The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty w/Tom Libby & Jesan Sorrells

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Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells and

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this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,

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episode number 189.

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Opening up with a summary of

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our book today because the book that we are covering is

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still under copyright, strict copyright through Vintage

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International. And so we don’t want to read too much from here, but we’re

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going to open up with a summary of an idea.

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Our book today opens up with a judge,

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a judge named McKelva who is

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in a hospital and he is dying.

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The judge is joined at his

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deathbed by his wife Faye, his second wife,

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Faye, and the daughter from his first marriage,

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Laurel. Laurel

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McKelva hand was a slender, quiet faced woman

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in her middle 40s, her hair still dark.

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This is a woman who as we go through the first few chapters of

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our book today, we find out a little bit about.

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We find out that she is a woman who has escaped her

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region. She moved away and now she

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has been called back. She is a woman who has a

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fraught or dare I say non existent relationship

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with her stepmother, Faye. And her stepmother

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Fay, who is significantly younger than her own mother was,

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is trying to rally the judge to come back to life.

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By the way, the judge died suddenly, not because

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of anything having to do with with disease,

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but just having given up.

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Laurel stays, of course, with the judge during the course

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of this opening to this book today. And she

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spent her time and read Nicholas Nickleby and

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that seemed like it was endless. Matter of fact, she

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read to him while he was in a coma, understanding, of course, that

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coma patients can hear everything.

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Once, of course, Fay enters into the

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picture more. Faye attempts her own

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methods to bring Judge McElva back to

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life. She attempts to appeal to his masculinity,

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to his Southern manhood, and of course, to his

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ability to defeat disease. This

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does not work and the judge passes

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away anyway. This

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opens the door to our action and to our movement because this

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book is not about a funeral or not about a judge’s death.

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It is instead about everything that happens afterward and the

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way in which Laurel and Faye and all of the other

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characters in this book react to and respond

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to in a very regional and very specifically

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Southern American way to death

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and to what it brings to their lives.

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And so we are going to be summarizing and talking about

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probably one of the better books by any female

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author of the late 20th century. Today on the

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show we’re going to cover a book I think you should pick up, the

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Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora

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Welty, Foreign.

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Now during the most recent golden era of our

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time on streaming and cable television

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entertainment, several popular shows played with the trope

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of the witness who documents without fully

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understanding. The best shows that did this

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included the Wire, the Arrested Development

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and Breaking Bad. At least I think they were the best

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shows. Now these comedies and dramas

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were part of a 20 year long mid century effort on

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television and in novels, as we are going to see in our novel

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today, to leverage the tension evident when a person

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observes another person’s empirical actions

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and is unable to determine any deep meaning

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from from those actions. In essence a

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witness witnessing but not understanding what

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they’re seeing. The challenge of

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determining meaning by witnessing another person’s actions is one that

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was visited upon the west sharply because of the West’s

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inability to collectively psychologically process the existential

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evil of the horrors of World War II. From the

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rape of Nan King to the trials at Nuremberg, the moral challenge that

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faced the west in a post war context

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was how to call observable evil what it was,

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and without an appeal to the existence of a spiritual transcendent authority

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whose existence all parties involved in the prosecution of the war may

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or may not have agreed upon. This

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friction, of course, led to an increase in existential dread, the toleration

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of higher levels of cultural and social absurdity as a coping mechanism,

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or as cope, as the kids would say these days, and finally at the close

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of the 20th century, appeals to deconstructionism, to

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the power of, well, raw power.

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However, the person or the society who

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witnesses evil and yet is shocked into incoherence has a problem.

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They do have a genuine problem, and we’re going to see this in the Optimist’s

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Daughter today. But their problem is not a lack of belief in a

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transcendent good. The problem is one of a lack of

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language to ask the right questions, interpret assertions that may

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be bogus, and a lack of ability to discern and then critically think through

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the challenge of interpersonal horror.

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The writer, essayist and journalist Joan Didion, who

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we’re going to cover a little bit later on this month, keyed

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into this exactly when she opened her 1961 collection of essays,

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which we’ve covered on this show before, Slouching Towards Bethlehem and we will

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cover again this month about the baby boomers who

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are beginning to make their own contribution to the long

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thread of cultural incoherence. Post war cultural incoherence, it was going to be

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in America. When she quoted in the opening

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of her collection of essays from William Butner Yeats,

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the Second coming, published in 1920,

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and I quote, turning and turning in the widening

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gyre. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things

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fall apart, the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is

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loosed upon the world. The blood tim tide is loosed

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and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The

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best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of

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passionate intensity.

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And that is something that we are going to see here today. We’re going to

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see the attempts by Eudora Weltley

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and the characters that she creates to make

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sense of the horror that she is seeing.

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But personal horror. The horror of the death of her father

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and at a much larger level, the death of a way of life

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that she had known since she was born.

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Leaders. Today on the show,

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I’m going to start off with a fundamental belief. I think we can

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describe what we’re witnessing. Matter of fact, I think we have a moral duty

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to do so. There is objective reality and

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documenting those moral challenges does require us to make

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moral judgments. But we must lead

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with the idea that we can do so first.

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And of course, as usual along my journey, here to

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explore some of these ideas and to discuss the

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challenges of the witness who documents is our regular co

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host, Tom Libby. You doing

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Tom? I mean, if I was doing any better,

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hy, I would think I was off in la la land. I’m doing so good.

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It’s, it’s, it’s crazy.

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I’m doing just fine, thank you for asking. You’re doing so

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good. It’s a level of insanity. I. You just can’t describe it. You, you know,

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it’s. What’s that line from? From, oh, gosh,

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those old ESPN this is Sports center promos. What was it? No,

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not. This is Sports Center. Stuart Scott used to say this.

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You cannot hold him. You can only hope to contain him. He is,

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dare I say, in fuego. And actually, that might not have been Stuart Scott. That

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might have been Dan Patrick. Who’s one of those guys? What? I’m pretty sure it’s

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Patrick, but that’s okay. Might have been Dan Patrick. Yeah, might have been Dan Patrick.

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So we open up today with the summary of the first few

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chapters of the Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Weltley.

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I sent you a bunch of paperwork and a bunch of information on.

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On. On wealthy. And I’m going to keep probably

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mispronouncing her name. It’s W E, L, T, Y.

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But I, I tend to reverse the L and the T and the Y. So

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forgive me, folks, but it is T Y.

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That’s, that’s. That’s her last name, the author’s last name here that we’re covering today.

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So, Tom, we’ve, I kind of sent you a bunch of information about her. You’re

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coming in fresh to this. In looking at the information that I sent you

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and looking at sort of her life, what do you think of this? What do

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you think of this author? I actually, I found it

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interesting at the very least. And by the way, like, I found it

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even more interesting that I had never heard of her, even though she’s, you know,

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she won the Pulitzer in 71 with this book.

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Not that I know every Pulitzer Prize winning author. I’m not suggesting that I know

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all of them. But as you’ve seen on this in our past episodes,

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even if I hadn’t read the actual book we’re talking about, most times I’ve heard

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of the author, like, you know, so I found it interesting that I

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actually had never heard of her. And I think before we hit the record

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button, and I’m sure you’re gonna get to this a little bit more in depth

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in a little, a little bit later. But I think your

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point about, as we were talking before you, we started the recording,

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I think your point about her being a regional author kind of

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matters in this ca. In, in my case, because of like, not really being from

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that area of the country. She was never really

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brought up in our schools or, you know, we don’t really talk about her, so

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to speak. Even more so I think it’s interesting that,

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that she was in a relatively

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dominated environment, dominated by black culture,

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but yet she was white. So I think that’s another reason why we didn’t really

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talk about her up here. I think she would have gotten more attention had she

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been a black author in a black dominated, you know,

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region of the country. So I, again, I’m not saying she wasn’t worth

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it or worthy. I’m just saying that I had never heard of her before. And

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I’m trying to figure out, I was trying to figure out my brain why, because

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what little I like, when I started reading her,

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her bio and stuff like that seemed very interesting at the

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very least, like, you know, talking about, you know, she didn’t, it

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wasn’t one of those things where she like, grew up so dirt poor that she

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had to write her way out of, out of her world.

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She kind of grew up middle class and kind of did her thing and went

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around very well educated. And

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similarly, I went, I, I, I found some similarities

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between this book and her life. If you then they’re not

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exact, but like some of the similarities about her dad getting sick in real life

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and her going back and looking at the book and the daughter going back to

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her dad getting sick, like certain things. I was wondering if this was like her

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interpretation of her life at a, at a. She just kind of changed it enough

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that people wouldn’t recognize it. Like her friends and family reading it, so to speak.

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Right. So anyway. But yeah, I, I thought it was, I thought she was my,

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in my, my. Like my

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initial reaction to her was I would, I probably would go

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back and read her at this point. Like, I think, I think it would be

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interesting to see what she has to say, especially considering she wrote for,

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you know, the radio station and stuff. Like some of the jobs she held. Like,

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it was interesting. And then to your point, she took a very similar

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career path as others and felt obligated to go into teaching,

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where today you probably wouldn’t do that. Right. Like a writer

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just wants to be a writer and they’re going to go write and they’ll figure

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it out along the way. They may do odds and ends jobs like, you know,

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but, but a writer, as a writer. As a writer, so to speak. And,

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but I don’t think they had that opportunity in her era,

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like back in that time frame. So she seemed like a very normal, there was,

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there was a lot of normalcy to her pathways, I think is what I was

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getting at like, like the. When I started reading the bio.

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Yeah. She was born in, she was born in 1909 and she died in

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2001, so. Only died 25 years

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ago, as a matter of fact, as of July 23rd, it’ll be exactly

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25 years since, since she passed.

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She mostly wrote short stories to kind of kick off her career

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and then she gradually moved into, into larger and larger

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or more, more challenging, more challenging work.

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She was a photographer as well. Kind of close to my heart there a little

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bit. And one of the things that, that Tom

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is mentioning here, and it’s a good point to mention for our, for our listeners,

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is she wrote at a time and she came of age during

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a time when the author William Faulkner, who was sort of

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the, the powerhouse of the

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cultural standard of what a regional author could be, specifically a regional

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Southern, you know, American author could

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actually, you know, be and do and succeed at.

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He was the gold standard. His writing was the gold standard that everybody was, that

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everybody was judged by.

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Her peers included folks like Catherine Ann Porter, who actually

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wrote, I believe, an introduction to one of her books,

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Harper Lee, who we covered in episode number 109, who wrote

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to Kill a Mockingbird, Zora Neale Hurston,

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who, to Tom’s point, African American author. We’ve covered

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a couple of her books on this show. In episode number 100,

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she, along with those other female authors, she wrote in that space that Faulkner

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pioneered. And it is a space of, as I was saying before we. We hit

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the record button to Tom, it is a space,

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interestingly enough, of regionalism. And

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I want to talk a little bit about that for just a minute, because I

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think that that’s part of the setup for this book, that if you’re going to

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read it, you’ve got to really understand that and really sort of imbibe

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that. So if you are a

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reader or a leader who has

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been reading and consuming what we now call content,

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books, movies, television shows, I’m sure you’ve noticed over

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the course of the last 25 years that things have become

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more homogenized, more globalized.

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Now, part of that is because of the ubiquitousness

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of cell phones attached to the Internet and social media.

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Part of that is due to what the algorithm pushes versus what it does

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not inside of those platforms and where people’s eyes and ears are.

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But also part of it is that

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you’re going to get more homogenization when

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things are flattened, when content is flattened, when ideas are

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flattened, and everybody seems like they’re saying the same thing. And that’s one of my

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00:16:02,710 –> 00:16:06,520
troubles with, with books written in the last 25, 30

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years. And that’s why I tend to not cover newer books on this show,

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because most of them aren’t saying anything that’s dramatically

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interesting or dramatically different than any other

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00:16:17,640 –> 00:16:20,960
book you could get. Whereas if you go back to

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the Optimist’s Daughter, or you go back to any

261
00:16:26,120 –> 00:16:29,960
books by Zora Neil Thurston, or you go back to books written by

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00:16:29,960 –> 00:16:33,170
Katherine Ann Porter. They are not part of a global

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00:16:33,330 –> 00:16:37,170
culture. They’re part of very much part of a regional perspective on.

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On writing. And this is not just in the American South. You have writers that

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were specific to the American Northeast. You had writers that were specific to the American

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West. One writer that jumps out to me in particular is Charles

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Portis, right, who wrote the book True Grit that we covered

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on this show and that the movie was made out of. And even when a

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00:16:54,690 –> 00:16:58,450
book was turned into a movie, it still rang very specifically

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of being of a specific region. And other folks, other

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readers who lived in other regions of the United States, recognized that

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author or that movie as Being part of. Part and parcel of

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that region. And even to Tom’s point, like, we didn’t get this up

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here, quote, unquote, right, because it didn’t match our region.

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That’s all gone. All that, all that, all that,

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all that differentiation has passed and now

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everybody sounds like everybody else. And you don’t get that with.

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You don’t get that with. With Welty. She said

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that. That her interest was in the relationships between

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00:17:37,700 –> 00:17:41,420
individuals and their communities, and that stemmed from her natural

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abilities as an observer. And she observed people

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in her community. She observed people in her own place. She observed

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00:17:48,780 –> 00:17:52,220
people in her own customs and traditions, and she even

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referred to folks who lived in the south as her people.

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Nobody talks like that anymore, Tom. Like that’s. That’s all gone.

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00:18:01,510 –> 00:18:05,270
It’s even a struggle for. I mean, you. You know this

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00:18:05,270 –> 00:18:08,830
as a. A proponent of the native peoples and the native

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people’s perspective and NATO people’s voice. I mean, how hard a fight

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00:18:12,550 –> 00:18:15,270
is it to. To avoid the globalization there?

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Oh, it’s. It’s very hard. It’s very hard. I will tell you though, one thing

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that surprised me. One day I met a.

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I was with a person from Russia. He

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was. He was here visiting for business. And when he had

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said that, like, some of the.

295
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There are descendants over there of our native.

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Of our native people, and I. It. It took a second for me to

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00:18:42,660 –> 00:18:46,340
understand how in the hell that could happen. But then I remembered

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00:18:46,340 –> 00:18:50,060
like, some of the. Some of the slave trade went the other way. Right?

299
00:18:50,060 –> 00:18:53,740
Like, so as the. As the black and African slaves were coming

300
00:18:53,740 –> 00:18:57,420
over here, native people were being taken over to Europe as slaves.

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So yeah, like, we have descendants like this. This connection over

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00:19:01,340 –> 00:19:04,780
there. So I guess to your point, when those

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00:19:04,860 –> 00:19:08,620
people start wanting to learn about the culture that they left

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behind hundreds of years ago, this is, you know, similar to

305
00:19:12,460 –> 00:19:16,180
maybe somebody like yourself trying to look up roots from your ancestors, et

306
00:19:16,180 –> 00:19:19,740
cetera, et cetera, really is

307
00:19:19,740 –> 00:19:23,220
difficult for them. It’s difficult to hear, I guess, kind of

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00:19:23,220 –> 00:19:27,020
circum back circling back to what your. Your question being. It’s very difficult for them

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00:19:27,020 –> 00:19:30,620
to find something so regionally located or,

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00:19:30,940 –> 00:19:34,580
you know, or it’s it for us. Maybe it’s tribal

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00:19:34,580 –> 00:19:38,140
affiliation. So you say, like, I know I’m this tribe, so I can go

312
00:19:38,140 –> 00:19:41,820
research that particular tribe. That’s fine. That’s not easy.

313
00:19:41,820 –> 00:19:45,530
But it’s at least a. A pointed direction to what you’re talking about with regional

314
00:19:45,530 –> 00:19:48,890
writing. But if you’re looking for like an

315
00:19:48,890 –> 00:19:52,650
overarching commentary about like Say

316
00:19:52,650 –> 00:19:56,290
the Southwest, whether it be Navajo or Hopi or something like that. And

317
00:19:56,530 –> 00:19:59,970
you want to have like a general. There’s no generalization like,

318
00:20:00,210 –> 00:20:03,970
or, or not. I, I shouldn’t say there’s zero. But it’s very difficult to

319
00:20:03,970 –> 00:20:07,810
find where you can have a single author that’s going to write about

320
00:20:07,810 –> 00:20:11,610
several tribal affiliations in a, in a way that makes them all

321
00:20:11,610 –> 00:20:15,330
make sense and makes them all true to

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00:20:15,330 –> 00:20:18,930
form and true to identity. Right. If they’re using, if

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00:20:18,930 –> 00:20:22,410
they’re generally using overarching terminologies and stuff like that,

324
00:20:22,410 –> 00:20:25,770
somebody’s going to be irritated that they wrote it that way. So

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00:20:25,770 –> 00:20:29,530
it’s, you’re right. It is very difficult in that sense to, to find something that’s

326
00:20:29,690 –> 00:20:33,250
generalized like that. Well, and I’m seeing something, and I

327
00:20:33,250 –> 00:20:36,980
pointed this out this year on the show during

328
00:20:36,980 –> 00:20:40,580
Black History Month when we covered African American authors. And I pointed it out last

329
00:20:40,580 –> 00:20:44,340
year and I pointed it out the year before that because I’ve been seeing,

330
00:20:45,380 –> 00:20:49,180
I haven’t, not even seen. I have a suspicion, not even a

331
00:20:49,180 –> 00:20:51,380
suspicion. I’m sensing the cultural wind

332
00:20:52,980 –> 00:20:56,660
blowing in a particular direction. And a lot of,

333
00:20:57,780 –> 00:21:00,700
a lot of African Americans aren’t ready for the cultural wind to blow in this

334
00:21:00,700 –> 00:21:04,310
direction, but it’s going to blow this way anyway at a certain

335
00:21:04,390 –> 00:21:08,070
point. And I know

336
00:21:08,230 –> 00:21:12,070
from a Native perspective, we’re all foreigners here. We’re all visiting. Got

337
00:21:12,070 –> 00:21:15,910
it, Got it. We’re all, we’re all invaders in your house.

