13,060
plays with one of the other things that jumps out to me about the book.

432
00:28:13,060 –> 00:28:15,100
And I don’t know if you’ll. I don’t know if you’ll agree about this, but

433
00:28:15,100 –> 00:28:18,600
I’m a. I’m a science. I’m a space travel guy. I’m

434
00:28:18,600 –> 00:28:21,480
fascinated by it. Star Trek, Star Wars, I love all that crap. Right?

435
00:28:22,280 –> 00:28:24,200
I’ve talked about some of that on this podcast before.

436
00:28:27,480 –> 00:28:31,080
I. I

437
00:28:31,080 –> 00:28:34,720
think that the linking, the

438
00:28:34,720 –> 00:28:38,480
inextricable linking of exploratory space travel to

439
00:28:38,480 –> 00:28:41,480
the whims of public policy and the vagaries of geopolitics

440
00:28:42,850 –> 00:28:46,570
500 years from now or 200 years from now will be viewed. Will be

441
00:28:46,570 –> 00:28:49,610
viewed by people who. We will be long dead. You and I will be long

442
00:28:49,610 –> 00:28:53,450
dead. And this podcast will be dust on the Internet. It

443
00:28:53,450 –> 00:28:56,170
will have been taken down by Google. It will no longer be up. No one

444
00:28:56,170 –> 00:28:58,770
will care. People will have moved on. Right?

445
00:28:59,810 –> 00:29:03,210
But that act will be

446
00:29:03,210 –> 00:29:06,530
viewed as probably one of the most fundamentally

447
00:29:06,530 –> 00:29:08,610
illogical acts of the late 20th century.

448
00:29:10,330 –> 00:29:13,450
The. The attaching of something so.

449
00:29:15,370 –> 00:29:19,050
A vision so big to something so small. And to your point,

450
00:29:19,290 –> 00:29:21,770
it dovetails with that idea of human arrogance.

451
00:29:22,970 –> 00:29:26,530
It dovetails right in there. Because our geopolitics should of course run our space

452
00:29:26,530 –> 00:29:29,690
travel. Of course we should be like competing with the Russians

453
00:29:31,530 –> 00:29:32,330
or whatever.

454
00:29:35,860 –> 00:29:36,420
There is.

455
00:29:42,820 –> 00:29:46,100
So we talked about. And this is. So the first

456
00:29:46,100 –> 00:29:49,940
Captain and Spender

457
00:29:50,500 –> 00:29:54,260
are the redeemable characters. Yes, yes, they are.

458
00:29:54,900 –> 00:29:58,100
And I mentioned

459
00:29:58,100 –> 00:30:01,780
spirituality in those two characters. You see

460
00:30:01,780 –> 00:30:05,310
that there is. They’re not godless. No.

461
00:30:05,310 –> 00:30:09,030
Whereas rest of the characters, I mean when they’re yee. Hauling and whooping

462
00:30:09,030 –> 00:30:12,110
and talking about drinking wine by the canal

463
00:30:12,990 –> 00:30:16,430
and I’m gonna go party. I’ve earned it. I came here from

464
00:30:16,990 –> 00:30:20,710
Texas, blah, blah, blah. And you earned. What did

465
00:30:20,710 –> 00:30:24,390
you earn? It’s a kind of. And

466
00:30:24,390 –> 00:30:26,430
it’s this like self importance

467
00:30:28,190 –> 00:30:28,590
and,

468
00:30:35,290 –> 00:30:37,930
and the prancing through the towns,

469
00:30:39,210 –> 00:30:42,090
breaking glass breaking, all this beautiful artwork

470
00:30:43,370 –> 00:30:47,210
and, and, and Spender especially seeing

471
00:30:47,210 –> 00:30:51,010
the connectivity between the, the spirit connection between

472
00:30:51,010 –> 00:30:54,570
the, the Martians, the planet, the Earth, how they’ve

473
00:30:54,570 –> 00:30:58,390
integrated art into nature, into. They’ve combined

474
00:30:58,790 –> 00:31:02,590
science, art and nature and into

475
00:31:02,590 –> 00:31:06,230
a harmonious sort of collection of

476
00:31:08,550 –> 00:31:11,110
really a lot of the things that. That matter

477
00:31:12,870 –> 00:31:13,270
and.

478
00:31:18,550 –> 00:31:21,350
Well, okay, so that, that opens up the door to this question then.

479
00:31:23,050 –> 00:31:26,690
Is it, will it ever be worth it for

480
00:31:26,690 –> 00:31:30,370
people from Earth to go to Mars? Like I think about, I think, I think

481
00:31:30,370 –> 00:31:34,090
about, I think about people like, like my wife, My wife does not care

482
00:31:35,450 –> 00:31:39,210
about Mars. Like she would be in the

483
00:31:39,210 –> 00:31:42,890
Ray Bradbury story. She’d be one of those people that. He doesn’t write about the

484
00:31:42,890 –> 00:31:46,010
die of the nuclear war. Right. Or that

485
00:31:46,570 –> 00:31:50,090
didn’t get into the rockets. Like the, the most heartbreaking

486
00:31:50,090 –> 00:31:53,870
story is the one.

487
00:31:54,430 –> 00:31:58,190
Well, no, there’s two stories. So the most fascinating story for me we could

488
00:31:58,190 –> 00:32:01,790
talk about this one is, is the one where

489
00:32:02,670 –> 00:32:06,270
all the black people get, get this, get their.

490
00:32:07,710 –> 00:32:11,230
They get all their stuff together and, and they get the heck out of town

491
00:32:13,790 –> 00:32:17,550
and, and way in the middle of the air. June

492
00:32:17,550 –> 00:32:21,020
2003. That’s interesting. We’re going to talk about that one

493
00:32:21,900 –> 00:32:25,620
because for me, as a person who has a high melanin content

494
00:32:25,620 –> 00:32:29,460
and lives in the United States of America, I found that one to be quite

495
00:32:29,460 –> 00:32:33,020
interesting. But the most heartbreaking story

496
00:32:33,500 –> 00:32:36,620
was the one that closes out the volume

497
00:32:39,420 –> 00:32:42,380
in August of 2026. The million year Picnic

498
00:32:43,260 –> 00:32:46,920
with the kid who doesn’t understand. No. Who

499
00:32:46,920 –> 00:32:50,600
understands only that he has to hold together

500
00:32:50,600 –> 00:32:54,280
his dad. Right? He feels like he has to hold together his dad.

501
00:32:55,160 –> 00:32:58,920
But then there’s a turn where the power shifts,

502
00:32:58,920 –> 00:33:02,640
right? And now his dad is holding him together, right?

503
00:33:02,640 –> 00:33:06,000
Because he. The full. The full weight of the

504
00:33:06,000 –> 00:33:09,480
realization that we can’t go home again. You actually

505
00:33:09,720 –> 00:33:13,410
can’t go home again. There’s no home to go back to

506
00:33:13,410 –> 00:33:17,010
because a second apocalypse has occurred, right? A second atomic war has occurred.

507
00:33:18,450 –> 00:33:21,810
And now Mars is the only place you got.

508
00:33:22,850 –> 00:33:25,410
There’s nothing else left, Right. There’s nowhere to go back to.

509
00:33:27,169 –> 00:33:30,450
There are people like my wife and many others

510
00:33:30,930 –> 00:33:34,370
who do not give a tinker’s damn about Mars

511
00:33:35,490 –> 00:33:39,320
and won’t leave the Earth even if you paid them. And I think there’ll always

512
00:33:39,320 –> 00:33:42,840
be those people, right? But then there are the people

513
00:33:44,120 –> 00:33:47,800
who do want to go and who do want to go

514
00:33:47,800 –> 00:33:51,080
there. And they will come in a wide variety of

515
00:33:51,080 –> 00:33:54,200
personalities and positions. They will come like Sam

516
00:33:54,200 –> 00:33:57,600
Parkhill and Spender and the

517
00:33:57,600 –> 00:34:01,120
Captain, but they’ll also come like the senator and his

518
00:34:01,120 –> 00:34:03,980
wife and his sons. They’ll come like

519
00:34:05,100 –> 00:34:08,820
the guy retire to retire, right? The retirees who

520
00:34:08,820 –> 00:34:12,580
came there and saw their dead child. Right? Because the Martians are going to screw

521
00:34:12,580 –> 00:34:16,340
with you, right? Or they’re going

522
00:34:16,340 –> 00:34:19,980
to come like, case in point, they’re going to come like the black people

523
00:34:21,260 –> 00:34:25,060
just escaping oppression. Which, by the way, one of the questions I

524
00:34:25,060 –> 00:34:28,820
had, sub question underneath. We should answer this first one. Is

525
00:34:28,820 –> 00:34:32,269
it going to ever be worth it to go to Mars? Sub question, did the

526
00:34:32,269 –> 00:34:36,029
black people. When the first nuclear war happened and the Earth sent out

527
00:34:36,029 –> 00:34:39,029
the signal for all the people to come back, why did all the black people

528
00:34:39,029 –> 00:34:42,829
go back? Bradbury never answers that question. Or did they? He

529
00:34:42,829 –> 00:34:45,949
never answers that. He just sort of leaves it open for you to, like, speculate

530
00:34:45,949 –> 00:34:49,549
on. Because I wouldn’t have gone back. I’d have been like, no, we got the

531
00:34:49,549 –> 00:34:52,949
rocket, we tore that sucker down. We set up a hot dog stand. Actually, we

532
00:34:52,949 –> 00:34:55,149
didn’t set up a hot dog stand. We set up a soul food stand over

533
00:34:55,149 –> 00:34:58,349
there. Ribs? Yeah, Martian ribs

534
00:34:58,829 –> 00:35:02,469
right from the canal over there. Sounds awesome. We

535
00:35:02,469 –> 00:35:06,229
barbecued and slathered those little babies. Greatest thing ever. Come

536
00:35:06,229 –> 00:35:09,469
on, brother, let’s have some ribs. Why would I go back home

537
00:35:10,189 –> 00:35:13,749
to what? So first

538
00:35:13,749 –> 00:35:17,429
question. Is it ever going to be worth it for us to go to

539
00:35:17,429 –> 00:35:20,909
Mars? That’s a lot of trips to Home Depot.

