Also traumatic.
Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the
Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode
number 112.
In this episode today, we are going to
start covering what is truly a massive
book. Now it is a serialized story or
collection with serialized story, featuring intrigue,
adventure, romance, pathos, and everything else. The
entire spectrum of human emotion is in this book. And
it is all set against the background of the French Revolution
and the aftermath of the actions across the
flat pan of Europe from the buzzsaw known as Napoleon
Bonaparte. This book is so massive, I'm going to be
honest, I didn't get through it, but that's okay
because our guest today did. As a matter
of fact, just like War and Peace by Leo
Tolstoy, which we barely covered in part 1 of in episode number 104, which
you should go listen to that. By the way, that's the most downloaded episode so
far this season. Excellent. This book is so deep and involved
that I I think we're only gonna get through barely the first part of it
today. Matter of fact, that's all I planned for. And that's okay because we'll have
our guests back to talk about this book in the future
because I am going to finish it. It's sort of 1 of my
missions for this year. Today, we will be
summarizing and analyzing the themes that are embedded for leaders
in the first part of the
fourth page phone book of a novel. And By the way,
that does include annotations and notes and bibliography at the end.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre
or Alexandre, depending upon your perspective and your level of
French, Leaders,
revenge may be a dish best served cold, but make sure
that if you go down that road, it works on the victim
you've selected successfully.
And today, we are joined in our journey down this
leadership path with the count of Montecristo
by our returning guest cohost, Kristen
Horn. How are you doing, Kristen? Hello. I am doing well.
Yes. Kristen is, has had a has had a bunch of life changes. It's been
a year since she was on the podcast. What episode were you on? Do you
remember with us initially? I don't remember the number. We were doing Ender's
Game. Yes. We did Ender's Game. That's right. Yeah. Yes. That's correct. We're since Scott
Card. You should go back and listen to that episode. I don't remember the number
either. Yeah. Yeah. But we are
going to get started in The Count of Montecristo. By the way, it
is an open source book, which is great. You can actually
go and get it, online if you want. So we will be
reading directly from, well, from
my version of the open source book known as The Count of Monte
Cristo. And we are going to start with chapter 1. I love
saying this word, Marseille, arrival.
On February fourth, 18 15, the lookout at Notre Dame de Lagarde signaled
the arrival of the 3 master Phaheron coming from
Smyrna, Trieste, and Naples. As usual, a
coastal pilot immediately left the port, sailed hard by the Chateau
d'If, and boarded the ship between the Cap Des Morgueux and the
island of Ryus. And once, as was also
customary, the terrace of Port Saint Jean was thronged with onlookers
because the arrival of a ship is always a great event in Marseille, particularly when
the vessel, like the Pharaon, has been built, fitted out, and laded in the
shipyards of the old port and belongs to an owner from the town.
Meanwhile, the ship was drawing near and had successfully negotiated the narrows created by some
volcanic upheaval between the islands of Pausare and Carre
and rounded Palmegueux it was proceeded under its 3 Sorrells, its outer
jib, and its spanker, but slowly and with such melancholy progress that
bystanders, instinctively sensing some misfortune, wondered what the accident
could have occurred on board. Nevertheless, those who were
experts in nautical manners acknowledged that if there had been such an
accident, it could not have affected the vessel itself, fourth its progress gave every indication
of a ship under perfect control. The anchor was ready to drop, and the bowspirit
shrouds loosed. Next to the pilot, who was preparing to guide the Pharaon through the
narrow entrance to the port of Marseille, saw a young man, alert and sharp eyed,
supervising every moment movement of the ship and repeating each of the
pilot's commands. 1 of the spectators on the terrace
of Fourth Saint Jean had been particularly affected by the vague sense of unease
that hovered among them so much so that he could not wait for the vessel
to come to land. He left into a small boat and ordered it to erode
out to the Pharaon, coming alongside opposite the cove of Blaise Veuve. When he saw
the man approaching, the young sailor left his place behind beside the pilot and, kind
in hand, came and lent on the bulwarks of the ship.
He was a young man of between 18/20, tall, slim, with fine dark eyes, and
ebony black hair. His whole demeanor possessed the calm and
resolve peculiar to men who have been accustomed from childhood to
wrestle with danger. Ah, it is you, Dantes, the man in the
boat cried. What has happened, and why is there this air of rejection all about
the about all on board? A great misfortune,
Monsignon Sorrells, the young man replied. A great misfortune, especially for
me. While off of Civitivica, we lost our good captain
Leclerc. And the cargo? The shipowner answered brusquely.
It has come safe to port Majumarel, but I think you will be content on
that score, but poor captain Leclerc. What happened to him then? The
shipowner asked, visibly relieved. So what happened to the good captain?
He is dead. Lost, overboard? No, monsieur. He died of
an apoplectic fever and terrible agony. Then turning back to his
crew, he said, look lively there. Hurry man to his station and drop anchor.
The crew obeyed. As 1 man, the 8 or 10 of the sailors
of which it was composed, left, some to the sheets, nose to the braces, others
to the halyards, nose to the gym, and still nose to the brails. The young
sailor glanced casually at the start of his operation and, seeing that his orders were
being carried out, prepared to resume the conversation. But how did
this misfortune occur? Leadership owner continued, picking up where the young man had left off.
By heaven, won't you, in the most unexpected way imaginable. After a long
conversation with the commander of the port commander of the port, captain Leclair left
Naples in a state of great agitation. 24 hours later, he was seized with
fever, and 3 days after that, he was dead. We gave him the customary
funeral, and now he rests decently wrapped in a hammock with a
36 pound cannonball at his feet and another at his head off the island
of Giglaud. We brought his medal and his sword back for his widow.
Much good it did him, the young man continued with a melancholy smile,
to fight the war against the English for 10 years
only to die at last, like anyone else, in
his bed. A
writers out of Monte Cristo, a fellow named Alexandre
Dumas, born July 24,
1802, died December 5, 18 70, was a
French novelist and playwright. His works have been translated
into many languages, and he is 1 of the most widely read French authors
probably in French history, outside of, you know,
those authors of political treaties or philosophical ones like the
Derridas or the de Tocquevilles or the,
Rousseaus of the world. Since the early 20th
century, his novels have been adapted into nearly 200
different variations of film. As a matter of fact, you've probably seen the
film, the Count of Monte Cristo, long before reading the
book, the Count of Monte Cristo. 1. 0, it doesn't
really matter. So many variations. I mean, this
book is 1 of those books that has that has that has
that has buried itself into the DNA of the West,
not just America, the West. You can go to, like,
Jesan, and they know what the Count of Monte Cristo is. You can go to
probably Japan, and they know what the Count of Monte Cristo is.
Dumas was prolific in several genres, and he began his career by writing plays,
which were successfully produced from the first. He wrote numerous magazine
articles and travel books and published works totaling 100, 000
pages. As a matter of fact, this guy was also an entrepreneur and a marketer,
and he hired other people to ghostwrite yeah. I see you,
James Patterson. Ghostwrite some of his
books er, allegedly.
His father, general Thomas Alexandre Dumas Davy de
la Palatiere, was born in the French colony of Santo
Domingo, the president day present day Haiti, du
Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Briatier, a French nobleman,
and Marie Jesan Dumas, an African slave. And
so what this means is that Alexandre Dumas was
actually we don't like using this word, but I'm gonna go ahead and use it
anyway. He was, technically speaking, a mulatto.
That means he was of mixed race origin.
Everybody gets upset when you say the word mulatto. They get really upset when you
say the word quadroon. Anyway,
Alexander acquired work with Louis Philippe Duco Sorrells.
Then as a writer, he became a writers, over the course of
time, and, he created a career
that led to much early success. Remember I said he was a marketer?
That was part of the reason why he serialized his novels over the long period
of time. And he wrote many, many and
created a modernized version of many, many modern myths
that we just take for granted now, such as the 3 Musketeers,
the D'Artagnan romances, which has also been turned into several
films, and, of course, even a film that played at my house a couple of
weeks ago with Kevin Costner, that was the virgin I saw,
Robin Hood.
English playwright, Watts Phillips, who knew DeMott later in his life, described
him as the most generous, largehearted being in the world.
He was also the most delightfully amusing and egotistical creature on the face of
the Earth. His tongue was like a windmill. Once set in motion,
you would never know when he would stop, especially if the
theme, was himself. I
love that, by the way. Back in the day, people really knew how to get
after each other, particularly writers I mean, writerly
disputes, which is 1 of the things that we're all missing was the Twitterization of
our world. Although I think Dumas would have loved Twitter. Probably. All about
oh my god. Like, YouTube, Twitter. He would have been all about that life. He'd
been like, oh, I can go to scale with all of this, and I can
Right. Meet Tom everyone. Oh, please. Where do I sign up? Get me get
me there now. Be
dominating. Oh my god. He'd be running everybody out of the room.
So, Kristen, let's start off with and you were the 1 that recommended
we read The Count of Monte Cristo. You were the 1 that recommended this this
books. And so I'm reading this book not under duress, but under your recommendation.
And so Is that how you read the rest of your books? No. No. No.
No. No. No. I do I do warranties to myself. It's fine. It's whatever.
I'm I'm the lady myself on the on the, you know, horns of Tolstoy.
No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. And you know, it's interesting.
So over the course of the last month, we've been covering a lot
of books, like Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, we covered that this
month. Oh, it's a great 1. Yes it is. We also,
talked a little bit about, and covered the book Night by Eli
Weisel, Podcast literature. Later on this month,
towards the end of this month, We'll be looking at,
Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt, Meditation on the
Banality of Evil. And 1 of the things that unites all of those
books, whether it's Anne or or or the Hannah Arendt,
or Harper Lee or even,
well, either 1 of those 2 authors. We'll use those 2 as as his sort
of points along with the count of Monte Cristo and, Alexandre
Dumas's work. 1 of the things that unites those works together
is how or the idea of
how a person, particularly a male,
develops a moral compass. You see Atticus Finch's moral
compass in To Kill A Mockingbird. Eli Weisel
developed a moral compass in the horrors of the podcast,
at the age of 16 when he was dumped into a concentration camp.
When you look at Hannah Arendt's work and her
analysis of Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem, the last of the
Nuremberg trials book in the 19 sixties,
you you realize that Eichmann struggled to
have a moral in the first place, which is kind of 1 of the more
amazing things that you ever see in a human being.
And then in the count of Monte Cristo, the driver
for this is revenge, of course,
which comes from a place of a lack of moral compass. It comes from envy
and jealousy and all of this. Now in the first
part of the book is the setup. Right? Oh, and
and and by the way, Dumas gives a lot of different motives for people. We're
gonna get into the motives of, like, Danglers and other folks here today. We're gonna
we're gonna we're gonna kinda pull a little bit of that part. But I want
you to talk about The Count of Monte Cristo, why you recommended this book, why
readers should should spend time slogging through this phone book of a book fourth even
just listening to this episode about it, which is just the first part, by the
way. We're not even we're gonna come out, like, maybe the first, like, 5 chapters
maybe. I mean, I 50 chapter book. I have a confession,
though. See, this is the copy that I read in high school, and I
loved it so much that I just went and bought the same copy, and it's
been in my library for years. But it is a
bridge.
And I will No. Let's put in the work over here. So I'm just
putting the work. It's okay. No. You're reading, like, the first type pages and I'm
following along. I'm like, yeah. That was a page and a half for me.
So Got the edited version. Yeah.
Yeah. Get out all those extra words. Which I don't know, Dimash probably would not
have liked that part, by the way. He would not have liked the decline of
literate, like, ability or
attention span. He would not have been a fan of that. Well, I remember my
because I the first time I read it was back in my, like, advanced English
class in high school. And I remember my English teacher kinda summarizing
what was left out by the in the in the abridgment. And I
remember thinking, okay. That's probably not important.
So I don't know. We you know, when when I come back for us to
finish this, we'll have to I'll have to go find the unabridged and see if
I can I will hold up? So I'm gonna hold up my unabridged copy. It's
a Penguin Classics unabridged copy, Normaio. Oh my
god. It's No. No. Oh,
yes. When I looked at it Tom month old. I
I'm not demanding. I never demand a guest to see a thing that I would
not do myself, to paraphrase from Jay z.
So why did I I mean, I just I remember loving this book.
For me, it really 1 of the reasons that I like fiction in general,
my Sorrells, my Sorrells, like the book that I like is it
has a lot, to do with my moral compass and
how, you know, like my worldview and stuff. And in this book,
the bad guys all get their just desserts. Right? Yes. It's vengeance and
there's a lot more conversation about, like, vengeance and
satisfaction and whether worth pursuing and all that. But
the people that this guy takes out are genuinely bad
people. Mhmm. And so it just feels really
good to watch them to watch him take
them down, not, but
in very unobvious ways. He basically lets them
kill themselves. Mhmm. Like, he just leads them all to
ruin, but through their own natures. Right.