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00:21:15,910 –> 00:21:18,310
I get it. I understand

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00:21:20,150 –> 00:21:22,950
among the invaders, though, there are distinctions with a difference.

340
00:21:26,150 –> 00:21:29,350
And, and, and as time has gone on

341
00:21:29,900 –> 00:21:33,660
over the last 25 years, because of the flattening of globalization,

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00:21:35,260 –> 00:21:38,060
because of the ubiquitousness of Internet communication,

343
00:21:39,100 –> 00:21:42,620
and because of the nature of the ways in which

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00:21:43,340 –> 00:21:46,220
voice, tradition, custom, community are being

345
00:21:47,020 –> 00:21:50,780
scaled up, I am

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00:21:50,780 –> 00:21:54,540
convinced that African Americans, at a certain point, and it

347
00:21:54,540 –> 00:21:57,260
won’t be in the next 25 years because there’s still too many of us who

348
00:21:57,340 –> 00:22:01,070
grow up with that designation with the dash in the middle. Yeah,

349
00:22:01,230 –> 00:22:04,390
but that’s going to go away. It’s going to go away in 50 years. It,

350
00:22:04,390 –> 00:22:08,070
it’ll be probably closer to the end of my lifetime before that goes away, but

351
00:22:08,070 –> 00:22:11,630
definitely in my kids lifetime that’ll go away. It’s, it’s going to be all

352
00:22:11,630 –> 00:22:14,910
flattened out and we will just be, much

353
00:22:15,230 –> 00:22:18,990
to African Americans dismay in this country, we will just

354
00:22:18,990 –> 00:22:22,190
be Americans. That’s it.

355
00:22:22,830 –> 00:22:25,710
And I don’t think folks are ready for that kind of revolution. And it’s, but

356
00:22:25,710 –> 00:22:28,620
it’s going to happen gradually. It’s going to happen soon, so gradually that no one’s

357
00:22:28,620 –> 00:22:32,140
even going to pay attention to it. And, and I think the

358
00:22:32,140 –> 00:22:35,900
seeds for that flattening are the same

359
00:22:35,900 –> 00:22:39,580
seeds that don’t allow. This is my last point, that

360
00:22:39,580 –> 00:22:43,219
don’t allow a writer like Welty, and I do think there are still

361
00:22:43,219 –> 00:22:47,060
writers like her floating around. I just don’t think they could

362
00:22:47,060 –> 00:22:50,860
get any traction and get anywhere even with self publishing,

363
00:22:50,860 –> 00:22:54,430
which was a point that you were making, you know, because I

364
00:22:54,430 –> 00:22:57,510
wonder. I don’t think the audience is there anymore.

365
00:22:59,110 –> 00:23:02,230
I think the audience was probably barely there in the late part of the 20th

366
00:23:02,230 –> 00:23:06,070
century. Probably was there more in the early 20th century when Faulkner was writing in

367
00:23:06,070 –> 00:23:09,830
the late 19th century. But in the early part of the 21st century,

368
00:23:09,830 –> 00:23:12,150
getting into the middle part of the century, I think that audience is going to

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00:23:12,150 –> 00:23:15,310
go away. To your point about being with somebody from Russia, you were with somebody

370
00:23:15,310 –> 00:23:18,070
from Russia at a, at a networking event.

371
00:23:19,040 –> 00:23:22,800
That’s, that’s, that’s globalism. That’s the triumph of globalism.

372
00:23:23,040 –> 00:23:26,520
Now, what you talk about in the language you use to do business, of course,

373
00:23:26,520 –> 00:23:30,360
will be English, but you’re gonna have to find some way to relate

374
00:23:30,360 –> 00:23:33,960
to that person. And I’m not saying that if a regional author

375
00:23:33,960 –> 00:23:37,120
is writing, they can’t find a way to relate to somebody from Russia. But I’m

376
00:23:37,120 –> 00:23:40,560
saying that the level of internal creative strength that they will have to have

377
00:23:40,960 –> 00:23:44,560
just to commit to that region is going to have to be so

378
00:23:44,560 –> 00:23:48,300
high that they’re not gonna. They’re not gonna

379
00:23:48,300 –> 00:23:52,140
get that far. Well, I think, I think it. I.

380
00:23:52,460 –> 00:23:55,820
It’s interesting that you say that because I think there’s some language things too, that

381
00:23:55,820 –> 00:23:59,380
matter. Meaning. Like. Like to your point, right? The

382
00:23:59,380 –> 00:24:02,940
globalization of even, like, lingo,

383
00:24:03,340 –> 00:24:06,940
right? For example, like up here in New England, for some strange

384
00:24:06,940 –> 00:24:10,380
reason, people use the word wicked for everything, right? Wicked cool,

385
00:24:10,380 –> 00:24:14,170
wicked bad, wicked ugly, wicked beautiful, whatever. It doesn’t matter. It’s like an

386
00:24:14,170 –> 00:24:17,930
adjective that goes with everything. So if you’re a writer from New England

387
00:24:17,930 –> 00:24:21,490
and you’re writing things like that and somebody from Russia picks it up

388
00:24:23,090 –> 00:24:26,730
to your point about global flattening, it’s not lost on them

389
00:24:26,730 –> 00:24:29,770
anymore. They could just look it up. Like, what does New England mean when they

390
00:24:29,770 –> 00:24:33,410
say wicked? Like, and then they. Now they start understanding our lingo

391
00:24:33,570 –> 00:24:37,410
to the point where it’s not a regional writer anymore. Like, I, I’m agreeing with

392
00:24:37,410 –> 00:24:41,240
you, but I’m using, like, a very specific example of how so people

393
00:24:41,240 –> 00:24:45,040
can understand what you mean by this is like, like when you.

394
00:24:45,040 –> 00:24:48,600
When I remember as a kid when I read certain things, there was no

395
00:24:48,600 –> 00:24:51,680
Internet for me to look up what it meant. I just had to move on

396
00:24:51,680 –> 00:24:54,639
and say, oh, that must be a regional thing down there or up there, over

397
00:24:54,639 –> 00:24:58,400
there, or whatever it is. And I, I went and tried to interpret

398
00:24:58,400 –> 00:25:01,960
it myself and moved on, but I didn’t feel like I was a part

399
00:25:02,280 –> 00:25:05,850
of that culture, a part of that region. Whereas

400
00:25:05,850 –> 00:25:09,530
today people would do that. I, I can tell you, I know

401
00:25:09,530 –> 00:25:13,210
people, I know people personally that would just look something up and then all of

402
00:25:13,210 –> 00:25:17,050
a sudden adopt it and be like, oh, and wait, no, this is something they

403
00:25:17,050 –> 00:25:20,410
only say in Texas. Like, why would you say that? You know what I mean?

404
00:25:21,450 –> 00:25:24,170
But you read it in the book somewhere that you like the book, so now

405
00:25:24,170 –> 00:25:27,970
you’re going to use it. Or they say things in England. There

406
00:25:27,970 –> 00:25:31,530
are certain words that they use in England that are very frowned upon here. And

407
00:25:31,530 –> 00:25:35,240
I’m not gonna say them, but there’s one particular one that pops into

408
00:25:35,240 –> 00:25:38,800
my head very frequently that when they say it over in England, I’m just like,

409
00:25:38,800 –> 00:25:42,360
oh, my God. And. But again, I go back to. If you

410
00:25:42,440 –> 00:25:46,280
read that from. We might take it as offensive where they don’t

411
00:25:46,280 –> 00:25:49,960
like. And that’s that global, that flattening globalization that you’re talking about,

412
00:25:49,960 –> 00:25:53,440
where now people can just absorb whatever that

413
00:25:53,440 –> 00:25:57,160
culture is in that book, in that writing, and it’s no longer a

414
00:25:57,160 –> 00:26:01,010
regional writing. Right? Like the definition of regional

415
00:26:01,010 –> 00:26:04,650
writing is, to your point about the dash. And it’s going to go away.

416
00:26:06,250 –> 00:26:10,010
I think it’s gone already. There might be, there might be some proud. There might

417
00:26:10,010 –> 00:26:13,450
be a little proudness. Like if you go back to. I thought for sure we’re

418
00:26:13,450 –> 00:26:16,170
going to avoid it on this episode, but we’re not. If you go back to

419
00:26:16,170 –> 00:26:19,930
the film industry and like the, like the, the

420
00:26:20,090 –> 00:26:23,610
filming of episodic television, whether it’s

421
00:26:23,770 –> 00:26:27,310
streaming or network, there is a certain sense of

422
00:26:27,310 –> 00:26:30,990
pride with visualization of it. Meaning, like when I see

423
00:26:30,990 –> 00:26:34,710
the cityscape of Boston in a show that’s kind of cool, and I

424
00:26:34,710 –> 00:26:38,510
like that. And I can, I can start associating my. Like, I

425
00:26:38,510 –> 00:26:42,230
can feel the world like it’s my world, right? Like, but,

426
00:26:42,230 –> 00:26:45,750
but that’s a visualization because as soon as they start talking and they

427
00:26:46,310 –> 00:26:49,910
butcher the Boston accent, and I think it’s so overplayed and I’m like,

428
00:26:49,910 –> 00:26:53,420
nobody from Boston speaks. Speaks like that. What are you doing? Like,

429
00:26:53,580 –> 00:26:57,420
like, there’s like, like they over accentuate the

430
00:26:57,420 –> 00:27:01,220
Boston access. Boston accent for for

431
00:27:01,220 –> 00:27:05,060
effect. Right. So, but, but. So there’s. I

432
00:27:05,060 –> 00:27:08,860
still think there’s some pridefulness in that regionality

433
00:27:08,860 –> 00:27:12,580
of certain things when it comes to, like film and, and, and

434
00:27:12,580 –> 00:27:16,220
in, in recording television. But I think in the writing it’s different

435
00:27:16,380 –> 00:27:20,070
because you don’t have that visual aspect of. I think that I

436
00:27:20,070 –> 00:27:23,790
would agree with you if you’re talking about. And maybe this is

437
00:27:23,790 –> 00:27:27,510
the next major sort of division, right? So we,

438
00:27:27,510 –> 00:27:31,350
we’ve, we talked about in our. In

439
00:27:31,350 –> 00:27:34,549
our most recent episode where we

440
00:27:34,549 –> 00:27:38,270
covered. What was the last one we did. I can’t remember. We

441
00:27:38,270 –> 00:27:41,950
do so many episodes, but the, the last

442
00:27:41,950 –> 00:27:45,360
episode that we did, a couple.

443
00:27:47,120 –> 00:27:49,920
Never mind. I just lost it. I just had it. Because we recorded it twice.

444
00:27:49,920 –> 00:27:53,520
We did. We recorded it twice exactly. Because we forgot to press the record button.

445
00:27:53,920 –> 00:27:57,680
But we. I made a point in there that I think needs

446
00:27:57,680 –> 00:28:00,720
to be revisited. And the point is that.

447
00:28:02,160 –> 00:28:05,720
Or not a point, but I made an observation, right. I think

448
00:28:05,720 –> 00:28:09,520
that the division between. Oh, yeah, because you were talking

449
00:28:09,520 –> 00:28:13,120
about Taylor Sheridan’s myth of not being able to, you

450
00:28:13,120 –> 00:28:15,600
know, sell a story that occurs in a rural area

451
00:28:17,120 –> 00:28:20,640
to, to television and movie executives, Right? Because

452
00:28:21,040 –> 00:28:24,440
they’ve committed, according to him, since the

453
00:28:24,440 –> 00:28:26,720
1970s, to only showing

454
00:28:27,920 –> 00:28:31,200
stories that come from an urban area or based in urban

455
00:28:31,200 –> 00:28:34,760
environments. Right? Now, whether that’s psychological

456
00:28:34,760 –> 00:28:38,400
manipulation, a psyop, as the kids say these days, or not,

457
00:28:39,030 –> 00:28:42,630
that’s a whole other thing all together. We’re not talking about it in that context.

458
00:28:43,430 –> 00:28:47,070
I’m bringing that up to say that I

459
00:28:47,070 –> 00:28:50,710
wonder or to mention or to wonder if the

460
00:28:50,710 –> 00:28:54,390
next great divide is not at a regional level in the United

461
00:28:54,390 –> 00:28:57,910
States. Maybe the next great divide is because you brought up

462
00:28:57,910 –> 00:29:01,710
Boston, right? So Boston is fundamentally different

463
00:29:01,710 –> 00:29:05,470
as a city than where I

464
00:29:05,470 –> 00:29:09,150
live in north central Texas. I live in a very

465
00:29:09,150 –> 00:29:12,830
rural. What would be considered by folks who are in

466
00:29:12,830 –> 00:29:16,590
Boston, it would be considered to be a very rural area. Now, it’s

467
00:29:16,590 –> 00:29:19,350
not that rural to me, but

468
00:29:20,070 –> 00:29:23,830
it seems that way to people. The

469
00:29:23,830 –> 00:29:26,470
stories that are in rural areas

470
00:29:28,150 –> 00:29:31,950
and the stories that are in urban areas, I think that’s the next

471
00:29:31,950 –> 00:29:35,580
great dividend. And, and, and I wonder, just as I

472
00:29:35,580 –> 00:29:39,060
did in that episode where we’re talking about this point a little bit further,

473
00:29:39,540 –> 00:29:43,220
I wonder if the next great sort of creative

474
00:29:43,460 –> 00:29:46,820
strength is going to come from. From a writer

475
00:29:47,060 –> 00:29:50,540
or an author in a rural area who’s going to say, no, I’m committed to

476
00:29:50,540 –> 00:29:54,300
this rural area east of Eden. That’s what we’re talking about it. I’m committed

477
00:29:54,300 –> 00:29:57,980
to this rural area and I Don’t care what you all are doing in the

478
00:29:57,980 –> 00:30:01,450
city. That’s interesting, but the next time you film my stuff,

479
00:30:01,530 –> 00:30:04,850
you’re not going to see a skyscraper in Boston. Like, that’s not what I write

480
00:30:04,850 –> 00:30:08,610
for. I don’t write for the skyscrapers in Boston. I think that’s already happening and

481
00:30:08,610 –> 00:30:12,330
I don’t think you’re realizing that it’s happening. It’s not the style or

482
00:30:12,330 –> 00:30:16,090
the, it’s genre driven. If you think about this for a second,

483
00:30:16,330 –> 00:30:19,890
most like a tremendous amount of horror movies start in

484
00:30:19,890 –> 00:30:23,050
urban America. Like they start in those urban environments. Most

485
00:30:23,370 –> 00:30:27,080
crime dramas end up in cities. Like

486
00:30:27,080 –> 00:30:30,080
so. Yeah. If you think about Last Cabin on the Left and like all these

487
00:30:30,080 –> 00:30:33,640
other like, horror, like horror movies, they’re all in these like

488
00:30:33,640 –> 00:30:37,360
little rural suburban neighborhoods. You don’t see a

489
00:30:37,360 –> 00:30:41,119
horror movie in downtown New York City, like, like in Manhattan or. Right.

490
00:30:41,119 –> 00:30:44,960
Like, or in downtown Boston. Those are, those are crime. Those are

491
00:30:44,960 –> 00:30:48,680
crime movies or gang movies. Like, I think it’s already

492
00:30:48,680 –> 00:30:52,290
happening. I think it’s just happening by the genre instead of the authors, that’s all.

493
00:30:52,290 –> 00:30:55,450
Okay, Okay. I mean, and you may, and you know what? You might have something

494
00:30:55,450 –> 00:30:59,170
there. Maybe, maybe this does descend into genre because I don’t,

495
00:30:59,170 –> 00:31:02,810
I, I. Human

496
00:31:02,810 –> 00:31:06,250
creativity is too powerful to be bound up for too long.

497
00:31:06,330 –> 00:31:10,090
Right. It’s just, it’s, it’s like, it’s like you’re trying

498
00:31:10,090 –> 00:31:13,610
to. It’s like you’re trying to dam up a raging river. Right.

499
00:31:13,930 –> 00:31:17,740
You know, the Chinese tried to damn the Yangi, the Yellow river, and it didn’t

500
00:31:17,740 –> 00:31:21,540
work because it’s, it’s a river. Like, it’s, it’s a force of

501
00:31:21,540 –> 00:31:25,180
nature. It just is. And that’s what human creativity is. It’s a

502
00:31:25,180 –> 00:31:28,260
force of nature. And so if you dam it up

503
00:31:28,820 –> 00:31:32,500
in tamping down regionalism, right, for the last 25

504
00:31:32,500 –> 00:31:35,940
years, it’s going to pop up in. Maybe to your point,

505
00:31:36,100 –> 00:31:39,460
all those people who would have gone regional are going now into genres,

506
00:31:39,700 –> 00:31:43,220
right? Because they can, they could play a little bit more. They could play a

507
00:31:43,220 –> 00:31:46,430
little bit more or in there. Well, they could play to an audience that

508
00:31:46,430 –> 00:31:50,150
understands. Right. Like that’s instead of a regional understanding.