540
00:35:22,440 –> 00:35:24,760
It is, yeah. Or Lowe’s or whatever. Whatever.

541
00:35:27,160 –> 00:35:27,720
I mean.

542
00:35:31,400 –> 00:35:34,160
Because this is the. I mean, this is. This is the problem that everybody has

543
00:35:34,160 –> 00:35:38,000
with Elon Musk talking about SpaceX. Everybody who’s opposed to

544
00:35:38,000 –> 00:35:41,800
him won’t say this. They Won’t say it out loud.

545
00:35:41,800 –> 00:35:44,600
They don’t have the guts to say it. But what they want to say is

546
00:35:45,000 –> 00:35:48,800
we don’t think that what you’re privately spending your money on, along with

547
00:35:48,800 –> 00:35:52,520
technology, taxpayer dollars for sure, but what you’re spending your money on is worth

548
00:35:52,520 –> 00:35:55,680
it. We do not think that there will be a benefit for this. You should

549
00:35:55,680 –> 00:35:59,440
stop. They won’t say that out loud. They coach it in other terms like,

550
00:35:59,440 –> 00:36:02,880
oh, he should spend his money on feeding poor kids in India

551
00:36:03,120 –> 00:36:06,800
or fixing the environment or I don’t know,

552
00:36:07,520 –> 00:36:11,320
making a longer lasting light bulb. Anything but this thing

553
00:36:11,320 –> 00:36:15,120
that we don’t think is worth anything. I was so was

554
00:36:15,120 –> 00:36:18,800
watching Roman. I can’t think of his name. He’s a PhD. He is

555
00:36:18,800 –> 00:36:22,460
an AI. You may know who I’m talking about. He’s an AI.

556
00:36:22,460 –> 00:36:25,940
Safety. Oh yeah, okay. And so

557
00:36:27,060 –> 00:36:28,260
he was saying, you know,

558
00:36:31,700 –> 00:36:35,140
so the interview I was watching, the host was holding up signs with

559
00:36:35,300 –> 00:36:38,880
just little, little, little signs with dates on them, like 2035,

560
00:36:39,080 –> 00:36:42,660
2045, 2070, something like that. And

561
00:36:43,860 –> 00:36:46,500
the host said, what do you think it’s going to be like in, you know,

562
00:36:46,500 –> 00:36:50,230
20, 2027? And then

563
00:36:50,390 –> 00:36:53,750
he projected a little bit, he’s like, you know, of course this is just my

564
00:36:53,750 –> 00:36:57,430
opinion. I can’t see that. And then when

565
00:36:57,430 –> 00:37:01,110
he got into like 2050, he said, I, I,

566
00:37:01,750 –> 00:37:05,110
I, he said it is so far out of

567
00:37:05,830 –> 00:37:09,550
the scope of what I

568
00:37:09,550 –> 00:37:12,390
can even relate to because everything

569
00:37:13,380 –> 00:37:16,980
might be different, Everything, people might be hat machine.

570
00:37:17,060 –> 00:37:20,900
People may not be around. So to project on

571
00:37:20,980 –> 00:37:24,780
how society is going to function in something like 40 years from now, 30

572
00:37:24,780 –> 00:37:28,580
years from now, 25 years from now, is so far

573
00:37:28,580 –> 00:37:32,100
out of the purview of what we have experience as

574
00:37:32,500 –> 00:37:36,100
human beings live in an analog life primarily.

575
00:37:36,180 –> 00:37:39,990
And technology is evolving. I

576
00:37:39,990 –> 00:37:43,830
mean. But we have tech, but we

577
00:37:43,830 –> 00:37:47,550
have technological sophistication. And yet this is where I would push back on

578
00:37:47,550 –> 00:37:51,110
him. I would say we have technological sophistication, sir, you’re

579
00:37:51,110 –> 00:37:54,870
absolutely correct. But we have massive levels in the west of

580
00:37:54,870 –> 00:37:55,870
cultural barbarity.

581
00:37:58,670 –> 00:38:02,230
I think that will last with us. I think the cultural barbarity will last with

582
00:38:02,230 –> 00:38:05,990
us. And so that when

583
00:38:05,990 –> 00:38:09,750
I think of Elon Musk in that, I think, let’s just

584
00:38:09,750 –> 00:38:13,510
face it, he might be a little more intelligent than most people. Sure,

585
00:38:13,510 –> 00:38:17,110
yeah. I’ll grant you. And so if, if he

586
00:38:17,110 –> 00:38:20,030
runs the algorithm all the way out, or he runs it all the way out,

587
00:38:20,030 –> 00:38:23,350
and this is kind of the conclusion he came to.

588
00:38:24,230 –> 00:38:27,630
I’m not gonna, like, I kind of have no

589
00:38:27,630 –> 00:38:30,390
opinion on it as far as, like,

590
00:38:31,390 –> 00:38:34,790
the success of what that mission would look like, terraforming and

591
00:38:34,790 –> 00:38:38,470
colonizing another planet. But

592
00:38:38,470 –> 00:38:42,190
I also don’t know. And he probably

593
00:38:42,190 –> 00:38:44,110
has a. Maybe has a better idea.

594
00:38:46,510 –> 00:38:50,310
And one of the things I wanted to. Okay. Is it worth it? So

595
00:38:50,310 –> 00:38:53,710
I think that we would have to, as a species,

596
00:38:56,280 –> 00:38:56,520
almost

597
00:38:59,480 –> 00:39:02,960
eliminate violence as a gratuitous

598
00:39:02,960 –> 00:39:05,480
response to

599
00:39:06,680 –> 00:39:10,400
any malady when confronted with something we

600
00:39:10,400 –> 00:39:14,240
don’t understand or. Or can’t

601
00:39:14,240 –> 00:39:17,080
relate to. Okay. And that would be

602
00:39:18,200 –> 00:39:20,680
Martians living on Mars, living in crystal

603
00:39:21,640 –> 00:39:25,430
castles and having you.

604
00:39:25,830 –> 00:39:29,630
Do you know what I’m saying? It’s. Yeah, I think we would

605
00:39:29,630 –> 00:39:32,310
need to be more spiritually evolved or.

606
00:39:33,190 –> 00:39:36,950
And because. So I have a question. So if we

607
00:39:36,950 –> 00:39:40,150
were more spiritually evolved in this book and these. And they

608
00:39:40,150 –> 00:39:43,910
encountered, would the Martians be playing jokes on them if they

609
00:39:44,550 –> 00:39:47,750
were. If, you know, if, If a thousand

610
00:39:47,990 –> 00:39:51,840
Buddhist monks would. Would

611
00:39:51,840 –> 00:39:54,960
Martians be like, completely.

612
00:39:56,720 –> 00:40:00,520
So. So here’s an idea that we explored in our Stranger in the Strange Land

613
00:40:00,520 –> 00:40:04,000
episode with John Hill. You should go back and listen to that episode. If you

614
00:40:04,000 –> 00:40:07,520
haven’t. I’m sorry, I sent a. I sent a link to. Sent a link to

615
00:40:07,520 –> 00:40:10,880
Ryan. I don’t know if you’ve taken a listen to that yet. But one of

616
00:40:10,880 –> 00:40:14,680
the ideas that we explored because Heinlein. So I look at the book Stranger

617
00:40:14,680 –> 00:40:18,020
in a Strange Land as the logical sort of.

618
00:40:18,420 –> 00:40:20,820
And this is why we’re doing them together, the logical

619
00:40:21,940 –> 00:40:24,100
follow up to the Martian Chronicles.

620
00:40:26,100 –> 00:40:28,500
So the Million Year Picnic happens.

621
00:40:29,860 –> 00:40:33,700
The kids grow up and Earth

622
00:40:33,700 –> 00:40:36,740
gets put back together somehow because there’s always gaps

623
00:40:37,620 –> 00:40:41,180
and they bring the kid back and the kid is the man from

624
00:40:41,180 –> 00:40:44,740
Mars and he could do all these things and he could be all these

625
00:40:44,740 –> 00:40:48,430
things. And he sets up in part

626
00:40:48,430 –> 00:40:52,230
three of Stranger

627
00:40:52,230 –> 00:40:55,790
in a Strange Land, he sets up a discipline which

628
00:40:55,790 –> 00:40:59,470
is eventually is referred to as. Or becomes a

629
00:40:59,470 –> 00:41:03,230
church in the book. Now, in that

630
00:41:03,230 –> 00:41:06,710
episode, we. I, I made the point with John Mountain, with John

631
00:41:06,710 –> 00:41:09,790
Hill, that, that

632
00:41:11,160 –> 00:41:14,960
the. If that book were updated to today, the man from

633
00:41:14,960 –> 00:41:18,720
Mars would start a political party because we’ve replaced religion

634
00:41:18,720 –> 00:41:22,240
with politics. I know from some professional

635
00:41:22,240 –> 00:41:25,600
therapists that I, that I talked to who are part of my, my inner

636
00:41:25,600 –> 00:41:29,440
circle, that a child’s

637
00:41:29,440 –> 00:41:33,280
first political identity is forming right around ninth grade. Now, which

638
00:41:33,280 –> 00:41:37,000
is absolutely insane to me. That’s absolutely nuts.

639
00:41:37,820 –> 00:41:41,580
But that’s because we have a meaning problem in our

640
00:41:41,580 –> 00:41:45,100
society and culture, which of course ties into the competency crisis which you and I

641
00:41:45,100 –> 00:41:48,100
were talking about. A different kind of context, right Both those things link together. They’re

642
00:41:48,100 –> 00:41:51,940
not independent. Right. And so to your point about

643
00:41:51,940 –> 00:41:55,620
spirituality, one of

644
00:41:55,620 –> 00:41:59,260
the interesting things, if you research conspiracy theories

645
00:41:59,660 –> 00:42:02,700
as I want to do, is that

646
00:42:04,530 –> 00:42:08,370
there are aliens that have visited our planet, but that they are not

647
00:42:08,370 –> 00:42:11,170
physical beings, they are spiritual beings,

648
00:42:12,130 –> 00:42:15,850
and that they are trying to communicate with us or raise us to

649
00:42:15,850 –> 00:42:19,530
a higher spiritual plane. Because the fact of the matter

650
00:42:19,530 –> 00:42:22,850
is that in the material universe that we see as planets,

651
00:42:23,570 –> 00:42:27,410
most of what exists on those planets are spiritual entities, not

652
00:42:27,410 –> 00:42:30,900
physical ones. This is a deep

653
00:42:30,900 –> 00:42:34,700
conspiracy theory. This goes beyond David Icke and the reptilian

654
00:42:34,700 –> 00:42:38,220
lizard people and into a whole bunch of different things like the Grays

655
00:42:38,540 –> 00:42:41,900
and then the Illuminati and the Anukai and

656
00:42:41,900 –> 00:42:45,620
Egyptians and a whole bunch of like Fox Mulder X file stuff that I

657
00:42:45,620 –> 00:42:49,420
can’t even get into. So there’s always been this tension

658
00:42:50,460 –> 00:42:54,100
between the material manifestation of a planet that appears to

659
00:42:54,100 –> 00:42:57,810
be dead and this idea.