And that's fascinating to watch. So just it's it's
very cleverly done. It's very subtle. And
well, in that regard, in how he leads them to their
destruction. In other regards, you know, you read this book and you're
like, well, that's a literary cliche now, and that is too.
And I it definitely got me thinking through this this most recent
read through. It's like, I wonder obviously, it was ridiculously
popular. Oh, yeah. I mean, it was serialized. Like, it was
insane. But I, you know, I trained 10 years as an opera singer and,
like, the version of Carmen that we have right now,
the the composer considered it pop,
like drivel. He he was he was so upset by
the, you know, the the artistic merit
that ended up being successful as in there there was none. He's
like, here, this is what the people want, but this is trash. This is not
what I wanted to write. And then Tchaikovsky
said the same thing about his most popular ballet, The Nutcracker. Mhmm. He just
it's he just called it he called it bombol. Right? Just sweet,
sickly sweet. And so that got me thinking about this book.
It was ridiculously popular, but I you know,
like I said, I have a 3 month old, so I didn't have a time
to go in and look like, hey. Was this, like,
considered sophisticated and, like, were the the great minds of
the time reading this and and thinking about it, or was it just
a a book for the masses? Mhmm. And that's why we still read
it today. And, right, what's it's almost, I I
read it in an English class, so I almost feel like it might be and
we're discussing it on this podcast. So it's like it's asking the question almost sacrilege,
like, does this book have literary merit? Well well
okay. No. No. No. Well, we're a literature podcast, and we're a leadership podcast. We
kinda merge those 2 things together. So, yes, it has literature think. It has
literary merit and leadership merit. Oh, I do too. It was just funny. The
question popped into my head. It was like, wow. Well, so my kid,
my my youngest daughter, who's 14, she's reading up
Scott Fitzgerald's Leadership the Night. And I we
were talking about this in a and doesn't matter the context, but we were having
a conversation about this book. And I said to her, you
know, f Scott Fitzgerald would really be irritable that the Great Gatsby is being
read by high school students if he were still alive. Like, he'd be he would
be irritated by this. This would drive him over. I
think he would well, but he would consider it to be an artistic failure. So
you talk about, you know, Carmen fourth you talk about
Tchaikowsky. Right? There's and you're you're
you're I mean, I want you to talk a little bit about your background or
my folks of your background in your writing and all that. You're creating
work. I create work. Mhmm. And then there's so there's this gap
between and you even mentioned it. What the people want versus
what might be artistic and might be, like, mature. Great
struggle. What's Yeah. How do you how do you right. Yeah. How
do you how do you as a creator cross that gap? And we'll
talk about him, boss, in a minute. Because I think he crossed that gap by
serialization. I think that's how he crossed that gap. Yeah.
And you can look at the Internet as a massive serialization
machine, but so many people have turned it into
massive clickbait machine, which I think would drive I think that part, of
course, would drive Jamal crazy as well. I think would also drive Tchaikowsky
crazy as well. He would have a problem with massive problem with Taylor Swift. He
just would. He'd be like, I don't like her. And I have a massive
problem with Taylor Swift, especially when she is being
compared to Shakespeare. Yeah. That's a
British accent. That headline, and I was like I
was appalled. I was like, look. I I
I'm not reading what you're reading, Hayson. That stuff, I'm like, that scares
me. I'm just gonna stay in my little fantasy world.
But when I saw that, I I
rolled over in my own grave.
Like that no. There cannot be German professors
that actually think that's true. But this is this is the so so there's a
fund wow. Okay. So let's I I wanna that's another idea. Right? I don't
wanna. Yeah. Let's no. No. No. No. So the gap
between what people want versus art, how do you cross that gap? And talk a
little bit about your background. What, like, what do you do? I mean, that's the
I mean, I think the opera world right now is doesn't know how to answer
that question. Mhmm. Because opera, I
think, is dying. And it partially and in
sorry. In part because of marketing. In part because,
oh, actually, this we will we'll talk a little bit about this leaders, is the
people that are in charge are very stubborn and stuck in their ways,
and they don't want to innovate. Mhmm. Right? So there's a little bit of 2
things going on, which is a real shame because the art form is
magnificent. It's basically the Olympics of
what the human voice is capable of.
And then the Sorrells, even though, like, the style of singing
estranges people a little bit, but the stories are so relatable still.
And so it's just yeah. It's but but the the industry is
a they don't know how to answer that question. Oh, except there is
1, little house little house.
That's, you know, upper house. There's 1 company in LA
that is doing actually really well Mhmm.
Tom making at making the
stories, the operas, like, accessible. Mhmm.
And so that's but while keeping most of the
and I say most of the the integrity. Because I we've
definitely had people go to those operas, be like,
that's not what that The they'll look at the the super titles, straight the translations,
be like, that's not Yep. That's not the right translation.
If I saw that in a beginner opera singer's notebook, I'd slap
her hand. Okay. So opera. Okay. So let's let's 1 of my good friends, he
does opera, and I did a jazz festival locally in my town, and I'm a
huge fan of jazz genre and and all of that kind of stuff.
And so the guy who we handed the the the committee that we handed off
to, the person who heads it is a is a professionally trained opera singer. And
so it's interesting to watch him kind of navigate this because jazz is not
opera and opera is not jazz. Like, those are 2 different they're 2 different things.
Right? There's 1 that Gershwin wrote. I mean, there's Porgy and Bess.
There's Porgy and Bess. Yep. But has that, like, really what he Yeah.
We got nothing. The the the the 2 don't. They don't make sweet beautiful music.
Not really. Yeah. They could maybe they could. Maybe they
could. Maybe they should be exciting. Right. Right. Right. Exactly. Maybe we should maybe we
should have a. You know? Like, maybe friends Some
detente. Right? Like, between the Russians and this and the Americans in the cold war.
Like, why can't we just have detente? Why can't we just have that?
There's 2 movies that I think of when I think of opera and I think
of this idea of integrity and art. I think of
Whiplash, and then I think of Tom, which
recently came out. We talked about that last time. It's We talked about it last
time. Still haven't watched it. You still haven't watched it. It's okay. You you got
a 3 month old. It's fine. You got a lot of things going on. And
I don't I don't wanna go back to that. Instead, what I wanna what I
wanna say is I think both of those films represent the
attempt by you you pointed out that there are folks who are stubborn who don't
wanna change. I don't think it's that they're stubborn and don't wanna change. I think
they're so committed to quality that they don't
see a way to bring that commitment into the new thing.
And I think that's really hard for people of all genres because what they don't
realize is the new thing is going to make new demands in different ways of
quality. Mhmm. Whereas that if you hold on to
the old ways of maintaining gatekeeping, if we're gonna use
that term Mhmm. Gatekeeping quality, you're right. You're not
free to go to those other places where you can still gatekeep
in different ways. Like like, the the the
and I essays a lot about these women. But say what you want about the
Kardashians, and I say a lot of negative things about them. I real I do.
But 1 of the things they do really well is they gatekeep that brand.
They do. They gatekeep the hell out of that sucker. Like, you have people who
come into that brand. I'll use Bruce
Jenner as an example, who do not come out the other side of it the
same as when they entered the gate. And I'll just leave it at that.
Lamar Odom was a basketball player who got mixed up with those
those young ladies. He went into the gate 1 way and he came out another
way. And and, of course, the biggest example
other than mister Bruce Jenner, the former mister Bruce Jenner,
is, the current Kanye West.
He came up to be totally different. Those women are a buzz saw,
and they are maintaining quality, book, bad, ugly, or
different inside of that thing. And they're doing it in that new
media space in a different kind of way than they would have
had to have done in the 19 fifties. Oh, yeah. Then Marilyn Monroe
did it. Mhmm. Or,
Jean Harlow or, you know, any of or Bettie Page. Right?
Any of the the the sex symbol women that could have been interchanged
with the Kardashians in their own era. I think the same thing happens
with high art. Opera, fine art, I think
jazz is is is high art, but, okay, let's just use opera, any kind of
the fine arts. And I think it's that lack of being able
to step over and see a new way to do a different date. Book think
that's the thing that people do. That's interesting. It's a very
interesting way of that's a interesting frame. I like
it. Well, you guys Opera Opera didn't
used to be the high art. You know, it used to be the the art
of the people, the the the pop. Right.
But that was back when people had to leave their houses
and dress up and go do stuff. And now people don't have to leave their
houses. Or or to leave your house, it must be something
worthwhile. Gotcha. I'm a big fan of minor league baseball. My
daughter and I try to go to at least a couple minor league baseballs every
baseball games every summer. Baseball is 1 of those
sports that's it's shocking in the era that we live in that baseball still
survives in any form. It's shocking. I love baseball.
I go every chance I get. That goes along with the opera, though. It's the
same idea. It's that we get dressed up. We're
gonna go do this thing. Yeah. We're gonna have a good Tom. And you look
at pictures of people who attended baseball games back in the thirties
and twenties, thirties, and forties when baseball was huge, like my grandma.
Like, black, white, didn't matter. You dressed up in your suit.
You put your tie your your your fedora on. She dressed up in a nice
dress. She was carrying a parasol, and you're gonna go to the area. You're gonna
watch a doubleheader that's gonna start at, like, 10 o'clock. Doubleheader's
gonna go. Gonna be about 10 to 3. It's gonna be a little bit of
intermission. Then you're gonna go from 4 to 8, and that's a whole day.
Yeah. And you're gonna have popcorn. You're gonna have hot
dogs, peanuts. You might have some beer. Cracker jugs. Yep.
It's gonna be fun. The baseball players
are in a space where, just like in opera
or or even in, or even in, well yeah. Or an
orchestra where individually, they all have to be book, but
if 1 person has an individually bad day, the rest of everybody
doesn't have to go along. And so baseball is a game of
individuals played as a Tom, whereas and I've
talked about this a little bit on the podcast before, although not extensively. I like
to explore this thesis a little bit, maybe not in this episode, but later on,
where we had a switch in the
sixties that happened. We switched from a baseball culture to a football culture and no
1 talks about it. And football is game. You can tell by your tongue
sticking out. Football is a game. It's a team game. Like, think about every job
interview you've ever been on. Are you a team player?
Like like, team building. Football is a game where
if the quarterback isn't leading the team effectively,
then the team falls apart. I'm a Broncos fan. Russell Wilson,
less said about that, the better. And so,
like like, that team aspect really began to filter into our culture in the
19 sixties, and the baseball aspect began to, like, go away and go away
and go away. Mhmm. And now the only reason baseball kinda
hangs on is because of nostalgia
primarily. Yeah. But also, it
owns summer because there's nothing else. Although football's creeping in and creeping in and creeping
in, and then you got hockey and baseball fourth basketball creeping down.
Everybody's the the may the other 3 major sports are trying to push baseball
out because baseball players don't care about Instagram.
They real they're not, you know, they're not I mean, they can't be
okay. They're there to hit the ball. Simple
game. You hit the ball, you catch the ball, and you throw the ball.
Simple game. And you run. You won a lot,
and you better run really fast. And so, like, it's not a game for
social media. It's not a game for clicks. It's not a game, but it
is game that can be gatekept inside of summer. If baseball ever
loses summer, baseball's done. It's done. It'll
die. Oh, sad. That would be
sad. You write books. Tell us about
the new book you're writing fourth you've got you you got I am writing yeah.
The trilogy. We finally we have a name for the trilogy. Good. So what's the
name for the trilogy? It's called The Bell and the Bow. Bell and the Bow.
Okay. Yeah. Which is fun because it, you know, references the 2
protagonists. But depending on how you
spell the words, they could they could
flip. Right? So the bell is the male, the book is the female. But
then if you, you know, bell can also be bell fourth
female and book. Anyway, I like it. I have fun.
It's a it's it's just a it's a fantasy trilogy. It's a lot it started
as a love story. We there's a lot of adventure and monster killing
in it. We think a lot and I say we,
because I'm writing it with a coauthor, 1 of my best friends.
And we think a lot about tropes and cliches,
which, you know, now going back and reading Canada, Medecristo, you know,
you see and you're like, well, that's a cliche now. Mhmm. But,
you know, at the time was probably just like, everybody's like, what? When you
read it and the the narrator, like,
spoilers, 1 of the characters dies. So, you know, when the first, you
know, person that the count wants vengeance on dies, the
narrator does not say does not
reveal that the count is Edmond Dantes. And I was
like, did people not know? Like,
was this something like like, there was this, like, their 6th sense, like,
this biggest twist that they that nobody saw coming
because, like, we read it now, and I'm like, well, that's the same guy.
Right. Okay. So that's Like, it's clearly the same guy. Oh,
yeah. Demas is, like, seeding it methodically,
and he gives you he gives the reader little hints. And I think
I saw that. I was like, oh, this is how it reminded me of our
process where, like, there will be this big twist that happens in, like, book
3, and we go back and we seed it. In book 1,
We we ramp it up a little bit in book 2, and then boom, it
hits you in book 3 and the smart well, smart readers.