509
00:31:50,230 –> 00:31:54,070
It’s a, it’s a, like, instead of like southeastern

510
00:31:54,070 –> 00:31:57,830
United States regional, it’s now it’s either inner city

511
00:31:57,830 –> 00:32:01,350
or suburban or rural. And anybody who lives in those

512
00:32:01,350 –> 00:32:04,990
environments will get it. Like they’ll, they’ll understand those, that, that, that

513
00:32:04,990 –> 00:32:08,470
the writing. Well, I wonder if it’s also because one of the things that Welty

514
00:32:08,470 –> 00:32:10,890
did And we’ll get back to the book here in just a moment, folks. But

515
00:32:10,890 –> 00:32:14,410
one of the things that Welty did really well is she observed, right? She said

516
00:32:14,410 –> 00:32:18,250
that all of her writing was based on observation, observation

517
00:32:18,250 –> 00:32:21,730
of people in her communities, observation of place.

518
00:32:21,810 –> 00:32:25,330
Place was hugely important to her, right? This

519
00:32:25,410 –> 00:32:27,650
place, this geographical

520
00:32:29,330 –> 00:32:32,770
designation has meaning, right? It’s not, it’s not value

521
00:32:32,930 –> 00:32:36,770
neutral. It has meaning here. And of course, being a

522
00:32:36,770 –> 00:32:40,490
Southern American, it’s interesting that I’m reading this book

523
00:32:40,490 –> 00:32:42,650
or that I read this book now and that we’re talking about this on the

524
00:32:42,650 –> 00:32:46,450
podcast, because one of my older daughters is my older daughter. My

525
00:32:46,450 –> 00:32:49,010
oldest daughter not older. My oldest daughter is.

526
00:32:49,890 –> 00:32:53,730
She’s writing a paper for college right now for her American history

527
00:32:53,730 –> 00:32:57,290
class around the Civil War. So we’ve been talking a lot about the Civil War

528
00:32:57,290 –> 00:33:00,970
in my household, right? And been sort of

529
00:33:00,970 –> 00:33:04,210
laying out to her, laying out for her with Proximate

530
00:33:04,860 –> 00:33:08,540
and the, the first order, second order, third order causes were for the war. Da

531
00:33:08,540 –> 00:33:11,620
da da da da. And one of the points that I make to her, and

532
00:33:11,620 –> 00:33:15,340
it is a point that I think Welty would appreciate along with Faulkner

533
00:33:15,660 –> 00:33:19,300
and Zora Neale Hurston and Katherine Ann Porter, all

534
00:33:19,300 –> 00:33:22,700
the Harper Lee, I mean, To Kill a Mockingbird. Come on. Like,

535
00:33:22,940 –> 00:33:26,780
one of my favorite books of all time. Exactly. The

536
00:33:26,780 –> 00:33:30,620
reason why those books are so powerful is because they tap

537
00:33:30,620 –> 00:33:34,330
directly into the plot place of the south in its own

538
00:33:34,330 –> 00:33:37,850
psychological conception of itself, which is, of course,

539
00:33:39,450 –> 00:33:43,050
all the things that we know about the American, the American South.

540
00:33:46,810 –> 00:33:50,610
I wonder if there is a. I

541
00:33:50,610 –> 00:33:54,010
wonder if one of the other factors that we’re. That we’re, that we’re,

542
00:33:54,010 –> 00:33:57,450
we’re seeing in creatives is

543
00:33:58,720 –> 00:34:02,440
that lack of observation. Like, I wonder how sharply people observe things

544
00:34:02,440 –> 00:34:05,520
anymore, right? So, like, if I was going to write a book about

545
00:34:06,960 –> 00:34:10,560
Carl Hiason, I’ll use him as an example. Carl Hiaasen,

546
00:34:10,720 –> 00:34:14,400
he was a mystery writer back in the day, and he

547
00:34:14,400 –> 00:34:17,760
wrote mystery novels that were based in Miami,

548
00:34:17,760 –> 00:34:20,720
Florida, or in Florida just in general, right.

549
00:34:21,520 –> 00:34:24,880
He knew Florida. When I would read Carl Hiaasen

550
00:34:24,960 –> 00:34:27,360
mysteries and I read a whole bunch of them when I was like

551
00:34:29,300 –> 00:34:32,260
late teens, early 20s. I like banged through a whole bunch of them and then

552
00:34:32,260 –> 00:34:34,900
I like jumped off of that train and went to something else. I’ve heard a

553
00:34:34,900 –> 00:34:38,420
Carl. I haven’t thought about Carl hiason in like 25 years. Good Lord.

554
00:34:40,740 –> 00:34:44,420
But, but he was a specifically Floridian writer.

555
00:34:45,700 –> 00:34:49,140
You could tell that he understood Florida. He knew

556
00:34:49,140 –> 00:34:52,940
Florida. He observed Florida. He

557
00:34:52,940 –> 00:34:56,769
also attained national prominence from selling books about Florida.

558
00:34:56,769 –> 00:35:00,409
So selling literally. And Weldy Welty would appreciate this. The

559
00:35:00,409 –> 00:35:03,929
myth of Florida to people in like South Dakota,

560
00:35:05,609 –> 00:35:09,409
the myth of Florida to people in like Idaho who are never going

561
00:35:09,409 –> 00:35:13,209
to go to Florida or the myth of Florida to people in New

562
00:35:13,209 –> 00:35:16,929
York City who when they would retire would like to

563
00:35:16,929 –> 00:35:20,769
go and experience the reality of Florida in the middle of

564
00:35:20,769 –> 00:35:24,330
that state. So

565
00:35:24,330 –> 00:35:28,090
Carl Hiason in the mystery genre, the detective

566
00:35:28,090 –> 00:35:31,810
genre, the crime genre, was an

567
00:35:31,810 –> 00:35:35,490
author who captured all that regional flavor from his

568
00:35:35,490 –> 00:35:39,010
observations. Just like Welting captured regional observations

569
00:35:40,130 –> 00:35:43,170
and was able to turn that into, into dramas and short stories.

570
00:35:44,050 –> 00:35:47,820
I think that’s a strength that modern authors are missing. I don’t,

571
00:35:48,540 –> 00:35:50,940
I wonder how many of them are on their phones too much.

572
00:35:52,220 –> 00:35:55,620
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you got it. You got it. You got to put the

573
00:35:55,620 –> 00:35:58,700
phone down and look around, right? Like this is what we tell leaders. Like, you

574
00:35:58,700 –> 00:36:02,540
got to put the phone down and look around. Like, does that, does that

575
00:36:02,540 –> 00:36:06,220
lead into the observations?

576
00:36:07,180 –> 00:36:10,940
I wonder if our next generation of writers are going to do what you’re

577
00:36:11,100 –> 00:36:14,540
asking them to do, but it’s going to be through the lens of their phone,

578
00:36:15,190 –> 00:36:18,750
right? So like all of their observations are gonna come from tick tock or Instagram

579
00:36:18,750 –> 00:36:22,470
or Facebook, whatever, like whichever the, whichever the flavor

580
00:36:22,470 –> 00:36:24,950
is. But. And, and you’re gonna start

581
00:36:25,990 –> 00:36:29,830
seeing books written in that

582
00:36:31,430 –> 00:36:35,270
instead of, I guess goes back to your point about. Instead of like the flattening

583
00:36:35,270 –> 00:36:38,870
of the, this global globalization. Flattening globalization thing is

584
00:36:39,190 –> 00:36:42,400
because now they’re going to be seeing everything they see on their tick tock talk

585
00:36:42,400 –> 00:36:45,920
is from all over the place. So there’s not one universal

586
00:36:46,640 –> 00:36:50,080
like you’re just talking about the gentleman writing from Florida

587
00:36:50,400 –> 00:36:54,080
or in Welties, you know, writing from the, the South.

588
00:36:55,440 –> 00:36:59,160
It’s, it’s going to be maybe, maybe, maybe

589
00:36:59,160 –> 00:37:02,920
that’s what it is, right? They’re observing. They’re still observing. Listen, if

590
00:37:02,920 –> 00:37:06,640
you, you’re gonna, you’re observing whether you think you are or not, whether you’re registering

591
00:37:06,640 –> 00:37:10,490
it in your brain is observing, observing or whether you’re like whether you understand

592
00:37:10,650 –> 00:37:14,370
that that’s what’s happening or not is not the is is

593
00:37:14,370 –> 00:37:17,810
you. It is happening. You’re. You are definitely. Now if you’re always

594
00:37:17,810 –> 00:37:21,490
observing this right then people are going to start writing

595
00:37:21,490 –> 00:37:25,170
about what’s in the little box instead of the

596
00:37:25,170 –> 00:37:28,530
regions of the world. Well, one of the ironies of our time, both of, both

597
00:37:28,530 –> 00:37:30,690
of us are film guys and we’ll go back to the book after I make

598
00:37:30,690 –> 00:37:34,500
this point. One of the ironies of our time is as the phone has become

599
00:37:34,500 –> 00:37:37,380
more ubiquitous as a physical object in our lives,

600
00:37:38,180 –> 00:37:42,020
the integration of the communication and the physical object of the phone

601
00:37:42,420 –> 00:37:46,140
into movies and television, which

602
00:37:46,140 –> 00:37:49,140
basically have overtaken the novel and have killed it, I think.

603
00:37:50,740 –> 00:37:53,780
Not the book, by the way, just the novel. Right.

604
00:37:55,460 –> 00:37:59,140
Those tools, the phone, that phone is

605
00:37:59,140 –> 00:38:02,820
an object, but also the phone is a communication tool. The struggle

606
00:38:02,820 –> 00:38:06,620
that, the struggle that film people have had to integrate that

607
00:38:06,620 –> 00:38:10,100
into stories has been kind of amazing to me. Kind of funny. Yeah,

608
00:38:10,340 –> 00:38:12,020
it’s kind of amazing because it’s like

609
00:38:14,580 –> 00:38:18,340
the analogy that I can make is how often do you see someone

610
00:38:18,580 –> 00:38:22,260
in a horror movie? You talked about horror movies. Okay, how often

611
00:38:22,260 –> 00:38:24,420
do you see someone in a horror movie go to the bathroom?

612
00:38:26,020 –> 00:38:28,980
Not because something horrible is about to happen, but just like, because people have to

613
00:38:28,980 –> 00:38:32,750
go to the bathroom. Or, or. My favorite part is when this thing does come

614
00:38:32,750 –> 00:38:35,990
into play in a horror movie, it’s all of a sudden out of Service. Like,

615
00:38:35,990 –> 00:38:39,790
we have 99. We have 99.9 of this coverage around

616
00:38:39,790 –> 00:38:43,630
our country, folks. But yet inevitably, you are in a dead zone

617
00:38:43,630 –> 00:38:44,870
when you’re in a horror movie.

618
00:38:50,150 –> 00:38:53,630
It’s my favorite part of the horror movie. That’s true. That’s true. And you could,

619
00:38:53,630 –> 00:38:57,260
and you could time it almost to like the beginning of the second act. Like

620
00:38:57,260 –> 00:38:59,540
the, the second act kicks in and then all of a sudden we’re in a

621
00:38:59,540 –> 00:39:03,260
dead zone. You’re like, really? Like, Sprint has 100% coverage. What are you talking

622
00:39:03,260 –> 00:39:06,580
about? There’s no dead zones. Just call somebody. There’s no dead zones in the United

623
00:39:06,580 –> 00:39:09,780
States anymore. I mean, come on. I mean, I mean, maybe there are. I’m not,

624
00:39:09,860 –> 00:39:13,580
you know, whatever, but they’re, they’re very few and far between. You know, there’s a,

625
00:39:13,580 –> 00:39:17,380
there’s, there’s a 15. Not even a 15. There is a 10 minute dead zone

626
00:39:17,540 –> 00:39:21,260
between where I live in Dallas, Fort Worth and

627
00:39:21,260 –> 00:39:24,380
it. And it doesn’t even, it’s not even dead. It goes from, it goes from.

628
00:39:25,180 –> 00:39:28,460
What do you call it? It goes from a 5 bar

629
00:39:28,460 –> 00:39:32,300
5G down to like 1 bar 1G. So

630
00:39:32,300 –> 00:39:36,060
I can still like stream an audiobook. And I’ve

631
00:39:36,060 –> 00:39:39,660
done that before. I just can’t have a phone call. Hey, son. I can drive.

632
00:39:39,660 –> 00:39:43,500
I can drive from New York City. From New York

633
00:39:43,500 –> 00:39:47,300
City, which is four and a half hours south of my home. Yep. I

634
00:39:47,300 –> 00:39:51,000
can drive from. I can drive from New York City past my home,

635
00:39:51,160 –> 00:39:54,920
drive all the way up to Portland, Maine, which is another two hours

636
00:39:55,080 –> 00:39:58,720
north of My home and never hit a dead zone, not

637
00:39:58,720 –> 00:40:01,800
once. See, that’s. Yeah, I mean, but that’s

638
00:40:02,040 –> 00:40:05,880
inevitably. I think they’re getting clever

639
00:40:05,880 –> 00:40:08,120
to it now though, because every once in a while you’ll watch a horror movie

640
00:40:08,120 –> 00:40:11,600
where the phone doesn’t work and they’ll be like, oh, there’s some interference. Like

641
00:40:11,600 –> 00:40:15,400
something’s happening to the. Yeah, okay, so. So it’s not a dead zone anymore, but

642
00:40:15,400 –> 00:40:18,920
some, you know, the cell tower’s down because the

643
00:40:18,920 –> 00:40:22,120
electrical storm or some jack wagon stuff.

644
00:40:23,960 –> 00:40:27,760
By the way, h. By the way, we will actually,

645
00:40:27,760 –> 00:40:30,120
at the end of our episode today, we’re gonna have a little bit of an

646
00:40:30,120 –> 00:40:33,440
extra bonus because Tom and I are going to talk about Project Hail Mary because

647
00:40:33,440 –> 00:40:35,880
I have some, we have some thoughts on that. I have some thoughts on movies.

648
00:40:35,880 –> 00:40:37,920
So if we have some time at the end of our episode, we’ll do that

649
00:40:37,920 –> 00:40:41,590
today. Okay. So going to book two. So Optimus Daughter is

650
00:40:41,590 –> 00:40:45,310
divided up into, into four books, right? Sort of an old

651
00:40:45,310 –> 00:40:48,990
classic, sort of novelist’s approach. And so we’re going to go into, we’re going to

652
00:40:48,990 –> 00:40:52,510
head into and summarize a little bit of book two. So book two opens up

653
00:40:52,670 –> 00:40:56,510
with, with a funeral. Right?

654
00:40:57,230 –> 00:40:59,710
Now I am a big fan of

655
00:41:01,070 –> 00:41:03,870
funerals. Pause

656
00:41:04,920 –> 00:41:08,600
in literary works. Because a funeral is a place

657
00:41:08,680 –> 00:41:12,400
where we can not

658
00:41:12,400 –> 00:41:16,000
only play with an understanding as an author or as a,

659
00:41:16,000 –> 00:41:19,760
as a, as an audience member or as a reader, as

660
00:41:19,760 –> 00:41:23,280
a witness. Right? We can play with perceptions of

661
00:41:23,280 –> 00:41:26,440
reality, but we also get to play with things that are existential.

662
00:41:26,680 –> 00:41:30,320
Themes that are existential, like life and death, themes

663
00:41:30,320 –> 00:41:34,120
of renewal and redemption, themes of forgiveness and reconciliation.

664
00:41:34,920 –> 00:41:38,720
And of course, when a funeral occurs in real life, as

665
00:41:38,720 –> 00:41:41,400
it does in a novel, as when it does in a novel,

666
00:41:42,520 –> 00:41:46,000
everybody who is at the funeral, well,

667
00:41:46,000 –> 00:41:49,760
everybody doesn’t need to be there. So in book two, we

668
00:41:49,760 –> 00:41:52,520
open up with Laurel McKelva

669
00:41:53,720 –> 00:41:57,320
returning to her father’s home. And

670
00:41:57,320 –> 00:42:00,920
all six of her bridesmaids from her wedding that she had had years

671
00:42:00,920 –> 00:42:04,690
ago show up. And these six bridesmaids

672
00:42:04,690 –> 00:42:08,050
begin to help her navigate the funeral

673
00:42:08,210 –> 00:42:11,570
process. The community shows up to help her

674
00:42:11,570 –> 00:42:14,050
bury her father, the judge.

675
00:42:15,410 –> 00:42:19,050
Now the interesting thing

676
00:42:19,050 –> 00:42:22,770
about these six women is that they

677
00:42:22,770 –> 00:42:26,290
are the ones who hold the memories

678
00:42:26,450 –> 00:42:30,020
of the community. And it’s interesting, so

679
00:42:30,020 –> 00:42:33,420
wealthy Welty sits on, on an observation here

680
00:42:33,740 –> 00:42:37,460
that women, and by the way, Welty was born in

681
00:42:37,460 –> 00:42:41,220
1909. So she, she saw and

682
00:42:41,220 –> 00:42:43,420
grew up in a pre feminist world

683
00:42:45,020 –> 00:42:48,420
in the south and then

684
00:42:48,420 –> 00:42:51,420
matured and had her career in a post

685
00:42:51,580 –> 00:42:54,470
feminism world in the south

686
00:42:56,310 –> 00:43:00,150
feminism doesn’t enter into this book. That’s a warning, by the

687
00:43:00,150 –> 00:43:02,630
way, for some of you who are looking for it. So if you’re, if you’re

688
00:43:02,630 –> 00:43:06,350
reading this book and you’re looking for that, that doesn’t, it doesn’t enter

689
00:43:06,350 –> 00:43:09,830
in here. Except.