660
00:42:58,210 –> 00:43:02,050
You, you came to it through violence. But this idea that there is something

661
00:43:02,290 –> 00:43:05,730
spiritually wrong in the human psyche,

662
00:43:05,970 –> 00:43:09,770
that’s beyond just arrogance that needs to be corrected

663
00:43:09,770 –> 00:43:13,570
before in essence, the training wheels can be taken off

664
00:43:13,570 –> 00:43:15,650
and we can join everybody else, right?

665
00:43:17,970 –> 00:43:21,710
And I always say to that, and this is why I brought in

666
00:43:21,710 –> 00:43:25,550
Heinlein and conspiracy theories and all this, this is, I always say

667
00:43:25,550 –> 00:43:27,590
to this, I always say this.

668
00:43:31,910 –> 00:43:35,750
I don’t know where we’re at on cultural evolution, but

669
00:43:35,750 –> 00:43:39,350
I do know this on spiritual. We ain’t there yet.

670
00:43:40,550 –> 00:43:44,230
I mean, our pineal gland has been shrinking for the last thousand years.

671
00:43:46,640 –> 00:43:49,200
I mean, there’s there and, and

672
00:43:50,480 –> 00:43:54,160
I mean that’s, that’s. I mean, were we at once, point, one point,

673
00:43:54,160 –> 00:43:57,760
telepathic? I mean, I don’t think it’s beyond the

674
00:43:57,760 –> 00:44:01,520
reason. I mean, they’re starting to see in certain children

675
00:44:01,520 –> 00:44:05,320
with autism that there’s, there’s

676
00:44:05,320 –> 00:44:08,720
a, there’s a telepathic quality that they exhibit

677
00:44:11,360 –> 00:44:15,210
that, you know, if you see that’s all. That’s, that’s some sci fi stuff.

678
00:44:15,210 –> 00:44:18,930
But that’s also same thing. It’s like, is it sci fi stuff

679
00:44:18,930 –> 00:44:22,730
or is it so far away from what

680
00:44:22,730 –> 00:44:25,290
we think is even physically or mentally

681
00:44:26,570 –> 00:44:30,250
possible that you immediately brush it out of the

682
00:44:31,450 –> 00:44:35,050
well? So there’s a, there’s an idea and, and this goes to the second

683
00:44:35,050 –> 00:44:38,830
piece of it. Prepping for a future you don’t understand, right? So

684
00:44:39,230 –> 00:44:42,910
you talk about predictive on AI and everybody’s going crazy about AI right now,

685
00:44:42,910 –> 00:44:46,550
right? And the singularity is near and da da da

686
00:44:46,550 –> 00:44:50,350
da. Okay, well, the reality

687
00:44:50,350 –> 00:44:54,110
of artificial intelligence is this. It’s artificial and it

688
00:44:54,110 –> 00:44:57,750
ain’t intelligent. I use a lot of it in my day to day. I do.

689
00:44:57,750 –> 00:45:01,590
I use a lot of it with clients. It’s artificial, it ain’t intelligent. It’s only

690
00:45:01,590 –> 00:45:05,040
as good as the prompts that I put in into it. And I’m not scared

691
00:45:05,040 –> 00:45:07,480
of it. As a matter of fact, I’m one of those crazy people who says,

692
00:45:07,480 –> 00:45:11,280
let it all out. Don’t hide anything. Let everything out. And by the

693
00:45:11,280 –> 00:45:15,080
way, don’t just let it out to like us first, first world Americans

694
00:45:15,240 –> 00:45:19,000
who have the technology and the technological infrastructure to handle it. No,

695
00:45:19,000 –> 00:45:22,680
no, no, no. Let it out to everybody from like the lowest

696
00:45:22,680 –> 00:45:26,080
homeless person on the street to the Pope in Rome. Let

697
00:45:26,080 –> 00:45:29,600
everybody have a shot at it. Because here’s the thing. I’m going to bet we’re

698
00:45:29,600 –> 00:45:31,400
going to break that thing in about 10 minutes

699
00:45:33,360 –> 00:45:37,160
and it’s going to be some kid in Mumbai. Yeah. Yes. That’s gonna break that

700
00:45:37,160 –> 00:45:40,640
thing in about 10 minutes. Yeah, you’ve seen that. You’ve seen the kid in

701
00:45:40,800 –> 00:45:44,160
Africa who’s building transistors that are old hubcaps and

702
00:45:44,240 –> 00:45:47,120
wire that he found on the ground. Like it’s. There you go.

703
00:45:47,840 –> 00:45:51,520
Yeah. To think that we can

704
00:45:51,520 –> 00:45:55,120
even really even know almost. I don’t want to say

705
00:45:55,120 –> 00:45:58,240
anything, but that’s something that’s so far out of what is

706
00:45:59,130 –> 00:46:02,250
what is currently. Well, we don’t. Right.

707
00:46:02,890 –> 00:46:05,930
Well, we. Well, we don’t. Right. Like, like one of the greatest shows. I mentioned

708
00:46:05,930 –> 00:46:09,530
this in our, in our conversation. Right. One of the greatest shows that’s on, that

709
00:46:09,530 –> 00:46:13,330
was ever on television was Quantum Leap. And

710
00:46:13,330 –> 00:46:17,010
the premise of that show is very simple. You get

711
00:46:17,010 –> 00:46:19,770
into the Quantum Leap chamber and you vanish. Right?

712
00:46:20,570 –> 00:46:24,380
Except here’s the thing. You could travel through time, but

713
00:46:24,380 –> 00:46:26,980
you can only travel through time in your own lifetime.

714
00:46:28,260 –> 00:46:31,220
And there’s a certain conceit in that. That’s brilliant

715
00:46:31,860 –> 00:46:35,580
because Scott Bakula. Great, great. By the way,

716
00:46:35,580 –> 00:46:39,300
the NBC tried to relaunch Quantum Leap and it didn’t work.

717
00:46:39,380 –> 00:46:42,700
I watched like two, four episodes of the new season, like from like two years

718
00:46:42,700 –> 00:46:45,140
ago, and I was like, yeah, forget this. And then I left.

719
00:46:47,380 –> 00:46:51,140
But the, the conceit of that is genius because here’s the reality.

720
00:46:51,350 –> 00:46:54,470
And it goes a little bit to what the AI Ethicist was saying about predictions.

721
00:46:55,510 –> 00:46:59,110
If you were born, think about your own life, right? If you were born

722
00:46:59,350 –> 00:47:03,150
20 years before you were actually born, so think about your birth date and

723
00:47:03,150 –> 00:47:06,910
then they could go back 20 years. If you’ve been born 20 years before then

724
00:47:06,910 –> 00:47:10,670
you’d be a totally different person. Even with all of the things that

725
00:47:10,670 –> 00:47:14,510
have happened to you in your life, everything but

726
00:47:14,510 –> 00:47:18,270
you, you wind that clock back 20 years. Now you’re a

727
00:47:18,270 –> 00:47:21,470
totally different person because you’re coming up under totally different circumstances.

728
00:47:22,350 –> 00:47:26,110
Now think about the year you were born in and wind that clock

729
00:47:26,110 –> 00:47:29,670
forward 20 years. You’re also a

730
00:47:29,670 –> 00:47:33,150
totally, completely different person. For one, you’re 20 years

731
00:47:33,150 –> 00:47:35,550
younger, but

732
00:47:36,910 –> 00:47:40,670
you also came up in a totally different kind of social

733
00:47:40,750 –> 00:47:44,550
culture, spiritual culture, psychological culture. 20 years,

734
00:47:44,790 –> 00:47:47,750
we don’t think as humans at 20 years makes that much of a difference.

735
00:47:48,550 –> 00:47:52,390
But Bradbury understood that it did. Right? And it does make

736
00:47:52,710 –> 00:47:55,590
a bit of a difference, actually makes a lot of a difference. So

737
00:47:57,750 –> 00:48:01,430
I say that to say this, we’ve lived

738
00:48:01,430 –> 00:48:04,870
through four major technological revolutions since the 1990s,

739
00:48:05,110 –> 00:48:08,550
four big ones, and I can name them off. We lived through the Internet.

740
00:48:08,950 –> 00:48:12,300
The Internet was going to change all of our lives. And to a certain degree

741
00:48:12,300 –> 00:48:16,060
it has. I would put the Internet up there with the printing press is

742
00:48:16,060 –> 00:48:19,820
probably the most revolutionary thing that we’ve ever done as human beings. So we’ve got

743
00:48:19,820 –> 00:48:23,580
the Internet. Then social media was going

744
00:48:23,580 –> 00:48:27,419
to change my entire life. Except the reality is it hasn’t really changed my entire

745
00:48:27,419 –> 00:48:30,620
life. It’s really just made the parts of my life that were

746
00:48:30,620 –> 00:48:34,380
interior, now exterior. And that hasn’t really changed anything

747
00:48:34,380 –> 00:48:38,060
for me. There’s still knuckleheads on Facebook, Marketplace, the way they were on

748
00:48:38,060 –> 00:48:41,800
Craigslist were creeping around on chat boards back in the day.

749
00:48:41,800 –> 00:48:45,480
Yahoo. Chatbots. So like that really. But okay, Internet, social media, that

750
00:48:45,480 –> 00:48:48,720
was, that was the second revolution. Third major revolution was

751
00:48:48,720 –> 00:48:52,120
cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. Okay, Remember when all that started, right?

