Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the
leadership lessons from the great books podcast, episode
number 122.
With our book today, written by an author who epitomizes
the idea, the concept, the
genre of high science fiction, his
writing in the mid-twentieth century set the gold
standard, for how literature and genre could overlap each
other and how a genre of writing could transform from being mere quote
unquote kids stuff to being something approaching
high art by the way, along the way
through transforming a genre, he also wrote screenplays,
poems, and many, many other works
along with Isaac Asimov Robert Heinlein and
the ever cigarette smoking rebel writer,
Philip K Dick. This writer's works will be
read long after the genre of science fiction
transmutes as it is doing in our own time. And
before our very eyes into the reality of science,
fact, through the alchemy of imagination,
deep in the recesses of engineering minds.
I'm almost right. Like a sentence, this author might write today on
the podcast to kick off our late summer and early fall
tour of the genre of science fiction. We will be
stubborn and addressing for leaders, The themes inherent
in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray
Bradbury. We'll
be joined on this March into the literary fire,
such as it worked with our returning guest host for episode number 98,
where we cover True Grit by Charles Portis,
John Hill, AKA "Small Mountain."
How you doing, John? Welcome back. Thanks for having me back, man.
I am so excited to talk about this book
and because, I don't know if you're gonna talk about this, but you put out
the list of books you wanted to cover. And I said, I wanna do this
one. Mhmm. Yep. Right? And we're gonna talk we're gonna talk about why
here in a little bit because, yeah, I'm just excited to be back. It
is it is a book that I have read
probably at least 2 or 3
times, in my life. And
reading it now, the stage of life that I'm at with all of the
current shenanigans we have going on in the world, in the
West in general, in the United States in particular. And when we're recording
this, we are coming off of a second set of
shots fired in presidential candidates.
We are living in perilous times. And while I am a person
who believes that we will come out of it on the other
side, I do believe that coming out of it on the other side of it
is going to be a close run thing. And this book,
is about, at least in my mind, this book is about what
happens if you if you don't come out on the other side of it.
So we're going to start with Fahrenheit 451
by, by Ray Bradbury. Now the version
that I have is the Simon and Schuster version,
published, oh gosh, back in, probably
1995. And while,
normally, I don't read directly from copy written books on the podcast,
you know, particularly ones like this, I don't think Ray Bradbury's estate would have a
problem with this, actually. I think they would
want people to read this book out loud.
So for Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, chapter 1, the hearth
and the salamander. I'm gonna open up quickly.
It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things
eaten, to see things blackened and changed. But the brass nozzle in
his fists with this great Python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood
pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing
all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal
ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet, numbered
451 on his solid head and his eyes all orange flame was the
thought of what came next. He flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in
a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow
and black. They strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted
above all, like the old joke to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the
furnace while the flapping pigeon wing books died on the porch and
lawn of the house. While the books went up
in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with
burning. Montauk grinned the
fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by
flame. He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might
wink at himself. A minstrel man burnt corked in the
mirror later going to sleep. He would feel
the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles in the
dark and never went away. That smile. It
never, ever went away. As long as he
remembered.
And that's how we open Fahrenheit 4 51,
the temperature, by the way, at which books
burn. As usual, we are going
to talk, right away. We're going to gonna delve
right away into the literary life of Ray Bradbury
because this guy was a hell of a guy who
was actually born. And you can tell this by reading his biography on Wikipedia.
He was born at exactly the right place at exactly the
right time in exactly the right century to be a
writer. And I would not call that luck.
I would call that providence. He was born
to well, write the things that he wrote and he
turned his talents to exactly
where they needed to be. Ray Douglas
Bradbury or an August 22, 1920 died June
5th, 2012 was born in Waukegan, Illinois to
Esther Bradbury, a Swedish immigrant and Leonard
Spalding Bradbury, a power and telephone Lineman
of English ancestry.
Bradbury, attended Los Angeles high school after his parents
moved around a bit and was active there in the drama club.
He often roller skated through Hollywood in hopes of meeting celebrities
among the creative people he met while roller skating through Hollywood were
special effects pioneer, Ray Harryhausen and radio star
George Burns. Bradbury's first pay as a writer at age
14 was for a joke he sold to George Burns to use on the
Burns and Allen radio show. And I'm a big fan, by the way, just as
a pause, of old time radio. That's one of the things I very rarely talk
about, but I will listen to old time radio shows. And then the
Burns and Allen show was was a really good one. The Charlie McCarthy show was
a really good one back in the day. People forget that,
drama, comedy, detective stories, science
fiction, film noir. Radio was the first place for a lot
of these genres that then transformed or transmuted to television.
By the way, the basic the biggest example of this of a show that made
the leap from radio to television was the show
Dragnet, which everyone forgets about, by the way.
By the way no. Not by the way. But, this is the memory that Bradbury
has, or or was quoted about in an interview
about selling that joke to Burns and Allen.
He says, I suppose the most important memory he has is of mister Electric Joe.
On Labor Day weekend, 1932, when I was 12 years old, he came to my
hometown with the Dill Brothers. He was a performer sitting in an electric
chair and a stage hand pulled a switch and he was charged with 50,000 volts
of pure electric. Lightning flash in his eyes as hair stood on
end. I sat below in the front row and he reached down with a flaming
sword full of electricity. And he tapped me on both shoulders and the 2 of
my nose, and he cried live forever. And I thought, God, that's
wonderful. How do you do that? So when I left the carnival that day,
I stood by the carousel and I watched the horses running around and around to
the music of beautiful Ohio. And I cried Tears
streamed down my cheeks because I knew something important had
happened to me that day because of mister electrical. I felt changed.
And so I went home and within days I started to write
and I've never stopped.
Bradbury cited, Vern's Jules, Vern, and.
My agent G Wells as his primary science fiction influences. He identified
with Vern saying, quote, he believes the human being is in a strange situation
in a very strange world. And he believes that we can triumph by
behaving morally. It's
very important, by the way, to remember about Bradbury's
writing more so than Asimov who was sort of
neutral on morality in his writing or even Heinlein
or Philip K. Dek who was more bitter and cynical and
sarcastic. Bradbury was a mid
century moralist. He still believed in Christian
morality. He still believed that you could actually find
good in people and that we had a responsibility to
dig that out. In regard to his education,
however, Bradbury said, and this relates directly to Fahrenheit, 4 51
quote, libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and
universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any
money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the depression and we
had no money. I couldn't go to college. So I went to the
library 3 days a week for 10 years. So I graduated
from the library when I was 28 years old.
I, you know,
when I read about guys like Ray Bradbury and when I read
about how impactful
things like the depression and world war 2, and Philip K. Dick was
very impressed by the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. So was Heinlein, quite frankly,
as was Isaac Asimov. Most of the folks who
wound up being science fiction writers at the end or the mid parts of
the end of 20th century, they were
seeking a way to, I think,
merge science and morality together while also
recognizing that the human condition is fraught with danger.
And Bradbury, I think, got closest
to touching on the positive aspects of that. And even
in Fahrenheit 451, a book that is about not positive
things, he it's not a
happy ending, but the ending is definitely hopeful. Let's
just say that. So, again, you know, I'd
like to welcome John to the podcast. I've rambled long enough as I usually
do. So I'm gonna open up the floor to him. And by the way, I'm
in my new podcast studio, so in case you're watching this on video. No. I
did not just graduate into a black room, such as a red shirted man in
a black room. I actually have a new podcast studio, on location
in, in the town in which I live, and we'll have a little more details
about that. It's subsequent to podcast, but this is the this is
the beginning. This is the grand opening. This is the
gala event such as it were, for our, for our
recording today. So we're gonna work out some technical things, and
we invited John along to, to help us out with that as well as talk
about the book. But, let me open up the question here for
John. I know that you were very, very excited
to read this book. So talk about Ray Bradbury, talk about Fahrenheit
451 and its impact, specifically on your worldview,
as a I consider you to be a sales leader, but think about yourself
in in the role in which you're in. Talk about the impact of
this book. So,
man, I love that you're talking about Heinlein
Asimov, Philip k Dick. Right? Because I
was in I think I was in 8th grade whenever a woman, a
girl at the time that I was in school with, her name is Laura Franek.
She works for, I think,
like, Industrial Light and Magic is who she works for now. Right? So she's done
some some very cool things. But she comes to me, and she goes, hey. You
need to read this book. And I and I had a crush on
her, and I was like, oh, okay. Cool. I'll read the book, but we're also
friends. You know? So I read this book, and, I'd already read
Heinlein. Right? A lot of Heinlein. You know? Strange in a
strange land, Job, you know, number of the beast. You know?
I'd read lots of Geralt. Right? And I like what you're
talking about here because I didn't really appreciate it until I was rereading it this
this next time. He's actually trying to keep it
very artful. Mhmm. Yeah. Not just like a story filled with a
bunch of, like, numbers and a theoretical way of thinking about a
scientific thing that they're excited to show off. It's not it's not really the place
for, like, nerds to go get lost and, and to do this thing. It is
very much a bridge between, you know, very science
fiction, very much in the future, but it's still
prose. It's still very much a piece of writing.
And hitting this now, I, you know, I was probably
13 or 14 when I read this. I think I probably read it again at
some point in high school, and then I I don't think I've read it since
then. You know?
And reading it now as an adult, I've been having this
weird season of really appreciating how
much being a self motivated reader
has led me to the place that I'm at right now. Mhmm.
You know? Like, I don't really think about how much I read
and how much I ingest and how that shows up in my in my
coaching and my working with clients and stuff like that, but, like, we both live
in small towns in Texas, man. Like, I'm like, I live I live
in a suburb called white settlement, which is, like, what a name.
Right? Can you imagine going back 25 years ago when there is no
Internet and the only source of news that you have is what the local
paper creator wants to put in front of you or the news and everything?
Like, that seems such a foreign concept now. Even though we're getting
a new version through, you know, AI prompts and and
search results and, you know, you know, reinforcing our own biases, but that's a whole
other conversation. That's a whole that's a whole wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. We may get to some of that today, but that's a
whole other thing. But this idea of, you know, like, I've been thinking about
this for a couple of weeks. How different would I be had I not read
Heinlein at 9 years old and David Garrold, who like,
I remember my brother coming to me with a stack of 5 books,
and number of the beast was one of them. Job was one of them. And
then David Gerold, which was you know, he's a gay man writing about alien
invasion on the planet of Earth. Mhmm. And and he goes, don't
tell mom you're reading these books. That was the only thing he saw that's the
only thing he told me. Right? So now I'm reading these books that are way
too old for me, and I'm getting introduced to these ideas, like,
probably way before most other people are.
You know? How does that impact me? Right? And then my thing
now is anything that where I think I'm deficient and I need to go
improvement, 1st place, I'm gonna go buy some books.
We're doing a customer service project for one of our clients and first thing is
like, I have a lot of opinions about service, but let me go see what
pros are talking about so that way I don't have to recreate the wheel or
start all the way over. Mhmm. And now it's this first step. It's this first
pivot. I'm gonna go look I'm gonna go see the other books that other people
are talking about. I'm gonna go dive into those books, not to completely learn the
whole thing because I do have some positions and perspectives on it because I've been
doing this for a while, but why would I try to start all the way
at 0? You know? And I think for I think
when we're young and we're, like, new in leadership and entrepreneurship, however you
wanna package that, it's very easy to be like, well, my stuff is not like
anybody else's. Right? And we create this island for us to hang out on that
doesn't really serve us. Right? Because, you know, while it's not the
same, variations on a theme start to apply. You know?
So I've been I've been reading this book and on some
level kind of frustrated because I do read so much for just business and for
Mhmm. And for improvement. Like, come on. Can we
get through, like, the fancy art prose stuff and, like, let's just get to the
meat of it and everything? And so I had this kinda weirdoality of, like, I
needed to kinda, like, find the right gear to actually, like, you
know, work through the book. So that took me a couple of
days. But the whole time, I'm just, like, appreciating it of, like,
kinda, I would be fundamentally a different person if it not for all the
reading that I do. And I wouldn't be able
to charge the rates that I charge if I didn't feel like I could find
my way to the answer, but it's always through books and literature. It's interesting
that you say that because that's part of the reason why we do this podcast.
Right? Mhmm. Exactly. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Business books were
great. I'm not knocking business books. That's fine. But
there's a whole 400 and I
mean, so book technology, and we can talk a little about this too. Book
technology in and of itself is a 500 year old approaching 600 year old
technology. Business books,
books exclusively focused on sales, marketing, finance,
operations, my area, psychology.
Well, this is in those quote unquote business specific areas that only really started
to ramp up within the last 100, 100 and 50 to
a 100 years of, of book technology. The
vast majority, 4 5ths of book technology, 80%,
well over 80%, 90% of books. Before that, we're focused
on everything else other than business. And that's one of the points of this
podcast is if you're just reading business books, you're
missing out on, like, 90% of everything else in the world.