690
00:43:10,630 –> 00:43:14,430
Not even. Except it enters in, in one. I

691
00:43:14,430 –> 00:43:17,910
shouldn’t say it. Interest in it. It glides across the top in one

692
00:43:17,910 –> 00:43:21,760
fashion. And how Laurel, the character Laurel talks about leaving the south

693
00:43:21,760 –> 00:43:25,440
and going to Chicago where she got married at, at

694
00:43:25,680 –> 00:43:28,080
the beginning of the beginning of World War II.

695
00:43:29,440 –> 00:43:32,680
But, but Laurel is comforted by these six

696
00:43:32,680 –> 00:43:36,280
bridesmaids and by the way, they swoop in and they do

697
00:43:36,280 –> 00:43:40,000
everything they can to help her. Now with that

698
00:43:40,080 –> 00:43:43,680
it there of course, is gossiping, backbiting,

699
00:43:44,800 –> 00:43:48,640
conversations that we would consider to be more feminine coded

700
00:43:49,430 –> 00:43:53,270
and more female coded that do occur in this part of the

701
00:43:53,270 –> 00:43:57,110
book. But there’s also the giving of food and the preparation

702
00:43:57,110 –> 00:44:00,310
of meals. There’s the turning down of the bed.

703
00:44:00,630 –> 00:44:04,310
And the. The African American maid

704
00:44:04,310 –> 00:44:07,910
returns who used to work with the judge and who helped raise

705
00:44:07,910 –> 00:44:11,510
Laurel, returns to, of course, help her

706
00:44:11,510 –> 00:44:15,200
during her time of need. This is the coming

707
00:44:15,200 –> 00:44:18,800
together of community in the second part of the

708
00:44:18,800 –> 00:44:22,320
Optimist’s Daughter. Now, a couple of other things

709
00:44:22,320 –> 00:44:25,960
happen in here too. So there’s, there’s Fay, the

710
00:44:25,960 –> 00:44:29,440
judge’s second wife, Laurel’s stepmother, such as it were.

711
00:44:29,440 –> 00:44:33,160
And Faye’s family comes

712
00:44:33,160 –> 00:44:37,000
in to the narrative in part two. And Faye’s

713
00:44:37,000 –> 00:44:39,600
family is from Texas.

714
00:44:40,750 –> 00:44:44,550
They are not from Alabama. No, not from Mississippi. And they’re not from Georgia. They

715
00:44:44,550 –> 00:44:46,990
are from Texas. And there is a distinct

716
00:44:47,950 –> 00:44:51,790
regional flavor given to them, as I often say,

717
00:44:52,350 –> 00:44:56,189
about conflicts that happen across the world. We in the United States don’t

718
00:44:56,189 –> 00:44:59,870
know the difference between XYZ ethnic group and ABC ethnic group,

719
00:44:59,870 –> 00:45:02,910
but they know the difference. Same thing here,

720
00:45:03,630 –> 00:45:07,480
people in the American South. They know the difference between folks from Georgia,

721
00:45:07,560 –> 00:45:11,280
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas

722
00:45:11,280 –> 00:45:14,480
and Texas. And yes, I can tell you, living in Texas, they all talk dirty

723
00:45:14,480 –> 00:45:17,960
about each other. Absolutely. Still

724
00:45:18,280 –> 00:45:21,920
these days, states do still

725
00:45:21,920 –> 00:45:25,760
matter. And in this narrative it matters as well,

726
00:45:25,760 –> 00:45:29,080
because the family of Fay rushes in and

727
00:45:29,080 –> 00:45:32,360
behaves as one of my old

728
00:45:33,090 –> 00:45:36,530
ex girlfriends. Back in the day, their mother would have said to me, they behave

729
00:45:36,530 –> 00:45:37,810
like a bunch of wood ticks.

730
00:45:40,130 –> 00:45:42,370
Some old school terminology there.

731
00:45:43,490 –> 00:45:46,850
Finally, there are the men who help

732
00:45:46,850 –> 00:45:50,210
bury the judge, the judge’s male friends

733
00:45:51,090 –> 00:45:54,890
and the judge’s male friends. The men in part two of the

734
00:45:54,890 –> 00:45:58,290
Optimist’s Daughter behave in a fashion

735
00:45:58,930 –> 00:46:02,690
that is old School, Southern patriarchy. They

736
00:46:02,690 –> 00:46:06,450
run around, they do the things they’re supposed to do, they listen to the women

737
00:46:06,450 –> 00:46:09,650
when they need to. And then when they can scatter off and not take any

738
00:46:09,650 –> 00:46:13,290
responsibility, they scatter off and not take any responsibility. There’s a

739
00:46:13,290 –> 00:46:17,130
whole, there’s a whole sequence in there of one of the judge’s friends.

740
00:46:17,130 –> 00:46:19,810
I don’t want to ruin it for you. Go, go read the book. But one

741
00:46:19,810 –> 00:46:23,330
of the judge’s friends going and getting some lemonade for his wife,

742
00:46:23,490 –> 00:46:27,170
who literally berates him into going and getting the lemonade and, and then coming

743
00:46:27,170 –> 00:46:30,530
back and he delivers the lemonade and then he runs outside to go smoke

744
00:46:30,530 –> 00:46:34,370
cigars. And Laurel observes this as a, as a

745
00:46:34,370 –> 00:46:38,170
witness, both of those, both as a witness of the new

746
00:46:38,170 –> 00:46:41,970
generation, the next generation that’s beginning to come in and is, is observing and judging

747
00:46:41,970 –> 00:46:45,730
this old school behavior, but also as someone who grew

748
00:46:45,730 –> 00:46:49,130
up in that behavior and finds comfort in it during her time of need,

749
00:46:50,410 –> 00:46:53,050
when she’s mourning her, her father.

750
00:46:57,180 –> 00:47:00,620
Welty hits on something in here, in the second part of the book that Joan

751
00:47:00,620 –> 00:47:04,380
Didion also hit on another point that her and Didion, you know, sort

752
00:47:04,380 –> 00:47:07,980
of, sort of share where she’s writing

753
00:47:07,980 –> 00:47:11,700
part two of this novel. And at one level it operates as

754
00:47:11,700 –> 00:47:15,540
a regional documentary of behaviors of people in the south

755
00:47:15,540 –> 00:47:18,620
during that time around funerals, but it also

756
00:47:18,780 –> 00:47:21,820
writes, she also engages with it at a social

757
00:47:21,980 –> 00:47:25,620
documentary level. She’s making some social commentary on what she’s

758
00:47:25,620 –> 00:47:29,420
seeing and what she’s, what she’s thinking about. And I think this is where

759
00:47:29,420 –> 00:47:33,220
Welty’s genius is. I think this is what won her the Pulitzer Prize because

760
00:47:33,220 –> 00:47:36,780
she’s doing the social documentary without being heavy handed.

761
00:47:36,860 –> 00:47:40,620
She’s not being judgmental. She’s merely saying, this

762
00:47:40,620 –> 00:47:44,060
is what we saw. This is, this is the way that it was.

763
00:47:44,940 –> 00:47:47,000
And you make a judgment about it

764
00:47:48,520 –> 00:47:52,320
now in our time, everyone documents everything. We talked about that extensively

765
00:47:52,320 –> 00:47:55,480
in the first part of the show with the phones and everything else, from every

766
00:47:55,480 –> 00:47:59,000
small aspect of their personal lives to the larger social moments of our culture.

767
00:48:00,280 –> 00:48:03,720
But no one ever stops to ask what

768
00:48:03,720 –> 00:48:07,320
documenting and making and sharing all of this quote unquote content

769
00:48:07,800 –> 00:48:11,560
actually means matter of fact. I think that historians of the future

770
00:48:11,560 –> 00:48:15,270
300 years from now are going to wonder at the flood

771
00:48:15,270 –> 00:48:17,990
of irrelevancy that we have created.

772
00:48:19,350 –> 00:48:22,150
And I think they’re going to be, they’re going to be choked. They’re not going

773
00:48:22,150 –> 00:48:25,350
to know what to do. They’re not going to know how to sift out meaning.

774
00:48:26,070 –> 00:48:28,830
And I think they will come to the conclusion that we, we didn’t know how

775
00:48:28,830 –> 00:48:32,230
to do it either. And I don’t think that that’ll be, I don’t think that’ll

776
00:48:32,230 –> 00:48:35,710
be a check mark plus for us. I don’t, don’t think that’s going to be

777
00:48:35,710 –> 00:48:39,430
a good thing. So Tom and I were talking about

778
00:48:40,350 –> 00:48:42,710
something that I want to bring up here in a little bit of a different

779
00:48:42,710 –> 00:48:46,510
context. Previously we were talking about this book and getting

780
00:48:46,510 –> 00:48:49,470
ready to prepare for the show. A couple days ago we were talking about this,

781
00:48:50,990 –> 00:48:54,430
the issue of disinterested journalists. And Tom was going on a little bit of a

782
00:48:54,430 –> 00:48:57,630
rant about journalism. I don’t know if he’s going to revisit this here,

783
00:48:58,030 –> 00:49:01,830
but Welty sort of behaves like an anthropologist and a journalist and

784
00:49:01,830 –> 00:49:04,030
a social commentator without

785
00:49:06,760 –> 00:49:10,560
she mastered journalistic. Just like Joan Didion early

786
00:49:10,560 –> 00:49:14,320
in her career, not later. Later Didion got wackadoo a little bit

787
00:49:14,320 –> 00:49:18,160
on this. But, but early in her career they

788
00:49:18,160 –> 00:49:21,240
both mastered, and they were both of the same generation,

789
00:49:22,760 –> 00:49:26,200
mastered the idea of that disinterested journalist

790
00:49:26,760 –> 00:49:29,960
where you couldn’t sense what their biases were.

791
00:49:30,930 –> 00:49:34,290
And now we live in a world where everybody’s a

792
00:49:34,290 –> 00:49:38,090
marketer all the time. We’re all marketing all the time.

793
00:49:38,090 –> 00:49:41,010
Whether we want to be marketing or not, we’re marketing all the time. Even I

794
00:49:41,010 –> 00:49:44,650
am marketing right now. I cannot help it. We are all

795
00:49:44,650 –> 00:49:45,650
marketers now,

796
00:49:48,530 –> 00:49:51,970
but no one seems to know what meaning we can grasp from this.

797
00:49:53,090 –> 00:49:56,930
So I’m going to use optimist daughter and the funeral and all that that

798
00:49:56,930 –> 00:50:00,540
I just set up. There is a setup for this question. Question, Tom, if.

799
00:50:02,780 –> 00:50:06,340
What does all of this mean? I’m going to ask you the existential question. What

800
00:50:06,340 –> 00:50:09,940
does all of this mean? Give, give us some meaning for all of

801
00:50:09,940 –> 00:50:13,500
this. That way at least we’ll have something on the

802
00:50:13,500 –> 00:50:17,220
Internet that Maybe will survive 300 years from now that

803
00:50:17,220 –> 00:50:20,860
can be found. Because I’m, I’m, I’m not yelling nearly as loudly with my voice

804
00:50:20,860 –> 00:50:24,540
as I could be. That maybe in some quiet

805
00:50:24,540 –> 00:50:28,220
corner of the Internet some historian 300 years from now will find and they’ll go,

806
00:50:28,650 –> 00:50:29,770
Tom Libby. Got it.

807
00:50:32,250 –> 00:50:35,890
Good luck to them. I mean, I’m not sure. I mean, you know, all I

808
00:50:35,890 –> 00:50:38,890
got right now are some opinions and as you know, they’re pretty strong

809
00:50:40,570 –> 00:50:44,169
this case because I, you know,

810
00:50:44,169 –> 00:50:47,890
kind of like you’re leading, leading to here. There is a

811
00:50:47,890 –> 00:50:51,050
major difference in what you just described as

812
00:50:51,290 –> 00:50:54,010
wealthy’s writing style, which is

813
00:50:54,670 –> 00:50:58,470
observational, no bias. I’M just going to tell you what I’m

814
00:50:58,470 –> 00:51:02,270
seeing. And that just doesn’t seem to exist anymore. And

815
00:51:02,350 –> 00:51:05,790
because journalism has turned into marketing. And

816
00:51:06,510 –> 00:51:10,070
one of my frustrations, as we were talking, as you alluded to as we were

817
00:51:10,070 –> 00:51:13,870
talking the other day, I cannot find

818
00:51:14,030 –> 00:51:17,470
anywhere anymore where I can just get factual data.

819
00:51:17,630 –> 00:51:21,330
Right. Just give me what. Folks, listen, we all know what’s

820
00:51:21,330 –> 00:51:23,970
going on around the world right now. We have wars in Iran, we have Israel

821
00:51:23,970 –> 00:51:27,530
doing this, Ukraine and Russia having this fight, et cetera, et cetera. We know that

822
00:51:27,530 –> 00:51:30,770
there’s, there’s turbulence in the world.

823
00:51:31,890 –> 00:51:35,730
But I want to know what the turbulence is stemming from

824
00:51:35,810 –> 00:51:39,170
without somebody giving me their, to your point, their

825
00:51:39,170 –> 00:51:42,770
bias. Whether you, and again, whether you

826
00:51:42,770 –> 00:51:46,450
are, whether you are, whether you stand behind

827
00:51:46,770 –> 00:51:49,880
our current, current administration blind

828
00:51:49,960 –> 00:51:53,800
faithfully, or you are on the other side and you hate him,

829
00:51:53,880 –> 00:51:57,560
you hate the administration with the passion of a thousand sons. I

830
00:51:57,560 –> 00:52:00,960
don’t care which side of the coin you are, you’re on, but give me factual

831
00:52:00,960 –> 00:52:04,360
reasons why you stand on that side of the coin. And

832
00:52:04,600 –> 00:52:07,400
nobody does it. Nobody is giving us

833
00:52:07,960 –> 00:52:11,680
factual information. Why are bombs being dropped

834
00:52:11,680 –> 00:52:15,380
here or there? Well, this happened, then that happened, then this happened, then that

835
00:52:15,380 –> 00:52:19,180
happened. The bombs dropped. Okay, now it’s up to me

836
00:52:19,180 –> 00:52:22,900
to determine what side of the coin I, I fall on because

837
00:52:22,900 –> 00:52:26,620
of the, the factual data. If you have a

838
00:52:26,620 –> 00:52:30,460
hundred. This, this goes to me, this goes directly to

839
00:52:30,460 –> 00:52:34,300
the heart of a problem that I was told when I was very, very young.

840
00:52:35,100 –> 00:52:38,260
When I was very, very young. Somebody asked me, one of my elders at the

841
00:52:38,260 –> 00:52:41,960
time asked me, me if I understood the difference between right and wrong.

842
00:52:43,080 –> 00:52:45,560
What’s the difference between not right and wrong, True,

843
00:52:46,760 –> 00:52:50,520
true or false? Sorry, what is the difference between true or false? And I

844
00:52:50,520 –> 00:52:53,600
said, well, one is right and one is wrong. And they said, no, it’s the

845
00:52:53,600 –> 00:52:57,240
majority. If the majority of people

846
00:52:57,240 –> 00:53:01,040
think something is true, then you are going to start believing it’s true. Whether it

847
00:53:01,040 –> 00:53:04,640
is or not, it’s the, the, the true or false, it lies

848
00:53:04,640 –> 00:53:08,330
with the majority. And, and that, that’s kind of what I’m

849
00:53:08,330 –> 00:53:11,970
seeing with journalism. If enough journalists say this is happening this way,

850
00:53:11,970 –> 00:53:15,410
then we all just follow that leader. It’s very rare that you find somebody trying

851
00:53:15,410 –> 00:53:18,890
to buck the system not because you have alternate views,

852
00:53:19,050 –> 00:53:22,810
just because you want to hear factual information. It’s very

853
00:53:22,810 –> 00:53:26,530
strange to me that, that you know, and again, I’m not saying I

854
00:53:26,530 –> 00:53:30,290
believe that, by the way, that the truth, the difference between the difference between true

855
00:53:30,290 –> 00:53:33,220
and false or the difference between between right and wrong is the majority. I, I

856
00:53:33,220 –> 00:53:36,820
understand that is not, that is not how you should be living your life.

857
00:53:36,980 –> 00:53:40,260
I get that. But that was said to me when I was a young kid

858
00:53:40,260 –> 00:53:44,100
that had no other, I had no other point of reference to

859
00:53:44,100 –> 00:53:47,900
understand the dynamics that they were talking about. So it’s like it was the

860
00:53:47,900 –> 00:53:51,580
easiest version of that explanation to me as I grew

861
00:53:51,580 –> 00:53:55,420
older and I started understanding what they meant by that. That was

862
00:53:55,420 –> 00:53:58,180
the shock, that was the shocking awe for me. Like that’s what I was like,

863
00:53:58,180 –> 00:54:01,640
oh, they’re right. But it’s not, it’s not truly the

864
00:54:01,640 –> 00:54:05,440
definition of right and wrong or the definition of

865
00:54:05,440 –> 00:54:09,240
true or false. It is just people tend to lead

866
00:54:09,320 –> 00:54:13,000
or follow like sheep to that, that majority.