752
00:48:52,280 –> 00:48:56,040
Blockchain, bitcoin, crypto. And this is gradually

753
00:48:56,040 –> 00:48:59,880
starting to move its way through the system. I do think in 20 years

754
00:48:59,960 –> 00:49:03,400
Bitcoin will be in crypto. Cryptocurrencies, not necessarily bitcoin, but

755
00:49:03,400 –> 00:49:07,120
cryptocurrencies of some form or another will be commonplace. But it’s,

756
00:49:07,120 –> 00:49:10,760
it was a slow moving revolution and now we’re into the fourth one.

757
00:49:11,160 –> 00:49:14,800
And this is the AI thing, right, that’s being plugged to

758
00:49:14,800 –> 00:49:18,360
us, right? So Internet, social media, crypto and AI.

759
00:49:19,320 –> 00:49:19,720
And

760
00:49:23,960 –> 00:49:26,920
if I had woke up, if I had, if, if you had woken me up

761
00:49:27,080 –> 00:49:30,440
and told me in 1989 when I was like 10 years old

762
00:49:31,310 –> 00:49:34,030
that those are going to be the four major revolutions of my time,

763
00:49:36,190 –> 00:49:40,030
I, number one, I wouldn’t know what the hell you were talking about. And number

764
00:49:40,030 –> 00:49:43,830
two, I Wouldn’t have believed you. And number three, I would have

765
00:49:43,830 –> 00:49:47,190
gone back to, I don’t know, playing Legos or trying to watch GI Joe or

766
00:49:47,190 –> 00:49:50,270
something. Right. So

767
00:49:51,630 –> 00:49:54,190
I guess maybe the question is,

768
00:49:55,310 –> 00:49:59,150
do science fiction writers have a better handle on predicting the future than the

769
00:49:59,150 –> 00:50:01,810
rest of us because they’re just creative? Or.

770
00:50:04,610 –> 00:50:08,290
Or is it more that because they’re open and free thinking,

771
00:50:09,010 –> 00:50:12,290
they place less boundaries on the spirituality of the human

772
00:50:12,450 –> 00:50:16,130
condition. I think that

773
00:50:18,690 –> 00:50:22,130
writing and reading so much because, I mean, most.

774
00:50:22,290 –> 00:50:25,970
Most writers are, you know, voracious readers

775
00:50:25,970 –> 00:50:29,260
or. And are just taking notes all the time. And

776
00:50:29,660 –> 00:50:33,020
I think when someone is

777
00:50:34,380 –> 00:50:37,580
plugged in to history,

778
00:50:39,260 –> 00:50:42,779
because so I would. 80% of

779
00:50:42,779 –> 00:50:43,820
writing is research.

780
00:50:47,020 –> 00:50:48,860
And through the research

781
00:50:50,620 –> 00:50:53,900
is where I kind of come up with ideas and you make

782
00:50:53,900 –> 00:50:56,340
connections. And so

783
00:50:57,780 –> 00:51:01,380
example, when I was in college, I

784
00:51:01,460 –> 00:51:05,020
figured out at some point that because of

785
00:51:05,020 –> 00:51:08,700
time and the classes I was taking, this

786
00:51:08,700 –> 00:51:10,980
is why I only had to study one subject.

787
00:51:13,300 –> 00:51:15,060
I figured out how to combine

788
00:51:17,540 –> 00:51:21,150
the crossover in subjects with whether it be

789
00:51:22,750 –> 00:51:26,030
English, psychology, public relations.

790
00:51:29,070 –> 00:51:32,870
There’s a thread that goes through all those. And what I was thinking Spanish

791
00:51:32,870 –> 00:51:36,030
in college. I mean, you could. Even if you got the right

792
00:51:36,750 –> 00:51:37,150
book

793
00:51:43,230 –> 00:51:46,750
to help link those things together, you can kind of study.

794
00:51:46,990 –> 00:51:50,780
All can study multiple ideas at

795
00:51:50,780 –> 00:51:54,620
the same time because there’s so much crossover. So it’s not necessarily the

796
00:51:54,620 –> 00:51:57,540
details of the information. It’s.

797
00:51:59,060 –> 00:52:01,940
It’s seeing it. It’s. It’s like pattern detection

798
00:52:03,779 –> 00:52:07,620
and understanding how. And. And seeing how it

799
00:52:07,620 –> 00:52:11,380
applies to almost each generation or

800
00:52:11,380 –> 00:52:15,180
each, Each period of time that it’s coming from and how it’s

801
00:52:15,180 –> 00:52:16,100
relevant in.

802
00:52:19,530 –> 00:52:23,250
And I think that’s. I mean, that’s what this book does. That’s what it’s. There’s

803
00:52:23,250 –> 00:52:26,730
a timelessness to this because you see the human

804
00:52:26,730 –> 00:52:30,410
arrogance. You see, you know, the displacement. You see the

805
00:52:30,410 –> 00:52:34,170
disregard for nature. You see the,

806
00:52:34,170 –> 00:52:36,250
the, the. The disregard for

807
00:52:38,970 –> 00:52:42,490
caring, just caring almost because

808
00:52:42,490 –> 00:52:46,310
it’s, you know, Park Hill yells, this is all mine.

809
00:52:46,310 –> 00:52:50,110
This is, you know, like, I did this and whatever. It’s like, did

810
00:52:50,110 –> 00:52:53,830
you. You know, and that’s. Someone told me years

811
00:52:53,830 –> 00:52:57,390
ago there was. And this. There’s some truth. But like in

812
00:52:57,390 –> 00:53:00,030
aa, you know, and I know publicly,

813
00:53:00,910 –> 00:53:04,550
but it. AA is. Someone told me years ago, it’s like

814
00:53:04,550 –> 00:53:07,710
it works so well to help people stop drinking

815
00:53:08,350 –> 00:53:12,040
that the people, like, people started to think

816
00:53:12,040 –> 00:53:15,880
they did it. All right. Okay. Yeah. And so

817
00:53:15,880 –> 00:53:19,240
it’s like, wait a minute. You’re kind of disconnected from reality, because

818
00:53:19,800 –> 00:53:23,600
I need to be the center of the universe, and so I am

819
00:53:23,600 –> 00:53:27,160
the master of my domain and X, Y and Z. However, the

820
00:53:27,160 –> 00:53:31,000
freedom, as you know, the freedom comes in

821
00:53:31,000 –> 00:53:34,520
surrendering. Right? Yeah. And so

822
00:53:35,170 –> 00:53:38,530
if that’s what the Martians do,

823
00:53:39,410 –> 00:53:43,210
they give them the deeds. They don’t surrender in

824
00:53:43,210 –> 00:53:47,010
the sense of militarily. They surrender

825
00:53:47,650 –> 00:53:51,450
I think because they have enough foresight

826
00:53:51,450 –> 00:53:53,490
to understand that it’s not going to be worth their time.

827
00:53:58,850 –> 00:54:02,650
And you’re talking to interplanetary. So this is. I haven’t shared

828
00:54:02,650 –> 00:54:06,170
this with anyone but years

829
00:54:06,170 –> 00:54:08,690
ago I had a. As. As

830
00:54:09,650 –> 00:54:13,410
maybe when. So I, I started doing a. I did a

831
00:54:13,410 –> 00:54:17,170
paper at Rutgers on. On.

832
00:54:18,850 –> 00:54:22,370
It was something within environmentalism

833
00:54:22,530 –> 00:54:25,730
and global warming. Sumatra and Borneo

834
00:54:26,210 –> 00:54:28,530
and that entire area of the world.

835
00:54:30,260 –> 00:54:32,260
And so I started doing a lot of research

836
00:54:34,820 –> 00:54:38,580
like doomsday environmentalists. There’s been people since the

837
00:54:38,580 –> 00:54:42,180
60s saying there’s only 10 years left, there’s only 10 years left.

838
00:54:42,260 –> 00:54:45,460
And they’re almost pissed off when they’re wrong

839
00:54:46,100 –> 00:54:49,900
because they’re completely null and void. Their entire identity and

840
00:54:49,900 –> 00:54:53,140
their worldview investing so much in something

841
00:54:53,620 –> 00:54:57,180
that is impossible to predict.

842
00:54:58,380 –> 00:55:01,900
And, and it gives people an identity. And once.

843
00:55:04,060 –> 00:55:06,540
You’Re. Yeah, yeah, you remove an identity from someone

844
00:55:07,820 –> 00:55:11,420
then it’s. I mean they’re grasping at straws. You see people in

845
00:55:11,420 –> 00:55:15,020
this book as they’re this.

846
00:55:15,020 –> 00:55:18,060
There’s a few characters who. They start to lose it.

847
00:55:19,260 –> 00:55:22,790
They’re talking to themselves, they’re talking to. And it’s because

848
00:55:23,670 –> 00:55:26,630
the reality is not necessarily

849
00:55:29,430 –> 00:55:33,070
linked to any. Any foundational. And this is where the

850
00:55:33,070 –> 00:55:36,750
spirituality comes. And this is where. That’s why I brought up

851
00:55:36,750 –> 00:55:40,550
the Buddhists and going to. Because if Buddhists met that first group

852
00:55:40,550 –> 00:55:44,350
of Martians and it was because

853
00:55:44,350 –> 00:55:47,750
they seem for all intents and purposes like almost like a wealthy. And the great

854
00:55:47,750 –> 00:55:51,500
ones, the spear orbs and that it seems

855
00:55:51,500 –> 00:55:54,300
like they were way more willing to kind of accept people

856
00:55:55,500 –> 00:55:59,340
in. And the reason that they were shape shifting and.

857
00:55:59,340 –> 00:56:02,940
And doing that stuff was to help bring

858
00:56:02,940 –> 00:56:06,300
light and to the dysfunction of

859
00:56:06,700 –> 00:56:10,500
the society they were leaving and recreating on another planet. Although

860
00:56:10,500 –> 00:56:11,180
the Martians.