And I don't I I I mean, I've said it before. You
can learn more about emotional intelligence from reading a Jane Austen novel. Just discipline
yourself to read pride and prejudice. Don't go read another Daniel Goleman book. And I
don't have a problem with Goldman by the way. I've read emotional intelligence. I've read
it many times. It's dog eared. I've got it. But
Goldman can only tell you the mechanical, and this is where the science fiction piece
comes in. He He can only tell you the mechanical stuff of how it clicks
together and why, but he can't tell you the what of the wisdom of
the meaning underneath that. So you need both of those together. That's why we do
this podcast. But then the other thing I love that you said, I
talked about how you started off with, like, you know, Heinlein
and Garwalt and all these guys, right, early. Right?
Weirdly enough, I started off with Isaac Asimov. That's
where I I mean, I read we're gonna do I, Robot, later
on a little bit this month. I started out with that book and going back
and rereading that has been kind of a
little bit trippy. Yeah. Because I started off with that's the place I
started off with. And so Asimov is definitely less of a
moralist and more and less focused on the poetry and more
focused on the the reportage of science
fiction. And I didn't get to Heinlein until I was in high school,
and I was already sort of, I don't
know, warped in my cynicism about humanity. I mean, I already seen Blade Runner, so
it already affected me.
But I also had a good bit of, like, Star
Trek the next generation underneath me. Absolutely. And so I
came to Heinlein with this mid century
moralism, and Heinlein sort of was like Yeah. Not
yeah. You can take all that gonna help us. To vote out. We're talking about
everything outside of that container, if you will.
Right? Space travel and time travel and, you
know, some crazy stuff.
Right? Like Right.
Okay. Well, then you got Philip k. Dick asking, asking a great question, which
again, we're gonna read Dick's short stories here on the podcast to this podcast.
You know, do androids dream of electric sheep? Like the first time I heard
that title, and this is just after I, yeah, just after
I seen Blade Runner. So I saw the movie first, and then I went back
and read the book. And I was like, what who comes up with that? Who
even thinks like that? That's not Ray Bradbury. Right? Ray
Bradbury would have looked at that and been like, yeah. He's
got talent, but I have no idea what's going on over there. Yeah. It's, like,
it's it's I think Bradbury is is sci fi
for people who don't who have not made the decision that they love sci fi
yet. Right? Yep. I know. Especially towards the
end when he's going again talking about the Beatles and and, like,
like, I'm, like, like,
in the, you know, I'm in the wrap up phase phase phase of the book.
Right? And I'm not gonna give away any spoilers, but, you know, he's talking about
the Beatles and, you know, the hound and all of this stuff. And I was
like, god. Like, can we stop being so artsy? Can we just call it what
it is and everything? And then I'm like, wait a minute. Like, shut up, idiot.
Like, this is art. Like, you wouldn't want someone else coming over your art and
doing all this stuff. So just shut up and enjoy it, you know? And it
was I demand work. Book, if you will, you know?
Don't cook. Right? As kids say these days. It it was because, like, I had
the same kind of situation a little bit with TrueGrid of, like, god, like, this
part wait a minute. It's a story, dude. You know? Like, I'm
so captain literal that sometimes I'm like, this would never really have. Oh, wait.
We're kind of living through a version of this potentially right now. That's very odd
and interesting. And, my wife who works on my
team, she worked at Half Price Books for 15 years before she started to work
with me. Okay. Price is known for, like, pushing back
against banned books and everything. Mhmm. This has been a topic we've talked
about, and we talk about a lot of just, like, you know, we're not gonna
limit the flow of information and everything. I'm
curious. Are your kids
readers? Oh, yeah. Yeah?
Oh, yeah. How much do you police what they read?
So I always get asked this question, and I think it's a
parent's job to know what a child is reading. And I also
think it's a parent's job to just like they would with a television show
or movie to understand that
individual child's emotional temperament and how that book is going to
impact that emotional temperament. And so
my mom was very much free range because she was, she's a baby
boomer. She was very much free range. She wasn't really, I'm not going to say
she wasn't paying too close attention, but she believed
in the freedom of availability to information and how, what could,
how could a book harm you? It was just a set of ideas. Right? Yeah.
I come at it from a different perspective because I'm on the bottom end of
gen X. Right. And so I come at it from the perspective
of, yeah, there's ideas in these books, but if your
emotional temperament doesn't match your ability to sort of deal with these
things, then I'm giving you a loaded bomb. Like I would never read,
let me pick something. I would not give
Fahrenheit 451 to my he's
he's 7 now. So when he turns 9, I probably wouldn't give it to my
9 year old just because I know his temperament. Right? Mhmm. It would it would
deeply upset him. Like, something with seismic would move inside of him
that quite frankly I'm not ready for it to move inside of him. You
know, and then that's and I get it. That's that's my comfort zone.
I absolutely am acknowledging that. But with that being said,
my 14 year old and my 19 year old have both read Fahrenheit 451 and
we've talked about it. And they read it when they were I mean,
my 14 year old read when she was 12. My 19 year old read it
when she was, like, 16. And they both had different opinions about the book.
My 16 year old was She was kind of okay with it. She was like,
okay, well, whatever. Because she's, you know, they're they're Gen Z or so like,
okay. Yeah. I don't read books anyway. I'm just Okay. What are we doing here?
Why do I need a book when I have this? They're like, they're not even
seeing that that this is easier to limit and show what the books are. Well,
and we and we limit and I love it. We're gonna talk about the screens
and everything. We limit the screens. So we're we're biblio
files. Like one of the challenges in our home
that we now moved into. And one of the challenges I
see in a lot of homes is there's no bookshelves. We've got so many books.
We have more books than we have furniture. We did
this the other day. You know, multiple genres. Oh my oh,
gosh. All kinds of things. Right? And it's like, where do where do I put
all this? Like, what are we what are we doing here? And my wife is
even like, you gotta give away some of these books. Like, I gotta read it.
My we moved into this house a year ago and we have a rather large
book collection. And even within that family book collection, there's
different book collections. There's the books that Melissa displays on the
now we have a wall of shelves, which is really, really nice. Very like,
maybe the coolest thing I've ever done. And now, like, I'm just used to it.
And then as other people come over, they're like, oh, like, it's it's super
nice. And then I have my library. And my library is the non
public facing books. Right? So it's all the kung fu books and the philosophy
and the all this stuff. Like, if you know me really well, I feel like
you can look at my library, my my personal library, and be like,
oh, well, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Me.
But, we were moving in here, and my wife was like, I don't think we
need to hire movers. And I was like, oh, you don't think we need to
hire movers? And she's like, yeah. No. No. I think we can do it. I
was like, cool. Let's pack the books first, and then we'll make that
decision. Right? So let her go with it for a while. And then we've
it's 26 boxes of books. Right? Yep. And I'm
like, how do you feel now? She's like, oh, yeah. Movers. Oh, yeah. You were
hiring people. Yeah. And it was so funny because, like, just over the
weekend, my daughter who's really getting into writing and her own
book collection, like, she's buying copies of books that that
Melissa and I own because she wants her own copy for her own. And she
goes, you know, like, I I have a I have a pretty small book collection,
but she has, like, 200 books, which is, like, not a small
book collection. Book collection. Because, like, I think it's I
think you're I think you're a 1 percenter if you have more than, like, 50
books. We right. Weird. Yo. Well, yeah.
I'll tell you about about the finish finish your your circle because I'm gonna tell
you something that, like, frustrates me. Go ahead. Like, it it's it's crazy to
me just,
like, like, the curse of knowledge. Right? Right.
How can we get to be our agent only have, like,
25 or 50 books that you
wanna have an ongoing relationship with. You know you know what I'm saying? Like like,
my grandmother used to say this thing, and she's the one who really unlocked reading
with with me and and everybody in my family is that these were her
friends. You know what I'm saying? And I can't
like, there there are so many impactful books on my shelves that have
fundamentally, like, changed and given me perspective and everything. And,
like, only having 25 like, that seems
crazy. There was an article I read in or even might have
been the headline. I don't remember specifically. And I think it was in the Atlantic.
It had to be one of those like mid
tier, and yes, I'm going to slam the Atlantic here, mid tier,
midwit journals. It is. It's a journal for people who think they're
smart, but they're really not. Because there's not really good ideas in
there. But anyway, whatever. Point is, I read the headline or it might have been
an article, something about how, like, and this was back maybe
in 2020 or 2021, about
how if you were reading to your child,
that was a sign of white privilege.
And I just thought
libraries literally are almost on every street
corner Bookstores. You talk about your wife. We're getting half price books. You
can walk into bookstores and they will not kick you out for reading a book.
They will not. They will not. They're there. They're just happy. You're there.
You have Amazon say what you want about Jeff Bezos may have started
with books Mhmm. Because they were the one piece of
technology. And by the way, this is the apocryphal story.
He packed up everything in his car with his wife and drove across the country
and they had to figure out what they were going to put on this online
thing because he saw this internet thing happening and the book is the thing to
be picked because it's not fruit and it's not pets. It's not weird
shapes, everybody knows what it is, it's easy to,
okay. Books, fundamentally books.
Even in the poorest neighborhoods in America, you can
literally go 2 streets over and there's a library. I
know I've lived in some of the poorest areas of the country.
Books are not closed to anyone in our society and
culture unless you wanna close that door. So
to tie it into number 1, I'm offended because as an
African American person,
books are agnostic from my perspective anyway. Certain
books are agnostic. Other books are not. I'll I'll grant you that. Yep. But for
the most part, authors just wanna tell a story. They're not really
they just want to tell a story. They want to tell the best story they
possibly can to the widest number of people they possibly can with a 500 year
old technology that everybody understands. That's number 1. Number 2, when
I told this to a young couple who was in my church,
oh gosh, years ago when they were having their first kids and they were like,
how do you, how did you raise your kids to be like, how to speak
so clearly and to be articulate and that. And I'm like, because
we read to them, Like I even read to my
7 year old, we're reading the Chronicles of Narnia right now.
My 7 year old is loving that. Now, you know, it's me
and his older sister and his mom reading it. Like we're in sort of
this weird rotation because just how the schedule work and all that in our house.
And so depending on who he can get, you know, he'll have them read
There's times I have no idea what's going on in the voyage of the Dawn
Treader. Like, I don't know where I'm at. I'm just like, dude, I'm just reading
this. I have no clue what's happening, dude. And he's like, don't worry, daddy.
Just read it. Exactly. No. No. It's literally This is not you.
Exactly. He pats my cheek. Just just just read the book, daddy.
It's like, okay. That's fine. I will read the words. I have no idea what's
happening in the story, and you know. Mhmm. And he is blown
away by this. Yeah. It's opening up again,
opening up doors in his head. Now say what you want about CS Lewis,
by the way, I would not read the screw tape letters or mere Christianity to
him.
Or the abolition of man. That's not appropriate for a 7
year old. Sorry. But hold on.
Like, and my my amazing wife would
have this, like, fit all the time about,
yeah, it's a science
fiction, but not young adult. Right? And, like, how do you cut the onion and
how do you group things? Like like, it's very interesting because, you know, I
think, you know, we're gonna punish authors for trying to cover more
more more content as opposed to staying in one line so that way it's easy
to shelve in the bookstore. That's a little absurd. Right? Speaking as
someone who's, you know, written a business book and is now currently trying
to write a narrative, like, screw you, buddy. I'm gonna I'm gonna write what I
wanna write. You know? Yeah. Like, I I would love to have
seen Cinderella brought to you by James Baldwin.
I'd have read that, but I don't know that I had my 9 year old
would have been interested in that. My 9 year old would have looked at that
and been like, I think I'll
pass. You know? So there's this line that I used to
hate. Right? And it's if the if
the book is bad and you can't read it, it's the author's fault.
And I was like, I kinda hate that. You know?
But, you know, the longer I live,
you know, as an author, the more I'm like
right? Well well ownership. It's my fault if you didn't finish it. You
ain't? Well, but I think so I'm a person who has written 3 books, and
I'm working on a 4th one. I'm grinding out a 4th one. Right? It'll
You sound very excited about it. It did. I'm grinding out a 4th one. It's
turned into a whole slot thing.
And This is not what you wanted to talk about today. Not what I wanted
to talk about. Digging into it. You're welcome. It's fine. We're digging in. We're digging
in. We're going in. We're going in the mine. We're gonna get some gold out
of here. But I
write on purpose difficult books.
That's what I'm doing here. I'm choosing to make it difficult. Right. Because I'm a
complicated guy and I'm in an era
where I am fighting uphill. And I've said this before on the podcast. I think
I've said it with you on interviews that we've done, conversations we've had.
I'm fighting uphill against short attention spans. You know, the
62nd, 32nd, hummingbird, TikTok generation
mindset, whatever. Mhmm. I'm also fighting
uphill against a flood of quote, unquote content. And by the way, I agree with
Martin Scorsese. Movies are not content. Movies are movies. Books are
not content. Books are books. Like but but again, everything's been dumped to that
content bucket and swirled around. That way we can bring it to its lowest
common denominator. So I'm fighting against this. The opposite. And the opposite is you.
To me, and sorry to like but I don't think that this is an
I like I had to stop thinking about books as books and
movies as movies and songs as songs. Right? And really just like
shove them all together and understand that it's
about the story was the thing that I that I ended up kinda going with.