Almost are you allowed to say that? I don't know. Oh, yeah. Just whatever you
want. Think about myself. Be like, well, if I was reading this book, I'd be
like, oh. Right. That happened in book 1 and book
2. Oh, they've been building to this the whole time. And then I also think
about rereadability because I love rereading my favorite books. And so, you
know, readers that, you know, hopefully fall in love with our books will go back
and they'll read book 1 and be like, they were planning
this the whole time. Those are just those are my I do
my best to put a lot of my favorite things that, like, it,
and by my favorite things, I mean, like, quality. Like, the things that I see
in books that I'm like, that worked. That
got me so good. We do our best to make sure that it's
meticulously woven that way. And that's
also why the writing today really irritates
me because they're like, how much are those writers getting
pay well, hold on. That's actually a different question because of the
the writers strike. But still, like, Disney,
you can afford more. Pay writers to
do better. We're gonna we're gonna save that to the next section. We're gonna
save that. I I took a note. We're gonna save that. I said, no. No.
No. No. It's good. No. Because I wanna so mad. I'd be like, how much
did they spend writing this bullshit? $22, 000, 000.
$22, 000, 000 on an episode. 1
episode. 1 episode. This is Meanwhile, quality writers
are, you know What makes us think putting their novels out on what
Amazon can't get published. And if they do get a publishing
contract, their, their, their, their advances are terrible.
Now it's just like, oh, I'm gonna take it out on Netflix. Writers
are. That's Alright. Let's support
writers. Go buy books. Sorry. I'm sorry.
I wanna talk about I wanna talk about that because I know you saw the,
I know you saw the little reveal from the Department of Justice
documents about Penguin Random House where they proposed the Penguin Random House
merger, and there was the document dump. Oh, gosh. This is probably about 2 months
ago. And it went through the book world like wildfire where it
revealed just how many books
don't get published and
how few books actually make the
New York Tom bestseller list and what the New York Times bestseller list numbers
are. And I'm gonna leave this I'm gonna put this here
before we go into our next section here, which we will in a moment.
But most books sell fewer than a 100
copies. And by the way, this doesn't matter if it's a celebrity
author. Like, Billie Eilish apparently released a book that sold less than 500
copies. The same I mean, who's
following Billie Eilish and thinks, I want her book.
But but but but but here's the here's the thing. We already talked about
Taylor Swift. Let me bring her back up for just a moment. Oh, no. Please
don't. Taylor Swift wouldn't be able to sell more than 10, 000 books. That's
But 10, 000 books gets you gratifying. But it gets you onto the New York
Times bestseller list. And by the way, most of these book
publishing companies, and we will get go back to this in a moment, survive off
of the back catalog. Do you know the number 1 book
that's published by most major book? Number 1 book in America that sells the most
number of books that most most booksellers survive on. Number
1 back catalog book in history. I don't. The Bible.
That was gonna be my guess, but it felt so, like, a cliche to to
say it. We're like, was it the Bible?
Back catalog authors and back catalog
books that came about before the Internet. So that's why Stephen King,
when he went and testified, against the merger,
basically said in his testimony that this merger, if it
is allowed to go through, will actually impact not him. He'll be
fine. He'll always get a book published, but it will impact people
negatively who are seeking to break into the market. What
a guy. But people who are seeking to break into the market
currently can't get in anyway. Mm-mm. And that's
why self publishing is there, and we'll get into all of that in a bit.
Mhmm. Couple other thoughts that I have before we go. So
this book was published in 18 fourth and was serialized through 8 through to
18 fourth, which means in 2024, we are coming up
on the 180th. Actually, this year is the 180th
anniversary of The Count of Monte Cristo being serialized.
That is and when you get 2 100 2 100 films made
off of 1 book, that tells you how deep the tropes and the cliches are
just they're part of the they're part of the background. 200?
They've made 200 films? Over 200 films.
So I knew We're using the site.
Sorry. Since the early 20th century let me go back real quick. Since the early
20th century, his novels, all of Dumas' novels, not just Count of Monte Cristo.
All of Dumonti's novels have been adapted into nearly 200
films. Okay. Okay. Okay. Which means the vast majority of I'm just sure sure of
the vast majority of them. Well, Dumonti's has been made at least
fourth At least fourth 5 times. Cannamani Cristo,
12, 13, 14. I mean, there's and by the way, that's play play versions
of Cannamani Cristo fourth, you know, I would throw in there too.
And then the other thing that I would point out is this, and we're gonna
talk about revenge here in a second. There's a great
line that, is said in the way of the gun
movie that came out way back at the end of 19 nineties with Ryan Phillippe
and Benicio del Toro was 2 bag men. And
they were talking to an old bag men old bag man,
played by James, Sonny from, The Godfather. I think it
was the actor's name right now. And, he says to them,
and I quote it, I love this quote, justice is just
revenge without the satisfaction.
Interesting. Of course, the other great line inside of the way
of the gun is never trust a bag man, and
there's always free cheese in a mousetrap, which is true.
But watch out for AI, by the way. That's a mousetrap.
Alright. Yeah. But there's always free cheese in there, though. Like,
go ahead and get in. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go
ahead. Alright. Back to the book. Oh,
goodness. Oh, the count of Montecristo.
Let's talk a little bit about revenge. I'm going to go into,
the chapter here known as the plot. And
this is where after,
danglers comes on to, comes on to land
and Danglars. Danglars. Sorry. I'm
sorry to hear it with the appropriate French, Elon.
I'm not I'm I'm not I'm not giving you enough French, Elon. I'm trying to
save that up for when we actually read read read passages of the book. But
we're gonna go on this chapter of the plot. We'll read a few pages from
this, and then we're gonna talk about revenge, and writers
today in AI. So AI revenge. This is gonna be good. Kristen's gonna
Kristen's gonna do this. It's so real. We're listening to this.
Danglars' eyes followed Edmond and Mercedes until the 2
lovers had vanished around 1 corner of the Fourth Saint Nicolas. Then turning at
last, he noticed Fernande, who had slipped back to his chair pale and trembling,
while Cadarout was mumbling the words of a drinking song. So
Danglars was on the ship just to give you a little background. Danglars was on
the ship with Edmond Dantes, Edmond and Mercedes.
Mercedes is his is betrothed. Okay. This is gonna come back
later. It's gonna be interesting plot point. But Don Gillars
is well, he's not the captain, and he
wants to be the captain. And then you've got bookkeeper,
I believe. Yeah. He's he's the ship's, you basically make sure
that and it was interesting because I read another book
about shipping and shipbuilding, and there
were positions on ships back in the day, which nobody knows us now, which are
basically accountants for, like, a floating floating vessel. And they made sure that
the amount of goods that left the ship and
the amount of goods that came back onto the ship balanced at the
end. Right? They also, did deals when they would go into fourth
ports. They had no multiple languages. It was all it was a very complicated
role that they, that they had, in addition to having to work on the
ship just like everybody else, all hands on deck means all hands.
So that was Don Gillard. And then, you've got
Fernand. Fernand was the the
person who, when Edmond was, shall we say,
out to sea, was sniffing around Mercedes
trying to get her to fall in love with him. And finally, Kaderu.
Kaderu was a or had the character of Kaderu,
is framed by Dumont as a Alexander Dumont as a,
a neighbor, not Frank. He is a neighbor who loans money
to, Edmund's father, and then demands repayment
of that money, gets the money repaid, and then Edmund comes back with
more money and just gives it to Catarou, thus creating a, a dynamic
of, of a dynamic of debt, which
Khaterou struggles with, but not as not as
much as some, which we'll see here in just a moment. So that's the background
on chapter 4 of the plot.
So my good sir, Douglass told Fourth, not everyone I think is happy
about this marriage. I am in despair, said Fernand. You're in love
with, Mercedes. I adore her. For a long time,
ever since I've known her, I've always loved her. And all you could do is
sit there and tear your hair out instead of finding some way out of the
dilemma. My god. I didn't know that this was how the people of your country
behaved. What do you expect me to do, Fourth? How do I
know? Is it in my business? As I see it, I'm not the 1 who's
in love with Mademoiselle Mercedes. You are. Seek and ye shall
find, the gospel says. I have found already.
What? I wanted to put my knife into the creature, but the girl said that
her fiance was harmed. She would kill herself.
People say such things when they don't do them. You don't know Mercedes,
If she threatens to do something, she will. Idiot. Thank books
mother. What does it matter whether she kills herself or not, provided Dantes does not
become captain? And before Mercedes dies, Fernand went
on in firmly resolute Tom, I should die myself. There
is love for you, Kyrie said in a voice increasingly slurred by drink.
There's love, or I don't know it. Come now, said Dank Lars.
You seem an agreeable enough lad and to me. And by Jove, I'd like to
ease your sorrow, but, yeah, let's say Catteroo. Come on
now. My good friend, Danglars remarked, you are 3 quarters
drunk. Go the whole way and finish the bottle. Drink, but don't interfere with our
business because you need a clear head for what we're doing.
Me? Trump? Katerou. You said Katerou.
Never. I could take another fourth of your bottles, which are no bigger than bottles
of vous de Calonne. Bring us some more wine.
And to make the point, Catherou banged his glass on the table.
You were saying, Fernand asked, impatient to hear what else Danglars had to
tell him. What What was I saying? I don't remember. I
this drunkard, if I could put it out of my mind.
Drunkard if you like. Accursed on those who fourth. Why?
The flood proved it beyond a doubt. All wicked men do water drink.
You were saying, Fernand continued, that you'd like to ease my sorrow, but
you added, ah, yes. But I added that to give you
satisfaction. It is enough for Dantes not to marry the 1 you love. In
this marriage, it seems to me, you could very well not take lazy if Dantes
does not die. Only death will separate them, said
Fernand. You have the brains of an oyster, my friend, said
Kadaru. And Danglars here, who is a sharp 1, crafty as
a Greek, will prove you wrong. You're a Danglars. I've stuck up for
you. Tell him that Dante doesn't have to die. In any case, he would be
a pity if he died. He's a good lad, Dante. I like you. No health,
Dante. Anurad rose impatiently to his feet.
Let him babble, Denglauer said, putting a hand on the young man's arm. And for
that matter, drunk as he is, he is not so far wrong. Absence
separates as effectively as death. Just so just suppose that there
were walls of a prison between Edmund and Mercedes.
That would separate them no more or no less than a tombstone.
Yes. But people get out of prison, said Katherou, who was
gripping who was gripping onto the conversation with what remained of his wits.
And when you get out of prison and you are called, you take
revenge. What does that matter? That's it for now.
In any event, Khadaruk continued, why should they put out his interest? He
hasn't stolen anything, killed anyone, committed any murder. Shut up,
I all want to shut up, I want to know why they should put Dante
in prison. I want to. What the hell?
We poured back another glass of wine.
Pingelars assessed the extent of the tailor's drunkenness from his dull eyes and
turned towards Pheranon. You understand that there is no need to kill him, he
said. No. Surely not. As if you said a moment ago there was some means
of having Dante's arrested, but do you have such means?
If we look, Vanglars answered, we can't find 1. But damn it.
Why should this concern me? What business is it to find? I don't know why
it should concern you, Fernand Fernand said, grasping his arm. What I do know
is that you have some private animosity against Dante. A man who feels hated cannot
be mistaken about that feeling in others. I know some
reason to hate Dante's. Don, I swear. I saw that you were unhappy and took
an interest in your unhappiness. That's all. But if you're going to imagine that
I'm acting on my own behalf, then farewell, my good friend. You could manage for
yourself, Eurydek Lars himself made as if to get
up. No. Stay, said Fernand. When it comes down to
it, it's of no matter to me whether you have some book difficulty bad days
or not. I do, and I freely admit it. Find the means, and I shall
carry it out as long as there is no murder involved. Fourth Mercedes said
that she would kill herself if anyone killed Dentes.
Gatturu, who let his head fall off the table, fall on
the table, lifted it and turned his dull, drinksoden eyes on
Fernand and Bangalore's. Killing Dentists, he said. Who's talking
about killing Dentists? I don't want him killed. He's my friend. This morning, he offered
to share his money with me, and I shared mine with him. I don't want
anyone to kill Dentists. Who said anything about killing an idiot? I'm telling
Manglers went on. It's only more than a joke. Drink to his health
and leave us be, he added, filling
Patarese glass.
Now they're gonna go on and on like this for a little while,
And then, Danglars why the abridged version exists. That's right.