861
00:56:15,590 –> 00:56:19,310
Well, it’s interesting that you. It’s interesting that you bring up the Buddhist because you

862
00:56:19,310 –> 00:56:23,030
just clicked over something in my head. So Bradbury

863
00:56:23,030 –> 00:56:26,270
is writing these stories and projecting forward into the future in the 40s and the

864
00:56:26,270 –> 00:56:29,829
50s. Right. And even into the 60s. And that is during a

865
00:56:29,829 –> 00:56:33,270
time of particular. Particularly Post World War II

866
00:56:34,550 –> 00:56:37,750
is a time of particular cultural and social

867
00:56:37,990 –> 00:56:41,600
conformity that occurred at a

868
00:56:41,600 –> 00:56:45,320
level that both the naive of our time who would like to

869
00:56:45,320 –> 00:56:48,960
return to that era misunderstand as

870
00:56:49,040 –> 00:56:52,760
well, as the rebellious of our time, who are consistently

871
00:56:52,760 –> 00:56:55,920
fighting against that error in their heads, also misunderstand.

872
00:56:56,720 –> 00:57:00,320
Right. So they both miss both the rebellious and the naive miss this.

873
00:57:01,760 –> 00:57:05,570
And Bradbury, along with many other writers, was. Was writing in

874
00:57:05,570 –> 00:57:09,290
opposition to this conformity which this

875
00:57:09,290 –> 00:57:13,130
cultural suffocation came from, in

876
00:57:13,130 –> 00:57:16,170
their opinion. And by the way, this is not just Bradbury. Heinlein was writing in

877
00:57:16,170 –> 00:57:19,770
this MO Too, came from the

878
00:57:19,770 –> 00:57:23,290
presence of American evangelical Christianity,

879
00:57:23,850 –> 00:57:26,570
the consistent boogeyman underneath everybody’s bed.

880
00:57:27,930 –> 00:57:31,570
And the assumption, of course, that Bradbury is

881
00:57:31,570 –> 00:57:35,410
writing with is that American astronauts

882
00:57:35,650 –> 00:57:39,330
or settlers going to Mars will have a default of

883
00:57:39,330 –> 00:57:41,570
evangelical Christianity inside of them.

884
00:57:43,410 –> 00:57:47,250
And, and I want to laugh because

885
00:57:47,250 –> 00:57:49,650
as I said on the Stranger in a Strange Land episode,

886
00:57:51,570 –> 00:57:54,130
the American evangelicals have lost the argument.

887
00:57:55,650 –> 00:57:59,490
They’re not a cultural power in America. It only took 80 years.

888
00:58:00,090 –> 00:58:03,850
It took 80 years of revolution and rebellion and banging on them, calling

889
00:58:03,850 –> 00:58:07,290
out hypocrisy. And sure, you could talk about regions in the country

890
00:58:07,610 –> 00:58:11,250
maybe, and sure, you can make whatever allusions you want to make to

891
00:58:11,250 –> 00:58:14,930
political parties and whoever’s in the White House, but the

892
00:58:14,930 –> 00:58:18,650
fact of the matter is that with the death of the Moral Majority at the

893
00:58:18,650 –> 00:58:22,170
end of the 90s, we have now been 25 years away

894
00:58:22,170 –> 00:58:25,810
from Christianity having any cultural weight in the

895
00:58:25,810 –> 00:58:29,180
United States. So we are far more likely to

896
00:58:29,180 –> 00:58:32,860
send to Mars a

897
00:58:32,860 –> 00:58:35,420
person who has the. The. The

898
00:58:37,100 –> 00:58:40,700
positioning of a secular

899
00:58:40,780 –> 00:58:44,340
atheist Darwinist as their default

900
00:58:44,340 –> 00:58:48,060
setting without even thinking about it. Then we do a

901
00:58:48,060 –> 00:58:51,500
person who has a default setting of American fundamentalist

902
00:58:51,500 –> 00:58:55,170
evangelical Christianity. That’s number one. Number two in

903
00:58:55,170 –> 00:58:58,250
Stranger in a Strange Land, by the way, Heinlein took on this directly.

904
00:58:59,050 –> 00:59:02,810
He goes, of course, directly after all this with the foster rights and all that.

905
00:59:02,890 –> 00:59:05,770
But it’s interesting. He picked the Muslim,

906
00:59:07,690 –> 00:59:11,210
curiously enough, and we talked a lot about this on that episode, so I don’t

907
00:59:11,210 –> 00:59:14,690
want to revisit that. But he picked the Muslim as a person who was willing

908
00:59:14,690 –> 00:59:18,370
to renounce Islam and go join the man from Mars in

909
00:59:18,370 –> 00:59:22,060
his discipline. Right? Except the reality

910
00:59:22,060 –> 00:59:23,940
is, again, 80 years down the road.

911
00:59:28,740 –> 00:59:31,940
That ain’t anyone.

912
00:59:32,340 –> 00:59:35,940
That’s not what’s going on. And that’s not. I mean, look,

913
00:59:35,940 –> 00:59:39,660
hey, look, you know what? Maybe I missed it, but the

914
00:59:39,660 –> 00:59:43,300
last imam I heard from in, in

915
00:59:43,300 –> 00:59:47,030
the Netherlands and in London was cocking and crowing

916
00:59:47,030 –> 00:59:50,510
about how they’re going to be having the call to

917
00:59:50,510 –> 00:59:54,030
prayer all over Europe in the next 10 years.

918
00:59:54,350 –> 00:59:57,910
And, like, everybody’s just going to bend the knee from

919
00:59:57,910 –> 01:00:01,550
England all the way. All the way, you know, east to Germany.

920
01:00:02,670 –> 01:00:05,910
So. You bring up

921
01:00:05,910 –> 01:00:09,670
Buddhism. That’s interesting. I don’t think the Germans

922
01:00:09,670 –> 01:00:13,490
are gonna. Well, they’re. There’s

923
01:00:13,490 –> 01:00:16,610
a lot of. There’s a lot of cultural. There’s a. So. So what. What you

924
01:00:16,610 –> 01:00:20,330
are seeing what is happening at a. At a larger geopolitical level.

925
01:00:20,330 –> 01:00:22,570
And I don’t want to go too deep into this because there’s a part of

926
01:00:22,570 –> 01:00:26,010
the book I really want to get to before we close our. Our conversation today.

927
01:00:26,970 –> 01:00:30,570
At a larger geopolitical level. What you see happening with.

928
01:00:30,570 –> 01:00:34,090
Particularly with migration and things like that that are happening around the world in

929
01:00:34,410 –> 01:00:37,970
opposition to migration is you are seeing an equal and

930
01:00:37,970 –> 01:00:41,470
opposite reaction to the position of political

931
01:00:41,630 –> 01:00:45,430
elites who believe that one human being is just as good as

932
01:00:45,430 –> 01:00:48,350
another human being in one place or another. It doesn’t matter.

933
01:00:49,230 –> 01:00:52,470
And the people are pushing back on this, saying, no, no, no, no, no, no,

934
01:00:52,470 –> 01:00:55,310
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I come from a particular

935
01:00:55,390 –> 01:00:59,110
place. To your point about human arrogance, I come from a particular place that has

936
01:00:59,110 –> 01:01:02,670
particular identity with particular traditions, particular duh, duh, duh. And if you try to

937
01:01:02,670 –> 01:01:05,710
erode that from me, I’m going to say no.

938
01:01:07,380 –> 01:01:10,380
Whether that’s good or bad, we can argue that we could. That’s probably a discussion

939
01:01:10,380 –> 01:01:14,020
worth having. But that’s the grounding force. That’s the foundation,

940
01:01:14,580 –> 01:01:18,100
right? That’s the grounding force. Correct? Right. The grounding force for a

941
01:01:18,100 –> 01:01:21,820
Martian, to your point, and Bradbury got this, the grounding force

942
01:01:21,820 –> 01:01:25,260
for the Martian is something totally different, just like the grounding force for a

943
01:01:25,260 –> 01:01:29,020
Venusian or the grounding force for a Jupiterian or the grounding

944
01:01:29,020 –> 01:01:32,180
force for a Saturnian. Right. I’m more curious

945
01:01:32,820 –> 01:01:35,860
about who’s in my neighborhood than I am

946
01:01:36,420 –> 01:01:40,100
about who’s on, like, dark matter star number 99

947
01:01:40,100 –> 01:01:43,940
somewhere. Because those people in my neighborhood, I don’t

948
01:01:43,940 –> 01:01:47,220
know their grounding. I don’t know what the grounding is of people on Mars. I

949
01:01:47,220 –> 01:01:50,660
don’t know what the grounding is of people on Saturn or on Jupiter. I don’t

950
01:01:50,660 –> 01:01:54,300
know what the grounding is of whatever spiritual entities may be

951
01:01:54,300 –> 01:01:58,060
floating around Neptune. Right. Like,

952
01:01:58,060 –> 01:02:00,420
I don’t know what their spiritual grounding is. I don’t know what their physical grounding.

953
01:02:00,420 –> 01:02:03,020
I don’t know if they have any. I don’t even know if I can communicate

954
01:02:03,020 –> 01:02:06,860
with them in a meaningful way. And

955
01:02:06,860 –> 01:02:10,700
so all of this comes in, and I agree that

956
01:02:10,700 –> 01:02:14,140
if we’d sent Buddhists, if

957
01:02:14,140 –> 01:02:17,940
Bradbury had sent Buddhists to Mars, maybe the outcome would

958
01:02:17,940 –> 01:02:21,380
have been different. Or maybe the human grounding

959
01:02:22,340 –> 01:02:26,100
that appears different to us and all these identities isn’t really that

960
01:02:26,100 –> 01:02:29,940
different at all. And maybe that’s part of what Bradbury is getting to. I don’t

961
01:02:29,940 –> 01:02:33,620
know. Okay. Yeah. No, I mean that. It’s. I was

962
01:02:33,620 –> 01:02:36,580
watching an interview the other day and, and you know, it’s, it’s,

963
01:02:37,380 –> 01:02:41,180
you know the argument of, like, it’s, it’s the, it’s all the same

964
01:02:41,180 –> 01:02:44,860
God. Right? Yeah. Okay. It’s just, you know, it’s not, it’s. It

965
01:02:44,860 –> 01:02:48,620
ain’t me. Right? You ain’t God. I’m not God. Like

966
01:02:48,620 –> 01:02:51,700
there’s something. And, and that’s it. And, and,

967
01:02:52,500 –> 01:02:56,110
and grocking that point

968
01:02:57,390 –> 01:03:00,750
to not to Highland is.