Right? A great song has got a story inside of it. Right? Well, and where
I come from is the medium can be part of the message. So
Oh, 100%. Right? When I look at when I look at when I look at
for Fahrenheit 4 51, and then I look at the the movie that, like,
Michael b Jordan was in a couple years ago on HBO Max. I did not
watch that. I thought about it, and then I was like, like, maybe after
the interview, because I don't wanna you know, I'm I'm just so used to the
movie being a letdown. But it's content, John. It's fine.
It's it's just content. Hey. Right? And you're while you are
correct, the greatness that makes this so good,
I think, comes from the format that it was in originally. And I think that
this is where people, like, screw up. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, the book did good,
but if we wanna reach more people, let's turn it into a movie. Like, I
get this I get this stuff from people all the time. Well, John, your stuff
is too deep. You need to make it easier for people to consume it. And
I'm like, God, if we just chase that far enough, it's going to be
single word dogma. Like, that's going to work out great for us. Right?
Just sell. One one word haikus. Exactly.
Right. You know? Like, in like, if anything, that's what I'm trying to push back
from of of stupid, outdated, dogmatic beliefs around
sales that no longer serves us and probably never served us at at
all. But in order to do that effectively, I don't
think you can water down ideas. And that's really what I put fundamentally at the
end of the day. That's what I push up, I push up against. I don't
want to, if I'm in a world where the long tail is the thing, and
I am in a world where the long tail is a thing now, the long
tail wasn't a thing in the mid-twentieth century. Like, it was mass and okay,
fine. You had to appeal to the largest number of people and the greatest common
denominator. Cool. Now I don't have to. I need to sell 2 books a
month to 2 people that want to hear my voice and everybody else, not to
a too fine a point on it, but can go to hell. Like if the
idea is too complicated for you, or if the argument's too long, or
the sentences are too rambling, or the paragraphs don't link together in the way that
you want, or you, you can't hear my voice in your
head. And so you're reading the words on the page. You don't.
I'm not for you and that's okay. Go away. I'll go find the 2 people
that are for me and I'll sell 2 books a month and I'll make 4
bucks in royalties and I'll move on with the rest of my life. Now,
most people will push back on that and they'll go, well, you know, you spent
$5,000 to make $4. Yeah. So
Well, I think that that comes down to what to what the intention behind the
book is. Right? Correct. Right. It was so funny because whenever
we decided that we were gonna launch the book, Melissa was already working on my
team with me. And, she was like, okay. Can I
tell you the the concern? And and I'm like, yeah. What's up? And she's like,
I have seen these people. Right? They they wrote a business book. It was
gonna be the game changer. And then they show up to half price books
with, like, 7 boxes of the same book because
it didn't work. And I was like, okay. You know, interesting.
And I had a very John moment. Why are you telling me that?
She goes she goes, well, I'm concerned that, you know, you
might do something similar. Okay.
Heard. Like, okay. You know? This is why our wives exist to provide
goal posts and and 100 times along the way. But
I was like, okay. I appreciate you bringing this
up. Let's acknowledge that I am who I am, and that I've already
told myself that this book changes absolutely nothing the next
day and that I still have to work to put it out.
Like my job is to put the book in the hands of the people who
need it through through my actions and activities. I'm not expecting for anyone
to find it because that's absurd entitled thinking,
in my in my opinion. Right? There's just too many marketplaces. There's too much messaging
going on to really think you're gonna, like, stand out unless you already have an
audience, and I and I don't. And so, like, the whole time I was writing
and and getting it published and doing the whole thing, it was like, you still
gotta sell, buddy. You still gotta sell. This changes nothing. If anything, it might
make your lift a little bit easier, and that's why I approached it. And that's
that's where it it was super helpful. But I had a coach whispering all
that stuff in my ear to kind of keep me grounded with my own expectations.
And I think that some people just don't have appropriate expectations when it comes to,
like, writing a book or putting it out or different things like that. We're lucky
the fact that the book feeds our business, so I don't need to make
money on the book. The fact that that we have books
gets us into some of the conversations that we're looking to be in. Right. Right.
And for me, the book so the reason the
4th book right now is a slog is because it's in a totally different genre
and I'm doing a totally different thing than I normally would have done. And it's
requiring a little bit more transparency on my part, than
I maybe previously have been comfortable with.
To drive the content. I
guess I'd say the word. To drive the content in. I don't wanna call
it that. I don't wanna call it that. No. Because you know what?
At a certain point, and and and I and I and this
is where Scorsese and I might disagree.
We have to figure out where
quality exists in books and songs
and movies. And what is the difference between Dreck
that's garbage? And by the way, during the mid 20th century, there were a lot
of science fiction writers who published in a lot of science fiction
note, what do you call it? Journals that were all over the place, that
were absolute direct. We've never heard of those guys. Yep. And it's only the big
four, Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, and and
Dick. Those 4 are the ones that are on the Mount Rushmore science
fiction and everybody else washed away. Would agree.
Now did everybody else wash away because there were, because
there was a mass of people that selected and curated. And I'm not talking
about publishers and agents. That's part of the process, but I'm talking about, there was
a mass of people that selected that this was good
versus now where everyone can say everything is good because it's
subjective. And there's a long enough tale to where if my mom buys a
book, I can say it's, it's good. Right.
And is that, and that's the word we're actually having is a war of quality.
We're not having a war of art. We're having a war of quality
and it's really tough to have a war of quality, particularly in
a world that is well kind of inside of the kind of
world that Bray Bradbury was decided, was describing in Fahrenheit 4
51, which we should get back to the book. Yeah, for sure.
So we're gonna skip forward a bunch of different
spots and, Yeah, you're
gonna, you're gonna like this book. You're gonna wanna pick it up.
And we're going to go to, well, Montag gets
sick and, he,
he has a conversation with the the second main character, the villain, I
guess, such as it were in this book, captain Beatty
and captain Beatty lays out basically
the entire game here in the chapter, the hearth
and the salamander back to Fahrenheit 4 51 by
Ray Bradbury.
Montag made sure the book was well hidden behind the pillow, climbed slowly back into
bed, arranged the covers over his knees and across his chest half sitting.
And after a while, Mildred moved and went out of the room and captain Beatty
strolled in his hands and his pockets, Shut the relatives up, said Beatty,
looking around everything except Montauk and his wife. This
time Mildred ran the yammering voices, stopped yelling in the parlor.
Captain Beatty sat down in the most comfortable chair with a peaceful look on his
ruddy face. He took time to repair and light his brass pipe and puff out
a great smoke cloud. Just thought I'd come by and see how the
sick man is. How'd you guess? Baby smiled his smile, which showed the
candy pinkness of his gums and the tiny candy whiteness of his teeth.
I've seen it all. You were going to call for a night off.
Montauk sat in bed. Well, said, baby, take the night off. He
examined his eternal matchbox, the lid of which said guaranteed 1,000,000 lates
in this igniter and began to strike the chemical match abstractedly, blowout,
strike, blowout, strike, speak a few words, blowout. He looked at the flame. He blew,
he looked at the smoke. When will you be well tomorrow?
The next day, maybe 1st of the week, baby puffed his
pipe. Every fireman sooner or
later hits this. They only need understanding
to know how the wheels run. He's know the history of our
profession. They don't feed it to the rookies. Like they used
to damn shame only fire chiefs. Remember it
now. I'll let you win on
it. Mildred fidgeted, but he took a full minute
to settle himself in and think back for what he wanted to say. When
did it all start? You asked this job of ours. How did it all come
about? Where and when I'd say it really got started around about a thing
called the civil war. Even though our rule book claims was
founded earlier. The fact is we didn't get along well until photography came
into its own. Then motion pictures in the early 20th century, radio, television,
things begin to have mass Montauk sat
in the bed, not moving. And because they had mass, they became simpler
said Beatty. Once books appeal to a few people here, there, everywhere, they could afford
to be different. The room world was roomy, but then the world
got full of eyes and elbows and elbows and mouths, double, triple, quadruple population
films, radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding
norm. Do you follow me? I think so.
Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put on in the air. Picture it.
19th century man and his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then in the 20th
century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condizations, digest, tabloids,
everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. Snap ending?
Mildred nodded. Classics cut to fit 15 minute
radio shows and cut again to fill a 2 minute book column winding up at
last as a 10 or 12 line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of
course. The dictionaries were for reference, but many were those who
sold knowledge of Hamlet. You know, the title, certainly Montag, it is probably
only a fake rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag, whose sole knowledge, as
I say of Hamlet was a 1 page digest in a book that claimed now,
alas, you can read all the classics. Keep up with your neighbors. Do you see
out of the nursery, into the college and back to the nursery? There's your
intellectual pattern for the past 5 centuries or more
Mildura rose and get to move around the room, picking up things and putting them
down. Beatty ignored her and continued speed the film up, Montag. Quick, click,
click, look, I flick now here, there, swift pace up, down, in, out. Why,
how, who, what, where, bang smack, walloping, bang bong, boom.
Digest, digest, digest, digest politics. 1 column, 2 sentences, a headline, then in
mid air all vanishes. World man's mind around so fast and into the pumping
hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters at the centrifuge flings off all
unnecessary time wasting thought.
Mildred smooth the bed closed. Montag felt his heart jump and jump again as she
patted his pillow. Right now, she was pulling at his shoulder, trying to get him
to move so she could take the pillow out and fix it nicely and put
it back and perhaps cry out and stare or simply reach down her hand and
say, what's this? And hold up the hidden book with touching
innocence. School is short and disciplined
relaxed. Philosophies, histories, languages dropped. English and spelling gradually,
gradually neglected. Finally, almost completely ignored. Life is immediate.
The job counts. Pleasure lies and all lies
all about after work. Why learn anything safe pressing buttons, pulling
switches, fixing nuts and bolts? Let me fix your pillows, said Mildred. No, whispered
Montauk. The zipper displaces the button, and man lacks just that much
time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour and thus a melancholy
hour. Mildred said here. Get away, said Montag.
Life's become life becomes one big pratfall. Montag, everything. Bang,
boff, and wow. God's sakes, let me
be, cried Montag passionately. Beatty opened his
eyes wide. Mildred's hands had frozen behind the pillow.
Her fingers were tracing the book's outline, and as the shape became familiar, her face
looked surprised. And then stunned, her mouth opened to ask a
question. Empty the theater, safe for clowns and
furnished the rooms, with glass walls and pretty colors running up and down the walls
like confetti or blood or sherry or sartereen.
You like baseball, don't you, Montag? Baseball is a fine game. Now
Betty was almost invisible, a voice somewhere behind a screen of smoke. What's this? That's
Mildred with almost with delight. Montauk heaved back against her
arms. What's this here? Sit down, Montauk shouted. She jumped
away, her hands empty. We're talking. Beatty went on as if
nothing had happened. You like bowling, don't you, Montauk? Bowling, gas, and
golf? Golf's a fine game. Base basketball? A fine game. Billiards pool, football?
Fine games, all of them. More sports for everyone. Group spirit fun, and you don't
have to think. Organize and organize and super organize, super, super
sports. More cartoons in books, more pictures. The mind drinks less and less
impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere.
The gasoline refugee. Towns turned into motels. People in nomadic
surges from place to place following the moon tide. Living tonight in the room where
you slept this noon and I the night before. Mildred went out of the room
and slammed the door. The parlor aunts began to laugh at the parlor uncles.
Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we?
Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers,
the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians,
2nd generation Chinese, Swedes, Baptists,
Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or
Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV
serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere.
The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy. Remember that?
All the minor minor minorities with all their navels to be kept clean.
Authors full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did.
Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca books, so the damned,
stoppage critics said were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said.
But the public, knowing what it wanted, spending happily let the
comic books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines,
of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the government
down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship to start with.
No technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried
the trick. Thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay
happy all the time. You are allowed to read comics, the good old confession,
or trade journals.
Yes. What about the firemen then? Asked Montag. Ah,
Bailey leaned forward in famous to smoke from his pipe. What more easily
explained than natural? With school turning out more runners, jumpers,
racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, flyers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics,
knowers, and imaginative creators, the word intellectual, of course, became the swear
word it deserved to be. You always dread
the unfamiliar. Surely, you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally,
quote, unquote, bright, did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like
so many Latin idols hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you
selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course, it was. We must all be
alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but
everyone made equal. Each man
the image of every other, then all are happy, for there are no mountains to
make them cower to judge themselves against. So a
book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take a shot
from the weapon. Breach man's minds. Who knows what might be the target of a
well read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. And so when
houses were finally fireproofed completely all over the world, you were
correcting your assumption the other night, there was no longer the need of firemen for
the old purposes. They were given a new job as custodians of our
peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of
being inferior, official censors, judges, and executors.
That's you Montag, and that's me.
That's a long bit there that I read. I read it on purpose
because you can't really break up captain baby speech into the little
tiny parts, particularly that bit, which hit
me right in the gut about the minorities and censorship
coming, not from the top down, the
totalitarianism from the bottom up.