Danglars is going to
write a note, and I'm gonna read the note because the note is important. This
is this is an important event for leaders to pay attention to here. It basically
puts the revenge part of this plot in motion. So I'm gonna skip ahead a
little bit. To illustrate his meaning,
Dan Galaros wrote the following lines with his left hand, the rights
the writing sloping backwards so that it bore no resemblance to his usual
handwriting, then passed it to Ferdinand, who read in read it in
a hushed voice. Quote, the crown prosecutor
writers advised by a friend of the monarchy and the faith that 1 Enman Dantes,
first mate of the Pharaon, arriving this morning from Smyrna after putting
in Naples and Porto Ferrajo was entrusted by Murat
with a letter for the usurper and by the usurper with a letter from the
Bonapartist Committee in Paris or there are 2 of the Bonapartist Committee in
Paris. Proof of his guilt will be found when he is arrested since the letter
will be discovered either on his person or at the house of his father or
in his cabin on board the Pharaon, close
quote. So there we have it, Enghleras continued. In this way,
your revenge will be consistent with common sense because it could in no way be
traced back to you, and the matter would proceed to his own accord. You would
merely have to fold the letter as I am doing now and write on it
to the crown prosecutor. That would settle it. And
Danglars wrote the address. A simple stroke
of the pen. I like
that chapter. It's book setup. Got
the dynamic between the 3 guys. I imagine them sitting at a table outside,
in Paris in, like, 1844. Fourth know, it's a
wooden table. It's kinda rotted. You got Cataneru who is drunk
off his behind. It's like the 3 stooges. And men
are big fans of the 3 stooges. It's like the 3 stooges. You got Nangalars
who absolutely knows what's happening. He's a total firm. He's he's he's
committed to this idea that he's gonna get
Nantes. And he's already figured out what he wants to do in order to
do it, but he doesn't wanna have his hand on the knife. Then you've got
Fernand, who is driven by passion
and, and, revenge, but
mostly is driven by this this idea of lust for
Mercedes. He he's not he doesn't, he doesn't really love her other
than as an object inside of his own head. And, and then you've got Katarou
who well, in Vinovaritas,
right, to paraphrase from tombstone. You
know, there's truth in drink.
Catarou is the only 1 who might, even though he's
drunk, who might be acting and behaving in a
way that is consistent with what is actual reality, which is why would
anybody have a problem with this guy? Why don't we just leave him alone?
He's not done anything to us. And
this gets us in the 21st
century because we don't know why we do what
we do. We are very sophisticated psychologically and sociologically, or at least
we like to convince ourselves that we are because of all the research that we've
done about human behavior going all the way back to the
19 forties. We do we like to convince ourselves if we're really
sophisticated, but our motivations, why we actually do what we do, the stuff
all the way down deep, stuff we don't talk about. Oh, stuff we don't talk
about at cocktail parties with polite people,
all that stuff is still down there. But we don't like using those words. We
we don't like using words like envy or jealousy or vanity
or pride or lust. We don't like using any greed. We're okay with
using because back in the eighties, we decided that greed
was something that we could tie to capitalism, so we'll talk about that out loud
all the time. But all those other these motivations,
all of those other ones, like and III know this
happens to me all the time. When I talk about envy out loud, when I
talk about social media as an envy machine,
which is really what it is, Mhmm. All of a sudden, everybody makes that sound
right there that you just made, Kristen, and then most people have nothing else to
say after that because they then pull out their phones and they get on Instagram
because you can't be off of Instagram for more than 5 minutes. Right? You can't
be off that NV machine for more than 5 minutes. Right? It's
okay. It's fine. I'm there too. I'm no better. Oh,
I actually, that was that
when I started writing my book, it was 2020
writers after the lockdowns. Yep. And I had also,
at the same time decided to get off of social media. Yep.
And discovered I had a book to write. So I did this
instead. It feels a lot better.
Well, it's not just social media. Like, that's easy to blame. Like, think
about the services that we use that are driven by imagery. So I'll
use a perfect innocuous example. If you wanna buy a house, no
1 is just driving around neighborhoods looking for for sale signs anymore. I know this.
1 of the things that I do is I work Mhmm. I work in buying
and selling of real essays, right Mhmm. In my local area. Everyone goes
to an app on their phone called that begins with an a z and ends
with anillo. Right? Everybody goes there. And there
are pictures on that app that are designed
with specific writers. This is what the AI does
that are designed to get you to click on the capture
and designed to get you to want it. Or and by the way, wanting
means you don't have. And when you don't have, it
means you desire. And when you desire, that comes from a place of
I know we're gonna use an old school word here. Makes everybody feel itchy, envy.
Right. Okay. I would rather have that thing. Right?
And this is how the psychology works. Always greener.
Absolutely. Particularly if it's if it's if it's enhanced through AI.
And so The grass doesn't even exist. It doesn't. The grass
ain't even there, girl. Especially in Southern California.
That's That's And the house is only 1, 900, 000. Of course, you can afford
that with all those pictures. Of course, you can't. And so, and
and it's only 1800 some more feet.
Oh, that was a little too close to the bottom. That 1. I like
the Well, we were in the market 3 years ago. I know. We're a
little too close to the truth there. And so
Dumont, Alexandre Dumont, understood even back in
1844 that manipulating motivations while
disguising your own And Deng Lars is an effective leader in this
seat. He's leading categories, and he's leading,
for an own by their by their own motivations. You
found the carrot to dangle? Bing. Well well, the end,
I mean dangle. Ours dangle. That's right. Particularly,
and I'll just put that together Particularly if you wanna lead
people to destruction.
1 of the things I think that strikes me about this, this
situation, and I think it's 1 of the things that makes me so angry and
why I feel like Dante's revenge is probably as
close to justice as you can get. But it also strikes me as relevant.
Today, they're just mad that he's happy
and successful. Yeah. And Donker is not
unsuccessful. That dude has probably, like what you
said, a pretty coveted position Mhmm. And is
and is doing well. Mhmm. So it's like it comes back
down to Edmund. But you can never reach us. But Edmund is happier than I
am, so he must have something that I don't. And because
I don't see a way to improve my own
position, then I'm just going to destroy his.
And that's 1 of those things I think that I've noticed since I
was literature, but was never able to articulate it. And that pisses me
off. And I think where I see this today is
when people start talking about, like the 1%.
Mhmm. Yeah. The 1%. They should have mythical. They need fourth
money. They should be doing this. They should be doing that. We're like, you're telling
a lot of people who have more money than you how they should spend their
money. Maybe spend your energy going and figuring out
how you wanna make your money and stop looking at them.
Now and that's not to say, like, you and I, we'd like there's unethical
business practices all over, and I get that.
Sure. But those those are like the
the Uber billionaires. But do you think but do you think There's plenty of people
with 1, 000, 000 of dollars who are running their businesses very
well and very ethically and treating their workers well. And, like
so talk talk about them too. Right. Well and even
with even with sort of this idea of there's unethical
businesses and things like that or unethical business practices or things are a little bit
in the gray area, a little bit shady, whatever.
Most of people's perceptions of wealth are driven by
the people who have who have attained celebrity with that wealth. So
Yeah. Big example that is on everybody's lips all the Tom. We
talk about him at least once on this podcast. Almost every single episode is Elon
Musk. It's Musk. Yeah. It's Musk. Because he puts himself out there.
That's number 1, but also number 2 but also number 2. And we can't take
this away from him. He takes risks that
regular people wouldn't take. So for instance,
in the current with Tesla around
his, compensation, he took no money from
Tesla for 10 years.
No salary. $0. Now that I didn't
know. That's not what they put in the articles. Of course not. Because the
media people who get paid $80, 000 a year can't
conceive of working for 10 years for no money and
literally pouring in, and you can argue with this, but
pouring in a 100 hours a week and sleeping on a factory floor
in LA to make sure a car goes out the door. Many can't conceive of
doing their jobs that way. And so because their brain can't get there,
they go back Tom, well, that guy doesn't deserve it because he's unethical.
No. No. No. No. He may be engaged in unethical practice.
He may even be engaged in a practice that doesn't really, like, go
directly to be helpful for mental health or spiritual health Oh, yeah. Or
emotional health. We can make those kinds of critiques. I'm open to all of that.
Right. But the critique of that guy doesn't deserve it
because he somehow didn't put in the book, I'm not open to that critique.
No. He put in the work. He did the thing you would never you don't
have the courage to do. I would like to see 1 of the things
more consideration for your mental well-being. No. But that's just not like
or fourth it's just like just something you just don't wanna do. Yeah. That that's
fine too. That's fine too. I'll take that too. You gotta be honest about that.
Right? Be like, no. I don't wanna go sleep on the factory floor and
work on a car for a 100 hours. I just don't never see my my
10 children and, like, have people chasing me around all the
blocks for money all the time. I'm good. If that's the only way, I'll find
a different way to make a $1, 000, 000, 000. Chris, I'm like, there's more
If I really want a $1, 000, 000, 000, I'll find a different way. There's
a And there's more than 1 way to make a $1, 000, 000, 000. I
mean, authors, writers, creatives.
You know? And by the way, there's another question that's buried inside of there that
we don't even consider, which is this idea of, do we need a $1, 000,
000, 000? No. Of course, we don't. And then
after that, well, then after that, there's a sub question, which
is, can you handle the responsibility
and accountability that comes with a $1, 000, 000, 000? Nobody thinks about
that. Nobody thinks about that. They think like, oh,
if I had a $1, 000, 000, 000, all of my problems would be gone.
Be like No. You got a $1, 000, 000, 000. There's other problems with the
$1, 000, 000, 000. It's a new problem. And and what's
making those 1, 000, 000, 000 of dollars. You'd like case in
point, Elon Musk. Like, everything he does, some people like
and other people don't. They're like, it's just And everybody's got opinion on how he
should spend his money. Yep. And and so
when he did the Twitter acquisition, the big the big knock against him was, oh,
you overspent 44, 000, 000, 000. I'm like and I I thought
at the Tom, that's just a canard and
snark. It doesn't mean anything.
It's almost a cliche trope at this point. He bought
it because it was laying around. If I had $44, 000, 000, 000
laying around, I would have bought it too because, a, I know
that guy is gonna make me back my money, or I would have invested with
that because, again, a, I know that guy is gonna book my money, b, I
know he's absolutely bat crap crazy, and c, which
you sometimes need, and c, I know that he's going to sleep on the floor
for a 100 hours a week to make it work for at least the first
2 years of it, and he's gonna be up inside everybody's
behind at that building in a way that the previous
management wasn't.
Done. Where do I sign up? Bet on that
guy. It reminds me of we we we have such a
rose colored, perspective on stuff like,
and I read or used to read a ton of personal development books. So the
big, example of that was Ford
when he was having his engineers
do the impossible and put that, like, single block engine
together or whatever technically the engineering
miracle was that he was asking for. And it makes me
wonder, like, if that was happening today,
what would the reception be? It'd be like, oh,
he's he's he's an idiot. He's abusing his
his engineers. He's driving them. He's he's just
slave drivers. This is it. Yeah. No. That's it. Like but engineers were Like, he
did like, because we wouldn't have our cars. So NASA
I'll use example NASA. NASA knew about rockets that
were reusable and would land, would go
up, straight up, turn around, land
land back fourth come back down and land on an
ocean platform and be reusable again. They knew about
that technology, like, 25, 30 years ago. NASA. The NASA
engineers are not dumb. But and we're gonna talk
about bureaucratic drift here in a little bit because bureaucracy is huge
in the first part of the comment, Christo. Bureaucrats
don't don't innovate. They cannot. The bureaucratic mind
looks at a technology like that and goes,
nope. Not gonna do it Too risky. Because not only too
risky, but we have to maintain processes and systems here so that everybody can keep
getting paid. This is the difference between gatekeepers and insurgents.
Elon looked at that, and this is literally and I don't I don't disagree. I
don't no. I'm sorry to disagree with him. When he said this in an interview
years ago, somebody asked him, how did you develop SpaceX? And he said, oh, I
read a book on theoretical fourth, and then I called NASA. And I tried I
had, like, 3 meetings with them, and I realized they were morons. And I just
I just decided I was just gonna go off and do it myself.
Now I'm paraphrasing there, but that's literally like, that's that's
not really. That's a paraphrase of what he said. That's that was the the the
he went and had meetings. Let me let me just back this up a little
bit. He went and had meetings with rocket scientists after reading a book about theoretical
physics and rocket science. Sitting in the room with
people and understanding that, okay, the knowledge that I have and the knowledge that they
have are the same, and yet
they're not doing this thing that is so obvious. I'm going to go do it.
And the first knocking in SpaceX was Tom your point about Henry Ford and the
block engine. When the engineers were putting together those rockets and
getting getting, getting off the shelf rockets from
Russia, basically, because Russia wasn't using any of their rockets, and they had to reverse
engineer they literally brought in engineers from NASA, and they readers engineered
rockets from Russia because NASA wouldn't sell them any rockets when it sells basically to
anything. They're like, oh, screw you guys. Kind of the way
Nissan did with Tesla initially when,
Tesla brought their battery technology to Nissan. Nissan was like, get the hell out the
door. You don't know what you're talking about. Right. Okay. Your book
Womp. Womp. Womp. Womp. Right. Corporate bureaucracies.