867
00:54:13,080 –> 00:54:16,800
The like. It’s very rare that you find somebody that says, we’re not gonna anyway

868
00:54:16,800 –> 00:54:20,360
to go back now circle this back. Because in my

869
00:54:20,360 –> 00:54:24,040
opinion, journalists are marketers in a sense. They

870
00:54:24,040 –> 00:54:27,840
just need the clip clicks. Right? Like so they will say and do

871
00:54:27,840 –> 00:54:31,400
wherever the majority leads them because they want all the clicks, because

872
00:54:31,400 –> 00:54:35,120
that’s their job survival at this point. They’re not being, they’re

873
00:54:35,120 –> 00:54:38,920
not being hired by CNN or Fox News or ABC or

874
00:54:38,920 –> 00:54:42,600
whomever. They’re not getting hired by any of those people to

875
00:54:42,600 –> 00:54:46,280
just dragnet it. Right. Like dragnet just the

876
00:54:46,280 –> 00:54:50,000
facts, man. No, they want clicks, which means you have to do

877
00:54:50,000 –> 00:54:53,530
something or say something to drive those clicks. You are marketing

878
00:54:53,850 –> 00:54:57,290
your opinions or your biases. The.

879
00:54:57,450 –> 00:55:01,290
That’s the only way for they, for them to survive. The problem is that is

880
00:55:01,290 –> 00:55:04,970
now leaking and seeping into everyday life because of

881
00:55:04,970 –> 00:55:08,330
these things. Yep. So

882
00:55:08,570 –> 00:55:11,450
now, now whether you speak loud or not,

883
00:55:12,570 –> 00:55:15,930
you’re going to basically be judged by the number of clicks you get on this

884
00:55:15,930 –> 00:55:19,260
web, on this podcast. Podcast, or a number of downloads you have on this podcast.

885
00:55:19,260 –> 00:55:22,380
So your success or failure is going to be based on the number of downloads,

886
00:55:22,380 –> 00:55:26,100
not on the quality of the content. Because you could have the best podcast

887
00:55:26,500 –> 00:55:30,060
in the market right now. And if you don’t have enough downloads to justify

888
00:55:30,060 –> 00:55:33,460
that statement, you’re not making it. So,

889
00:55:33,540 –> 00:55:37,340
so I will say this. I. I do have the best. I do have

890
00:55:37,340 –> 00:55:40,980
the best podcast in the market right now. You are part of the best podcast

891
00:55:40,980 –> 00:55:43,980
in the market right now. And then you’re right, I don’t have enough downloads to

892
00:55:43,980 –> 00:55:45,620
justify that. You’re exactly correct.

893
00:55:47,940 –> 00:55:49,140
And this is why

894
00:55:52,340 –> 00:55:55,220
on the other side of the idea

895
00:55:56,500 –> 00:55:59,940
that we are all marketers is

896
00:56:01,220 –> 00:56:04,860
also the idea that, or, or not the

897
00:56:04,860 –> 00:56:07,460
idea, but the, the fact that

898
00:56:08,980 –> 00:56:10,740
for lack of a better idea,

899
00:56:12,990 –> 00:56:16,750
the Idea that marketing ruins everything, right?

900
00:56:17,550 –> 00:56:20,750
And it’s not that the Internet was this like, you know, pristine

901
00:56:21,790 –> 00:56:25,310
sort of virginal territory with no bad actors.

902
00:56:25,630 –> 00:56:29,230
That’s never been the Internet. Tom. Tom and I both

903
00:56:29,230 –> 00:56:32,830
been. We’ve both been here since. Since the dark

904
00:56:32,830 –> 00:56:35,990
magic. The rails for the dark magic were originally laid. We’ve been around here for

905
00:56:35,990 –> 00:56:38,720
a while. It was never.

906
00:56:40,240 –> 00:56:43,240
Oh, I just saw today that that

907
00:56:43,240 –> 00:56:46,960
ask.com finally just shut down, right? I was like, oh, really? I didn’t even know.

908
00:56:47,040 –> 00:56:49,520
Yeah, I didn’t know that was still rolling. Good Lord.

909
00:56:51,760 –> 00:56:55,560
But my point is that human beings are going

910
00:56:55,560 –> 00:56:57,960
to be bad. Human beings are going to be good. This is. This is. This

911
00:56:57,960 –> 00:57:01,120
is just sort of the human nature kind of thing, right? The.

912
00:57:02,160 –> 00:57:05,920
The challenge we have is. And. And Tom, you named

913
00:57:05,920 –> 00:57:09,700
it correctly, the challenge we have is if the vast majority

914
00:57:09,700 –> 00:57:13,260
is pursuing clicks and behaving in a way where they are only

915
00:57:13,260 –> 00:57:16,980
pursuing marketing outcomes, then of course they’re going to be

916
00:57:16,980 –> 00:57:20,420
biased. Now, with that being said, my oldest son is in

917
00:57:20,420 –> 00:57:24,220
journalism, and I will tell you that the way he writes

918
00:57:24,220 –> 00:57:27,900
is not a way that. That, that pursues clicks.

919
00:57:28,220 –> 00:57:31,820
He’s actually trying to get to maybe not capital

920
00:57:31,820 –> 00:57:35,650
T truth, but just the facts. Right now there are

921
00:57:35,650 –> 00:57:39,450
people who believe that his pursuit, because they

922
00:57:39,450 –> 00:57:41,890
have been so warped. And this is the thing on. This is the other side

923
00:57:41,890 –> 00:57:45,410
effect. They have been so warped by people who

924
00:57:45,410 –> 00:57:48,770
are pursuing clicks, they’re running after him going,

925
00:57:49,490 –> 00:57:52,250
well, you had to be pursuing clicks to say this thing about me, even though

926
00:57:52,250 –> 00:57:56,010
it was factual. You had to be pursuing clicks because that’s the only way that

927
00:57:56,010 –> 00:57:59,790
someone would bring up this factual. Right. That even remotely bring up this factual thing.

928
00:57:59,940 –> 00:58:03,060
Thing. Right? Which. Which of course

929
00:58:04,740 –> 00:58:08,580
leads to an inability

930
00:58:09,860 –> 00:58:13,700
of the audience who is observing this

931
00:58:13,700 –> 00:58:17,540
and reading this and trying to discuss out what is

932
00:58:17,700 –> 00:58:21,420
not true. Again, I’m not using that word on purpose. What

933
00:58:21,420 –> 00:58:25,060
is factual from what is opinion to be confused.

934
00:58:26,140 –> 00:58:29,260
And so you have the people who don’t like what’s happening

935
00:58:29,660 –> 00:58:33,420
muddying the waters. You have the people who

936
00:58:34,380 –> 00:58:37,980
are manipulating the system muddying the

937
00:58:37,980 –> 00:58:41,740
water. And then you have people who are

938
00:58:41,740 –> 00:58:45,500
seeking to navigate the waters, like myself or my

939
00:58:45,500 –> 00:58:49,340
son, in a way that neither muddies them nor. Nor

940
00:58:49,500 –> 00:58:53,330
further causes problems, who can’t get traction no matter how loudly

941
00:58:53,330 –> 00:58:57,090
we yell. Which, by the way, I’m of the opinion that. And I’ll just

942
00:58:57,090 –> 00:58:58,970
sort of preface this a little bit. This is sort of how I’m going to

943
00:58:58,970 –> 00:59:02,370
end today. I’m of the. I’m of the ability. I’m of the thought process now

944
00:59:02,370 –> 00:59:06,090
that actually speaking quieter is probably better rather than

945
00:59:06,090 –> 00:59:09,930
yelling louder. But, but that’s, that’s, that’s for a little

946
00:59:09,930 –> 00:59:13,090
bit later on. So I know I saw you sort of have that. You sort

947
00:59:13,090 –> 00:59:16,610
of had that, had that, had that response. Because this is, this is what, this

948
00:59:16,610 –> 00:59:20,030
is what is happening. And it’s still at the end of the day.

949
00:59:22,030 –> 00:59:23,710
And, and, you know,

950
00:59:25,710 –> 00:59:29,070
people want to know what all this means. We want to know what it means.

951
00:59:29,230 –> 00:59:32,950
Not necessarily. Like, you picked. You pick something big, right? You pick like

952
00:59:32,950 –> 00:59:36,710
Ukraine and Iran, and these are big things. Yeah. Okay. Because

953
00:59:36,710 –> 00:59:40,470
there are things everybody knows. I’m less interested in what those

954
00:59:40,470 –> 00:59:43,390
things mean, and I’m more interested in. In what.

955
00:59:46,920 –> 00:59:49,480
I’m more interested in what the tax abatement

956
00:59:51,640 –> 00:59:54,440
promises mean for my community

957
00:59:55,800 –> 00:59:59,639
around data centers. Which has nothing to do with anything

958
00:59:59,639 –> 01:00:03,280
that you’re doing in Boston. Right. It has everything to do

959
01:00:03,280 –> 01:00:06,680
with what’s happening in my local community. I want to know what that means.

960
01:00:07,960 –> 01:00:10,490
And Facebook, even Facebook

961
01:00:11,770 –> 01:00:15,370
muddies the waters of that meaning. I can’t get

962
01:00:15,370 –> 01:00:19,010
meaning on that because you know what the people. And again, it’s,

963
01:00:19,010 –> 01:00:22,690
it’s, it’s a smaller microcosm of a much larger thing at scale that you’re

964
01:00:22,690 –> 01:00:26,490
seeing with larger international events. So we’ve scaled

965
01:00:26,570 –> 01:00:30,050
down that sort of marketing behavior to the

966
01:00:30,050 –> 01:00:33,690
average person, and that’s been deleterious, that’s been damaging to our culture.

967
01:00:33,930 –> 01:00:37,640
That’s why we can’t communicate about the same things. Yeah, no,

968
01:00:37,640 –> 01:00:41,360
and you’re right, I, again, I, I use something because, you know, people

969
01:00:41,360 –> 01:00:44,520
listening to this podcast are listening from all over the place. So I was trying

970
01:00:44,520 –> 01:00:48,120
to find something universal. Right? Like that everybody on the planet

971
01:00:48,120 –> 01:00:51,840
could put their fingertip on if they wanted to. Yeah. Fact still remains the

972
01:00:51,840 –> 01:00:55,240
same, though, because I agree with you too. Like, if I’m looking at, like, you

973
01:00:55,240 –> 01:00:58,400
know, we have a, A thing up here. You know, we have a special prop,

974
01:00:58,800 –> 01:01:02,600
what’s called Prop 2 and a half, right? Like, there’s a, there’s a. There’s this

975
01:01:02,600 –> 01:01:06,330
automatic trigger that your town could pull. It’s

976
01:01:06,330 –> 01:01:10,010
called a. A property tax of 2 1/2 percent. So it’s an automatic prop

977
01:01:10,010 –> 01:01:13,770
2 1/2 increase. If they need revenue

978
01:01:13,770 –> 01:01:17,250
for something now, they can only pull the trigger, like X so many number of

979
01:01:17,250 –> 01:01:20,770
years. Like it’s like once every five years or something like that.

980
01:01:21,250 –> 01:01:23,850
But. And I don’t remember all the details to that, but the point is, to

981
01:01:23,850 –> 01:01:27,450
your point, when they pull that trigger and you want to know why, like, okay,

982
01:01:27,450 –> 01:01:31,140
what’s going on that you need the revenue, like for the city. Like, you’re

983
01:01:31,140 –> 01:01:34,620
like, you’re abatement problem. I’m like, we can’t find like,

984
01:01:34,620 –> 01:01:38,420
oh, there was, you know, a school blew up or not blew up, but

985
01:01:38,420 –> 01:01:42,140
you know what I mean? Like, they needed to expand a school or they needed

986
01:01:42,140 –> 01:01:45,540
to pay for whatever, whatever it was. And you want to be able to

987
01:01:45,540 –> 01:01:49,020
justify it. And you can almost never find. But to your point, Facebook

988
01:01:49,100 –> 01:01:52,940
forums and all this stuff are just people throwing mud at each other. Like, well,

989
01:01:52,940 –> 01:01:56,190
you know, and then of course, every once in a while you get the, you

990
01:01:56,190 –> 01:01:59,990
try to get the voice of reason in those groups that say, hey guys, stop.

991
01:01:59,990 –> 01:02:03,790
You guys are neighbors. Stop throwing mud at each other. When you realize that

992
01:02:03,790 –> 01:02:06,310
the government can do this whether you want them to or not.

993
01:02:07,510 –> 01:02:10,470
That’s why they call it a prop two and a half override. Like, they, they,

994
01:02:10,470 –> 01:02:13,990
they can just do it and you’re just asking them for why

995
01:02:14,230 –> 01:02:17,350
out of. And they’re going to tell you out of the nicety, not out of

996
01:02:17,350 –> 01:02:21,070
the requirement. Like, there’s no requirement that says they have to tell us what the

997
01:02:21,070 –> 01:02:24,850
money is for. For. But every government official does just because they know we can

998
01:02:24,850 –> 01:02:26,970
vote them out. Right? Like, if you don’t tell us what it’s for, we’re going

999
01:02:26,970 –> 01:02:30,170
to vote you out next. The next election, you’re gone. So they tell us.

1000
01:02:30,490 –> 01:02:34,210
But they’re finding that information is literally like finding

1001
01:02:34,210 –> 01:02:38,010
a needle in a pile of needles. Never mind the haystack, it’s

1002
01:02:38,010 –> 01:02:40,930
like a needle in a pile of needles and you just don’t, don’t know which

1003
01:02:40,930 –> 01:02:44,170
one you’re grabbing onto to try to figure out what the hell’s going on. So

1004
01:02:44,410 –> 01:02:48,020
again, I agree with you that it’s like the muddying of the water is

1005
01:02:48,020 –> 01:02:51,860
not. And by the way, we’re not picking on journalists here because to, to

1006
01:02:51,860 –> 01:02:55,580
your point, with this, this, you know, Facebook forum situation

1007
01:02:55,660 –> 01:02:59,380
or Facebook group posts, whatever you’re talking about, it’s not

1008
01:02:59,380 –> 01:03:03,020
just journalists, it’s everybody. Like, people will say something in those

1009
01:03:03,020 –> 01:03:06,620
forums just to get reactions from people. Correct?

1010
01:03:06,700 –> 01:03:10,100
They’re not saying it because they’re trying to add to the conversation or they’re trying

1011
01:03:10,100 –> 01:03:13,790
to clarify something. People will throw comments in there just

1012
01:03:13,790 –> 01:03:17,350
to see how people react. And that’s

1013
01:03:17,430 –> 01:03:19,990
not helpful. Stop that, guys.

1014
01:03:21,110 –> 01:03:24,910
Like, it’s not helpful. And that’s even before we’ve gotten to the

1015
01:03:24,910 –> 01:03:28,150
trolls and the bad actors and the bot farms that are offshore

1016
01:03:28,630 –> 01:03:32,430
that are, that are mucking around in our internal infrastructure. And by

1017
01:03:32,430 –> 01:03:36,150
the way, where we’re mucking around with our trolls and our bot farms in our

1018
01:03:36,150 –> 01:03:39,870
country, in other countries, infrastructure. Because everybody’s doing it to everybody

1019
01:03:39,870 –> 01:03:43,690
else, right? This isn’t just something the Iranians happen to be doing or the

1020
01:03:43,690 –> 01:03:46,810
Russians happen to be doing, where the Chinese and the North Koreans happen to be

1021
01:03:46,810 –> 01:03:49,890
doing. The United States is doing it, the British are doing it,

1022
01:03:50,770 –> 01:03:54,490
you know, the French are doing it. The first world, the first

1023
01:03:54,490 –> 01:03:58,210
world, whatever that may mean. The first world nations are doing it to the

1024
01:03:58,210 –> 01:04:01,730
third world nations. Everybody’s doing it to everybody. This, this is,

1025
01:04:03,090 –> 01:04:06,900
this is the problem. And there’s no meaning behind it. To your point,

1026
01:04:06,900 –> 01:04:10,260
Tom, it’s just trolling. It’s getting a

1027
01:04:10,260 –> 01:04:12,860
reaction to get a reaction. It’s.

1028
01:04:14,380 –> 01:04:17,820
I’m not saying, I’m just saying. And then go ahead and saying the thing

1029
01:04:19,100 –> 01:04:22,540
and then, you know, they just walk away, like I, I,

1030
01:04:23,420 –> 01:04:26,140
something some. Was it today? Might have been today,

1031
01:04:27,180 –> 01:04:30,660
maybe it was a couple days ago, in preparation for this podcast, but

1032
01:04:30,660 –> 01:04:34,300
apparently somebody ran their mouth in England online about some

1033
01:04:34,300 –> 01:04:38,020
boxer or something. And the boxer, like, actually showed up to their house, like,

1034
01:04:38,020 –> 01:04:40,980
found out where this person lived, because of course, you know, everybody could be doxed

1035
01:04:40,980 –> 01:04:44,780
on the Internet and like showed up to this person’s house and was

1036
01:04:44,780 –> 01:04:48,020
like, you’re gonna say that to my face? And the guy’s like, oh. You know.

1037
01:04:48,020 –> 01:04:51,820
And apparently there was like a whole like commercial ad campaign about

1038
01:04:51,820 –> 01:04:54,100
this. Like, don’t say the things on the Internet that you. And of course they

1039
01:04:54,100 –> 01:04:57,780
use it because there’s no free speech laws in the UK and

1040
01:04:57,780 –> 01:05:00,870
it’s libel and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there was a larger sort of

1041
01:05:00,940 –> 01:05:04,380
of state cultural apparatus behind this thing.