Captain Beatty is the classic bureaucratic
leader trapped in a system. He understands almost
totally and completely because it works for him.
Montag, of course, stands in as the person who has woken up to manipulation of
the matrix, but he doesn't know what to do about it quite just yet at
this point in the book. He doesn't have a plan. He's just still in
shock. Captain Beatty and guys like captain
Beatty, and this is a warning for our time, they don't mind if you've been
awakened or awoken or whatever the term is you would
like. He just doesn't want you to take any action to disrupt the
system. Newspapers, music, radio, television,
cable news, and now, and Bradbury died in
2012, right on the cusp of this all hitting now,
social media and the internet are blamed for the tendency of
people to give up control of their minds to those who appear to be in
control of events. By the way,
the unnamed country in Fahrenheit 4 51 is in a state of perpetual
war, just as a side note, with every other country,
just as Oceania was in 1984 by George Orwell,
which we'll read in Q3 of next year.
If we're all still around to read it in Q3 of
next year, by the way, when I read this
book and I read about the firefighters, I thought of the
band Rage Against the Machine, and the great line that they
have in that song,
Bulls on Parade, They don't got to burn the books. They
just remove them.
John, there are many different flavors and types in our world today of getting
red pill to quote unquote or waking up or becoming woke.
And yet I sense
behind all of them. A lot of captain Beatty, but
maybe that's just my conspiratorial thinking.
How can we be more like Montag and less like captain Beatty?
So this is unique perspective on captain Beatty because
and I and I think we're gonna talk about this part a little later. There's
a there's an add on from another character that, like,
blew my mind about Beatty. Right? Now,
I don't know if I talked about this on the show, but I'm prior service.
I joined the military in, May of 2001.
And, obviously, in September of 2001, you know, we
it was no longer just a theoretical exercise. Right. And
there's so much of this
awakening that he goes through. Right? And part of me,
as I'm reading this, oh my god. The pacing of this is just so fast.
It doesn't happen this quick. It takes longer to wake up. It takes longer to
kinda fall out of the fold. It takes longer. But, man,
when I think about, you know, September 11th,
and this is no longer an exercise This is not a
drill. It's not a drill. You know?
Instantly pushed me to the place of, like, I don't know that this is the
place I need to be. Mhmm. Right? Because, like, I was feeling
that before, but then we were having this conversation.
Right? And military is filled with stuff like this. Right? You
know, boot camp is an indoctrination process. Right? It's meant to break you down to
nothing and then designed to be that way. Person it needs to be. You know?
Yeah. And it's it's for the reasons that it's for. Right?
But, like, as I'm going through this and I'm and and I'm like, no. No.
No. It's not that quick. It's it can be that quick. And if you go
through the right experiences, have the right mentors around you, have the right environment for
it to show up, it can be a a blazingly quick process. Mhmm.
But, like, I just keep going back to that. You know, when the student is
ready, the teacher will appear. You know? And we
were sitting we were sitting in a room called the day room. Right? Anyone who's
been in the army understands what the day room is. It's like a it's like
a communal room in there, and there's a TV in there. Right? Mhmm. And so
we're in there, and I'm this kid from Texas, 20
I I my birthday is actually on 9:11, so I turned 21 the day that
that happened. I have a great story about telling a drill sergeant that I was
gonna get to go off post that weekend, and he told me, no. You're
not. And I I worry. You're not. We're in the day room,
and I'm having this very disconnected experience of, like, what have I
signed up for? What am I really going through? And I'm in
Georgia at the time. Right? And I'm there with guys from Philly
and New York and DC and people who are who are having a
profoundly different experience than what I'm going through as a as a kid from
Texas. And, man, there were
I think there's about 30 people in my in my cohort from my
class. Right? And we had the night class, and so we're talking about it either
that day or the next day. And everyone else is like, man, we just gotta
go turn it into a parking lot. Just go nuke it, turn it into
a parking lot. We don't have to deal with this anymore. And I'm like,
don't that make us the same? Don't that make us, like, not
any better than than the people that did this? Mhmm.
And the heat that, like, that
kind of commentary was getting in that space. You know?
Mhmm. So, like, reading this now as as a 44 year old guy
who's gone through that experience, has had to deload himself, right, had therapy
and, you know, working through it and everything, it can happen
that quick. Mhmm. You know? But
you also just have to be aware of, for lack
of better term, spend. Right? Because And that's what captain Beatty
delivers, by the way. That that that that's what that's exactly what Beatty delivers, by
the way. And it's so easy to get caught up in spin. Right? And
he's he's on one level, like, demonizing spin.
Mhmm. Right? We're not gonna have short,
multipurpose content, you know, that is just watered down to the lowest
forms. That way, you can be there. But the answer is not to
just take it all away, though. Right? You know, it's very much, well, this was
the problem, so this was our solution. And look how better we are. And, like,
if you're drinking the Kool Aid, I bet it tastes amazing
in that moment. Right? Like, backing up
in my military story, we first get to boot camp, and
we have a captain who's in charge of our of our, company.
And the drill sergeants were being really mean, like, really mean, yelling
at us, making us do lots of push ups, and making us, like, do all
this crazy stuff. And in the back of my head, I was like, you know
what? That captain, he wouldn't let them do
that to us if he knew what was really happening.
Right? And then a couple of days after that, I, you know, see the
captain being the person who's reinforcing the drill sergeants.
And I just, like, had this moment of, like, like, a shattered world
view of, like, of, like, oh, he's not gonna save us. And then, like,
duh, idiot. I'm the only one not on this page.
You know? And, I mean, we Well, it's a it's a hell of a thing
to be robbed of your preconceived notions.
Fair. Right? Or to be in a situation to where
like, this feels very military esque. Right? Like, these are the deep
brotherhood. They're they're they're they they spend a lot of time together.
He just shows up at his house because he knows he's gonna call in sick
after this environment. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's it's so
very much military. And in those situations,
when you're talking with someone, they're they're essentially telling you this is
how we think about it, and it's meant to be
push the other stuff away and continue with this way forward. You know? And
so it's weird to like, I've been in those in those conversations. I remember
having a conversation with drill sergeants about hand grenades and why I
shouldn't be nervous about throwing them. Why would I
not be nervous? You know? See, this is this is it's
interesting. So, you know, you you said your birthday is on September 11th.
Mhmm. And,
I turned 21, 13 days after September 11th.
And, both of our lives I would assert,
and this is one of the solutions I made on this podcast this year, which
is why I'm sort of approaching it in a different kind of way, particularly towards
the end of our, session today where I try
to, or end of our episode today where I try every episode now to talk
about what are solutions to problems. Because I'm just, I'm done
pulling apart problems 99% of the time, because all we've done
from my perspective for the last 20 years
is since that, since that day in Midtown Manhattan,
all we've done is, is chew over problems
and I'm done with it personally, professionally,
ecumenically, whatever you're the way you can possibly
think of that ends with why I'm done. I, we know what the problems are.
Number 1, we know how deep the problems are. Number 2, we can
identify what the cause of the problems is. Number 3, but no one has a
courage to talk about solutions to the problem. Like here's a big one.
Like you talk about captain Beatty and spin.
The solution to the captain babies of the world.
And is the destruction of bureaucratic systems. That's that
that's that's that's the solution, like, right. And everybody makes that sound right
there. Everybody makes that sound right there because what you're laughing at is not
the solution I'm proposing. What you're laughing at is the inevitable
consequence that you can go forward with for when that that
bureaucratic system is destroyed. And by the way, I'm not talking about destroying people's
lives, physical lives. What I'm talking about is taking you out of the system.
So here's very simple one. Let's take the list of all the
captain batings that are in the Pentagon. Let's line them up
alphabetically and let's just fire every other one of them alphabetical order. And then we
cut the Pentagon's budget by 15%. And now we're done. And don't tell
me that you can't find people who wouldn't be willing to do this. Rand, Paul,
Ron, Paul, there's plenty of people floating around who'd be willing to do this. Jim
Jordan, you may not agree with them politically, but we'll put that aside for just
a second. There are plenty of people who would be willing to do this. That's
that is the solution, but we'd laugh because of the consequence
on the other side of that is when you go in alphabetical order and
you cut all those people out of the system, now you've got them running around
in general population, making trouble on the internet.
And with their past connections and past networks and past ability to raise money
and. And we don't want to actually face
that consequence. We don't want the person who
spent the last 15 years in the Pentagon
fighting endless wars, working at Safeway,
bagging groceries, although quite frankly, they
would probably do a much better job at Safeway. I would rather have them
wrecking Safeway then, you know, I don't
know, selling more weapons to Ukraine
or coming up with more unique ways to, I don't
know, drop more bombs on people that don't need to have bombs dropped on because
I don't have a personal problem with them. But we're at
Safeway or go work at HEB or go work at the gas station.
Go, go wreck a gas station, go wreck Exxon Mobile's job, go wreck
Exxon Mobile's outfit over there. You'll do less damage,
but we don't actually want to do that because why do we wanna do
that? We don't actually wanna do that because the the the consequence
of that now taken from the 5,000 bureaucrats 400
miles away, now real close enough to us, we don't wanna deal with.
We don't wanna deal with that guy that is a general manager at HEB
because we know that guy would be a nightmare. But that's the
way we that's the way we fundamentally fix the system. That's one of the ways
we can fund it. And so I would like to have the proposal of
solutions. A guy like captain Beatty isn't proposing solutions to your
point. He's proposing just go they're there. They're
there. You're Make it through. You're not smart enough to understand
this than I am, so you'll make it through if I just shepherd you through.
And that and that's pay and, of course, that's patronizing. And, you
know, Bradbury is writing this out of the perspective of the military industrial complex. There's
opposition to the military industrial complex and his opposition to police power.
One of the interesting back stories behind this book is that one of the pieces
of the genesis that went into this book is that or into the story is
that he was pulled over by the cops or he was walking with the cops
because he never like actually learned how to drive. And he was like walking around
or whatever in the park and the cop was like hassling him about walking in
the park or something and gave him a ticket or whatever. Yeah. And he was
all rebellious, just like most creative types. He's rebellious in his head, but then in
reality, he just took a ticket and just like went away. And he couldn't figure
out how to make those two things, you know, sort of click together in his
reality. And so he came with his captain baby character to sort of work
through cathartically all these feelings of being oppressed by the
man, which is a very sixties sort of idea. Yeah. But
the problem is we live in 2024, and the people who used to protest
against the man and now are the man, and they've been the man for a
while. Yeah. You
brought up Rage Against the Machine a few a few moments ago, and,
I remember when that album came out. Right? Like like, I'm sure you do as
well. I think I was probably in 7 and, again, Laura Frohnick, same person
who recommended this book to me, was the person who came back. She'd taken a
trip to Italy and came back and was like, man, have you heard Bulls on
Parade? I was like, no. I didn't know what that is. And game changer of
a song. And now it's funny because, like, I'll see people who I
knew listen to this in, like, late teens, early twenties.
Now they know really what what it's about, and now they're
against it. Like, what do you think they were talking about this whole
time? You know? And, and when we get to that
level, that's kinda like, these people don't even know what
they're championing, right, in in some levels, which is very,
very interesting. But Well and I wonder
I wonder if the if the consistent uphill battle is
between not because it's an uphill battle. Maybe I shouldn't frame it this way.
I wonder if that no. I'll I'll go a 3rd way. I'm having
a thought in a middle of a thought middle of a thought. I'm gonna go
a 3rd way. So the, the, the title of this section of
the podcast is, the day after the totalitarians win the war for
control of your mind. Right? No one ever, ever
asked this question. What happens after the totalitarians win?
What happens after, like, the cap and betties win? Because they're let's
the the good guys don't always win. Sometimes the bad guys
win. The bad guys definitely get a vote, as would
say. And sometimes their vote is good enough to win the
day, and then they rule.
And 1984 is sort of the classic novel
of the classic, the totalitarians win, and we're all
being repressed. Right? And of course, George Orwell was writing this in the face of
Soviet oppression where from his perspective, and I think from the perspective
of most thinking people in the 20th century, the
totalitarians won. I mean, hell, you know, London said he was a totalitarian.
He wasn't had nothing. And so they won the day
and they got to implement their rule and they got to implement their solutions to
their problems or to the problems that they saw in,
market capitalism. And they got to run that experiment for 80
years in a country just to kind of see if it was gonna work. Mhmm.
So we know what happens the day after totalitarian. One
of my gigantic concerns in the early
part of the 20th century is, and I'm seeing this particularly.
And we talked a lot about books and libraries in the first part of this
When people don't read the books, because the books are where the stories
are about the toe, what happens after the totalitarians win.
They don't respect the history that came before them. And thus we wind up in
the same ditch that we wound up in before. Agreed.
Just with a different flavor of people with different names, maybe even in
some cases, let me be egalitarian, different colors and
different genders, but they all have the same mindset.
Like, during during the pandemic, I was reading like, that's where I found
stoicism and really started to kinda it was a thing that I was
I was interested in, but during the pandemic is when I really needed to, like,
apply it because I was struggling, you know, and, you know, lockdown.