Right? And so Elon goes, okay. Well, we'll just we'll
spend a 100 hours a week figuring it out. He readers engineer now
he didn't figure out himself, but he knew enough to push the engineers in the
direction where they needed to go on that technology. And the fourth the knock
against SpaceX was the same knock against people at Tesla. They are
spending too much Tom. He's a slave driver. He's inhumane.
But no one's asking you to go do this thing. You wanna go be a
journalist, go be a journalist. You wanna work 40 hours a week and then go
see your kids and, like, complain about stuff on the Internet or watch a Netflix
thing and then go flop into bed? Right? That's the thing. Be happy with that.
But danglers, like danglers, can't be happy
unless every journalist or particularly notorious for this, can't be happy unless everybody
else is unhappy. And I don't understand why. Mindset. It's so
it's so like, it reminds me of the crabs. Yes. Crabs in book
Crabs in the bucket. Crabs in the bucket. Just like, woah.
Woah. Revenge and manipulation. So
Bringing it back around. Yeah. Bringing it back on.
Why are those such powerful drivers for for understanding
people in literature? And and why do leaders
need to, like, be on the lookout for those as
drivers? Or maybe a better question is this. How can
leaders spot when someone on their team is jealous
of them and wants what they have? Because this is not something where somebody walks
up to you and goes or very Sorrells, very
rarely does someone walk up to you and go I I
think I've only I mean, I I have a consultancy where we do leadership development.
I've been doing it for 12 years professionally and 20 years total, and
I think I've only had a handful of times fourth I've had somebody walk up
to me and they they tell me they tell me, hey,
XYZ person told me yesterday that they they should have had my job. That's
a handful of times. Most people don't have the courage to go do that to
somebody else. So how do leaders spot that that envy
and that jealousy that might be a motivator on their team?
Because I'm fascinated by the 2nd negative motivators. Difficult
question to answer, I think, because the manifestation of the of
the manifestation of or the behaviors from the
emotions is gonna be different for everybody. So I could tell you how you could
spot it in me. But
I but I'm only 1 Jesan. And You're screaming across the upper
room? I Jesan, no.
I mean, the passive aggressive behavior, I think, is a is a is a
good 1 to look for. This
that that that seems like a,
what am I trying to say? Like, a lot of people would do that, I
think, from that that seed of discontent or
jealousy or
and be yeah. The passive aggressive behavior would definitely be
1 of those things to look at. Kinda always, what are they it's almost
like like miserly behavior as well because
it becomes, to, you know, to move back into personal
development verbiage, scarcity versus
Abundance. Yeah. Mind mindset. Right? They like
and like Danglar. Right? Mhmm. Penny pinching. Every little
thing. What's the other word?
Not nitpicking, but, you know, it's that kind of that grasp being that
like every little nitpick, like, have to have every
penny accounted for. And it comes from a place of
I have to grasping. Writers? So I think if you
start to see some of that and that could probably manifest in a couple of
different ways.
Well, I don't know. I don't know because I've never worked in, like, a corporate
Yeah. Corporate environment. Yeah. Environment before, but
just just my brain throwing out possible examples. Like, if
you're assigning projects, particularly if there's,
like, bonuses or, commission
involved, whoever is complaining
that they didn't get more.
Yeah. That would be the first person that I'd be
like, alright. Well, ask yourself why.
Why didn't you get more? Fourth get Sorrells? Like, well, if you gave
me more, then I could prove myself. Like, you got
the company can't take that risk. You gotta prove yourself before
you get more. That's a mindset that I think we're losing, and it's
very present in, personal development entrepreneurship entrepreneurship
is this working without compensation with the idea
that you will earn more literature can be taken advantage
of, and I think that's part of why people have this like like, they smart
against it. But Yeah.
Exactly. There's like a there's I feel like there's probably an end. There's
probably a middle ground that we can find. Well, I think the I think the
I think the part of the middle ground there, and this is so I work
a lot with startups. Right? In class So with class? You
know, you're going to eat beans and rice for x number of
whatevers until, like, this thing happens. Right? I'm currently in a startup right now
myself fourth Sorrells organization that's in startup mode where
I I'm gonna have equity, whatever, but, like,
whatever that means. But myself and this group of people who are together,
there's, like, 14 or 15 of us together. None of us are getting paid
out of this project. Kind of in a startup right now. I forgot. I
bought a business. I bought a music
store that's kind of in startup mode right now. That's in startup mode. Yeah.
Because we're recovering from COVID. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. And all, just The disease that shall not be named.
Yeah. I forget I forget that I bought it. Like, I
just, like, it's It's a store. It's fine. That in November, and then my baby
came. I was just like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My life is completely different now. It's
fine. Yeah. It's fine. But it's but you're gonna experience the same thing in a
small business where I'm not getting paid. You're not gonna get right. Right.
Like, I I had to explain this 1 time to some employees of mine, who
are working with me. I said, there are there are months where I do not
take a salary from here so that the rest of you can get paid. Mhmm.
And he stared at me in utter,
like, disbelief. Right? And the
reason why those types of associations
offend people, particularly bureaucrat people with a bureaucratic mindset. Like, I remember
back in 2010, it might have been or
maybe it was 2009, because it was the
2nd administration. Yeah. And it took it's it took us it was Tom started in
his first Barack Obama's fourth administration, and then it took his Jesan administration to actually
implement it. But, he
he began the push of this idea that internships,
college internships should be paid. Right? AOC runs around screaming about
this. And it's this idea that, and and this is the AOC
line or the Barack Obama line that, you know, my getting my
experience shouldn't be for free or something like that. And I
thought you will get your money
eventually. Mhmm. You're 20.
The best thing you can do right now when you have no children,
no responsibilities, or minimal responsibilities,
you're living and I and I when I was 20,
I think I made $8, 000 in a year. You're living on the dole from
somebody else. You just are at 20. What
unless you're 1 of those outlier 20 year olds that's, like, been hustling since you
were like, you're Warren Buffett. You've been hustling since you were, like, 8. Okay? Though
you're outliers. Right? Mhmm. But if you're the vast majority. 98%
of you are gonna be living on the door. What possible
experience could you have that's worth paying for? And by the way,
if you're a person who has to pay bills and you take on
an leadership, that is for free,
you better have done that risk versus reward thing in your head already. That's not
my responsibility as the organization to do that thing for you. It's
your responsibility to have done that thing. That's called free association.
And when Obama's administration shifted the rules around
internships to make them to basically penalize employers
fourth doing unpaid internships,
that that was the death knell of or
the death knell the beginning of the death knell of what you're talking about, which
is this idea that everyone, if they're in the
market, should somehow be paid for something. And
that's not that's not true. No. You have to be providing value.
Right. And you're not providing value just by showing up and being
you. That's not valuable. Like, we like
to say it's valuable. Start a YouTube channel and see how
valuable that is. This is this is true. Exactly. It's not
true. For some people. For some people, it works. Right. Those are
usually the crazies. Right. Or or, like, or start podcast. Like, this
Yeah. You're like, we get a decent amount of downloads per month and a
decent amount of downloads per week. We're not killing it. We
will be in x number of years if we keep going on a particular path.
Right. But this is the other thing. Like, it's 10 years to an overnight success.
Yep. It's always 10 years. So you bought a music store, it'll be 10 years
to climb out of COVID.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it'll be the it'll be
Yeah. And in the meantime, I have to figure out how to pay off that,
that financing. That financing. Yes. Exactly. And and
no 1 and by the way, no. No. No. 1 of your not 1 of
the employees that you have, not 1 of the or or in in the
start up that I'm working with, not 1 of the the founders that we're working
with is going to be able to effectively sort of help
us walk through that idea. And so you
have to and it it was a real learning curve for me to figure that
out, and that's the last gas of the employee mindset. The last
gas with the employee mindset is the whining that, oh, it's not
terrible, and people don't love you. Why don't people appreciate me? It's not fair. And
you're getting rid of all that. You gotta that's dead weight. None of that's helping
you. I go to Comic Con, San Diego Comic Con every year, and every year,
I end it with this panel by this editor who has been in the
industry for decades. Yeah. Just decades.
And the first thing or the thing she says every year because she free
free free hands, whatever it's called. She she just goes. She just talks.
She just comes and just writes on the whiteboard and starts talking. Yeah. She's just
turning. Mile a minute. But, the first thing she says
is nobody owes you anything. Nobody owes you a sale.
Nobody owes you a read of a sentence. If you
nobody owes you like, if you wanna put a comic out there, nobody owes
you. Like, it's your job Right. To
make it, you know, desirable, marketable, like people want to read
it. You gotta write something or draw something that people want to
consume. So this is a good segue into PECO and
Random House and writers and AI. So AI,
I this is 1 of the things I really wanna ask you about. So AI,
large language algorithms are here now. And in the
fiction space where you are at Thankfully, they are
still terrible. They they are oh, they are horrible. They are horrible. They're
still terrible at the fiction thing. They are well, because, you know, they are
Honestly, I think it's only a matter of time. You you don't really I don't
I don't think they're ever gonna get to the nuance of no. No. No. Here's
what I think. No. No. No. Here's here's what I think. I think there will
be I read a lot of sci fi. So, yes, I think it's a good
amount of Tom. I know you don't. Oh, I know you don't even need to.
So I remember the line from, oh gosh. It's from
Moneyball that's, like, clipped and memed, from Brad who
hit such a great movie where he says, you know, there's there's
the the elite Tom here, then there's then there's 20 feet
of crap, and then there's us. And you know what that 20
feet of crap is gonna be? The AI produced fiction content.
And we are going to we, The algorithms and people who are looking to get
rich quick all the way at the end of the long tail, at the furthest
tippy tippy tip of the long tail, and this is already starting to happen,
are gonna create content that will to
paraphrase from from a essay I read in, a couple
of months ago that will the
Internet, basically.
More. You're a content crew more than it already is. Right? More.
Now I am shit on the Internet. Oh, yeah. And then
I Just go to Wattpad. Just go to I wasn't gonna bring it up. I
wasn't gonna say which I will admit we are
posting. Because, hey. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Like,
you're not making any money. It's not like, a lot of How do people separate
them the quality writing from the crap
when they gotta fuck it. And if Penguin Random House isn't gonna help you,
because they're not gonna help you They're not. No. They're they're fighting
for for any foothold or toehold or
fingernail hold they can maintain on an incredibly shrinking fat head.
Yeah. Writers so so they're not gonna help you. They're not gonna publish your
books. They're too busy publishing the Bible and Shakespeare for the until,
like, until, like, you know come home. Whatever the phrase Or Jesus
comes back or nuclear weapons or roaches come out and, you know, all the insurance
companies send out the final checks and then they collapse. Like,
this is what they're doing. Right? And they plan on doing it all the way
to the end. Right? The bitter end, and it will be a bitter end,
which is why that merger was gonna happen. So how do we I have so
many questions here. How do we take like, the kind of Monte
Cristo could probably work now, in a serialized
form, but it'd have to be on YouTube with TikTok videos around it,
and Dumas would have to come on and do a TikTok dance to promote it,
which he probably would do do that just fine. You would have to do a
long form YouTube kind of thing. You'd have to have a long form YouTube show
to support the account of Monte Cristo, and then you have to go on a
bunch of podcasts to support that. And it would be this whole marketing
structure around this 1 little piece of content, which then, of course, would not allow
him to scale the content because that's where his real talents and skills were,
which is why certain people have long at certain times. Right?
But You have just articulated our conundrum.
Why? Expert. It is. It is. Yes. It is the kind of
Yep. I write nonfiction business books. All nonfiction
business books sell all, not all, sell well
over 80% of their copies in the first, like, 6 weeks of release
Wow. Of their lifetime of their lifetime.
So a business book like Napoleon Hill's Eat and Grow Rich or
Think and Grow Rich or whatever, Eat and Grow Rich. Think and Grow Rich fourth
Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence. The reason why we still about Dale
Carnegie and Napoleon Hill is because they came along at a time when you could
sell to a literate public, and you could sell a 100, 000 copies, and then
your legacy just rose like a mountain over time. But if you're
publishing a book, a business book business nonfiction book in
2024, there's so much garbage. There's the elite, which is the
Adam Grant, Malcolm Gladwell folks of the world. Then there's not
20 feet. There's a 150 feet of garbage.
And then there's you squirming around the bottom like a roach trying to figure out
that's me. Scrolling around the bottom like a roach trying to figure out how to
get through the 150 feet crap. The roaches survive. They
do, and they eat a lot of crap. Yes.
And that's why we have them. And so when not the nonfiction business book space,
it's vicious. No 1 ever talks about how few nonfiction books
celebrities sell. No 1 ever talks about that because it
would be in his biographies. Oh, it would be embarrassing. Oh,
god. It would be embarrassing. Like, Principles by Ray Dalio.