1042
01:05:05,820 –> 01:05:09,580
And those kinds of

1043
01:05:09,580 –> 01:05:13,380
things work other places. The reason they don’t work here is because we have this

1044
01:05:13,380 –> 01:05:17,220
thing called the First Amendment. And as Dave Chappelle infamously said,

1045
01:05:17,220 –> 01:05:20,500
the reason the Second Amendment follows on the First Amendment is because you’re free to

1046
01:05:20,500 –> 01:05:23,660
say whatever it is you want to say in this country. Government can’t stop you.

1047
01:05:24,300 –> 01:05:27,910
But here’s the but. You’re gonna need a

1048
01:05:27,910 –> 01:05:28,270
gun.

1049
01:05:33,950 –> 01:05:35,710
If you run your mouth that hard.

1050
01:05:39,630 –> 01:05:43,110
I still don’t think we’ve underst. We know what it means. We haven’t really

1051
01:05:43,110 –> 01:05:46,870
figured that out. I think maybe we got close to something

1052
01:05:46,870 –> 01:05:50,190
with your idea of perception, and maybe that’s the thing for leaders here, is,

1053
01:05:50,670 –> 01:05:53,790
you know, we can talk about perception equaling

1054
01:05:54,140 –> 01:05:57,900
truth and what other people observe, but if

1055
01:05:57,900 –> 01:06:01,700
you’re observing something as a leader, that makes no sense. I Think it is

1056
01:06:01,700 –> 01:06:05,420
incumbent upon you to go and figure out what that thing is

1057
01:06:05,420 –> 01:06:09,180
and why it makes no sense. I also think it’s incumbent on

1058
01:06:09,180 –> 01:06:12,140
us to. And this is why I started with the funeral.

1059
01:06:12,860 –> 01:06:16,140
I think it’s incumbent on us to revisit and re

1060
01:06:16,380 –> 01:06:19,860
rebuild traditions and structures and

1061
01:06:19,860 –> 01:06:23,620
customs because we’ve talked a lot about the Internet and social

1062
01:06:23,620 –> 01:06:27,460
media. One of the other knock on effects of those tools is

1063
01:06:27,460 –> 01:06:30,860
that it’s convinced us that we can just sort of float along above things

1064
01:06:31,580 –> 01:06:35,300
and just not be impacted by them. And that’s

1065
01:06:35,300 –> 01:06:38,900
a lie. That, that’s a lie. And Welty, you know,

1066
01:06:38,900 –> 01:06:42,620
doesn’t believe that the culture that she came out of didn’t believe that. Tradition

1067
01:06:42,620 –> 01:06:45,820
was the thing that grounded you. Community was the thing that grounded you.

1068
01:06:47,030 –> 01:06:49,830
Family and, and even,

1069
01:06:50,870 –> 01:06:53,990
even, I mean, nature. Like in part three of this book,

1070
01:06:55,350 –> 01:06:58,670
it opens up with Laurel and her six

1071
01:06:58,670 –> 01:07:02,350
bridesmaids who have come back to her house after they’ve cleaned out the Texas

1072
01:07:02,350 –> 01:07:05,750
clan and everybody’s gone home and the funeral’s over.

1073
01:07:06,150 –> 01:07:09,910
And yes, I did use the word clan. Clean them all out. Right.

1074
01:07:11,830 –> 01:07:15,430
And. And the six bridesmaids come over

1075
01:07:15,670 –> 01:07:19,510
and they’re all helping her garden and they’re gossiping

1076
01:07:19,510 –> 01:07:23,230
and talking in the garden. Right? And it’s just six ladies

1077
01:07:23,230 –> 01:07:26,910
talking in the garden to Laurel. And there’s such, there’s. There’s. One of the things

1078
01:07:26,910 –> 01:07:30,190
that’s interesting about parts two and three of this book is there’s such a sense

1079
01:07:30,190 –> 01:07:34,030
of community. Like at first I was like, oh, I’m reading this. It

1080
01:07:34,030 –> 01:07:37,550
is a man. You know, men perceive community differently than women

1081
01:07:37,550 –> 01:07:41,280
do. And how that grows is different than how it grows among

1082
01:07:41,280 –> 01:07:44,080
women. But you could definitely see that like

1083
01:07:44,400 –> 01:07:48,080
Eudora had sat down with. Not even

1084
01:07:48,080 –> 01:07:50,880
sat down, had seen women behave like this.

1085
01:07:51,600 –> 01:07:55,400
Older women behave like this and pass along these traditions and

1086
01:07:55,400 –> 01:07:59,000
engage with the nature, such as it were, you know, in the

1087
01:07:59,000 –> 01:08:02,800
garden bed and use that engagement as a way to grow

1088
01:08:02,880 –> 01:08:06,580
relationships between people. And by the way, they’re still gossiping the way the

1089
01:08:06,580 –> 01:08:10,260
people gossip on Facebook. That’s not gone away. But it was only

1090
01:08:10,260 –> 01:08:14,060
the six of them. It wasn’t at scale. And everybody in the neighborhood wasn’t trolling

1091
01:08:14,060 –> 01:08:17,180
in. That’s the fundamental difference.

1092
01:08:20,220 –> 01:08:23,340
Yeah, the anchoring to small dramas and small things.

1093
01:08:26,220 –> 01:08:29,620
So let me talk about these women for just a second. The

1094
01:08:29,620 –> 01:08:33,210
characters of Faye, Laurel and the four.

1095
01:08:33,290 –> 01:08:37,050
The four. Four of the six bridesmaids who stuck around. Mrs.

1096
01:08:37,050 –> 01:08:40,730
Pease, Ms. Adele, Ms. Tennyson and Tish, they

1097
01:08:40,730 –> 01:08:44,570
all hold memories of the Past, and that’s in part three. Is, is,

1098
01:08:44,570 –> 01:08:48,370
is. It’s all about the past memories of the judge, the past memories of

1099
01:08:48,370 –> 01:08:52,050
Laurel when she was a child. It’s kind of this attempt by these

1100
01:08:52,050 –> 01:08:55,690
bridesmaids, these friends of hers, to build Laurel back

1101
01:08:55,690 –> 01:08:59,510
up after the funeral had happened. And that’s what great

1102
01:08:59,510 –> 01:09:03,150
tight knit communities do for people. And that’s the thing that we’re missing by

1103
01:09:03,150 –> 01:09:04,630
thinking that we could float above it.

1104
01:09:07,830 –> 01:09:11,670
You’re a person, Tom, who, not only out of your cultural tradition,

1105
01:09:11,670 –> 01:09:15,310
but I think just how you’re wired, the way you’ve talked, and we’ve never actually

1106
01:09:15,310 –> 01:09:18,830
directly talked about this, but I do think the cultural memory is very important for

1107
01:09:18,830 –> 01:09:20,550
you, just how you’re naturally wired.

1108
01:09:21,830 –> 01:09:25,620
Unfortunately, it’s not. It’s not. I think

1109
01:09:25,620 –> 01:09:28,500
that that’s again, one of those things that’s either dying

1110
01:09:29,620 –> 01:09:31,700
or maybe needs to be renewed.

1111
01:09:33,940 –> 01:09:37,740
But I do think it’s important for leaders to hold cultural memory. So how do

1112
01:09:37,740 –> 01:09:41,300
we, how do leaders do that? Not just in an organizational

1113
01:09:41,300 –> 01:09:44,900
structure, but how do leaders do that in general? How do they,

1114
01:09:45,380 –> 01:09:49,060
how do they hold memories? Like, how do they connect with

1115
01:09:49,060 –> 01:09:52,020
people and do that? What is, maybe some ways that they can do that? Because

1116
01:09:52,020 –> 01:09:54,960
that’s, that’s something that definitely jumps out at you from the optimist’s daughter.

1117
01:09:58,070 –> 01:10:01,870
I think there’s, I think there’s an awful lot to actually unpack there because

1118
01:10:01,870 –> 01:10:05,430
I think it, it matters from which angle you’re looking at the business

1119
01:10:05,510 –> 01:10:08,310
itself. Meaning like so for example,

1120
01:10:09,750 –> 01:10:13,430
when you’re talking about sales and marketing, you have to have a pretty short

1121
01:10:13,430 –> 01:10:17,110
memory and not allow the, not

1122
01:10:17,110 –> 01:10:20,630
allow the mistakes of the past to hold you in fear of

1123
01:10:20,910 –> 01:10:24,750
trying to advance the future. Meaning like so just to give you an example,

1124
01:10:24,750 –> 01:10:28,470
like I, I, you know, you encounter somebody who is, got a new

1125
01:10:28,470 –> 01:10:32,230
product on online or whatever, and you’re suggesting they do maybe

1126
01:10:32,230 –> 01:10:35,430
a social media campaign or something like that, and they go, no, no, time out.

1127
01:10:35,430 –> 01:10:38,750
I tried social media. It didn’t work. We’re not doing social media.

1128
01:10:39,070 –> 01:10:42,830
And that, that, that memory of them failing at social media

1129
01:10:43,150 –> 01:10:46,510
is not allowing to them to realize that social media

1130
01:10:46,950 –> 01:10:50,670
today is not the same as it was 15 years ago. Right.

1131
01:10:50,670 –> 01:10:54,350
Like, so there are ways and mechanisms and levers to pull there

1132
01:10:54,350 –> 01:10:58,070
that didn’t exist 15 years ago and that you should revisit this.

1133
01:10:58,070 –> 01:11:01,910
But the holding on to those memories stop them from doing so. So

1134
01:11:01,910 –> 01:11:05,670
it stops them from progressing into thinking that. Now on the flip side,

1135
01:11:06,150 –> 01:11:08,630
there’s. I was again, I was told,

1136
01:11:10,150 –> 01:11:13,830
I remember working for as very young, I was probably in my early

1137
01:11:13,830 –> 01:11:16,950
20s and I was working for this senior VP

1138
01:11:17,430 –> 01:11:21,230
level person and this guy was just super nice, like super

1139
01:11:21,230 –> 01:11:24,630
nice all the time, even when he had to discipline

1140
01:11:24,790 –> 01:11:28,590
like, like enforce a disciplinary action, whether it’s

1141
01:11:28,590 –> 01:11:32,390
putting somebody on a pip or whatever, right. But he was always just genuinely

1142
01:11:32,390 –> 01:11:35,910
nice about it. He genuinely cared about

1143
01:11:36,790 –> 01:11:40,540
you, you as a person, not you as an employee. Well,

1144
01:11:40,540 –> 01:11:43,180
he did still carries you as an important. But he went be. It went beyond

1145
01:11:43,180 –> 01:11:46,580
caring about you as an employee and it went into the,

1146
01:11:46,820 –> 01:11:50,540
the realm of caring about you as a person. And I asked him one day

1147
01:11:50,540 –> 01:11:54,020
because again, as you know me, I’m trying to learn everywhere I can for

1148
01:11:54,180 –> 01:11:57,100
I asked him, I was like why, why is it important for you to do

1149
01:11:57,100 –> 01:12:00,900
that? And it had nothing to do with like it was just being

1150
01:12:00,900 –> 01:12:04,660
inquisitive, right? And he said, well, you’ve got to be really nice

1151
01:12:04,660 –> 01:12:06,820
to people on the way up because you’re going to see them again on the

1152
01:12:06,820 –> 01:12:10,650
way to down. So I may be a regional VP

1153
01:12:10,650 –> 01:12:14,178
of sales and mar, like you know, sales now it’s like but 10,

1154
01:12:14,242 –> 01:12:18,090
20 years from now when I’m obsolete, I might have to go get a

1155
01:12:18,090 –> 01:12:21,730
job from that person that I just put on a pip that now

1156
01:12:21,730 –> 01:12:24,730
they’re the VP of sales and marketing and now I would need a job from

1157
01:12:24,730 –> 01:12:28,370
them and they’re going to remember that I was a human being to them first.

1158
01:12:29,570 –> 01:12:33,010
So that theory of like remember, remember things

1159
01:12:33,360 –> 01:12:35,520
on the way up because you’re going to see them again on the way down.

1160
01:12:35,840 –> 01:12:38,640
That was very impactful to me when I was a young guy, like when I

1161
01:12:38,640 –> 01:12:42,080
was learning some of the about when I was learning about leadership, that,

1162
01:12:42,640 –> 01:12:46,320
that put a peg in a place where I don’t think a lot of

1163
01:12:46,320 –> 01:12:49,720
people actually took from like that wasn’t

1164
01:12:49,720 –> 01:12:53,560
everybody’s instinct to do that is, you know, to be nice to somebody on

1165
01:12:53,560 –> 01:12:56,680
the way up because you’re going to see them on the way down. So I

1166
01:12:56,680 –> 01:13:00,160
think again, depending on which facet of business you’re looking at, I think all, all

1167
01:13:00,160 –> 01:13:01,480
of these things have.

1168
01:13:04,200 –> 01:13:07,800
They hold water, right? Like there’s something to be said about

1169
01:13:07,960 –> 01:13:11,400
letting memories go versus hanging on to the like all of it

1170
01:13:11,400 –> 01:13:15,200
matters. Like, and it’s not a simple box to put everything in that

1171
01:13:15,200 –> 01:13:18,760
says you should learn this from memories and then move on, right?

1172
01:13:18,760 –> 01:13:22,280
Like it’s not that simple. And I think that we as people

1173
01:13:22,280 –> 01:13:25,500
sometimes want something wrapped nice and neat in a little package

1174
01:13:26,050 –> 01:13:29,530
and we say, okay, this is how we do something we learn that we move

1175
01:13:29,530 –> 01:13:33,330
on to learn something else in this particular case, and holding on to

1176
01:13:33,330 –> 01:13:36,770
memories. Memories are so impactful to us that.

1177
01:13:37,410 –> 01:13:41,210
That there are lessons to learn and there are lessons to unlearn because of

1178
01:13:41,210 –> 01:13:44,450
them. And you need to be able to kind of go back to the well

1179
01:13:44,770 –> 01:13:48,610
multiple times in order to kind of indicate what you’re supposed to

1180
01:13:48,610 –> 01:13:52,430
do next. Like, the past will teach us for sure. You and

1181
01:13:52,430 –> 01:13:56,230
I have talked about this so many times about, like, the past

1182
01:13:56,230 –> 01:13:59,430
repeating itself. The more things change, the more things stay the same. If you have

1183
01:13:59,430 –> 01:14:03,270
those memories rooted in that, in that past, then you can go back to that

1184
01:14:03,270 –> 01:14:07,030
well over and over to try to teach yourself how to anticipate

1185
01:14:07,030 –> 01:14:10,590
things, how to have predict. We have

1186
01:14:10,590 –> 01:14:13,630
predictive analytics built into us based on our past.

1187
01:14:14,430 –> 01:14:17,470
Based on our past, we can predict how we’re going to react to a future

1188
01:14:17,470 –> 01:14:21,130
event. Like that’s. We have a built in, you know, predictive.

1189
01:14:21,130 –> 01:14:24,850
So memories allow us to use that. Memories are what allow us

1190
01:14:24,850 –> 01:14:28,650
to use that predictive analytics on the inside. Now, real quick, from a

1191
01:14:28,650 –> 01:14:32,210
cultural perspective, though, I think

1192
01:14:32,210 –> 01:14:35,930
there are things getting lost that once

1193
01:14:35,930 –> 01:14:39,290
they are gone, are going to be so missed

1194
01:14:39,690 –> 01:14:43,450
that we’re not going to understand why we even miss them. I’ll give you

1195
01:14:43,450 –> 01:14:47,220
an example of. And this is going to be. This will be

1196
01:14:47,220 –> 01:14:50,580
a little behind the curtain here. So for any of you who are listening, who

1197
01:14:50,580 –> 01:14:54,260
happen to be native, I really. I apologize for giving away some of our

1198
01:14:54,260 –> 01:14:57,580
secrets. But this one, I think is important because it directly

1199
01:14:58,460 –> 01:15:02,060
goes to what you’re talking about here. My daughter and I were at a

1200
01:15:02,060 –> 01:15:05,820
powwow yesterday and we were observing. Her and I were just observing a few things

1201
01:15:06,620 –> 01:15:10,350
and we were observing some of the younger dancers and

1202
01:15:10,590 –> 01:15:14,230
how there used

1203
01:15:14,230 –> 01:15:17,870
to be. And my daughter has. My daughter is only 24, and she has

1204
01:15:17,870 –> 01:15:21,670
memories of this. When you wanted to be a particular style of

1205
01:15:21,670 –> 01:15:24,990
dancer, there was a particular way

1206
01:15:25,390 –> 01:15:29,150
that you would go and ask somebody to teach

1207
01:15:29,150 –> 01:15:32,990
you. And today nobody’s really doing that because

1208
01:15:32,990 –> 01:15:36,710
they’re all online now. And they just can watch the steps and learn the

1209
01:15:36,710 –> 01:15:40,110
steps, and they can, but they’re not learning the meaning behind the dance.