And, one of the
things, Ryan Holiday is you know, he writes a lot about philosophy
and cynicism and everything. Mhmm. And he was just kinda talking about this
idea that, like, this isn't the first time we've had a
major lockdown. You know? Like like, let's go back and let's look at the
I think it's, like, the 19 12 Spanish influenza thing. Right? Like, there's a big
thing there. And because we were so stupid, oh,
this can't happen to us. There's no we're so much smarter.
And all these things, we end up creating something
markedly similar. Oh, yeah. You know? And
it's funny because I talk about this with, like, some of the owners and founders
that I talked to of, you know, hey. Were you were you
around in, like, o eight? Were you in business? Were you doing anything? Were you
in sales? Because let me tell you, it was rough. I was in sales.
Right? And, you know, it was rough for a while after that. You
had to earn the trust back, and some people still don't trust finance people and
mortgages and things like that. And then we had the same thing happen around
COVID. Right? And so, like, you can see it
for the recurring patterns of what it is, or you can try to, like, oh,
these two things are not similar, but I feel like those people always have an
have an agenda. Oh, yeah. Really serve everyone else
when they should be looking for the for the overlap, the commonality. Well, they're the
bosses of the captain babies. Yes. Exactly. Right. They're the people
that are giving the captain babies of the world, the marching It's the status quo
push. Right? Like, you know, and yeah. I
mean, I such a such
an interesting reread. You know? Like, I I spent time kinda wondering
what would it be like to read this for the very first time at my
age with my experience that would be kinda kinda unique. Mhmm.
Because the thing I the thing that even
having read this before, right, it had been so many years, I was
I wasn't ready for how much, like, content there was in the
space. Right? That people could turn on these, like, TVs, and they're being programmed from
the TVs. Right? And they were but that's okay. But books are you
know? So, like, in my head, I'd built it out to be be this very
sparse, almost like a Star Trek thing. We don't have Yeah. You know, and everything
else like that. And not really seeing it for, like, hey. We're taking away
the opportunity for other people to inject their ideas, and we're just creating an opportunity
for you to be bottle fed the ideas. Right?
Because then Yep. You don't even you don't even realize that you're missing anything.
Correct. That's right. So That's right. You know? This
other unique perspective I got a couple of years ago was, like, talking about
they they were talking about Dante, actually, like like like like Dante's Inferno,
and they were talking about this idea that you don't have to convince
everyone that the that that the government is wrong.
You just gotta, like, convince them that the books aren't worth reading or something like
that. But the way that it was and I and, god, man, I I I
wish I could say it because it went through everything, like, every bias that I
possibly could have put in front of it and just, like, hit me square in
the head of, like, oh, yeah. That's very much a thing.
Very, very much a thing. The so
this is my problem with,
the idea of malinformation,
disinformation. I have a problem with all of
those terms coming from any government apparatchic.
Period. Full stop. That's that's the period. That's the end of the sentence. There's no
qualifier afterward. There's no, but there's no, and I have
a problem with those words coming from the mouth of anybody who's getting a
check based in any kind of way on
any of my tax dollars. Period. Full stop.
Just period. That's the end of the sentence. I don't I don't wanna hear you
even say it. You can think whatever you want, but the human
brain is the last truly private area until Elon Musk gets
that neural link thing really wrapped up, and then we're all boned after that.
But it's like, you can think whatever you want,
but don't let it drop out your mouth.
And I'm not naive enough. And this is probably why I,
even though I have a warrior spirit, I didn't join the
military. I'm not. That is not
naive. I'm not hopeful enough that in the past there was some
housing on time when some government apparatchik didn't believe
this, please. I've read too much history.
They've believed this throughout history under any system, but they had the good
grace to not open their mouth and say it. And what
troubles me greatly is we've lost the the
government apparatchiks seem to have lost the captain base of the world,
seem to have lost the ability to keep their mouth shut and just run the
game. They want to now, in my opinion,
and this is my opinion, They want to now be,
be, be applauded for the cleverness with which they are
running the game and,
and maybe, and they gussied up by saying, oh, well, we're informing you.
But the thing is, even when we only had 5
channels and 4 newspapers in a town that all
reported the same thing and, like, three copies of Time Magazine and Reader's
Digest that was on everybody's table, and you talk about
living in a place, where, you know,
maybe there weren't many minorities in the neighborhood, you know, back in the
day. Mhmm. Even when we had that system,
we were still for that system in that time
educated enough as a populist to recognize B. S.
And so what has well, but what has happened over the course of time
is not that the public has become less educated to recognize
BS. And I'm using public as an, a mass term. Okay. I'm not gonna talk
about specific individuals. The public has, has gotten more
information and more facts.
Right. Which by the way, we can access facts, not on
screens on our walls, like in Fahrenheit 4 51, we now access
facts. I mean, Bradbury couldn't have come up with this idea of a
computer in your pocket. He would that, that Asimov would have come up with that
idea. That was an Asimov. Yeah. And then, and then Heinlein would have
taken it to his logical conclusion. That's what that would have happened. Here's a vehicle
that does it for you. Exactly.
Exactly. But we
are mainlining facts and information, but
with very few insights. That's what we were looking for. We're looking for
insights. We're looking for the meaning behind the facts and the information.
And so when you, as a government apparatchik, were getting your regular
check, tell me what the meaning should be, I
say, no. No. No. I don't wanna hear
from you. I I I really don't. I reject that because to
me that there's a thin line there that you're about to cross into
the burning of the books. That's a thin
line there between just tell me, I'm just gonna tell you which
information is is, is disinformation and, and
which information is mal information. I started hearing about that more and which
information is, is, is, is well, that guy said it
was fake, but we're telling you the real thing.
Yeah. No. You're both saying the fake thing.
Yeah. You're you you making
news that someone else is lying to you is not the same thing as, like,
giving me the truth. That's the thing. Right? Like
and, like, I mean, it the this is
slightly tangential, but, like, I worked my
tail off to build a pretty high wall between, like,
myself and regular
news, political news, because
a, I can't change anything. Right. And
like stoic idea, if you can't, if you can't put your hands on it and
change it, it's outside of your locus of control and your time is better spent
focusing on what is in your control. Right. So it became very easy, but it,
but it was on the backside of frustration because.
What I think that people are doing is that they don't want to go through
the process of like having to figure it out for themselves. So it's easier to
cling to an identity of some way, shape or form. And you know, that can
be Christian. It can be military. It can be, you know, the atheists
that are out there swinging for the fences for, for their message and everything.
Like, and then when it's close enough, people just
go, let it wash over me almost. Right? And it's
like, you know, it's it's almost like you're getting baptized by
this part because you've just realized we we agree on
enough. I can just take your word for the rest of it. And that's
problematic thinking. Right? Yes. Yes.
Yes. And I and maybe this is a fundamental and and I I I will
say, this is a fundamental difference between me and maybe someone who might be a
little more progressive than me. This is maybe revealing a little bit more of my
conservative bonafides, but I tend to
mistrust that more when it's coming from a public agency with police force behind
it. Then I, then I
worry about maybe like, I don't know, amazon.com,
you know, sending me fake and from, you know, whatever. And by the way, yes,
I understand Jeff Bezos owns the Washington post. I'm not ignorant or naive.
Right. Like, but I don't have to buy the Washington post. I
always make this point. Amazon isn't sending out like, you
know, police officers to make me buy stuff from them. I think they're
not. But if I don't pay my taxes, I'm
just going to show up in my house. Like that police force thing
is really, really the defining line. Because
if, if, if, and we saw this with you mentioned COVID, we saw this with
COVID in certain places, the place that I came out of, we saw this, you
know, in places like, Well,
in other places around the world, I mean,
the government apparatchiks in China were like welding people into their
houses. Like, you know, so that's police power.
That's the power of life and death at the end of it. Yeah. No
corporation, none. Even the ones with the most repair rapacious
lawyers on the planet.
I love your vocabulary, man. It makes me so happy every time we get to
talk because, like, I know that I'm gonna get, like, 2 or 3 new words
that I'm like Rapacious. You like the word rapacious? I've never heard that word before.
I'm gonna have to go spend some time with it. And I'm and I'm so
excited because it doesn't happen that often. So thank you. It's it's it's think of
like, think of like a, a honey Badger cross with like a Wolverine just
tearing through something that's rapacious. Yeah. I'm with you.
Right? Like, yeah. BlackRock may have private military
contractors, but they can be stopped. Yes.
No one's gonna stop the ATF if they wanna knock down my
door with a no knock warrant. Oh, I I have a version
of this conversation with, some friends of mine because,
I am more liberal than most people in our
locale. Right? Like, you know, lumping in North Texas. Yeah.
I'm pretty I'm pretty pretty progressive just by comparison. You know?
Sure. But I think zoomed out, you know, I'm left
of center, but, like, I'm not far left or anything. You know? Yeah. But
when I talk to some of my friends who were, you
know, very, I would say, probably a
little too enthusiastic about, you know, weapons and everything.
And they it always comes back down to this idea of, like, well, you know,
what what's that Benjamin Franklin quote? You know, they they take away the guns and
and everything. And I'm like, you know, this is always where they go. And I'm
like, you know, you would never even know if they
decided to take you out. Like Well
Like you would think that, but I I would the only
pushback I would give on that is current events within the
last summer have proven that the folks who should know how to take it out
people out. I I believe we're in
a crisis of incompetency at all levels. Let's just say that.
Well We can't And that and that brings up a good spin. You know? But,
like, I have I I have I have friends who have, you
know, a smattering of pistols. Sure. Right? And to
them, they think that that's gonna be the game
changer. Oh, well, yeah. Those people are foolish. Yeah. Like like
I'm sorry. Right? If if that is really your perspective,
you're actually going out and training. You're not just hoarding and collecting something you
feel tough in public. Right. You're actually going to ranges. You're you're you're
doing the thing. You're not that far, so this is kinda, like, not
real perspective. You're just looking for a reason to hold on to your idea.
Because, like, if they if, you know, if they made that
decision, they would make that decision, and people would have problems with it. Right?
But and I'm not even saying that that is the solution. So before anybody at
me or comes after me or anything else like this, I'm not even against gun
ownership. I think it should be harder to get a gun than it currently
is, but I also think that if you decide to go through that
that idea and you think that just owning the gun is enough,
you're so fundamentally not on the level that that that
you should probably not qualify for having that kind of weapon.
Personal opinion. Well no. No. And I I, you know, I don't
as a person who is slightly to the right of center,
I don't, I don't just based on my life experiences and things that I've seen,
I don't disagree with that. And I would
say that we need
to be checking the captain
babies and the bureaucrats of the world using all the available tools we
have before we go to those tools. Agree.
I am also deeply troubled by the lack of faith
by people of all across all political spectrums,
whether you are the anarcho libertarian on the, on the right,
or you're the socialist Marxist progressive on the left.
I am, I am deeply concerned by the lack of faith in our elect or
of the, the, the, not only like Torah process, but also the, the, what
do you call it solidity of our electoral process? Because I think of
that. If the belief in that system by
regular people, I'm not talking about the weirdos who hang out and yell on
the internet at each other. Those people are ridiculous. I'm talking about
like one of my neighbors is this cause, he owns a
construction company in California. Right. He's He's a regular
dude. He didn't get past high school. Like he's a regular dude.
And when he says to me, does my vote even
matter? That's a problem. That's
that's a problem is my vote being counted. That's a problem. Like that guy
has to have faith in the system because that guy gets up every day
with the system just sort of running in the background.
And what COVID did was it disrupted so much of that for
people in general. I would agree with that.
Had that disrupted for them before, and they didn't the
things that they thought were solid, and he's in his he's in his sixties
now, but the things that they thought were solid for their the majority of their
adult life proved to be paper tigers. Oh,
well, I mean, welcome to the party, guys. It was not right. I thought
it was. Right. But if I'm a construction worker who didn't get
past high school and I've done kind of okay
for myself. Right. But I never really had to think about it.
Cause I pay, man, I pay my taxes and I pay my employees. What do
you want me to do? Like, and you've run across business owners like this. Well,
they got to really, I got to think about this thing now, like,
really, you know? And those are
the vast majority of people. And so the captain babies
of the world, I think had a better understanding
probably about 2 or 3 generations ago. And I think there has been an erosion.
This is where I talk about the crisis of incompetency, but there has been an
erosion over the course of time of the captain babies of the world. Understanding
that their job is to make sure that the system stays up without everybody ever
noticing they were. Exactly. And,
and I think that's what we've lost in
the pursuit of everybody wanting to be famous on, like, you know, Twitter.
Okay. I have a question potentially. X, whatever the hell it is. Yeah.
Whatever that is. It feels like on one mobile, you're saying that captain Badia shouldn't
be there, but then it also feels like like you're now describing that there's
a gap because because we don't have people willing to be
that. Let's just keep everything moving. Right. No. I I don't
think captain Baty should be there. Okay. But if captain Baty is going
to be there We need more of them? Yeah. Well,
no. No. No. No. I would rather there not be
I'd say what I at a deeper level of detail about the words. I
I I object to the arrogance and the hubris.