I think the book came out 10 years ago now. Oh, I'm not Reason was
on my list for a while Yeah. And I didn't buy it. No. Writers. Nobody's
read that book all the way through, and Ray Dalio knows it. Like well,
anyway, there's all kinds of scams that are done to get those books
into the New York Times bestseller list. We can get 10, 000 copies. Heard about
that. Yes. It's so frustrating. The New
York best type that that doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean anything. It's it's a
marketing turning, right? It's become a marketing thing. It used to mean something, but now
it doesn't. But it's Like, I've heard of writers that will buy the 10,
000 books themselves Mhmm. Yep. Just to make sure that it gets
to the New York best times. And then they give the copies away, and then
they have that marking yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
What do you but in fiction, I don't know what the rules are in fiction.
I I don't know. I don't know what the rules are in fiction. Like, you
said you just wrote a trilogy. You I I presume you wrote it with as
a human being, not using AI. Of course. You've got AI.
You have AI, And then you've got which is gonna create a problem for all
the fiction writers. Yeah. And you even said it yourself.
And then and then you've got the marketing, you know,
scheme around the book. Right? And then you've got the
fact that you might only sell a 1, 000 of these books. That's not really
an option for me. And I'm grateful that I worked as an entrepreneur
and made no money for 10 years. Yeah.
Because I finally it's 1 of those things where I look back and I'm like,
this is what all this shit was for. Yeah. I think.
You know, I've tried what is it? Do you
every 9 out of 10 businesses fail? Oh, yeah. It's like so
I I think that's what all the failure that what this was for is like,
I'm just gonna keep going until this book sells. Right. I'm not
gonna I'm not gonna stop. Yeah. But I think
you need that. And I think a lot of authors or
aspiring writers just don't understand that that's the kind of
mindset you need. Mhmm. Especially with this. Like, I
don't like, if we if, you know, we're probably gonna self publish first. We'll
try that. I have a friend who, like, is
an expert and coaches people on, you know, the SEO of Amazon. We're like,
okay. We'll try that. Like, if that doesn't work, we'll try something
else. Like, we're just gonna keep trying,
and I'm gonna keep writers. Right. Yeah. Like, it's just like, I I
and though I think 1 of the things is, like, what
keeps you going Mhmm. Is like, well, I would rather write than
do most other things. Mhmm. The I
grew up playing video games. I love video games. And
the the tell for me was when I started it was like, would I
rather play Jesan right now fourth would I rather write? I'm like, I'm
gonna go write. I was like, woah. That's
weird. I never thought that would happen. Never ever would I that would I
have thought that I would be doing something work
related that I would rather do that would
it's because games are designed to feel rewarding.
Right. Which is why we have such a massive intellect trapped
in virtual worlds, which I think is the biggest
shame. Ready player 1 exists for a reason like
that. Like like And nailed it in that first book. He did. He
nailed it perfectly. It just there's so much
intelligence just stuck
in video games right now. And that's not to say they're playing video there's nothing
wrong with playing video games. I love video games. But, man,
if we could figure out how to get them a little bit of confidence
and get that what is it that that problem solving
mindset that is just inherent in all video game playing to
solve the problems of the world. Well, this is my this is my concern with
AI because my concern with our with large language algorithms is not necessarily on the
creative and in the the craft Yeah. That's what we're talking about. Content end. It's
not necessarily that. But it is it is this idea that because this is
already starting to happen. We're gonna take the data the
data pattern recognition process of an LLM.
We're going to put that machine next to the machine of virtual reality,
the VR machine. And, of course, because
it's 2 algorithms talking to each other, they're gonna pattern recognition and solve for each
other all the way out to the logical end.
And my concern is not that we're gonna have a Terminator thing
where the AI jumps out into the physical thing and start shooting people, although
that very well may be a thing. I think Google's working on that on the
side. Oh, fourth sure. There's I I think they're definitely working on
that in Mountain View. What's far more insidious to me is when
Mark Zuckerberg's working on with Meta, where we're
going to make the thing so good in here, you never
leave. That's ready player 1. Yeah.
And that Tom me is far more
possible, And that
creates the dystopia that you saw in that book where everybody's living
in, you know, trailers or or stack 1 on top of each other somewhere in
Oklahoma hooked up to these, you know, machines.
And that's why I think and and that's why I do this podcast. It's like
it does and that's why I write books that nobody reads fourth
very few people. And it's why I do workshops
that a very small people, you know, a small number of people attend. And it's
why I've done this book, this kind of work for the last number of
double digit years because it's actually not about the number of people that I
impact. It's less about that, and it's more about the fight for
gatekeeping quality. And that's a fight worth
having. Yeah. And I become an insurgent by gatekeeping quality. That's
fascinating. Right? Right. We are doing that. It was just yeah. No.
When you were talking about that, it reminded me of your your notes about motivations.
And, you know, we only do things for 2 reasons
to move towards pleasure or move away from pain. Yep.
At the base, base, base level, that's what it all comes down to. It's very
binary. Very binary. Very binary. Pleasure. Move away
from pain. And that Jesan you
made the comments about meta, it's like they're they're, yeah, that's already kind of what
they do is Mhmm. It's all designed, like, to to stimulate the
pleasure centers of your brain, or the or the addictive
writers, both, you know, so that you just you don't wanna leave. You'll just
keep scrolling forever. Right. And it's not just Facebook. All of all
of them have done that because they they make their money the longer you're on
the platform. Right. Exactly. Well, and the the
dynamic and we will go back to the counterparty crystal here in just a second.
That's why I talk about bureaucracy. The dynamic of a company like
Meta, because it's a giant bureaucracy, I think they have 50, 000
employees. Wow. Google has a 100 I think Google has a
190, 000 last time I heard. That's like That's a small
country. Right. That that country. Yeah. That's a small country.
When you have these CEOs that are running small countries
that are getting $50, 000 a month,
They're not incentivized to be insurgents. They're incentivized
to make sure that whatever the hell is happening here keeps
happening. So everybody's fat or at least moderately fat.
And if not happy, at least moderately happy, and
and keeps the machine going. Because if this machine doesn't keep going,
the stockholders or Sorrells. The stockholders, the shareholders,
the folks who buy stock, the folks who are
employees, the folks who are on the board, the folks who are in the
audience, the folks who are the customers, all these folks will be impacted
in in a negative way. Whether that negative way is Tom right.
That's the word. Right. Exactly. And so you've got a
bureaucratic mindset doesn't just exist in government, although we're gonna see this in in
County of Monte Cristo with, this bureaucratic we're about to
introduce to the to the audience here. But we see it now
in corporations, and we've been here for a while since at least the mid
20th century. And I think people are starting to wake up to
the wake up to the game. I think COVID did a lot wake
wake people up to the game fourth so than probably anything
else that has happened in the last 100 years of
America.
Back to the count of Mike, Christelle, in just a moment.
We're not gonna read all of this chapter, but it is called the interrogation.
And, the interrogation of Edmond
Dantes, because he is arrested based on this,
letter that, Fernand actually delivers,
not Danglar, interestingly enough, which is again what
Danglar wanted. He didn't want his fingerprints on the
on the murder weapon. And so
the Dantes gets arrested,
and the person who is interrogating him,
is a gentleman named De Villefort, Gerard.
And Gerard. There we go. Yes. I think it's a
there's a buddy of mine who speaks French, and he fourth of anyway.
Okay. Yep. I didn't say it book. No. No. The more important part is that
the double l is No. Is is not l. It's e
like d 4. Yeah. V4. V4. V4. V4. V4. V
like a like a guy hop off the back of your throat. Yeah.
V4. And, he
is at a betrothal of his own. This is the this is the play that
Dumont does with and,
and hang on. I'm not gonna call it. And Dante's,
and and he plays off this idea that both gentlemen are
approaching, we just mentioned this earlier, happiness. Right? They're approaching their peak of
happiness, and now they have to do they have to have an unfortunate
engagement with each other.
So we'll read selections from this chapter because it is it is a
long chapter, there's a lot involved here, but there's a couple of different ideas I
want to pull out from here. So we'll start off here. Hartley
had left the dining room,
then he had put out it's gonna get worse and worse pronunciation as I go
along. So just batten down the hatches.
Then he put off his joyful mask to take on the serious
meow of 1 called upon to exercise the supreme office of pronouncing on the life
of his fellow man. However, despite the mobility of his
expression, something which the deputy had studied more than once, as a skilled
actor does in front of his mirror, on this occasion, it was an effort for
him to lower his brow and darken his features. In reality, apart from the memory
of his father's choice of political allegiance, which if he did not himself
completely renounce it might affect his own career, Gerard de
Vivot was at that moment as happy as it is possible for a man to
be. David 26, already wealthy in his own right, he held a
high office in the legal profession, and he was to marry a beautiful young woman
whom he loved, not with passion, but reasonably, as a deputy
crown prostitute Tom Merlot. Apart from her beauty, which was exceptional,
his fiancee, Mademoiselle Jesan Maron, belonged to a
family which was among those most highly thought of at court in this
time. And besides the influence of her mother and father, who having no other children,
preserved entirely for their son-in-law, She was,
in addition, bringing her husband a dowry of 50, 000
which, thanks to her, quote, unquote, expectations, that
drove forward invented by marriage brokers might 1 day be increased by a
legacy of half a1000000. The
reason I'm reading this is because, we
in our time married for love. Right? We don't marry for any other
reasons. Anyway,
he's hustling his way over to the office to
have a conversation. He's waylaid a little bit by the
ship's owner, a monsieur Sorrells.
And, well, Zijo sits down
once he has a con a conversation with Marel, basically indicating
that, he will do his duty no matter
what else happens,
and then he meets Dantes. First impressions had
been favorable to Dantes, but Viro had often heard it said as a
profound political maxim that 1 must be aware of first
impulses even when they were correct, and he applied this rule of impulses to
his impressions without taking account of the difference between the 2 Tom. So he's
a bit of a midwit. He thus stifled the good
instinct that was attempting to invade his heart and from there to
attack his mind, settled his features in front of the mirror into their grandest
expression, and sat down, dark and threatening, behind his desk.
A moment later, Dantes entered. The young man was still pale but calm and smiling.
He greeted his judge in a simple but courteous manner and looked around for somewhere
to sit as though he had been in the shipowner fourth met,
Major Morel's drawing room. It was only then that he met
Yehaw's dull gaze book looked peculiar to men of the law who do not want
anyone to read thoughts and so make their eyes into unpolished glass.
The look reminded him that he was standing before justice, a figure
of grim aspect and manners. Who
are you and what is your name? Vilfred asked, leaving leafing through the notes that
the officer had given him as he came in, which in the past hour had
already become a voluminous pile, so quickly does the amount of reports and information build
up around the that unfortunate body known as detainees.
My name is Edmund Dantes, and the young man replied in a calm voice in
readers tones. I am the first mate on board the vessel Faron belonging to
Mayor Suarez Sorrells and Son. Your age?
Continued. 19. What were you doing at the time of your arrest?
I was celebrating my betrothal, Dante said, his voice
faltering slightly. So sharp was the contrast between those moments of
happiness and the dismal formalities in which he was now taking part and so much
did the bomber face of,
enhance the brilliance of Mercedes features.
You were at your betrothal feast, said the deputy, shuddering inspiring in
spite of himself. Yes, I'm about to marry a woman whom I have
loved for the past 3 years. Though
usually impassive, nevertheless, Villefort was struck by this coincidence, and the emotion in
the voice of Dante, whose happiness had been interrupted, sounded a sympathetic chord
with with him. He too was to be married. He too was happy, and his
own felicity had been disturbed so that he might help to destroy
that of a man who, like himself, was on the brink of happiness.
This philosophical analogy he thought would cause a great stir when he returned
Tom, Mademoiselle de Saint Morin Salon. And while
Dante's waited for his next question, he was already mentally ordering the antithesis
around which orators construct those sentences designed to elicit applause,
but would sometimes produce the illusion of true eloquence.
They go through the interrogation. Essays him a
bunch of questions and then takes the letter from his
pocket. That is the letter that Denglars
wrote and offered it to Dantes who
examined it. His face clouded, and he said, this is a little bit later in
the chapter, Sorrells, I do not know this handwriting. It is disguised, yet it has
an appearance of sincerity. In any case, the writing is that of an educated hand.
He looked at the whole with such gratitude. I'm happy to find myself dealing with
a man such as you because my rival is indeed a true enemy.
Fourth the flash that passed through the young man's eyes as he spoke those words,
D'Arroy was able to perceive how much violent energy was hidden beneath his mild
exterior. Come then, said the deputy prosecutor, answer my questions
honestly, not as an accused man Tom his judge, but as 1 wrongly accused might
answer another who has his interests at heart. How much truth is there in this
anonymous accusation? And through the letter, which Dante
essays just given back to him onto the desk in a gesture with a gesture
of distaste. Now that's the
letter or the the cover of the leaders. And,
well Then there's a letter that Dante
Yeah. Go ahead. Oh, was
given by the captain to deliver in
Paris. Yes. And this is where, you know, if, you know,
you're asking about the bureaucracy and I think ville fourth really does use
the bureaucracy to his advantage here, obviously.