1210
01:15:40,270 –> 01:15:43,150
They’re not learning. They’re not learning that value that

1211
01:15:44,670 –> 01:15:48,350
there’s this intrinsic value to understanding

1212
01:15:48,350 –> 01:15:51,470
how to ask somebody for help. That

1213
01:15:52,030 –> 01:15:55,310
from our culture is literally

1214
01:15:55,550 –> 01:15:59,270
vital. It’s like the root. It is the root of the

1215
01:15:59,270 –> 01:16:02,870
culture of being able to look at an elder or look at somebody old,

1216
01:16:02,870 –> 01:16:06,660
like, ask. There’s a mechanism there that you’re supposed to

1217
01:16:06,660 –> 01:16:10,260
leverage. So that that elder knows that

1218
01:16:10,260 –> 01:16:13,020
you’re sincere in wanting to learn. And

1219
01:16:13,980 –> 01:16:17,780
the sincerity of the want is going by

1220
01:16:17,780 –> 01:16:21,340
the wayside because we have just such easy access to the footwork

1221
01:16:21,500 –> 01:16:25,340
or to the steps or the styles or the regalia styles

1222
01:16:25,340 –> 01:16:28,940
that match the footwork. And we can just look it up on YouTube and watch

1223
01:16:28,940 –> 01:16:32,520
a few steps and learn how to dance and just go. And I

1224
01:16:32,520 –> 01:16:36,280
think that’s heart wrenching to me that

1225
01:16:36,520 –> 01:16:40,080
the memories of how to ask, how to be

1226
01:16:40,080 –> 01:16:43,920
asked, the honor, the honor it has for somebody to come

1227
01:16:43,920 –> 01:16:47,160
to you and ask you to that, that,

1228
01:16:48,920 –> 01:16:51,560
that being missing from the cultural perspective

1229
01:16:53,000 –> 01:16:56,810
is terrifying to me. And my daughter

1230
01:16:56,810 –> 01:17:00,130
still has memories of being taught those things

1231
01:17:01,090 –> 01:17:04,850
and she’s watching younger dancers that are just

1232
01:17:04,850 –> 01:17:08,410
not being taught that. And it hurts her heart at

1233
01:17:08,410 –> 01:17:11,890
24. So again,

1234
01:17:12,210 –> 01:17:15,450
what leaders can take from some of these memories, especially if you’re talking from the

1235
01:17:15,450 –> 01:17:19,290
cultural perspective. Stop. Stop allowing them to

1236
01:17:19,290 –> 01:17:22,900
do this. Stop allowing them to use that as a

1237
01:17:22,900 –> 01:17:25,980
cultural reference point. You have

1238
01:17:26,460 –> 01:17:29,740
this deep rooted ancestral culture

1239
01:17:29,980 –> 01:17:33,700
that is going to be gone if you don’t hold on to it. Now that

1240
01:17:33,700 –> 01:17:37,540
being said, there’s this small, like this

1241
01:17:37,540 –> 01:17:41,220
little woodpecker thing inside me that bangs my brain every once in a while that

1242
01:17:41,220 –> 01:17:44,980
says, just remember your culture is a living, breathing thing and it will

1243
01:17:44,980 –> 01:17:48,790
adapt and move forward. That that’s the way it’s supposed to happen. But

1244
01:17:48,790 –> 01:17:51,110
there are just certain things that just

1245
01:17:52,390 –> 01:17:56,190
cannot be forgotten. That. To your point about holding on to the

1246
01:17:56,190 –> 01:17:59,750
memories, I absolutely refuse to let those memories

1247
01:17:59,750 –> 01:18:03,110
go. Refuse. And, and I’m

1248
01:18:03,590 –> 01:18:07,310
starting to be viewed as an elder in our culture. And I’m not. I don’t,

1249
01:18:07,310 –> 01:18:10,150
I do not think of myself as an elder. I am certainly not old enough.

1250
01:18:10,550 –> 01:18:14,320
Although my kids think I am. I’m not. I am not.

1251
01:18:14,320 –> 01:18:18,040
I find there are elders that are, that I still go to

1252
01:18:18,040 –> 01:18:21,800
for a lot of guidance. I still ask a lot of questions to. I

1253
01:18:21,800 –> 01:18:25,280
still ask and I ask in very particular ways the way that I’m talking about

1254
01:18:25,760 –> 01:18:29,080
and they appreciate the fact that I still do that. So when I have

1255
01:18:29,080 –> 01:18:32,760
grandkids, you bet your damn bottom dollar my grandkids are gonna

1256
01:18:32,760 –> 01:18:35,920
learn that. And I don’t care what cell phone they have in front of them.

1257
01:18:36,160 –> 01:18:38,660
If they don’t do it the right way, they’re gonna have to. Gonna. They’re. They’re

1258
01:18:38,660 –> 01:18:42,220
going to contend with me. So it’s.

1259
01:18:42,220 –> 01:18:44,980
Anyway, I, I can go on and on. Like I said, I think there is

1260
01:18:44,980 –> 01:18:47,980
a lot to unpack with this one because I think this one is really really

1261
01:18:47,980 –> 01:18:50,260
important. This is huge because.

1262
01:19:00,740 –> 01:19:03,140
The solution. Let me go to a solution.

1263
01:19:04,430 –> 01:19:07,750
Maybe I don’t know. Or trade off, I don’t know. I, I think, I think

1264
01:19:07,750 –> 01:19:11,310
the trade off is to your point and I think you hit on it correctly.

1265
01:19:11,870 –> 01:19:12,990
The trade off is,

1266
01:19:15,550 –> 01:19:18,990
it’s a trade off between the advancement of culture

1267
01:19:21,070 –> 01:19:24,510
and the gatekeeping of tradition.

1268
01:19:25,310 –> 01:19:29,070
Yes. And by the way, thank you for sharing

1269
01:19:29,070 –> 01:19:32,300
that. I appreciate that, that, that was a little bit behind the curtain.

1270
01:19:32,700 –> 01:19:36,420
I, I didn’t ask for that. But it’s a great example of, of

1271
01:19:36,420 –> 01:19:39,940
what we’re, what we’re talking about here. I

1272
01:19:39,940 –> 01:19:43,500
think, I think that trade off

1273
01:19:44,380 –> 01:19:47,580
has been made in the direction of

1274
01:19:47,820 –> 01:19:51,660
advancing culture for benefit and gain.

1275
01:19:52,140 –> 01:19:55,780
And we could talk about what those benefits are, what those gains are. But I

1276
01:19:55,780 –> 01:19:59,220
think too often in the last 25 years,

1277
01:19:59,540 –> 01:20:03,380
particularly sharply. And by the way, that trade off has always been

1278
01:20:03,380 –> 01:20:07,100
made. That’s always been sort of the tension. I think what’s happened in the

1279
01:20:07,100 –> 01:20:10,860
last 25 years is that trade off has been made more and more often in

1280
01:20:10,860 –> 01:20:11,780
the direction of

1281
01:20:15,700 –> 01:20:19,380
progress, whatever the hell that may mean,

1282
01:20:21,220 –> 01:20:24,740
versus gatekeeping tradition. And I’m going to use a

1283
01:20:24,740 –> 01:20:27,740
popular culture example of this. So we’re recording this today.

1284
01:20:28,860 –> 01:20:32,140
The date of this recording, not the date of the release of this episode.

1285
01:20:32,540 –> 01:20:36,380
The day of the recording of this episode is May 4, 2026.

1286
01:20:39,260 –> 01:20:43,100
Star Wars Day. May the fourth be with you. Yeah.

1287
01:20:43,180 –> 01:20:47,020
Okay. Now I’m not

1288
01:20:47,020 –> 01:20:50,660
going to go on, on and on about Star Wars. Not going to do

1289
01:20:50,660 –> 01:20:54,140
that. I could, I could do an entire series

1290
01:20:54,380 –> 01:20:58,060
of shows on Star Wars. I’m a Star wars guy.

1291
01:21:01,180 –> 01:21:04,860
George Lucas did not gatekeep

1292
01:21:06,460 –> 01:21:10,300
that franchise correctly. And

1293
01:21:10,300 –> 01:21:13,180
when he made the trade off between

1294
01:21:13,420 –> 01:21:16,880
progressing a vision of story

1295
01:21:18,000 –> 01:21:21,760
in order to maybe get paid or maybe he was

1296
01:21:21,760 –> 01:21:25,480
tired, whatever the entity he sold

1297
01:21:25,480 –> 01:21:29,240
it to, Disney then proceeded to make all the wrong trade

1298
01:21:29,240 –> 01:21:32,800
offs, removed the boundaries and the borders.

1299
01:21:33,840 –> 01:21:37,520
And to your point, I love how you’ve mentioned this about permission. This is

1300
01:21:37,520 –> 01:21:41,360
genius. Disney believe they didn’t have to

1301
01:21:41,360 –> 01:21:44,580
ask the permission of the elders of strangers. Star Wars. And the elders of Star

1302
01:21:44,580 –> 01:21:48,300
wars weren’t George Lucas. The ones who held the cultural memory of

1303
01:21:48,300 –> 01:21:51,940
Star wars were the fans. Yeah, the original

1304
01:21:52,420 –> 01:21:56,260
geek fans that watched those movies. And,

1305
01:21:56,500 –> 01:22:00,100
and, and were a subculture of culture.

1306
01:22:00,740 –> 01:22:04,500
And yeah. Was it majority males? Were they majority white? Were they

1307
01:22:04,500 –> 01:22:08,260
majority dopey dudes who couldn’t get dates? Yeah, absolutely.

1308
01:22:08,500 –> 01:22:12,300
That’s, that’s who the Star wars fans are. They’re dirty, smelly, video

1309
01:22:12,300 –> 01:22:16,140
game gaming, tabletop gaming dudes who can’t get dates. Yes.

1310
01:22:16,140 –> 01:22:19,900
Okay, so what, they’re the elders, though, to make the, to make

1311
01:22:19,900 –> 01:22:23,500
the parallel here. They’re the ones that hold the memory of what Star

1312
01:22:23,500 –> 01:22:27,260
wars was and Disney was like, nope, we don’t care because we got to go

1313
01:22:27,260 –> 01:22:30,980
get this new audience over here. We have to progress the culture. This has

1314
01:22:30,980 –> 01:22:34,740
happened consistently in popular cultural properties over

1315
01:22:34,740 –> 01:22:38,530
the last 25 years. And then when the people

1316
01:22:38,530 –> 01:22:41,930
who hold the cultural value, who were never asked what their

1317
01:22:41,930 –> 01:22:45,250
opinion was, when they riot online,

1318
01:22:46,770 –> 01:22:50,210
then somehow they’re the problem. They’re toxic.

1319
01:22:50,370 –> 01:22:54,130
They’re the issue. Now, I want to be very clear.

1320
01:22:54,130 –> 01:22:57,890
I am not minimizing what Tom is saying at all. What he

1321
01:22:57,890 –> 01:22:59,570
gave is a very high example.

1322
01:23:02,380 –> 01:23:06,060
I think the exact same thing that Tom is talking about is what’s happened is

1323
01:23:06,060 –> 01:23:09,540
what’s happening everywhere else in our culture too. I don’t think that this is, this

1324
01:23:09,540 –> 01:23:13,380
is an outlier thing. And that’s a real problem

1325
01:23:13,380 –> 01:23:17,140
for me. It’s a problem for me too. And to your

1326
01:23:17,140 –> 01:23:20,860
point, when, but when you say something about it, you’re, you’re like, you’re old

1327
01:23:20,860 –> 01:23:24,620
fashioned and you’re not, you know, you get labeled all kinds of weird things

1328
01:23:25,180 –> 01:23:28,820
and I don’t even care if, if, if troublemaker or, you know,

1329
01:23:28,820 –> 01:23:32,590
dissident. I don’t, I wouldn’t care about those. But I don’t like when it

1330
01:23:32,590 –> 01:23:36,430
comes back to you as being too stiff and too,

1331
01:23:37,150 –> 01:23:40,910
too, too, too wrapped up in the old ways. You don’t like, you

1332
01:23:40,910 –> 01:23:44,550
don’t, you don’t like, you can’t see the future. Like, stop. You’re

1333
01:23:44,550 –> 01:23:48,110
opposed to progress. Yeah. Like, especially,

1334
01:23:48,350 –> 01:23:51,950
again, especially in my culture, I laugh when I say that. I’m like, I use

1335
01:23:51,950 –> 01:23:55,800
AI more than anybody. Like, like, trust me

1336
01:23:55,800 –> 01:23:58,720
when I tell you it’s not because I don’t want to see the futuristic part

1337
01:23:58,720 –> 01:24:02,280
of the world. That’s not what it is. But there, to your point, there,

1338
01:24:02,280 –> 01:24:06,120
there needs to be some, I think there needs to be guardrails in place where

1339
01:24:06,120 –> 01:24:09,920
this stuff doesn’t happen on a regular basis. I just think it’s, it’s

1340
01:24:09,920 –> 01:24:13,440
unfair. It’s unfair to the people that

1341
01:24:13,440 –> 01:24:17,240
matter. And to your point, it’s the elder generation. That elder generation is, is the

1342
01:24:17,240 –> 01:24:21,040
ones that, that matter in those cases. It’s also the use of, and this

1343
01:24:21,040 –> 01:24:24,680
is where technology as a tool, tool is now

1344
01:24:24,680 –> 01:24:28,400
neutral because it’s not the technology’s problem. Yeah. So

1345
01:24:28,400 –> 01:24:31,400
the technology of the phone and YouTube

1346
01:24:31,880 –> 01:24:35,640
disconnected. To your point that the mechanics

1347
01:24:36,360 –> 01:24:39,160
of being able to do the

1348
01:24:39,880 –> 01:24:43,440
traditional dances correctly from the meaning of the

1349
01:24:43,440 –> 01:24:47,240
traditional dances that was held by the elders at. At a. At a.

1350
01:24:47,640 –> 01:24:51,400
If I may use the term, a pow wow. Right. Okay.

1351
01:24:52,280 –> 01:24:55,960
That separation was facilitated by technology.

1352
01:24:57,400 –> 01:25:01,080
And if it hadn’t been YouTube plus the phone, it had been something

1353
01:25:01,080 –> 01:25:04,280
else that would have made. That would have separated those things. Right. Okay.

1354
01:25:04,680 –> 01:25:08,440
Now, with that being said, I think of

1355
01:25:08,440 –> 01:25:11,960
the line from Jurassic park, the original Jurassic park, the. The great Ian

1356
01:25:11,960 –> 01:25:15,770
Malcolm line. You

1357
01:25:15,770 –> 01:25:19,410
were. Your scientists were so worried about whether or not they could,

1358
01:25:19,890 –> 01:25:23,250
they didn’t stop to think about whether or not they should. Yeah,

1359
01:25:24,050 –> 01:25:27,890
our technologists were so worried about whether or not they could. Our

1360
01:25:27,890 –> 01:25:31,610
marketers were so worried about whether or not they could. The people who were

1361
01:25:31,610 –> 01:25:35,250
tearing down cultural guardrails like Disney, I’m looking at you, were

1362
01:25:35,250 –> 01:25:38,970
so worried about whether or not they could, they didn’t stop

1363
01:25:38,970 –> 01:25:42,580
to think about whether or not they should. And every time

1364
01:25:43,380 –> 01:25:47,180
someone causes, calls, pause and says, should we be doing

1365
01:25:47,180 –> 01:25:50,460
this? They’re getting the dirty end of the stick. And that’s that. That’s my

1366
01:25:50,460 –> 01:25:54,220
opposition. That’s my opposition. You know, the,

1367
01:25:54,220 –> 01:25:57,940
the should we do this? People, they’re not enemies of progress.

1368
01:25:58,180 –> 01:26:01,980
They understand that when you separate the mechanics of a thing from the

1369
01:26:01,980 –> 01:26:05,420
meaning of the thing, the meaning always goes away and the

1370
01:26:05,420 –> 01:26:07,260
mechanics stay. But now they’re hollow.

1371
01:26:11,010 –> 01:26:14,850
Now, question for you as follow up to this said

1372
01:26:14,850 –> 01:26:18,610
your daughter’s 24. My oldest daughter’s

1373
01:26:18,610 –> 01:26:22,250
21. My

1374
01:26:22,250 –> 01:26:25,850
second oldest daughter is 15. Get ready to be

1375
01:26:25,850 –> 01:26:29,210
16 in about a spin of a minute, about a month and a half. That

1376
01:26:29,210 –> 01:26:32,050
girl’s going to be 16 years old, by the way. I just signed up to,

1377
01:26:32,050 –> 01:26:35,630
like, be her parent instructor, which. You can do that in Texas. Be her parent

1378
01:26:35,630 –> 01:26:38,950
instructor for driving lessons. Yeah. Good. This is going to be good times.

1379
01:26:47,510 –> 01:26:49,190
In the under 25s.

1380
01:26:52,630 –> 01:26:53,910
I think we can take heart.

1381
01:26:56,630 –> 01:26:58,950
I think they’re sick of the. The technical

1382
01:27:01,840 –> 01:27:05,640
disconnects. I think they’re sick of the surgery. They don’t

1383
01:27:05,640 –> 01:27:09,040
like what they’ve been left with. They don’t like the technique without meaning.

1384
01:27:11,680 –> 01:27:15,400
I think you can take heart, Tom. I think that that

1385
01:27:15,400 –> 01:27:18,480
will be the generation that will bring you the grandchildren,

1386
01:27:19,200 –> 01:27:22,720
and that generation will tell you those grandchildren will tell their

1387
01:27:22,720 –> 01:27:26,570
kids. You shut your mouth and you listen to Tom. Yeah.

1388
01:27:26,570 –> 01:27:30,410
Put that crap down and you shut up and listen to him. Well,

1389
01:27:30,410 –> 01:27:34,170
I don’t want to. This is old and boring. You don’t get a vote.

1390
01:27:34,730 –> 01:27:35,450
Be quiet.

1391
01:27:38,250 –> 01:27:41,770
That’s not. That’s not a. That’s not. I don’t know how she’ll approach it.