That's what I I would rather if we're gonna have captain Beatty's all over the
place, which to a certain degree, I guess, we will. Fine. The
the the the number of them will vary, you know, 10 or a100.
I think they're all probably equal. From me and my perspective, they're all equally bad.
Get rid of all of them. But okay.
If we're not, I'd rather have 10 than a 100. You know? Sure. Okay. Fine.
So 10 captain betties that are that are humble, I will take
over a 100 captain betties that are arrogant. Oh,
man. Yeah. I talk, I talk about this idea of
being expectant, which is entitled or being
enabling. Right? Because like, I think the good leadership is enabling leadership.
And it's so funny because I talk about,
just kind of like knowing what you need in the leadership for you to, for
you to flourish. Right. And I
cannot work under like a middle manager,
like Beatty. Like, I like, I just can't. Because
inside of that conversation, and this has just happened to me so many times
now that I can see it for what it is, I'm
gonna I'm gonna ask 3 to 4 questions, like, looking for connection
to other things. And these people don't have those kind of
answers. Right? And this was such a problem whenever I was a
salesperson in bigger corporate structures where where, like, my sales manager
who came up on an ops path and has never been in a sales role
ever is just like, well, you should just keep following up because you're the
difference. Okay. Explain to me how that works. John, I don't have time to answer
all your questions. I just need you to go out and hit the goal because
this should work. It's working. And and I already know you're full of
shit. Sorry. Am I allowed to curse on here? Yeah. You're fine. You're
fine. And so, you know, in in that moment, once you show yourself to
me that you don't either know why this is connected or why we're doing it,
I can't even I can't even go with you. And I don't know if this
is me being a c. I I don't know if this is me being private
service military and just having kinda, like, maybe ridiculously high
standards for the people who who wanna be, like, my leader. But,
like, as soon as I see that gap, I'm I
can't I can't go with you. Right? Mhmm. And then this is part of the
reason why I work for myself is because, like, I know that I'm gonna run
into that somewhere. Mhmm. And then it just I
turn, and then I start becoming, well, let me go find all the other
cracks, all the other answers and everything else. Right? And it's not good. You know?
Let me start let me start pulling that thread. Oh, yeah. Don't pull the
threads. Don't pull the threads. Right? Like and and,
honestly, if you're a curious person, curious person here. Right? Mhmm.
Go figure out how to ask questions in a way so that you can be
heard the right way. Because half the time when I'm looking for these connection points,
they take it as, like, I'm looking for answers. Right. Right? And, really,
that's just how I communicate. So I think it
kinda goes back down to, like, a lack of leadership in the form of
Beatty is just thinking, like, I'm just gonna say this, and it's gonna work, and
then I'm gonna leave, and everything is just gonna go back to normal. Mhmm. Right?
Imagine how many other times he's given that same speech with how it's, like, talked
about. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's like, oh, well, and that's why
and I love it how Bradbury puts this. You know, he has him, like, or
how he frames it. He has him lighting the, the lighter
and then blowing it out in lighting. And the smoke just starts billowing up in
the room. And it sort of put me in mind, weirdly enough, of The Wizard
of Oz. Interesting. Okay. You know, the the wizard
in the, you know, the 19 thirties movie where, you know,
Oz is the great and terrible, and it's the smoke effects.
Yep. And so it's and, of course,
you know, if you know anything about the Wizard of Oz, you know that,
that the the wizard was a flimflam man.
The wizard was a scammer.
He was selling a game. Yep. And I
think Bradbury is subtly for those who are paying attention
is subtly sort of intimating that this government
apparatchik is pulling a game. Mhmm.
And he's doing it behind a smokescreen. You know?
And that's a very powerful kind of idea there,
which of course ties into the book burning and all the other all the other
kind of elements. But it it is operating at that
secondary or maybe even tertiary psychological level in the book.
And I don't know if that was intentional or if that was just something that
he put in there. It's like, oh, this is gonna be a good descriptor. This
is how I'm framing it in my head. And he just and sometimes you do
that as a writer. You just write the framing that's in your head because the
narrative drives you to a certain place. Yep. Stephen King talks about
about a lot about this in odd writing, you know, where
you start out thinking you're driving the car, and then it turns out that you
and the characters are switching. And now you're on the back, and you're just you're
along for the ride. I did some reading about his writing
process because the way that he writes is very much he has an
idea. He'll kinda flush it out. He'll flush it out, but he kinda holds himself
apart from it. And then it's like, okay, baby, it's
typewriter time. So like, I, I think, I think I read and I'm
happy to be wrong that he, that he wrote this in 9 days.
Yes. Right. He rented a typewriter for 10¢ an hour or something like that. 10¢
an hour. Isn't that crazy? And and, like, that idea of
I know that I gotta move quickly through this or else it's gonna change Mhmm.
I think then creates that flow state of him being able to get,
like, as deep into the books as he is. Right? So, like, I I think
that they're tied together. But that thing blew me away as a guy
who's been working on a second book for a lot longer than 9 days. And
I'm still, like, trying to figure out exactly what this thing is gonna be at
the final end of it. You know? But just that idea of, like, I've got
this idea. I'm gonna hit it hard because he wants the character to take
over the driving. Right? He wants to invest himself so fully in this
character that, like, he can't even see it for himself
whenever he's trying to put his finger on it and stuff like that. And, like,
that to me is such such an interesting way to approach
the entire process because, like, as a control freak,
that's everything I don't wanna do. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.
Well yes. Well and and and that's the difference,
interestingly enough. Well, we're gonna talk about this a little bit
because we're gonna talk about Faber. Let's talk about Faber. Yes. Please talk about Faber.
Let's talk about Faber. Faber is the sort of the counter captain
Beatty. He he he is in when you send over your notes
for the show Mhmm. And you talked about Faber Mhmm.
Immediate unique perspective, because I was not
seeing him the same way that you are talking about him, at least in the
notes that you sent me. So I'm gonna shut up and let you drive. Sorry.
Okay. Alright. No. No. It's alright. So back to the book, back to Fahrenheit
451. Let's meet Faber, a man who's
going to help out mister Montag.
Favor sniff to the book. Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some
spice from a foreign land? I love to smell them when I was a boy.
Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once before we let them go.
Favorite turn the pages, Mr. Montag, you were looking at a coward. I
saw the way things were going a long time back. I said nothing. I wanted
the innocence who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to
the guilty, but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.
And finally they set the structure to burn books using the fireman. I grunted a
few times as subsided, but there were no others grunting or yelling with
me by then. Now it's too late.
They were closed the Bible. So what would you tell me why you
came here? Nobody listens anymore. I can't talk to the walls
because they're yelling at me. I can't talk to my wife. She listens to the
walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if
I talk long enough, it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to
understand what I read. Favor examined Montauk's
thin, blue jowled face. How did you get shaken up? What
knocked the torch out of your hands? I don't know. We have
everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around.
The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I burned
in 10 or 12 years, so I thought books might help.
Your hopeless romantic said Faber. It would be funny if it were not serious.
It's not the books you need. It's some of the things that were once in
books. The same things could be in the parlor families
today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and television,
but are not. No. No. No. No. It's not books at all you're looking for.
Take it where you can find it in old phonograph records, old
motion pictures, and in old friends. Look for it in nature and look for it
in yourself. Books are only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of
things we were afraid we might forget. There's nothing magical in them at all. The
magic is only what books say, how they stitch the patches of the universe together
into one garment for us. Of course, you couldn't know this. Of course, you still
can't understand what I mean when I say all this. You are intuitively right. That's
what counts. Three things are missing. Number 1, do
you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have a
quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me, it means
texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book
can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past
an infinite perfusion. The more pores, the more truthfully
recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper,
the more literary you are. That's my definition anyway. Telling
detail, fresh detail. The good writers touch life
often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones,
rape her and leave her for the flies. So how
now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in
the face of life. The comfortable people only want wax moon faces, poreless,
hairless expressionless. We We are living in a time when flowers are trying to
live on flowers instead of growing a good rain, black loam, even
fireworks for all their prettiness come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we
think we can grow, beating on flowers and fireworks without completing the
cycle back to reality. Do you know the legend of Hercules
and NTS? The giant wrestler whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly
on the earth, but when he was held rootless in midair by Hercules, he
perished easily. If there isn't something in that legend for us today, in this
city, in our time that I am completely insane. Oh, there we have the first
thing I said we needed quality texture of information
and the second leisure. Oh, well, we've got plenty of off hours
off hours. Yes. But time to think if you're not driving a 100 miles an
hour at a clip, when you can't think of anything else with the danger, then
you're playing some game or sitting in some room where you can't argue with the
4 wall televisor. Why televisor is real. It
is immediate. It has dimension. It tells you what's to think and blast city and
it must be right. Seems so right. It rushes
you on so quickly to its own conclusions. Your mind has a time to protest.
What? Only the family is people. I beg
pardon. My wife says books. Aren't real. Thank God for
that. You can shut them. Say, hold on a moment. You play
God to it, but who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you
when you drop a seed in a TV par or grows you any shape of
wishes, it is an environment as real as the world it becomes and is
the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason, but with all my
knowledge and skepticism, I have never been able to argue with a 100 piece symphony
orchestra, full color, 3 dimensions, and being in and part of those incredible
parlors. As you see, my parlor is nothing but 4 plaster walls in
here. He held out 2 small rubber plugs for my years and I
ride the subway jets. That hems dentiferous. They
toil not neither do they spins in Montagai shut. Where do we go from here?
Would books help us? Only of the third necessary thing could be given to
us. Number 1, as I said, is quality of information. Number 2, leisure to digest
it. Number 3, the right to carry out the actions based on what we
learned from the interaction of the first two. And I hardly
think a very old man and a fireman turned sour could
do much this late
in the game.
Here at the end of the 4th turning in the United States of
America, the hour is indeed late,
or at least from my perspective, it's late. John's
mileage may vary. Your mileage
may vary. Faber,
and this is the leap that I made in my brain that
captivated John that I put in the notes.
Faber is Montag's Morpheus, but he isn't a
cool black dude. He's not a cool black savior
character. And he's flawed
as a hero because books make us complicated,
which is what the systems that captain Beatty represented
understood. They didn't want complication. They wanted
flat wax. And by the way, wax is manipulable
when you heat it Structures.
The builders that were holding together civilization's memory along
the train tracks outside the city also understood this. And eventually,
Montauk will run into them as well on the
escape from the rapacious. There's that word again,
hordes in the city.
Faber at the end doesn't have a happy ending. Matter of fact, Faber
has no ending, weirdly enough. Bradbury just
sort of abandons him in the middle of the well, not the middle,
sort of the back end of the 3rd act of the book. And it's kind
of odd. I've never seen a writer do that. It's sort of like the inverse
of Anton Chekhov's gun. This idea that you, like, just leave
something there. I had completely forgotten about how the book wraps
up. Yeah. You know? So, like, I knew the premise. Right? You're not allowed to
have books. Right? And, someone wakes up, but the
ending was very interesting. Right. Because, like all of a
sudden I realized that I don't remember how this book ends. Right. You know, the
story. And I'm like, we're so close to the end. Like,
is this just the wake up? Is there any lasting change? You know? And then
I was like, oh, now I'm very excited because I'd forgotten how to do it.
And you're right. Like, there is like, there's a lot of hope. Mhmm. Right?
That, you know, they're gonna meet up in the future, but, like, you know, there's
there's also a lot of reason to assume that hope is not valid. Right. You
know? There's there's no denouement. There's no
there's no conclusion. There's no catharsis at the end. It
feels it like as I was reading it, I was like, god. This just feels
kinda rushed at the end of it. And then, you know, thinking about
it is like we you
know, this is about change. This is about this is about the wake up. This
is about all of these things. Right? And if you're going
through it, you have no idea what it what the what
the ultimate conclusion is gonna be like. You know what I'm saying? So
the and, initially, I was like, this feels rushed. I don't like this. I don't
like this. I want more details. I wanna know how everyone wraps up, and I
just wanna have clarity at the end of it. And then I kinda had to
slow down and, like, pause and realize, like, hey. It doesn't
have to go it doesn't have to end the way that I want it to
end for it to be a good story, which was, you know, a very interesting
part as I'm reading this book and wanting it to, like, wrap up my way,
and then it doesn't wrap up my way, and I'm a little bit frustrated for
a couple of minutes. You know? Well, I think there's one
possibility. I think Bradbury probably would have accepted
this. The possibility exists that
Faber was evaporated in the bombs No. I know. The
city. But, like like, that whole thing. And I don't really feel like
they do a good job of really talking about how, like, this country's
on the constant verge of war until, like, until he's meeting
with favor until, like, we're, like, at that midpoint. Right? Well, no. No.