969
01:03:01,150 –> 01:03:04,910
That’s a wonderful place to meet is like, I, I believe in a

970
01:03:04,910 –> 01:03:08,030
spiritual entity. I believe in a higher power that is not me.

971
01:03:08,510 –> 01:03:10,670
And instead of saying, well,

972
01:03:12,590 –> 01:03:14,910
you don’t work on Sunday,

973
01:03:16,270 –> 01:03:19,150
I don’t work on. Or I don’t work on Saturday, you don’t work on Sunday,

974
01:03:20,110 –> 01:03:23,760
like that doesn’t become a point of

975
01:03:23,760 –> 01:03:27,400
contention. It’s just a, A little matter

976
01:03:27,400 –> 01:03:30,440
of shift in perspective or the details a little bit different.

977
01:03:32,280 –> 01:03:36,000
And if it was sort of opened up a little more and that

978
01:03:36,000 –> 01:03:39,720
was the start of the conversation, I don’t think the differences would be so

979
01:03:40,360 –> 01:03:43,840
harmful. Right, right. Or so, or perhaps even maybe so

980
01:03:43,840 –> 01:03:47,580
stark. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

981
01:03:47,580 –> 01:03:50,740
So there is a piece in here that I want to, I want to get

982
01:03:50,740 –> 01:03:53,980
your, your thoughts on. So. Way in the middle of the air.

983
01:03:54,300 –> 01:03:57,340
So in my edition, it’s June 2003.

984
01:03:58,460 –> 01:04:01,900
And this is the, this is the, this is the story

985
01:04:02,140 –> 01:04:05,580
of. Well, it’s a story of an exodus such as it were

986
01:04:06,380 –> 01:04:10,060
speaking about. Leaving.

987
01:04:17,270 –> 01:04:20,630
Yeah, go ahead. So the thing that I, I,

988
01:04:21,270 –> 01:04:24,390
I didn’t share. So

989
01:04:25,430 –> 01:04:29,110
a few years ago, the, you know, the, the global warming, blah, blah.

990
01:04:29,270 –> 01:04:30,790
I started to think, wait a minute.

991
01:04:33,830 –> 01:04:37,670
Humans. Or I’m gonna say because humans. Because we could be, we could be

992
01:04:38,080 –> 01:04:41,680
relatives of. Who knows? Okay.

993
01:04:41,680 –> 01:04:44,800
Yeah. So whatever that was,

994
01:04:46,160 –> 01:04:49,520
let’s just say here. So humans did to Venus

995
01:04:50,560 –> 01:04:53,680
what we’re doing to the Earth now.

996
01:04:54,560 –> 01:04:58,320
And maybe before the Earth

997
01:04:58,560 –> 01:05:02,400
was terraformed and water and had an atmosphere, the

998
01:05:02,400 –> 01:05:04,590
Venusians went to Mars.

999
01:05:06,030 –> 01:05:09,750
Oh, yes, I’ve heard this before. Yes. And so. And then you

1000
01:05:09,750 –> 01:05:12,910
burn Mars out and then Earth is ready and we’re.

1001
01:05:14,830 –> 01:05:18,070
Well, and in that case, I mean, I’ve, I have heard that before. You’re not

1002
01:05:18,070 –> 01:05:21,430
the first person I’ve heard that from. And in that case, I always say, well,

1003
01:05:21,430 –> 01:05:23,550
we better get to Step it on Jupiter, then,

1004
01:05:25,230 –> 01:05:28,670
like, we better get. We forget Mars. Like that. That’s. Please, like.

1005
01:05:28,750 –> 01:05:32,510
And that’s where. Like, what is it? It’s not 2001. 2000. Is

1006
01:05:32,510 –> 01:05:36,150
it 2010? It’s 2010 where he winds up on

1007
01:05:36,150 –> 01:05:39,150
Jupiter, right? I think it’s 2010.

1008
01:05:39,790 –> 01:05:43,190
It’s one of those 2001 Space Odyssey sequel

1009
01:05:43,190 –> 01:05:46,310
books that Arthur C. Clarke wrote. It’s either 2010 or

1010
01:05:46,310 –> 01:05:50,070
2040 where he winds up on Jupiter or they go

1011
01:05:50,070 –> 01:05:53,510
to the outer planets or something. Because the

1012
01:05:53,510 –> 01:05:57,270
original Dave with the monolith somehow

1013
01:05:57,270 –> 01:06:00,950
goes inside the monolith. I might be confusing the Kubrick movie with the book. I

1014
01:06:00,950 –> 01:06:03,550
might be. I might be merging those two things in my head. But I know

1015
01:06:03,550 –> 01:06:05,850
at some point Arthur C. Clarke had that

1016
01:06:07,290 –> 01:06:11,130
had humans voyaging to Jupiter

1017
01:06:11,850 –> 01:06:15,490
and either planning to put a probe on

1018
01:06:15,490 –> 01:06:18,090
Jupiter to terraform the planet or

1019
01:06:19,530 –> 01:06:23,370
trying to terraform one of the moons. Can’t remember.

1020
01:06:23,370 –> 01:06:27,130
But it’ll come back to me. We’ll be on Europa in no time. Yeah, yeah,

1021
01:06:27,130 –> 01:06:30,690
yeah. It’ll all work out. Or IO maybe. I hear that’s a volcanic

1022
01:06:30,690 –> 01:06:34,350
planet. It might be warm enough for life. Might actually be water underneath

1023
01:06:34,350 –> 01:06:38,150
there. So, yeah. So I want to pick this up

1024
01:06:38,150 –> 01:06:41,950
again as we round the corner towards the end of our conversation today. This is

1025
01:06:41,950 –> 01:06:45,670
from way in the middle of the air, a story that is. That, for me,

1026
01:06:45,670 –> 01:06:49,350
is quite unique in science fiction. I’ve

1027
01:06:49,350 –> 01:06:52,830
read a fair bit of science fiction. I’ve watched a fair bit of science

1028
01:06:52,830 –> 01:06:56,670
fiction. And science fiction always struggles, with the exception of Star Trek, that’s the

1029
01:06:56,670 –> 01:07:00,190
outlier, tends to struggle with, well,

1030
01:07:00,430 –> 01:07:03,150
race. Also class.

1031
01:07:04,190 –> 01:07:07,710
But primarily in an American context. Most American

1032
01:07:07,790 –> 01:07:11,630
science fiction tends to struggle with race. What are all

1033
01:07:11,630 –> 01:07:14,350
these racial groups going to do? How are they going to engage in the technology?

1034
01:07:15,710 –> 01:07:19,550
And Bradbury came up with a clever conclusion. And this was part of it.

1035
01:07:19,550 –> 01:07:21,870
So let me read. Let me just read a few pieces of this.

1036
01:07:23,640 –> 01:07:27,400
Far up the street, the levee seemed to have broken. The black warm waters

1037
01:07:27,400 –> 01:07:30,840
descended and engulfed the town. Between the blazing white banks of the town

1038
01:07:30,840 –> 01:07:34,640
stores, among the tree silences, a black tide flowed like

1039
01:07:34,640 –> 01:07:38,440
a kind of summer molasses. It poured turgidly forth upon the cinnamon dusty

1040
01:07:38,440 –> 01:07:42,160
road. It surged slow, slow. And it was men and women and horses

1041
01:07:42,160 –> 01:07:45,880
and barking dogs and it was little boys and girls. And from the

1042
01:07:45,880 –> 01:07:49,110
mouths of the people partaking of this tide came the sound of a river, a

1043
01:07:49,110 –> 01:07:52,830
summer day river going somewhere, murmuring and irrevocable. And in

1044
01:07:52,830 –> 01:07:56,310
that slow, steady channel of darkness that cut across the white glare of day were

1045
01:07:56,310 –> 01:08:00,030
touches of alert white, the eyes, the ivory eyes staring

1046
01:08:00,030 –> 01:08:03,830
ahead, glancing aside as the river, the long and endless river, took itself

1047
01:08:03,830 –> 01:08:07,550
from old channels into a new one for

1048
01:08:07,550 –> 01:08:11,310
various and uncountable tributaries and creeks and brooks of color and motion. The parts of

1049
01:08:11,310 –> 01:08:14,790
this river had joined, becoming one mother current and flowed on and

1050
01:08:14,790 –> 01:08:18,329
brimming the swell where things carried by the river, grandfather

1051
01:08:18,329 –> 01:08:21,729
clocks chiming, kitchen clocks ticking, caged heads screaming, babies

1052
01:08:21,729 –> 01:08:25,449
wailing and swimming among the thickened eddies where mules and cats

1053
01:08:25,449 –> 01:08:28,729
and sudden excursions of burst mattress springs floating by,

1054
01:08:29,689 –> 01:08:33,529
insane hair stuffing sticking out and boxes and crates and pictures of dark

1055
01:08:33,529 –> 01:08:36,329
grandfathers in oak frames, the river flowing on,

1056
01:08:36,969 –> 01:08:40,649
flowing it on, while the men sat like nervous hounds on the hardware porch,

1057
01:08:41,129 –> 01:08:44,930
too late to mend the levee, their hands empty.

1058
01:08:46,290 –> 01:08:49,970
Samuel T.S. wouldn’t believe it. Why the hell where’d they get the transportation?

1059
01:08:50,050 –> 01:08:53,490
How they going to get to Mars? Rockets, said

1060
01:08:53,490 –> 01:08:57,170
Grandpa Quartermain. All the damn fool things.

1061
01:08:57,170 –> 01:09:00,690
Where’d they get rockets? Saved their money and built them.

1062
01:09:01,170 –> 01:09:04,530
I never heard about it. Seems these kept it a secret.

1063
01:09:04,690 –> 01:09:07,970
Worked on the rockets all themselves. I don’t know where. In Africa, maybe?

1064
01:09:08,780 –> 01:09:12,540
Could they do that? Demanded Samuel T. Pacing about the porch.

1065
01:09:12,540 –> 01:09:16,220
Ain’t there a law? It ain’t as if they’re declaring war,

1066
01:09:16,860 –> 01:09:19,420
grandpa declared quietly.