Oh, yeah. But it's still a matter of self interest. So sorry fourth
those of you who've not read Count of Monte Cristo, Fourth, the
letter is addressed to Noirtier,
who is Villefort's father. Father. That's right. Noirtier is a
Bonaparte supporter, and Villefort is working
very hard to disassociate himself with his father's
political leanings. And so
I think 1 of the writers, Fourth just straight up meets the king.
Yep. So Yep. He's he's working real hard to
establish himself with, the the new monarchy
or the old reestablished monarchy, whatever. And
so Edmond Dantes now presents a threat
to all of Fourth hard work.
And instead of being a cool guy,
he just screws Edmond
Dentas over. And he's like, you can go just
disappear in prison because that will save my reputation
and all of my hard work. Now
why was Napoleon a problem?
I mean For those of
us who don't know, why was Napoleon a problem? Why was that guy a
little bit of a challenge for folks in Europe at that time? I feel like
you could probably answer it, better than I could.
The other, like, side note, the other
books that I've been reading are it's called the Temeraire novels by Naomi
Novik. They're also set in the Napoleon era, but it's
fantasy. It's historical fantasy. It's a lot of fun, but it's just interesting. We're like,
oh, I forgot this was set during the Napoleon era. I was like, dang. Okay.
Just Napoleon everywhere. Well and so Napoleon was you're
right. I can answer this question. You're correct. So, Napoleon, you're exactly correct. Be
like Well vague memories of my history lessons. Yeah.
So this was this novel or or the Count of Monte Cristo events of Count
of Monte Cristo occur at a time when Napoleon is
either yes. He's at his first exile to Elba. Yes. And
so the the folks on the yeah. The monarchists on the continent,
specifically in France, don't know if he's going to
mount a return, which he would actually mount a
return. And then there would be a 100 days where he would rampage
across Europe, and then he would be put back in a box and
shipped off as far away as they could possibly manage to ship him
off because I don't I actually am not I'm really curious as to why they
didn't send him to, like, North America. Anyway, it doesn't matter. Point is,
they were gonna put him in a box and send him away. Right? And
that gap, between, you know, him being
defeated, at the battle of Waterloo and then being exiled,
and then coming back, that that gap of time. There's a lot of
turmoil in France, particularly around Paris. You see that in
the chapter where he goes and where Viofael goes and sees runs off and goes
and sees the king to your point. And at that point, everybody's
trying to make their own separate deals.
Everybody's trying to appeal to the king or or not the king, at least, the
monarch. Sure their place. Correct. Abundel. That's
right. There's a lot of, what we call Tom modern terms
jostling Right. For political position.
And Don Tedz is the classic guy.
He's the the term that we use nowadays, particularly on Substack and other
places is normie. He's a normie.
He does I was gonna essays, but that's usually for women. The is for women.
Normie is for dudes. Yeah. He's he's he's
he's he's your average video game playing dude who just wants to get married and
go back to work. He doesn't know who Joe Biden is. He
doesn't have an opinion about Donald Trump. Didn't even know who his own mayor is.
He's just he's There you go. Right. I just wanna just wanna hang out and
go, I don't know, all in good work. And he's party, girl. Right.
I just wanna marry the pay the bills. Girl, pay the bills. He got promoted
early. Right. I'm 19. I got a promotion. Why? I don't wanna die fat
and old. And by the way, I'll be fat and old if I'm lucky by
the time I'm 30. Come on. Right.
He's he he's almost a man with no
I won't say no motivation. He's almost a man with no
no. I'll frame it this way. Dumont has created the author, Alexandre Dumont,
created a character upon whom he could paint
turning, and he painted this revenge
story on on Dantes,
because of the situation that he was surrounded. And so I think
there's a warning actually in here for all of the normies.
And the warning is and this is where bureaucratic self interest comes in, and
it's discontent. If the bureaucrat decides that it's
self serving to reach down and get you
and by the way, you're you're done. I mean, you see this in in in
in night by Eli Weisel. We covered,
we covered, the, the Gulag Archipelago last year by Alexander
Soljacidsson. Like, if you're engaged
in just living out your life, the system, and we talk a lot about
this today in our culture, the system will find a way to get you if
the system wants you. Oh, that feels that reminds this kind
of weird example, but I play a lot of board games. And I my favorite
board games are the ones where I can just sit on my side of the
board and do my thing and, you know, I'm like, oh, cool. I'm getting my
points. Blah blah blah. And as soon as somebody comes over to fuck with me,
I'm like, leave me alone. Why are you
bothering me? I'm just happy over here. And it's like, well, it's because it's
part of the game. Right. It it is. But that happens in life. That happens
in life. It's all part of the game. 1 of my favorite shows on
HBO over the last 25 years, was,
and it's not on anymore, but I recommend everybody watch it. You can find it
on HBO Max, the app. The Wire. You should watch
all 3 seasons of The Wire. Talk about brilliant writing that hangs together.
It's genius. It takes the Coppin Readers or Coppin
versus drug dealers fourth of trope, puts it in Baltimore, and it takes Tom its
next level. And the writing is so clean and clear and amazing.
And there's a character in there who robs other drug dealers named
Omar. Okay. And, that's how he makes
his living. He walks out down the street with a shotgun and a big black
trench coat, and all the drug dealers on the corners know, and they scream
out, Omar's coming, and they they scatter. He
robs drug dealers. And so in
the course of the series, eventually, the prosecution who wants to prosecute
these drug readers, calls him as a witness. Now he's doing it self
servingly because he wants to get revenge on some people who who hurt
him and hurt some people close to him. But,
the prosecution is fine with using him to accomplish their own means because they work
for the state. The bureaucracy again. And this little
bureaucratic lawyer is questioning, this
this Omar, and and
he asked and there's a sequence view of this. It goes to season 4
or 5 of the wire where he basically asks,
Omar, you know, I you seal with you you rob drug
dealers. Why should we believe anything that you that you say
here? You you take a shotgun and you rob people. And he
goes and Omar says, you do the same thing just with a suitcase.
And it turns it on that bureaucratic lawyer, and leaders like his mouth
drops open because he has nothing to say. And everybody in the court
laughs, and then Omar owns it. And
then a couple more beats go by, and,
you know, the prosecutor asks him after he pulls
himself back together, and he asks him, you know, how has this man like
this has survived this long? Either you have survived this long because if
you're robbing drug dealers, your life expectancy is
minimal at best. And so he says, well, you know, it's all in
the game. You either play or you get played. That's
how it goes. And
this is the thing I think in life
that normal people miss. They don't
realize the games they are in, or they
think the games they're playing don't have any long term consequences. Like,
they can't they can't project those out. Yeah. And so, yes, it most
normal people play life like that board game. Like, when like, where you play board
games. They just wanna be left in a normal corner and leave me alone. And
if you come over here and mess with me my city. I don't know. Build
my city. And and you're not allowed to
be left alone because the bureaucrats want
to come over and mess with you. Knock over your sand castle.
That's what I mean. And they're doing it, and this is the
counterpoint I always think of. They're doing it for duty, like the
fourth you know, they're doing it for duty, or they're doing it for
other self serving reasons, or they're doing it to they're doing it to win
their own game that they're in. And you don't know the rules of their game
Mhmm. But because they've been set in position and
hierarchy over you, they know your game. And if
there's 1 thing I would recommend for leaders who are who think of themselves as
being quote, unquote Sorrells or, I would rec fourth
naive. I would recommend
that it might be a good idea to learn what kind of games other people
are playing on other boards.
Might be a really good idea to learn those games. Write this down.
Well, you're gonna see it you're gonna see it in the in the music store
that you I already have. Yeah. Like, that's that's a totally different
game. Yeah. You know? And you I mean, I'm and you've got a
I'm presume you've got Actually, I know 1 of the games. You know what I
book? Because I was I was.
But there's so many other games that then open up. Right? Because, you
know, like, there's the there's the you're in California. I
won't say where, but you're in California. So, like, you got the inspection game.
The bureaucrats and the regulators that show up and wanna wanna produce
literally nothing but paper. That's literally the job just to produce paper. Not to provide
value, just produce paper so they can keep getting, keep getting a job.
And if you irritate any of those people, they won't give you a piece of
paper that you need in order to run this business Mhmm. Which
is brutal and vicious. But that's only 1
game. Then you've got, like, the tax California taxing authority game, which is
totally different game. And then you've got the IRS game, which
is a totally different game. And then and then you've got,
like, the game of actually going to your customers. Your customers don't care about any
of those other games you're playing. Nope. And then you've got your employees who are
totally different game, and they don't care about any of those other games you're playing.
And this is the challenge of entrepreneurship, but it's also the challenge of
Leadership. Of leadership. Yeah. III have
like, my friend group in general just doesn't they're
like, do CEOs deserve how much they get paid? And
sometimes I'm like Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. I Jesan, you Yeah. Like, like, we can argue about the ethics of,
like, the how much their raises have gone up and how much their workers are
like, yeah. The CEOs can't do their thing if they don't have their workers
in the beehive making the thing. But, like, like,
they're they're thinking about so much.
Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. They deserve to make a lot of money,
a lot of money because nobody else wants to do that.
They deserve it unless you're like the Boeing's I was the LS.
And if you're the CEO of Boeing where the
door falls off your plane in the middle of the
air, right, you've gotta be the 1st leader that falls
on the grenade This. When the screw up happens. That's and I
think that's the big issue is ours like, well, I don't know. I was about
to say a, like, a blanket statement, but I think
something that people are not seeing Mhmm. In CEO
leadership is that Yeah. They're not willing to
fall on the grenade for their companies. They're not willing to it's just a
paycheck. It's all very, like, mercenary.
Transactional. Yeah. And so the, like,
the passion, the the the, what are those little
Vision or whatever. Right? The buy in of the the company's mission. It's
not actually there. Don't actually care. Well, when you see the source a lot
of the big, big ones. Right? I think there are some smaller still
maybe, like, lots of revenue, but smaller,
companies where the CEO is, like, they'll take the
hit. 1 of the CEOs that I hear about occasionally
is, like, the CEO of Costco Tom, like, how little he makes and how much,
like, he does to to really build that company and
make sure it's it's good for their workers too. And it's just like, damn. That's
that's how it's done. Well, it's really interesting. So if you ever have an opportunity
to in the local area you're in, if you ever have opportunity to go to,
like, a small business mixer with other small business
leaders who are leading their businesses,
It's interesting because you see this at a micro level Mhmm. Versus
seeing it at a mac or sorry. You see it at a macro versus the
micro level. But what you see is when you wind up fourth what you
experience when you wind up talking to books, and I've been to a lot of
those those mixers and summits and conferences and things like that in my
Tom, in running, like, the 3 or 4 businesses that I've
run. It's you you you wind up in a
space where you look at what that person's doing
and leading in that particular way even if it's parallel to you. And
the first thing you think is, well, that's fine for that person. I would never
do that, and you walk away.
Because you're like, I I can't I can't
I can't sit here and critique you because I know how
hard what you're doing is, and you know how hard what I'm doing
is. Yeah. So there's actually no critique here. It's just you
found a different solution than the solution that I found. So
if you're at a It's like parenting. Right. Exactly.
Right. Now Yes. Now 1 of the things that I push on very often, just
like in parenting, is there has to be a standard at some level. Like,
we have to say that there's a baseline of ethics
or a baseline of whatever. Right? And we see this in the count of Monte
Cristo. There has to be a baseline of some behavior here that we all
socially agree on. But then after we get past the baseline
and by the way, my my big problem is the baseline is is being and
has been destroyed. That's my big Yep. Yeah. But We've been working on
disintegrating that, and now it's just crumbled. It's just like we have movement.
Right. We've deconstructed it out of existence. Yeah. That doesn't work though because now
you're just floating around. And if you're just floating around, whether
you're a corporate, whether you're a big public company, like a Boeing or a
META, which we've mentioned, or any of Musk's companies, big public companies,
or you're a small business, there's no baseline standard that unites
you. And so anyone can do anything anywhere. And you're at that
mixer. You're listening to this person talk, or you're you're you're
having a can of hay fourth whatever, some order that you didn't wanna
eat. And you're going, I would never do that that way, but
you're still hamstrung in that sense of not being able to
critique that person because guess what? If you do, they're gonna start
poking on you. And this is where we get
to the idea that it doesn't matter what you're doing. It only matters
the result because the result is the thing that can never be
argued against. And so if the result
is, well, I gave all of my employees $50,
000 bonuses last year and you gave none of your employees any and you're
almost a debt, then you go, well,
you win the day. Congratulations. You won. Yeah. I
guess you won. And and this is this is the
thing I think we're struggling with in the United States right now. Yeah.
Chaos. Can I ask you a question about chaos here as we round the corner?