No. The women no. No. No. No. The scene with the women in the parlor
when Montag goes nuts, and he starts yelling at them about their lives and
about their kids. Mhmm. And the one woman, she's on her, what,
like, 3rd marriage or whatever. And she's, like, joking about
how, you know, he's going off to war because there's a perpetual war, and
they're not gonna get married or not they're not gonna exchange names because he's just
gonna get vaporized or something like that, basically. Oh, I
it it was so funny because during that exchange, I was just so focused on
the idea of, like, kids Mhmm. And, like, and,
like, the kid Oh, yeah. Inside of there of, like, why would you ever have
kids? Well, it's just a cesarean. You know? Like, that to me was,
like, shocking and kind of, like, removed enough that that's where all my
focus went. I didn't even see that for the initial kind of,
like, ground laying of the war that then ties into the 3rd act
stuff. Mhmm. That's very interesting, to
me. But this idea that
Well, and the girl at the beginning, Claire, who doesn't make it.
Right. Yeah. Mhmm. And there's also an intimation Maybe she
did. Maybe she did. There's an intimation there
that warfare is going on.
Yeah. That's fair. But but it's it's one of those things because Montag isn't awake
yet. So he's still walking through sort of this, oh,
I just put out the fires and then I go home and there's the walls
and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Yeah. And it's all and it's
and, you know, it's interesting how Bradbury steps him down into the into
the being awake piece, ironically enough, or maybe interestingly enough, with his wife
getting her stomach pumped from the sleeping pills that she OD'd on.
Yeah. And the and the people who show up to to to pump her stomach.
And I and, you know, you talk about the cesarean. I was I
was sort of taken out a little bit. And I'm it's very
hard to take me aback. It it really is. But I was sort of
taken aback by the casualness with which
Same. Bradbury described them showing up and just sort of, oh, they're just
gonna have a cigarette. It's just another Well, I'm You
know? Like They ending in why. We'll go to the next one. It's fine.
And that casual that casualness with
human life Yeah.
I think it does such I think it does the opposite, honestly. Like like, a,
it shocked me how, like, early it wasn't just how stark it was. Right? He
just walks home and finds this thing out. But to me, them coming along
and then being so nonchalant about it, to me, that really sets the stage for,
like, the environment that, like, this is so common. They're
oh, yeah. Here's another one. You know what I'm saying? Like Right. And,
you know, we go through versions of that. And, like like, not to that extreme,
but, you know, like Well, there are there are people who would assert that in
our even in our own time. I mean, Bradbury wrote
this book in the in the fifties sixties. Right? Mhmm.
But in our own time, there are
people who would assert that we are too casual with life.
By the way, cradle the grave. It didn't matter what context
or in this matter where we're talking about the death penalty or,
you know, the 3rd rail issue of abortion or whatever. Any
anything involving life, we're way too
casual about. Anything involving the,
the transmutation of life
into something else. Right? There are people
who would assert. And I do think they have a valid point that we are
not and and it's really they they use the term too casual. I
think what they're looking for is we lack seriousness. We it lacks
our conversations lack. There's a Hebrew word Fidelity?
There's a Hebrew word, in the in the Bible called the
in the Old Testament, called kabod. Right? It's used to
describe, the patriarch Abraham. Right? He had kabod.
And what that what we translate that into in English is gravitas. He
had weight. Right? And when a person like
that speaks, it doesn't matter how much you know, you shut up and listen.
Agreed. Yeah. And we've all run into people like
that. And we, the, there are people who
would make the assertion that in the kinds of conversations we are having around
life and that we've had with increasing
intensity around life, those people with that
type of gravitas are not involved in the conversation. And so we are having
unserious casual conversations, which cheapens
life. And I think that I think there is a point
there.
And so I can see where, and even, even
with me seeing that intellectually, it still hit me like, oh, there's no, this is
the emotion of it. Yeah. This is the emotion of these guys
just being like, oh, this woman may die. She may not. I don't know. I
gotta go down the street. Let's pack our car and go down the street. It
was so, like, cold. Yeah. And it was
so early, but I was like, this
is the world. This is the world that that they were in. And for me,
it was like a it was like a very interesting pacesetter. You know? Yes.
You know, that also starts to him to kinda think and, you know, outside the
box and everything. Okay. And comparing
him to Morpheus and the black savior piece, which I know that kinda struck you
a little bit. Why did that why did that you're like, I'm like, I thought
of that that way. The question you said is, like, is Faber a good leader?
Yeah. Is he a favor? Is he a good leader? Yeah. And it's so
funny because, like, as I was reading it, he's so apologetic.
Right? I'm the I'm the I'm the coward. Right? I'm sending you to go do
these things, and I'm not doing them myself. On on one hand
and I didn't realize this until this conversation, so thank you for this perspective.
It's like I was like, god. Like, this guy is just a doormat.
Okay? But what if he's just manipulating him from the
other side? Because, you know, you have you have
Faber on one side, you have, you know, BD in the other,
and he's just there in the middle. Like, what if he is just, like, that
good of an of a manipulator and not really that much of a
coward? And I wasn't thinking about that until until I saw that and and
we're having this conversation because, like, I just thought he was just, like, this, like,
kinda this is gonna sound bad, but, like, a guy who's too
nerdy, and he's missed the opportunity to, like, to, like, speak up. And so now
he needs someone who's got some brute strength amongst him or around him
to, like Oh, yeah. To, like, cause change. But
he's so always with the
but, like, hey. You're the real hero here on you know what I'm saying? And
it and, like, like, there is a realm to where, like, if you're good at,
you know, motivational manipulation Mhmm. It's
all there. Right? The nagging and the and the, oh,
well, you know, blah blah blah. But then he's also the thing that I
really loved is when they're talking about Beatty, and he's like, maybe he's one of
us, and we just don't know it yet. And that blew my mind, man. I
was like, oh Right. Right. There was a there was a scene,
and I read about it, I think, in my research on the book.
But, Bradbury was going to put it in a scene where Beatty had like
books in his living room or something, but they were all like burned up books
on bookshelves. Oh, interesting. That he'd like charred
or whatever. And he decided not to put that in the, in
the book. And maybe maybe it was in an interview. He talked about it or
or maybe something. I I don't know. Anyway, because he's written several inter he wrote
several introductions to several different introductions to Fahrenheit 4 51. And I would
recommend if you're gonna read this book, go back and read, the
edition that has at least a couple of his,
of his, introductions. Because, you know, it's interesting how he
changed over the course of his life subsequent to the book and changed
his perspective for where the book landed. Right?
And I wanna revisit something that you said in the first part, which I didn't
fully I don't think I fully addressed you. You said, yes, my opinion about ban
banning books in libraries. Right? Well, I I
think I think the question is I think it's very easy for people to be
like, oh, yeah. We shouldn't ban books, but, like, my kid's not reading this
stuff. Sure. You know what I'm saying? Which in summation is kind
of the same thing. Right? If you're a parental figure and you're holding your kids
apart from it, you're, you know, you you don't have a
police state to come in there and, like, force it and everything, but in all
all intents and purposes, you might as well be. Well, I think we
so I think there's a bunch of different dynamics happening underneath there. First off, you've
got parents who are not for
whatever multifaceted multimotive reasons are not actually
paying attention to what's going on in their kids' heads, much less their kids' lives.
They're just, they're just not, they're not dialed in. I think something
like less than half, and it might be even
higher than that now, of all families don't have at least one meal together
at night. Over what? Like, a week or a month?
Over, like, a week? Just just don't have it. They just don't
because they're they're and by the way, there are seasons in my life, I'll be
perfectly transparent on this, like, I'm currently in a season where we are struggling to
have a meal together every night because, like, just
schedules and all this other kind of stuff. Right? Because we added one more thing
in and then everything went to help. You know, the whole entire schedule went off
went off the table. But it's okay because it's only for 8 weeks. It's only
the one thing for 8 weeks and it's done. Right? And then we'll be back
to sort of some sense of, for us, normalcy. But I try to have
meals with my kids, like, every night of the week.
Like, how else am I gonna find out what's going on with my kids? Right?
Now, are there other ways can I have other conversations? Sure. Okay. But that
idea of the traditional communal table that everybody gathers around and
we exchange ideas about our day without by the way, you'll don't get to bring
a cell phone to the table. We're not bringing distractions. You're actually gonna look at
another human being over a meal and, like, have a conversation with
them. The the vast majority of people are not doing that. So if a parent
is not doing that with it, I would assert that a parent is not doing
that with their child. On a regular or semi regular basis, you
actually probably don't have a good clue of what's going on in your kid's head.
That's number 1. And then 2, the second dynamic
and this was actually not a point made by me. It's been a point made
by others. I'm just repeating it.
You complain about the cell phones, but you're the one is the parent that paid
for the plan. You're the one that put the iPhone 4 in that kid's
hand. That 14 year old doesn't have a job.
That 12 year old ain't going out and paying the $200 a
month, cell phone bill. You are the one that put the crack
cocaine in the kid's hand. Stop putting the
crack cocaine in the kid's hand. Oh, well,
but. Oh, well, but. There's all these oh, well, buts. I don't wanna hear about
your oh, well, buts. I came from when my mama had to
pick me up this is directly out of my experience. My mama had to pick
me up from an extracurricular activity. If I had to be sitting by behind on
the sidewalk waiting for my mama to come pick me up, guess what? Because my
mama forgot, and there were times my mama forgot. Same. Yeah.
Like and I didn't die. By the way by the way, did I inconvenience other
adults? Sure. Did they all look at her like she was inconveniencing
them? Absolutely. Did my mama care? Hell no.
She didn't care. She's like, I'm making money. What are you making?
Like, you eat my food. What? But be quiet. Get in the car. You're saying
this? So so Absolutely. That's the very that's the very
specific perspective that I think so I just I gotta be very clear
on that. Right? I get it. Other people had other experiences, yada yada yada. Okay.
Yeah. We have 2 generations of hand on parenting, and now we're doing this thing
called gentle parenting. I don't know what the hell that is. My point is
that if you're not
engaged with the kid and then you're giving the
kid technology, that's basically according to Jonathan height and he's not
incorrect. Again, mainlining dopamine
into your kid's system from a very early age when they can't even handle it.
I mean, Snapchat is marketed to 8 year olds. Okay?
And I've been on that Remember you remember when it was like a porn platform?
It was just for, like, something like like and and it's so funny because it's
not that anymore, but because I was an adult when it came out. Like, I
like, there for a while when it was, like, becoming, like, a social media
platform and brands were on there and everything. And I was like, what is, like,
what is it? Like, I was so stuck in the old conjecture that, like, I
wasn't able to kinda see that that they were trying to ship that and do
something different with it. You know? Right. Yeah. But, Yeah. But when you
have that, though, and that's and but and then and then you're going
to outsource your kids to and I don't think you and I have ever talked
about this on the podcast, but, you know, I me and my
wife, we try to homeschool our kids. Not track. We homeschool our kids. And we've
been doing that for many, many years if work was cool. Like, we've got systems
in place, all that. Right? This is part of the reason why we have tons
of books in our house. We have biblio files. Right? But the point is
you're outsourcing your kid for 8 hours a day to somebody
else who's putting ideas in their heads. Yep. And you
only have 2 to 4 hours a day. And by the way, if you're not
eating a meal with them, you have less time than that to counteract
those ideas or to just offer an alternative perspective.
Forget counteract, just offer an alternative perspective.
And by the way, you're going to do that for 12 years.
Those 3 ingredients just by themselves in the
pot are enough. And this is where the banned books comes in now,
are enough for me to question you yelling and screaming about books in the
library. Work on those three things first,
and then you can worry about books in the library. Well Books in
library are are the the they're the lab place. No. I agree
with you. Right? Like What are we doing? But but the perspective is,
well, I'm, you know, I'm paying money for these schools. It's therefore they they
should And and but but no one shows up to school board meetings to talk
about the curriculum. Yeah. Please. No. You know what I'm saying? So it's it's very
much this we all want what we want, but, you know,
we're not very good at the follow through to actually make it, like, actually happen.
Right? And, you know, the thing you said about, like, the
family dinner and everything, like, part of me is
wants to push back and be like, it
doesn't need to be a dinner. Right? It needs to be intentional time.
Right? And I think I I think right? And and this is not
to kinda, like, judge you or anything else like that. No. No. No. It's fine.
Go ahead. I think it's I think it's very easy to be like, okay. We're
all coming together at dinner and blah blah blah, and then kids get busy, and
then we're just mad about the sanctity of dinner not being what it once
was as opposed to, like, trying to take the action of, like, going and
having those conversations wherever you can have them because we prioritize them as
important. Mhmm. You know? So I am
also one of those people who says, and I want to
be intellectually and emotionally consistent on this.
You have to do what fits in the context of your life. That's why
we have a republic. Right? Okay.
It's not my job to, cast
aspersions, not judgment cast aspersions on whatever it is you may have to be
doing. It's also not your job to feel guilt about whatever you may
happen to be doing or not be doing. It's your job to kind of look
at the thing that you're doing and okay. And then the other dynamic
is, and this is something that I think a lot of people who are parents
struggle with, particularly younger parents, struggle with
this. I'm not in a,
I have not raised my children and I am not personally parenting in
a war against other parents. I'm not in a competition, but frame it that way.