1067
01:09:22,620 –> 01:09:26,140
This is one of the more stunning stories in the history of science fiction.

1068
01:09:27,500 –> 01:09:31,100
It’s. It’s subtle. It’s very

1069
01:09:31,100 –> 01:09:34,460
subtle. Yeah, even though it’s, it’s, it’s, it seems kind of like,

1070
01:09:34,780 –> 01:09:38,060
like really obvious. But there’s so many subtleties

1071
01:09:38,540 –> 01:09:40,300
within that little bit that you read.

1072
01:09:42,140 –> 01:09:45,940
It is. And then, you know, you go into the the one of the

1073
01:09:45,940 –> 01:09:49,700
men having an objection, you know, the objection of the overseer over the

1074
01:09:49,700 –> 01:09:53,500
slave realizing that the slaves could just leave, but not just leave and go to

1075
01:09:53,500 –> 01:09:57,340
the well, as Chris Rock might joke. But leave the and not

1076
01:09:57,340 –> 01:10:00,820
just leave the plantation and go someplace else on the same continent. No, no, no,

1077
01:10:00,820 –> 01:10:04,440
no no. Not just that. No, no no no. The the

1078
01:10:04,440 –> 01:10:08,080
slave is leaving the planet. The the

1079
01:10:08,080 –> 01:10:11,800
imagery that came into my head because I’m currently

1080
01:10:11,880 –> 01:10:15,520
in my Bible in a year reading. I’m currently, for better or

1081
01:10:15,520 –> 01:10:17,720
worse, trapped in the book of Ezekiel

1082
01:10:19,560 –> 01:10:23,400
in the Old Testament. This will be my third or fourth time

1083
01:10:23,400 –> 01:10:27,160
through the Bible in a year. I recommend everybody do it. Even if

1084
01:10:27,160 –> 01:10:30,990
you don’t believe, just get the book under your belt. It’s good to get the

1085
01:10:30,990 –> 01:10:34,790
book under your belt. But. But I’m reminded of

1086
01:10:34,790 –> 01:10:38,470
the Exodus, how the Exodus is described in the Old Testament,

1087
01:10:38,470 –> 01:10:41,910
right, where there’s a great line in the

1088
01:10:41,910 –> 01:10:44,430
Exodus where basically the Egyptians

1089
01:10:45,150 –> 01:10:48,790
throw gold and jewels and baubles

1090
01:10:48,790 –> 01:10:52,430
and stuff at the, at the, at the Jewish, the Israelite slaves

1091
01:10:52,670 –> 01:10:56,400
as they literally walk out of town. And of course,

1092
01:10:56,800 –> 01:11:00,640
you know, just as in previous

1093
01:11:00,720 –> 01:11:02,480
tales referencing other things.

1094
01:11:04,560 –> 01:11:08,200
The. Allusions in this story are to the

1095
01:11:08,200 –> 01:11:11,840
exodus of the Jewish people from, from

1096
01:11:11,840 –> 01:11:15,560
Egypt. And Bradbury would have known that his audience would have recognized those

1097
01:11:15,560 –> 01:11:19,080
illusions or would have, or would have at least caught on to them because we

1098
01:11:19,080 –> 01:11:22,840
had a more bibly literate country at that time. Whether they, whether people

1099
01:11:22,840 –> 01:11:25,720
believed in it or not is a whole different thing altogether. But they, they were

1100
01:11:25,720 –> 01:11:29,200
biblically literate. They knew the stories. Right. As an

1101
01:11:29,200 –> 01:11:32,960
underpinning to make references to other things. Okay, well,

1102
01:11:33,200 –> 01:11:36,080
it’s interesting to note that he combines this

1103
01:11:36,720 –> 01:11:38,720
together with his thoughts on

1104
01:11:40,640 –> 01:11:43,680
segregation, on oppression, on

1105
01:11:43,840 –> 01:11:46,800
slavery, on black and white relations.

1106
01:11:47,940 –> 01:11:51,300
And of course the story ends with

1107
01:11:53,140 –> 01:11:56,980
the rocket closing up and everybody, all the black people

1108
01:11:56,980 –> 01:11:59,140
just taking off and leaving.

1109
01:12:01,620 –> 01:12:04,100
And of course for me, the

1110
01:12:05,460 –> 01:12:09,300
irony in this story is Bradbury doesn’t write a follow up to it. As a

1111
01:12:09,300 –> 01:12:12,340
matter of fact, in most of the other stories that follow on in the novel,

1112
01:12:12,740 –> 01:12:16,590
he doesn’t even make a reference to it. Yeah, yeah, it’s gone.

1113
01:12:16,750 –> 01:12:20,550
It’s gone. It’s completely gone. Well,

1114
01:12:20,550 –> 01:12:24,230
I mean, is that, I mean, is there, I mean the,

1115
01:12:24,230 –> 01:12:27,990
the like Moses was, it was a call in. Oh,

1116
01:12:27,990 –> 01:12:30,190
he was. And

1117
01:12:32,670 –> 01:12:36,070
so when you said, you know, you, you know, you personally would have stayed if

1118
01:12:36,070 –> 01:12:39,830
you were. Oh yeah, there. So you’re right, he doesn’t

1119
01:12:39,830 –> 01:12:42,270
write another thing. So you don’t know. There could, there could have been a calling

1120
01:12:43,120 –> 01:12:46,640
to go back to, to go back to Earth for some,

1121
01:12:47,600 –> 01:12:51,360
you know, particular. Right,

1122
01:12:51,360 –> 01:12:55,200
but like why would you. Well, why. And I give it.

1123
01:12:55,200 –> 01:12:58,439
Even if. Let’s, let’s, let’s be. Remember I said the whole thing about Quantum leap,

1124
01:12:58,439 –> 01:13:02,280
right? 20 years one way, 20 years the other. Okay, so I

1125
01:13:02,280 –> 01:13:02,960
was born

1126
01:13:07,520 –> 01:13:11,130
15 years. Year. No, 10 years.

1127
01:13:12,010 –> 01:13:15,770
10 years. I was born 10 years after the height of the civil rights movement.

1128
01:13:16,330 –> 01:13:17,210
10 years after

1129
01:13:20,410 –> 01:13:24,210
that is enough time with enough things having changed to

1130
01:13:24,210 –> 01:13:27,810
where now that was when I was born. To where, When I came of

1131
01:13:27,810 –> 01:13:31,610
age. Right. Or came into my manhood 10 years after.

1132
01:13:31,770 –> 01:13:35,450
20 years after that I was there. Right,

1133
01:13:35,450 –> 01:13:38,250
exactly. The, the, the,

1134
01:13:39,050 –> 01:13:42,010
the results of the civil rights movement

1135
01:13:43,850 –> 01:13:47,050
had, had flowed down to me.

1136
01:13:47,370 –> 01:13:51,170
Right. But the, and we explore this

1137
01:13:51,170 –> 01:13:53,850
sometimes when we, when we read books during Black History Month.

1138
01:13:55,050 –> 01:13:58,610
The, the, the, the I can appreciate the

1139
01:13:58,610 –> 01:14:02,460
energy of the folks who came before. But I got bigger

1140
01:14:02,460 –> 01:14:06,300
problems right now, right? I got to deal with. I don’t have Eldridge Cleaver

1141
01:14:06,300 –> 01:14:09,620
problems, let’s put it that way. Right. I got different kinds of problems, right?

1142
01:14:10,100 –> 01:14:13,780
And if I’m on Mars and my, my mother or my

1143
01:14:13,780 –> 01:14:16,020
father left Earth 20 years ago.

1144
01:14:19,780 –> 01:14:23,060
What are the. What’s. Yeah, what’s. What’s that going to look like? What’s that going

1145
01:14:23,060 –> 01:14:26,420
to look like? And of course, Bradbury is. Bradbury is mute on this and again,

1146
01:14:26,500 –> 01:14:30,180
curiously mute because, like, he references. So remember

1147
01:14:30,340 –> 01:14:34,180
the story of the man who, after the first exodus away from Earth,

1148
01:14:34,900 –> 01:14:37,460
he finds the one telephone that works on Mars

1149
01:14:39,780 –> 01:14:42,500
and he answers it. And then he goes and meets the woman.

1150
01:14:43,620 –> 01:14:47,460
Genevieve. Genevieve, right. It turns out Genevieve is a mess.

1151
01:14:52,020 –> 01:14:55,700
He gets in his car and drives. As fast

1152
01:14:55,700 –> 01:14:58,580
as he can. He drives 10,000 miles away.

1153
01:15:00,810 –> 01:15:04,650
And then later on, later on he is referenced in a

1154
01:15:04,650 –> 01:15:06,490
story where

1155
01:15:08,330 –> 01:15:12,170
like a third expedition comes to Mars and

1156
01:15:12,170 –> 01:15:15,570
they, they find him and he’s. He’s on a rocking chair in the middle of

1157
01:15:15,570 –> 01:15:19,130
a long abandoned superhighway. And they ask him, do you want to be picked up

1158
01:15:19,130 –> 01:15:21,210
and taken to the other side of the planet? And he goes, nope, I’m

1159
01:15:21,210 –> 01:15:24,350
fine.

1160
01:15:25,620 –> 01:15:29,340
Oh, by the way, I cracked up. I did. I cracked up. I.

1161
01:15:29,340 –> 01:15:33,140
And, and again, Bradbury is visiting something. He’s visiting a

1162
01:15:33,140 –> 01:15:36,900
theme about male and female relationships, right? Even on

1163
01:15:36,900 –> 01:15:40,299
a dead planet that is absolutely, positively

1164
01:15:40,299 –> 01:15:44,060
abandoned. Even

1165
01:15:44,060 –> 01:15:47,860
if you’re the last woman on Earth. I wouldn’t. Or

1166
01:15:47,860 –> 01:15:51,490
a Mars. The last one on Mars. I would not entertain saying the idea

1167
01:15:51,490 –> 01:15:54,450
of. Yeah, that’s. That’s pretty powerful, man.

1168
01:15:55,010 –> 01:15:58,690
That’s. That’s pretty powerful. I gotta admit, I did. I cracked up

1169
01:15:58,690 –> 01:16:00,610
laughing. I did. I cracked him laughing.