1392
01:27:42,009 –> 01:27:45,850
But I sense that if she’s anything like my daughter, there’s a lot

1393
01:27:45,850 –> 01:27:49,570
of folks in that, as they call them, the zoomers. There’s a lot of folks

1394
01:27:49,570 –> 01:27:53,060
in Generation Z that want that,

1395
01:27:53,140 –> 01:27:56,980
that they want those two things clicked back together because they’ve been through the,

1396
01:27:57,460 –> 01:28:01,300
the disintermediation with technology. They’ve been through the trade off.

1397
01:28:01,620 –> 01:28:04,420
They understand what’s at the other end of the trade off. Like I talk about

1398
01:28:05,140 –> 01:28:08,700
myself as an African American who was born on the other side of the civil

1399
01:28:08,700 –> 01:28:12,020
rights movement. I saw what happened on the other side of the civil rights movement.

1400
01:28:12,500 –> 01:28:16,260
I would. Jim Crow wasn’t great. Let me be

1401
01:28:16,260 –> 01:28:19,230
very clear. Okay. And

1402
01:28:19,950 –> 01:28:23,590
the legal function as a technology of the

1403
01:28:23,590 –> 01:28:26,750
Civil Rights act disconnected the

1404
01:28:26,750 –> 01:28:30,470
techniques from meaning in black community, which is why black

1405
01:28:30,470 –> 01:28:33,710
community has particularly underclass. Black community has

1406
01:28:33,790 –> 01:28:37,510
floated anklelessly in worse and worse ways for the

1407
01:28:37,510 –> 01:28:41,110
last 50, 60 years. My generation didn’t have enough

1408
01:28:41,110 –> 01:28:44,510
power, nor were there enough of us to click those two things back together.

1409
01:28:47,150 –> 01:28:50,350
And then the cultural flattening started. And

1410
01:28:50,830 –> 01:28:54,550
I say these things and people don’t even understand what I’m talking about. Right, right.

1411
01:28:54,550 –> 01:28:58,190
It’s, it’s already gone. It’s, it’s too far gone. We, we have to go to,

1412
01:28:58,830 –> 01:29:02,550
in my case, we have to go to the future because the past is just

1413
01:29:02,550 –> 01:29:06,390
too far gone. We, we can’t get back to the

1414
01:29:06,390 –> 01:29:10,110
way Thomas Soul was raised and educated. We,

1415
01:29:10,110 –> 01:29:12,860
we can’t get to a, we can’t get back to a pre civil rights conception

1416
01:29:12,860 –> 01:29:16,300
of African American existence in this country. We can’t get there.

1417
01:29:17,180 –> 01:29:19,500
The way the bridge is, the bridge is burned. It’s gone.

1418
01:29:21,500 –> 01:29:25,060
And so you’re correct in defending that. And I think your

1419
01:29:25,060 –> 01:29:28,380
daughter on the other side of that and other folks in her generation

1420
01:29:28,780 –> 01:29:32,300
are going to be the ones that are going to do the yeoman’s work of,

1421
01:29:32,780 –> 01:29:36,300
of making sure that, that, that, that gets, that it gets maintained.

1422
01:29:37,990 –> 01:29:41,430
At least I get that sense. I hope so. I, I hope you’re right. And

1423
01:29:41,590 –> 01:29:45,030
to your point, I mean, I, I get that, I get that feeling from,

1424
01:29:45,830 –> 01:29:49,590
from, you know, kids, her age group as well, because again, they’re the ones that

1425
01:29:49,590 –> 01:29:53,390
are going to start having kids in the near future. But some of the

1426
01:29:53,390 –> 01:29:57,052
teenagers that are a little younger than her like that, 14 to 6,

1427
01:29:57,128 –> 01:30:00,950
14 to 17, I don’t get that sense from them. Yeah,

1428
01:30:01,190 –> 01:30:04,790
well, well, there’s always so, so millennials. Millennials. And the

1429
01:30:04,790 –> 01:30:08,620
millennials and the Gen Z are going to have

1430
01:30:08,620 –> 01:30:12,060
an out andout street war socially that’s already starting

1431
01:30:13,260 –> 01:30:16,700
because, and this is, this is how it always goes, right?

1432
01:30:16,860 –> 01:30:20,700
And then whoever’s coming up behind Gen Z, Gen Alpha, they’re going to have

1433
01:30:20,700 –> 01:30:23,820
an out andout social street war. Like it’s just going to, it’s just going to

1434
01:30:23,820 –> 01:30:25,900
happen because of the nature of how

1435
01:30:27,340 –> 01:30:30,820
technology has speeded up the, the progression between

1436
01:30:30,820 –> 01:30:34,660
generations. And the technological, which we brought up last time we talked in east of

1437
01:30:34,660 –> 01:30:38,340
Eden, the technological separations now that matter more than generational or

1438
01:30:38,340 –> 01:30:41,420
even historical. Right? So the 14 year old

1439
01:30:41,820 –> 01:30:45,580
doesn’t understand why they can’t go to YouTube. They, they, they, they literally do not

1440
01:30:45,580 –> 01:30:49,340
understand the question. Like it doesn’t. You could bring it to them.

1441
01:30:49,340 –> 01:30:52,900
They would be shocked at even having to consider that. That would open up new

1442
01:30:52,900 –> 01:30:54,700
parallels of, of stuff in their brain.

1443
01:30:56,460 –> 01:30:59,980
Whereas, you know, the 24 year old, only 10 years

1444
01:31:00,060 –> 01:31:03,530
older goes, oh, I know what we’ve lost, or I

1445
01:31:03,530 –> 01:31:05,970
recognize what we’ve lost. You know, so

1446
01:31:07,170 –> 01:31:10,890
gatekeeping, gatekeeping is huge. And I think, I think we’ve got a.

1447
01:31:10,890 –> 01:31:14,650
I think everybody in the United States has. I think every cultural and subcultural

1448
01:31:14,650 –> 01:31:17,690
group in the United States, and not just in the United States, but also I

1449
01:31:17,690 –> 01:31:20,410
think other places around the world kind of get this a little bit better even

1450
01:31:20,410 –> 01:31:24,250
than we do. But you have to culturally gatekeep, otherwise

1451
01:31:24,250 –> 01:31:27,170
you can’t, you can’t protect, to your point, what’s valuable.

1452
01:31:29,680 –> 01:31:33,480
Okay. Rounding the corner. Don’t

1453
01:31:33,480 –> 01:31:36,120
want to talk about Project Hail Mary. I want to wrap up this book. This

1454
01:31:36,120 –> 01:31:38,720
book is great. Go pick up the Optimist’s daughter

1455
01:31:39,680 –> 01:31:43,519
in book four of the Optimist’s Daughter. Book four is actually one long chapter,

1456
01:31:43,519 –> 01:31:47,240
so don’t be surprised it’s not divided up into different chapter pieces. And book

1457
01:31:47,240 –> 01:31:50,560
four is about the confrontation between

1458
01:31:50,560 –> 01:31:54,250
Laurel, the, the judge’s daughter, and

1459
01:31:54,250 –> 01:31:57,290
Faye, the stepmother, the young stepmother.

1460
01:31:58,410 –> 01:32:02,090
And they get into, they get into a fight over

1461
01:32:02,090 –> 01:32:05,810
a breadboard. A breadboard that was Laurel’s

1462
01:32:05,810 –> 01:32:09,410
mother’s breadboard. A breadboard that has specific

1463
01:32:09,410 –> 01:32:12,970
meaning because it’s part of the estate. Right.

1464
01:32:12,970 –> 01:32:15,850
That’s going directly to Laurel. And

1465
01:32:17,290 –> 01:32:20,460
one of the things that’s interesting in this

1466
01:32:21,340 –> 01:32:24,980
is that Laurel wins the fight.

1467
01:32:24,980 –> 01:32:27,700
And actually this was in the review that I sent to you from the New

1468
01:32:27,700 –> 01:32:30,740
York Times. I don’t know if you had a chance to read that, Tom, but

1469
01:32:30,740 –> 01:32:34,460
Laurel wins this fight because Faye doesn’t actually understand

1470
01:32:34,540 –> 01:32:38,020
what she’s fighting over. Faye only

1471
01:32:38,020 –> 01:32:41,780
understands that to my point that I was just

1472
01:32:41,780 –> 01:32:45,380
making earlier. She only understands that she

1473
01:32:45,380 –> 01:32:48,890
doesn’t understand and she doesn’t even know the right

1474
01:32:48,890 –> 01:32:51,890
questions to ask. And so Laurel wins

1475
01:32:52,530 –> 01:32:55,730
by not fighting. Laurel wins by

1476
01:32:56,850 –> 01:33:00,290
in essence abandoning her, not her roots, but

1477
01:33:00,530 –> 01:33:04,210
abandoning the thing in order to pursue something

1478
01:33:04,290 –> 01:33:07,930
higher. And then she gets on a train and goes back to

1479
01:33:07,930 –> 01:33:08,530
Chicago.

1480
01:33:19,340 –> 01:33:22,540
One of the points that I like to make at our close here today is

1481
01:33:22,540 –> 01:33:22,860
that.

1482
01:33:29,020 –> 01:33:32,700
Eudora Welty and, and, and what she was writing about in the Optimist

1483
01:33:32,700 –> 01:33:35,860
Daughter her entire career. And I think Tom and I have kind of covered this

1484
01:33:35,860 –> 01:33:38,810
really, really well today. So go pick up Optimus. His daughter.

1485
01:33:39,210 –> 01:33:43,050
Eudora Welty really was sincere in

1486
01:33:43,050 –> 01:33:46,370
what she was trying to do. She was trying to make a sincere representation of

1487
01:33:46,370 –> 01:33:50,210
people that she observed mythologies that

1488
01:33:50,210 –> 01:33:53,890
she believed in or maybe that she did not, maybe not that she

1489
01:33:53,890 –> 01:33:56,650
believed in. I don’t know if she believed in them or not. And that’s a

1490
01:33:56,650 –> 01:34:00,330
great thing. I don’t know if she believed in them or not. She presented them

1491
01:34:00,330 –> 01:34:04,130
though, as if she did, which is genius. That’s how that’s where her real talent

1492
01:34:04,130 –> 01:34:07,830
was, was she presented tradition and custom as things

1493
01:34:07,830 –> 01:34:11,110
that anchor people to reality into meaning.

1494
01:34:11,670 –> 01:34:15,430
And that those things, when you lose them, when

1495
01:34:15,430 –> 01:34:19,110
you are disintermediated from them, as Tom has brought up, you

1496
01:34:19,110 –> 01:34:22,950
really do lose something. It’s not just about breadboards

1497
01:34:23,510 –> 01:34:26,790
or in Tom’s case, footwork, or in my case education

1498
01:34:27,350 –> 01:34:30,990
in a pre civil rights black America. It’s not just about

1499
01:34:30,990 –> 01:34:34,640
those things. It’s about the things that they

1500
01:34:34,640 –> 01:34:38,400
mean and the way they anchor to us, to the world and us

1501
01:34:38,400 –> 01:34:42,200
to meaning. And Welty got all that, but she could only write about it

1502
01:34:42,440 –> 01:34:46,160
in a sincere kind of way. You and I have

1503
01:34:46,160 –> 01:34:49,960
talked about this on the show before, Tom. I think that for Gen

1504
01:34:49,960 –> 01:34:53,000
X, sincerity is one of those things we’re going to have to pick up.

1505
01:34:53,640 –> 01:34:57,040
You and I are both firmly in that generation. We’re the generation of

1506
01:34:57,040 –> 01:35:00,730
cynics and ironic detachment. I’ve said that before

1507
01:35:00,730 –> 01:35:03,410
on this show and I don’t think that works

1508
01:35:04,290 –> 01:35:07,730
like I see the passion which you’re talking about, what you were observing,

1509
01:35:07,890 –> 01:35:11,570
that’s sincere. When I talk about the things I talk about on the show,

1510
01:35:11,570 –> 01:35:15,370
this is sincere. I couldn’t do this show without sincerity. Wealthy couldn’t

1511
01:35:15,370 –> 01:35:19,090
write her book without sincerity. And sincerity is not

1512
01:35:19,090 –> 01:35:22,810
cringe. It’s not even cringe worthy. It’s the thing we

1513
01:35:22,810 –> 01:35:26,540
actually need, need to

1514
01:35:26,540 –> 01:35:30,300
get where we need to go. I

1515
01:35:30,300 –> 01:35:34,100
know we didn’t talk specifically about specific pieces in the book, but final thoughts

1516
01:35:34,100 –> 01:35:37,780
on the Optimist Daughter. What can leaders learn from this. Tom, what.

1517
01:35:37,780 –> 01:35:40,980
What should we all take from. From our conversation today, even?

1518
01:35:42,260 –> 01:35:45,860
Well, I’ve used this phrase on the show before,

1519
01:35:46,180 –> 01:35:48,540
and I think it was something that we kind of joked around a little bit

1520
01:35:48,540 –> 01:35:52,140
here and there, but I think it applies here as well. Again, when

1521
01:35:52,140 –> 01:35:55,900
I. Some of the leadership training that I’ve had in

1522
01:35:55,900 –> 01:35:59,660
the past, one of my favorite parts of it was,

1523
01:36:00,060 –> 01:36:03,740
you have heard a hundred times in your life, don’t just stand there, do

1524
01:36:03,740 –> 01:36:07,540
something right? So they. People want action when things are happening,

1525
01:36:07,540 –> 01:36:11,260
when in reality. And I think this leads back to what she was doing

1526
01:36:11,740 –> 01:36:15,380
is don’t just do something, stand there right? Like

1527
01:36:15,380 –> 01:36:19,150
so observe. Make sure you completely understand what’s

1528
01:36:19,150 –> 01:36:22,910
going on before you just jump in to answer questions or jump in to answer

1529
01:36:22,910 –> 01:36:26,550
or give solutions or anything like that. I think into your point with

1530
01:36:26,550 –> 01:36:30,190
her observation skills, I think leaders

1531
01:36:30,190 –> 01:36:33,790
can learn from those observation skills. Being

1532
01:36:33,790 –> 01:36:37,430
able to objectively view something without

1533
01:36:37,750 –> 01:36:41,470
bias, without predetermined, without allowing certain

1534
01:36:41,470 –> 01:36:44,300
things to influence your thought processes,

1535
01:36:45,260 –> 01:36:48,220
I think it’s. I think it’s a talent that you need to

1536
01:36:49,020 –> 01:36:52,340
hone. It’s not inherent. Like, you don’t just get this

1537
01:36:52,340 –> 01:36:56,140
automatically. I think it’s something that she probably learned over the years. And when

1538
01:36:56,140 –> 01:36:59,780
we were talking about her bio earlier, if you thought about, think about what she

1539
01:36:59,780 –> 01:37:03,340
did for work, how her education was, it

1540
01:37:03,420 –> 01:37:07,220
taught her to be that observant. And I think even if

1541
01:37:07,220 –> 01:37:10,860
you are not, if you don’t have access to those teachings directly,

1542
01:37:11,220 –> 01:37:14,980
then you should just go look for them. You should be observant as to what’s

1543
01:37:14,980 –> 01:37:18,700
going on. Make sure you know and understand the. All

1544
01:37:18,700 –> 01:37:22,500
of the details and happenings around you before

1545
01:37:22,500 –> 01:37:26,060
you start making those decisions. I think that lesson is all over

1546
01:37:26,060 –> 01:37:29,380
this. Like, anyway, that’s my

1547
01:37:30,020 –> 01:37:33,700
take out of it, anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well. And you know

1548
01:37:33,700 –> 01:37:37,500
what? Like, the challenging of determining meaning, as

1549
01:37:37,500 –> 01:37:39,900
we brought up at the begin, I brought up at the beginning of this episode,

1550
01:37:40,220 –> 01:37:43,940
from what you’re watching other people do, is a challenge that dogged

1551
01:37:43,940 –> 01:37:47,660
us through the 20th century. It dogged us at a

1552
01:37:47,660 –> 01:37:51,380
social level, dogged us at a cultural level. And we’re going to explore

1553
01:37:51,380 –> 01:37:54,580
more of this in A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion and Sting towards

1554
01:37:54,580 –> 01:37:58,100
Bethlehem. We’re going to cover both of her books. We’re also going to visit a

1555
01:37:58,100 –> 01:38:01,940
17th century novel and talk

1556
01:38:01,940 –> 01:38:05,780
about that as well. Because the challenge of observation, the challenge of being

1557
01:38:05,780 –> 01:38:09,610
able to determine meaning, the challenge of being able to sift that as an

1558
01:38:09,610 –> 01:38:13,450
observer is huge, I think for all

1559
01:38:13,450 –> 01:38:16,050
of us. Because we do spend a lot of time

1560
01:38:17,170 –> 01:38:19,090
observing the world now

1561
01:38:21,970 –> 01:38:25,730
in those rectangular devices that we have in our hands.

1562
01:38:27,090 –> 01:38:30,890
Yeah. All right. Well, Tom and I didn’t

1563
01:38:30,890 –> 01:38:34,650
resolve anything today, and I’m actually glad about that, actually. Normally, I was like, well,

1564
01:38:34,650 –> 01:38:37,740
we should have resolved something. Now we didn’t resolve anything. We brought up a bunch

1565
01:38:37,740 –> 01:38:41,020
of different points, and you know what? I’m fine with that. So

1566
01:38:41,340 –> 01:38:44,580
I want to thank Tom for coming. Oh, go ahead. In the. In the. In

1567
01:38:44,580 –> 01:38:47,980
the words of CNC Music Factory, we gave you things to make you go,

1568
01:38:47,980 –> 01:38:51,620
hm, CNC Music

1569
01:38:51,620 –> 01:38:55,180
Factory. With that, well, we’re out.