Because in a chaotic time, like in the count of Monte
Cristo, where, like, no 1 knows
what's turning. And and we are in a weird this has been 1 of the
the 1 of the things on this podcast this year is that we're in a
moment. I think we're at the end of chaos. I think we're at the back
end of chaos. Oh, I hope so. Oh, and the reason why I say this
is because usually chaos comes in 20 year cycles.
We've been in a 20 to 25 year cycle of chaos since 2, 001.
Next year will be 25 years of pay 24 years, 25 years of chaos.
We're almost done. We're almost out the other side. Now usually in the back end
of chaos, there's a last sort of explosion of
nonsense, which may happen, you know, internationally, may
happen internally, may happen in November, whatever. Right? There's a
last but then usually, that's the last thing. It's like a rat that's trapped and
makes it podcast, like, lunge, and then it's done. Right? Yeah.
So we we're not in the last lunge moment, but the last lunge moment is
coming. And then what's on the other and and this podcast this year has been
consumed with what's on the other side of that last bunch.
Because I'm less interested in the last lunge of chaos, and I'm more
interested in what happens when, okay, now we're done with
that. That's so interesting. And now we're gonna do something else.
When you were talking about,
I am sorry. I can't even remember what you're talking about, but chaos was the
the 1. Chaos. Fourth examples of chaos. Yeah. 1 of the things that
started kind of playing in my head was that montage in, v for
Vendetta, if you've seen it. When
like, it's like right after V has sent out all of the masks. Mhmm. Yep.
And there's that that just that montage of chaos in the UK. I mean, it's
just even but the anarchy in the UK and the guy shoots the gun in
the air. And that's what it reminded me of. But then your your
point just now is, like, what comes after that? Because that's where the movie ends.
They're just like, we blew up parliament. The the good
guys won. And we're like, what happens
next? It's like Right. And how do we rule? Right.
Yeah. Nobody thought about that. The 1 guy that might have
thought about it is now dead.
Well, this is this is my problem with revolutionary movements because sometimes
sometimes the dog catches the car.
So I already mentioned I mean, before we started the the podcast, I
mentioned Joker in a different kind of context in the dark night.
And my challenge with many revolutionary movies, I don't care whether they're Marxist
from the left or whether they're, you know, Proud
Boys or the Patriot Front or whoever from the right. I don't care.
Political political revolutionary movements, social revolutionary movements, cultural
revolutionary movements, deconstruction, which is a philosophy
from Merida, you know, all of this stuff.
What happens I always ask the the diversity, equity, and inclusion people, what
happens after you have a diverse equity or equitable and inclusive
world? And, of course, the response to that always is, well, Jesan will never get
there. Oh, okay. So what you're telling me, you're gonna have never ending chaos and
never ending revolution? And by the way, when you say that
conclusion, everybody walks away. And the reason why
everybody walks away and has nothing to say is because
the thing that destroys a in a revolution is not the same
thing as the thing that builds. No. And it's time I
I will say this. I personally have had enough of
destruction, and it is time for building.
Yeah. I've had enough of destruction. So
are there going to be destruction. Or deconstruction or whatever fancy term? We've
been deconstructing since 2 planes flew into the towers in the World Trade Center in
2, 001. We've been deconstructing ever since then. We've had 25
years of deconstruction. Stop deconstructing.
What do we build? Constructing. Right. The thought that came to
me was that the answer to your question is
like, well, we don't know what we want, but it's not that. Right. We spend
so much time criticizing the thing that is that
we know we don't want that we're
not we're not spending any energy or time on, like, what would we do
instead? Okay. So we were talking about Disney, and we were
talking about the writing on Tom Wars a little bit before we started this podcast.
You write, you're writing a, you know, a, fictional science
fiction trilogy, putting that out into the world. That's so this
is our last question as we round the fourth, literature, as we come
around and bring it around. What are we going
to build in the future? Because DuMont
in the count of Monte Cristo, he's building something for the future. He's building a
Yeah. Right? He's building something that other people will be able to he wasn't
deconstruct well, no. He wasn't deconstructing trucks. He was building trucks.
He was building cliches. He was putting something into the world. Right? As
a creator, and this is why I love having you on and talking about this
kind of stuff. As a creator, how do we
well, how do we build past Disney, past X
Men, past MCU, past Star Wars? My thought
is, like, I'm so tired of lazy writing and lazy world building. I'm gonna go
build my own world that is going to have all of the
passion and thought and care and love
that I grew up reading. Mhmm. That's what I'm gonna go. I'm gonna
go create that. And if hopefully it Sorrells, and if it doesn't, I don't know.
I'm just gonna push it until it does. Mhmm. I there's no there's not really
any room in my mind for like, eventually,
people like me who maybe are still, like, please get better
Mhmm. Haven't thrown in the towel yet, are
gonna find my world, and they're gonna be
starving for it. And I think and I I don't
I don't and here's the other thing. I'm kinda I know competition is
a thing. Mhmm. But I would love it if there were, like,
10, 20, however many other writers go and do the same
thing. Like, there's room. There's room. My world is gonna
be different from your world. Go build your own world. Make it make it
good. Take the time. Don't be in a
rush. Like, just just just let it marinate. You know?
Make a make a good thing, and
it's hard. Do do the hard thing, which is we want
the easy out. Right? We're like, oh, chat gpt. Let let it write it for
me. Like, no. Chat gpt can be a useful tool.
Mhmm. But it's not gonna write it's not gonna write your book. It's not gonna
build your world in a, like you said, with any
substance. So go make your own
thing. If you're unhappy with that, think about, like, hey. What would
you do instead? What would you do better? And then go do it. Don't just
talk about it. Be like, Yeah. That would be cool if that existed.
You had the thought, go make it. Because the way you're gonna make it is
gonna be different from how I would make it. It. And then suddenly, if we
both put in the time and the effort and the, you know, the
passion, then we have 2 plus
very high quality fantasy worlds. And
just, like, people are gonna eat it up. And eventually,
you know, this is this is where I, you know, I definitely I'm the
idealist naive. If everything was roses, you know,
eventually, Hollywood will be so starving for good content, then they're
gonna come to us. And they'll be like, hey.
You have good writing. And I'll be like, yes. And I will continue to
be involved, and I'm not taking your contract until Right.
You're like, there's, oh, here's the other thing. We need more people who can't
be bought. We wanna criticize so much
of, like, people who have a ton of money
with without realizing that, like, we're just waiting for our
chance to have that much money, except especially for
artists, we need things that that there's
no there's no figure. You cannot pay me enough
to turn Orda into Star Wars. Orda, sorry, is
the name of my world. You are d a. Like like, the I'm not
going to let you do that. I like, I think about this all the time
for when I'm fantasizing. To let each director would I trust pretty
much implicitly with with my work, and I think I have
1. And his name is Guillermo del Tom, and because that guy is picky.
And when they wanted to make Pacific Rim 2, he was like, nah. Yeah.
I don't need that. I'm not gonna do it. And so they made it without
him. And guess what? It was It was exactly what you would
expect. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But Guillermo del Toro is just such
a fantastic storyteller. If, you know, if you didn't watch his
Pinocchio that came out on Netflix, that was amazing. Okay. So let me ask you
let me ask you the counter question to this, which I always get from people.
How do I survive the 10
years because I gotta eat and I need somewhere to live? Give me
practical steps on how I survive while I'm building this thing
Tom maybe at the end of that 10 years, no 1 will care about.
Might pay off. That's true. But more likely than not, no 1 will care about.
So how do I live? Well, so part right. Right.
It's like it's it depends on what you want. Do you want to survive fourth
do you want to be happy on the journey? So, like, my what I love
about my writing is that I love this process.
Yeah. If I get to the end and it never makes me a dime,
I'm like, well, I had fun. Writers? So
What else would I have done with my time? Exactly.
III had fun. It's out there. It's it's alive.
Maybe my kids will pick it up and be like, hey. Mama wrote this
cool book. We're gonna publish it for her. Right. Like, may
maybe. I don't know. I don't know how this is gonna Tom gonna
shake out. All I know is I'm having a blast. I love what I'm
doing. I love collaborating with my coauthor. Like and that the
journey is the thing anyway. At the end, if I make $1, 000, 000,
cool. At the end, if I make $10, cool. Like,
hey. Whatever. Because it's not about that ultimately.
Yeah. And so, you know, how do you pay the bills? I think I
got lucky. I have multiple passions. So, like, I was, you know, I
was teaching music in a
pretty affluent area. So I like, it's
a pretty it's a fairly cushy job.
We're working like, it's hard work. It is. Yeah. Yeah. I love my
students. Yeah. Right? I love and I so I got I think
maybe not I shouldn't say I got lucky because then, you know, everybody's
like, well, she's a special unicorn. I can't do that. You gotta, like,
figure out how to, like, enjoy whatever
process. 1 will make you money, and then 1 is the
long term 1 fourth 1 will pay the bills. Right? That's what my voice
teaching kinda always was. And, again, that's not to say that I, like, I cared
very deeply about my students. And taking this summer off to to stay
home with my daughter was actually a very difficult decision. Mhmm.
But, yeah, I think I think people have
that in them. They've or at the very least, they've got a way to find
a job that's at least not soul sucking. Right. Because if
it's if it's just this job that you show up and you do the thing
and it doesn't take a lot of mental or emotional energy, then you have that
mental, emotional energy to do your side thing, to create.
That's how you do it. Well, and when you show up to do that job,
And this is something I mean, this is how I solve that conundrum
when I show up to do that job. And I and I even use this
to solve this conundrum today, or this
idea. I'm in that 8 hours or 4 hours or whatever
it is that I'm giving to that employer. I'm not
over there with whatever the thing is that I'm building. I'm
here with you, but I'm a partner in this.
I'm not your employee. And partner means
if I don't like what you're doing, I'm free to
leave. Mhmm. I'm also free to set the
terms of what I will do, what I won't do,
not in a way that disrespects you or the business, but in a way that
respects what you've built and respects who I am.
Mhmm. Now if you can come to some fourth
that, great. We can work together. Mhmm. But
if we can't, I'm not for you
as an employer, and that's okay.
The world always needs more bartenders. I can hear I can
hear people saying, like, that's very idealistic way of of,
like, you have to pay the bills with and and desperation was what
came to mind. But I think there's this
belief or this fear that you can't
find that. Right. And you can't. So you have to keep looking.
Like, it might take a while to find. Yeah. But you can find it. Oh,
yeah. Well and and and totally shifted around everything when the employer
to employee relationship, like, in ways that are dramatic that I would not have
anticipated. And what we now have is people who are putting in the bare
minimum at the employee level, and it
shows. And that damages what the
employer is able to offer. We see this particularly in the restaurant industry. That
damages what the employer is able to offer as a service,
which by the way, if you don't offer a better service, you cannot make more
money and thus raise the book. Writers. And so the symbiotic relationship, the
deal, to paraphrase from Darth Vader, has been altered.
These deals get worse and worse all the time. All of us. This
is this is a very fine deal, and I'll take it.
Because we haven't seen the bid on robot chicken. You need to see it. Hilarious.
Oh my gosh. It's hilarious. I used to use that line back in the day
when I was leading larger teams because, like, careful, I don't alter the deal. Just
be careful. And 1 of my employees was a
huge Tom Wars fan. He would always laugh. I was like, just don't don't laugh
because I might alter the deal. And you're robot thing. It was hysterical. It
was hysterical. Yeah. My point is by the way, a show that could never get
made today fourth Right. Or the Boondocks. Like, everyone's seeing
Boondocks. They're now floating around among the Gen z ers on Instagram. It's kind of
interesting to see, like, this is floating up from the cultural zeitgeist. And I'm like,
oh, this is interesting. Y'all looking for quality, aren't you? There you go.
But but, but I think that you
can get there, but that symbiotic relationship has been broken. Mhmm. And,
again, that's part of the chaos piece. And so it's how do
we rebuild that symbiotic relationship. It's how do
we build new structures on the other side. I don't need to hear any
more about how we break them apart because we figured that part out. Right. How
do we rebuild that symbiotic structure? So if I No. It's gonna take the
leaders. The leaders have to do it. Leaders have to go first. Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah. Yep. It's gonna take the leaders.
Alright. Well, we have resolved everything here, but that's okay. That's
it. That's fine. That's fine. We we read some things from, the count of Monte
Cristo. I strongly heartily recommend you either get the unabridged
version or the abridged version, whichever version. They're both great. But you know what
you have time fourth. But you know what you have time for in your in
your day. We will have Kristen back on
when I finally power through to the end of
my unbridged version of, the count of Montecristo, but I'm
going to thank Christopher for coming on our podcast today. And, of course,
when Belle of the Book comes out, we'll have her on to talk about that.
I can't wait to see that new project come into the world, and I look
forward to hearing more from her about this. So thank you very much for coming
on the podcast today, Kristin. It was great. Thank you so much for having me.
It's a blast. Alright. And with that, well, folks,
we're out.