1170
01:16:02,450 –> 01:16:06,130
Because it’s so. It’S so raw to the truth

1171
01:16:07,010 –> 01:16:10,050
of interpersonal, you know, relations

1172
01:16:10,530 –> 01:16:14,330
between men and women. And then he

1173
01:16:14,330 –> 01:16:18,120
goes raw to the truth on the exodus part, right.

1174
01:16:18,600 –> 01:16:22,280
Of interpersonal relationships between the races, particularly

1175
01:16:22,280 –> 01:16:26,080
in a, in a, in a, in a historical time. That’s

1176
01:16:26,080 –> 01:16:29,880
a historical snapshot. But then he

1177
01:16:29,880 –> 01:16:32,440
has no follow up to that. And I don’t know why. I would love to

1178
01:16:32,440 –> 01:16:36,280
ask him. I would have loved to have asked him this, you know, or

1179
01:16:36,280 –> 01:16:39,840
maybe he did try to revisit it, but he couldn’t find another way in. I

1180
01:16:39,840 –> 01:16:43,560
did read that when he wrote that short story, he had seen an

1181
01:16:43,560 –> 01:16:47,350
article about something that had happened in the segregated south that, like,

1182
01:16:47,350 –> 01:16:51,070
drove him crazy. And he sort of wrote it in, like,

1183
01:16:51,070 –> 01:16:54,790
one fell swoop and got it out and then it appeared in this

1184
01:16:54,790 –> 01:16:58,430
collection or he included it in this collection as part of this

1185
01:16:58,430 –> 01:17:02,190
fix up novel. And maybe he never really, to

1186
01:17:02,190 –> 01:17:05,590
your point about Stephen King earlier, maybe he was never able to really revisit that

1187
01:17:05,590 –> 01:17:09,430
emotional, that emotional push again. Maybe it was just a

1188
01:17:09,430 –> 01:17:12,860
one shot deal, I don’t know. And, and you

1189
01:17:13,180 –> 01:17:16,540
have no idea how it could have like you were talking about, affect him emotionally,

1190
01:17:16,940 –> 01:17:20,540
right? It could, I mean it could have been so

1191
01:17:20,940 –> 01:17:24,420
devastating on some level that you know what? I don’t want to, I don’t want

1192
01:17:24,420 –> 01:17:28,020
to, I don’t want to go into that place again because of how it

1193
01:17:28,020 –> 01:17:31,460
affected other areas of my life. Because it’s, it’s such, it can be such a

1194
01:17:31,460 –> 01:17:35,220
mirror. Right. And I mean writers generally speaking are

1195
01:17:35,220 –> 01:17:37,100
kind of, you know, sensitive people and

1196
01:17:39,290 –> 01:17:42,090
I don’t know, there’s, there’s a lot of variables that could have been in play.

1197
01:17:42,490 –> 01:17:46,330
Yep. Yep. All right, well, we gotta, we’ve talked for

1198
01:17:46,330 –> 01:17:48,890
a little while. We gotta, we gotta wrap up here. I’ve got other things I’ve

1199
01:17:48,890 –> 01:17:52,050
got to do. You’ve got other things you’ve got to do? I gotta go, I

1200
01:17:52,050 –> 01:17:55,050
gotta go coach some people and teach them how to do

1201
01:17:55,690 –> 01:17:57,370
stuff. So

1202
01:18:01,450 –> 01:18:04,920
I think that. Well, no, I’m gonna let, gonna let you,

1203
01:18:05,080 –> 01:18:08,240
let you sort of round this out a little bit. So what, what should we

1204
01:18:08,240 –> 01:18:11,720
take from the Marsha. What should leaders take from the Marshall Chronicles? So I, I,

1205
01:18:11,720 –> 01:18:15,400
what’s the point of this book? I, I look at the themes of

1206
01:18:16,920 –> 01:18:20,280
like I said, a lot of sub sub, but

1207
01:18:21,160 –> 01:18:23,640
guilt, shame, justification.

1208
01:18:24,680 –> 01:18:28,320
And also there’s an element of when the hits the

1209
01:18:28,320 –> 01:18:31,080
fan, people expect, expected to be saved

1210
01:18:32,920 –> 01:18:36,600
and not taking into consideration that maybe they shouldn’t be

1211
01:18:36,600 –> 01:18:40,400
saved. Maybe they’ve acted

1212
01:18:40,400 –> 01:18:44,160
so deplorably that they’ve kind

1213
01:18:44,160 –> 01:18:47,760
of like spent their, you know, pay it forward or

1214
01:18:47,760 –> 01:18:50,840
they spent their, you know, them being saved

1215
01:18:53,160 –> 01:18:56,280
and to the just like was it the

1216
01:18:57,640 –> 01:19:01,360
grip, the, the who’s sitting in a rocking chair smoking

1217
01:19:01,360 –> 01:19:05,200
cigar. Oh yeah. You know what man? This is, this is maybe this is

1218
01:19:05,200 –> 01:19:08,360
it. And, and it’s, it’s wonderful that

1219
01:19:08,760 –> 01:19:12,560
although he broke from reality is able to kind of

1220
01:19:12,560 –> 01:19:16,320
like have some self reflection and say,

1221
01:19:16,320 –> 01:19:19,880
you know what, I can accept this. Yeah.

1222
01:19:20,200 –> 01:19:24,010
Yeah. I think for leaders as we round the corner

1223
01:19:24,010 –> 01:19:27,770
today. First off, I want to thank Brian

1224
01:19:27,770 –> 01:19:31,290
for coming on the show. Always a great time, always good seeing you, always good

1225
01:19:31,290 –> 01:19:34,210
hearing from you. I think for leaders,

1226
01:19:34,930 –> 01:19:38,770
a couple of different things. One, leaders have to have a robust

1227
01:19:39,010 –> 01:19:42,130
cultural or social vision for whatever they want their

1228
01:19:42,130 –> 01:19:45,610
organizations to be. I think one of the reasons why we haven’t gone to Mars

1229
01:19:45,610 –> 01:19:49,460
the other way, we need someone as crazy or as

1230
01:19:49,460 –> 01:19:52,820
a person who runs the algorithm, to Ryan’s point, all the way to the end,

1231
01:19:52,820 –> 01:19:56,340
as Elon, is because we do lack, socially and

1232
01:19:56,340 –> 01:19:59,420
culturally a robust vision for what space travel would look like.

1233
01:20:00,940 –> 01:20:04,700
We don’t lack a robust imagination of what it could be,

1234
01:20:05,180 –> 01:20:08,460
but we do lack a vision of what we are capable of.

1235
01:20:10,860 –> 01:20:14,620
And this lack of vision exists because while the technological problems could be

1236
01:20:14,620 –> 01:20:17,830
solved, the application of scientific principles that science has

1237
01:20:17,830 –> 01:20:21,670
absolutely nothing to say about, the spiritual

1238
01:20:21,990 –> 01:20:25,030
problems and about how to solve those,

1239
01:20:26,070 –> 01:20:29,870
sure, science can put the Buddhists on the rocket and

1240
01:20:29,870 –> 01:20:33,190
science can bring them back, maybe. But science

1241
01:20:33,350 –> 01:20:35,990
can’t tell the Buddhists what to do when they get there.

1242
01:20:37,270 –> 01:20:41,030
And all the training in the world won’t help them. They need a vision.

1243
01:20:41,910 –> 01:20:45,090
They need an idea. They also need something that I think

1244
01:20:45,570 –> 01:20:49,370
we are finally wrapping our arms around culturally in America,

1245
01:20:49,370 –> 01:20:52,210
that we’re missing. We. We need cultural confidence.

1246
01:20:53,170 –> 01:20:56,890
And that confidence and that meaning, for better or worse, emanates

1247
01:20:56,890 –> 01:21:00,209
from our leaders. I think accountability. And

1248
01:21:00,209 –> 01:21:03,250
accountability. Yes, that also emanates from our leaders. Yeah.

1249
01:21:03,810 –> 01:21:07,450
And. And if we don’t believe that we’re capable or accountable as

1250
01:21:07,450 –> 01:21:11,170
humans of executing exploration with wisdom, then we’ve

1251
01:21:11,170 –> 01:21:14,690
only digested negative lessons from our history of exploration,

1252
01:21:14,930 –> 01:21:18,610
and we have cavalierly dismissed and discarded all the positive ones.

1253
01:21:18,850 –> 01:21:22,690
Look, say what you want about how the Europeans treated

1254
01:21:22,690 –> 01:21:26,130
the native tribes in Manhattan. Without

1255
01:21:26,210 –> 01:21:29,930
that happening the way that it happened, I wouldn’t be sitting here having this

1256
01:21:29,930 –> 01:21:33,730
conversation with you today. I just wouldn’t. Maybe

1257
01:21:34,850 –> 01:21:37,940
it might have shown up in a different kind of way, but more likely than

1258
01:21:37,940 –> 01:21:40,500
not, probably wouldn’t have shown up at all.

1259
01:21:42,340 –> 01:21:46,020
Leaders provide cultural and social vision for the future, both at

1260
01:21:46,020 –> 01:21:49,740
a family level, at a neighborhood level, but also at an organizational level. But

1261
01:21:49,740 –> 01:21:53,300
they can only provide such vision if they cut away the anchor of ironic

1262
01:21:53,300 –> 01:21:56,980
distance and carefully cultivated cynicism wrapped around

1263
01:21:56,980 –> 01:22:00,780
their actions and given permission to

1264
01:22:00,780 –> 01:22:02,660
them to have by recent history.

1265
01:22:04,790 –> 01:22:08,110
We got to cut away those things. We got to start caring. And I think

1266
01:22:08,110 –> 01:22:11,670
that that’s at the core of the Martian Chronicles

1267
01:22:12,710 –> 01:22:16,430
by Ray Bradbury. I want to thank Ryan

1268
01:22:16,430 –> 01:22:19,790
Stout once again for coming on our show today. Thank you, Jason

1269
01:22:19,790 –> 01:22:23,390
Sorrells. Thank you, Ray Bradbury. Thank you,

1270
01:22:23,390 –> 01:22:27,030
Martians. And with that, well, we’re out.

1271
01:22:27,430 –> 01:22:30,870
Have a beautiful evening. Right.