I'm not in a competition because of the parents, whatever you want to do, you
do. However, the
things that I do with my kids are going to be the things that I'm
going to advocate for. They're sharing it as they're
doing business. Right. And, and you
know, when we talk about things like books, you know, or we
talk about things like larger ideas you're talking about and you're talking
about intentional time. Sure. If you're taking intentional time to talk about
stoicism with your kid. Cool. Let's take that additional time. Let's figure out where
that, what that, you know, focus time is and really be intentional about doing
that. I do think that we do have a
long. Not, I think I know we have a long history in
the west where we can trace certain no
guests. We could trace the transmission of culture to certain
traditional acts that occur first at a family level, and then are usually
scaled up to a nation state level. And by the way,
Jewish people I'll use them as a perfect example, very strong
traditions around Friday, Sabbath and Friday
meals. Mhmm. And
that's the thing that has transmuted that belief system,
you know, across destructions of temples and
damn near destructions of people for 5000
years. Traditions work. And I think one of the things we're struggling with right now
in the west is with the atomization of life and
the allowing of these other systems to come in and atomize us and break us
down into our smallest bits, which are of course the individual and then even
smaller than that. It also atomizes away the
traditions. And it just kind of blows those
up. And human beings don't do really well
in general without traditions and children in particular don't do really well
without traditions. There has to be some sort of cultural transmission process
here. Now books are weighted away. Knowledge. For sure. Right.
And how are we gonna do that intentionally in in our family based on the
context of whatever it is we're doing? So and that may sound like a giant
justification for what I just said, but it's not. Well, no. I I I just
think it's important to because I
could I could see fast forwarding. Right? And my daughter's a little bit older,
and she's got extra extracurricular stuff and then being pissed that she's not
prioritizing dinner because this is our time. You know?
Whereas, like, I think the parents, you know, if you wanna be part of your
kids' lives, you need to be intentional and insert yourself in the in the kids'
lives as opposed to expecting them to, you know,
effortlessly include you in everything. Sure. And I think you also have
to, understand that
and, again, this is probably how I was raised. The the
hierarchical structure, whatever because there was a structure. And where are you at
in the hierarchy? Right? And so, you
know, are you know, is the person that you're raising these kids with, are
they on the same page that you are on? Oh, yeah. You That's a
whole other That's a whole other conversation. Right. You know,
so, you know, it's, it's, it's about, it's
about fighting the appropriate, not fighting. I shouldn't say that
it's about negotiating. That's really what it is. You'll appreciate this as a salesperson. It's
about negotiating in the appropriate way, in the appropriate manner with the appropriate
person at the appropriate time and knowing where the negotiations go.
Right. And getting alignment as much as possible.
There going to be times of misalignment? Are there gonna be seasons of disruption and
of chaos for sure? But that can't be the whole life of the child. That
can't be the whole life of the family. Oh, I agree. 100% agree. Like You
know?
God. Like, there's so many tangents I could take this conversation down from that from
that just Just from that one. Basic idea. Right? Because Yeah. You know, people also
have a habit of rubbing off on each other, right, in close proximity. Right? Like,
part of the reason that the that the military works is you're all
in the same boat. Right? You've all made this this
decision, and you all have to deal with with the outcome. You
know? And you're you're learning how to become the
machine that the government thinks that they might need to call on. You know? And
like, that's always there, but no one's really talking about it and stuff.
But yeah, man. You know? And then,
you know, you get married, you start spending time with someone and, you know, just
like we were talking about before, well, this influencer, this person
knows knows a, b, and c just like I do. So
therefore, you know, d through z,
we're probably as well. We're probably on the same page. Right? We're
probably fine. Except the challenge is, like, d and c,
you're not on the same page and probably looking at that influencer
for advice about how you should lift your Exactly. Exactly. Right?
But a was solid. A was solid. Right? B's
b's maybe 80% of line, but then we get to c and it's like it's
like 25%. Well, Jordan Peterson says this thing, so I'm gonna go do it this
way. And it's like it's like, you know, you've you've you've missed the
opportunity to have your own critical conversations with yourself.
Bingo. And and those critical thinking skills come from.
Exactly. And, man, like, I love getting
to come and do these episodes with you because, like, I read these
books and I always know that after the conversation, I'm still mostly gonna feel
the way that I feel about it. But, like, because I I have deep trust
for you and I know that you're a thoughtful person.
I have some new perspective that I didn't have before. Right? And
that's what I love so much about the second point we need
leisure. Right. If you're running from book to book, to
book, to book, to book, to book, and you're never sitting and thinking
like, what did I get from this?
You're you're you're missing 9 tenths of the point. Right? And so it's
funny when you see these online social media things of like, well, I read 52
books. How much are you synthesizing, bro? Right? And that's always the
solution. Right? I read a lot. You know? I mean, I don't read as
much as Melissa does. Melissa reads about 50 books a year, but it's like, it's
like, it's, it's her number one pastime is reading, you know,
but I, I probably read 15 to 20, sometimes 30, depending upon the
year. But I'm also I'm also, because of what I
do, like, able to, like, let's go try this, and let's go try this, and
let's go try this. Right? And it's funny because I met up with a friend
of mine that I know digitally. He's an entrepreneur. We met an
entrepreneurial community. We've only been friends digitally. Right? But last year, he,
like, he sells to, like, airports and everything, like, $1,000,000,000 deals. Right?
Yeah. So he's in town. We meet up last year as I'm
going through the process of buying the house and everything. And then he came back
in town this year. He had to follow-up with a client and everything. And so
we met up again, and we were talking again. And it was so funny
because he pauses, and he was like, dude, like, how long has it been since
since we saw each other? And I was like, oh, I did the math, actually.
You know, it's been this long, you know, because that's who I am. And he
was like, you are miles
away different than where you were a year ago.
And I kinda had this moment of, like, duh.
Like, why wouldn't I be? Right? I'm on this path. I'm on I'm pushing
myself. I'm I'm challenging my ideas. Like, I'm I'm, like,
you know, helping people think about how they think. You know? Of course,
that's gonna kinda wash over onto me. So but it was this, like, very weird
moment of realizing most people don't change that much
over a decade. Oh, yeah. No. You know? Yeah.
So that that whole thing of, like, I'm looking for things to
implement. I'm looking for things to change and to try and to dole out and
to see how it works and everything else like this. And because my job is
what it is, I get the opportunity to be like, oh, well, that sounds like
an interesting anecdote. Let me go tell someone about it in relation to this other
thing and see how they deal with it, you know? And then when and then
when they show up later and they're like, oh, that what? You know?
I told people I was rereading this book. They're like, oh, what's that book about?
I've never read it before. And I'm like, it's it's a it's about a future
with no books, and then I can just leave it. Yep.
Right? And then and then they'll, like, okay. How's the book coming? You know? Like
like, oh, man. Pretty good. Right? Mhmm. So I get this
opportunity to, and this is this
is back to the true grit thing. You can have the map, but that's not
the same thing as being in the territory. Right. Right? And, like,
I'm in the territory all the time with people that are dealing with
changes of their own perception around leadership and sales and
marketing and positioning and spin. And are we spinning for the right
reasons? Are we spinning negatively? Are we telling them just what what we think that
they wanna hear? Are these things actually connected to the things we wanna build? Like
and there's there's so much in this as
like, I'm I'm curious as to your perspective on this as someone who works with
individuals and helps kind of Yep. Rack them open, if you will. Because, like, I
think on some level, like, I'm trying to wake people
up. I'm trying to get them to to stop thinking about, yeah, you can just
walk in the room and push hard enough, and they're gonna say yes. Because, like,
even if you can, let's talk about what happens after that. They ghost you. Right.
They stall. They churn. All these things that are bad, but, like, we're
all just happy that we, like, got our way, and it's like, guys, like, think
about the connective tissue here. You know? Mhmm. So it it's
very interesting as I'm going through, like,
I do get to take these ideas and and play with them and and try
to kinda get other people to think about them and stuff like that. Do you
do you see that in your work, or did that not really show
up for you as you were thinking about the book? Oh, yeah. I mean,
so one of the things
that's very interesting to me is I was having a conversation with somebody the other
day. And I won't obviously get into names or
relationships, but it was having a conversation with, and I was having a conversation
with someone the other day about how their,
one of their intimate relationships is in the process of being
redefined. Well, hopefully that's neutral enough
and not redefined in a positive direction. Right. Okay.
Yeah. And the conversation was very intimate.
There were a lot of details in there that were dropped.
I was like, oh, I kinda didn't know that. I didn't know that before. I
didn't know that before. I've known this person for a little while, but now we've
reached a certain level of trust where he can kind of, he can kind of
have this conversation with me. Okay, cool. And I
wound up. He didn't really ask for my advice. He was just really just
looking to kind of just, like, document dump and then move on.
But there were things that were in the conversation that we were
having that I thought he was missing that were critical.
And I literally said, hold on. Like I gotta, I gotta
give you advice here, whether you want to hear it or not. Like I really
do. Cause you're, you're, you're skipping like a rock over some of this
stuff and you're missing the deeper thing here.
And I went back to a couple of books that I've been reading,
you know, over the course of, this year. Right.
And a couple of conversations where, not
just with you, but with other hosts that I've had, where we distilled out some,
some ideas that I thought would be helpful for him. And I kind of gave
those ideas to him. And then I tied that into
sort of my personal life experience around some of the areas that are similar,
similar to, to him. Right.
And in the book that I'm
writing right now, the one I'm mashing around with, I can't get out of
the book is being driven by these
conversations. So these kinds of conversations I'm having with you are
driving the book, right? It's not a book based on the podcast, but
it's a book based on the conversations that I've been able and the critical thinking
I've been able to put behind. You know, coming up with these ideas and these
ways into these books. Like, one of the things that I do with these books
is I try to find a way in. Like, what's the way in
here? Right? And so the way into true grit
was sort of thinking about what does a character
look like who is claiming moral authority,
and is just rigidly committed to that moral authority. And she's
not gonna she ain't gonna move off her rock. You know? Yeah.
Maddie Ross says at some point, and it might have been in the movie too,
nothing's free by the grace of God.
You have to pay for everything in this world. And she was fine with paying
her price. Where do you run into someone like that? Like
ever in the world today now? Like, where do you run into somebody that's like
that? Just that rigidly committed? Many people
that I run into are loosey goosey. I run to a lot of loosey goosey
people who are kinda flopping all over the place. Now, again, your
mileage will probably vary. Yeah. I
okay. This is one of my favorite topics. Right? Because in in
the Well and I wanna draw I wanna draw that in in comparison to a
guy like captain Beatty, who I run into a lot of
captain Beatty's. Oh, yeah. A lot of those
folks. And those would drive me absolutely crazy, but go
ahead. I I I can't deal with the captain
Beatty's. Right? And so if I hear anything about, like, well, we're just gonna get
rid of these people and get new people, and that's gonna fix the problem. I'm
like, no. No. No. No. No. No. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
I'm forced I'm forced to turn see, the Maddie Rosses drive the captain babies
crazy. 100%. For sure. That that's the
that's the whole process of coin. That's the that's the Like like,
that's the other greatness of the whole thing. Right? But in the kung fu school,
one night, you know, I was, like, I was lamenting that, like, people
don't do kung fu. Right? But, really, I was wrapping it up in the idea
that people don't have lives because they they just finish work, and they go home,
and they sit on the couch, and they drink beer, and they watch TV. Right?
And I'm over here, and I'm doing a thing. Right? And, like, I was
drinking too much of the Kool Aid at the time. Right? You kinda have to
in those environments or else, you know, you don't get the good stuff, if you
will. Mhmm. And one of my friends, still friends with him, he
goes he goes, man, everyone has kung fu. But for most people, that kung fu
is watching TV. Right? There you go. And I know people and you know people
that watch UFC fights, and they can they can name off every one of those
moves. They know exactly what's happening. Like, and you and I also both know that
that being able to name those names is not going to help them against an
8 year old. You know what I'm saying? So I think
I think what what has happened is we you do see those people.
Right? You see black belts in jujitsu. That takes a level
of, like, nah. Not going your way. Right.
You know? Yeah. Business ownership. Right? You know, I
can't tell you this is gonna sound so bad. I can't tell you how
many people can't seem to figure out how to be productive for their
own intrinsic needs and to do it consistently enough that they can have a business.
Right? So they're almost like, oh my god, I hope I can spin up this
business before I get bored. And it's almost like they know about it, which is
very just interesting to me because I do think
it takes a little bit of, like, no. Screw you. Watch me go do this
thing to do any of these things. Yes. And I think that
that's I think that's Maddie Ross. It's just not
as, what's the word? It's
not as it's not as Concentrated, maybe?
It's not as is trying to build an archetype. That's the other thing 100%. For
sure. These authors are trying to build archetypes. Right? So there's an archetype of Capturably.
There's an archetype of Maddie Ross. Mhmm. There's an
archetype of we read War and Peace, one of our more downloaded episodes this
year. Mhmm. Just the first part of it, just like the first introduction. And it
is a masterclass in how to do business networking. It's a
masterclass in how to go to market, but it's a Russian party.
I need to go back and read that. Yeah. I go back and read like
the first, like 5 chapters. It is a masterclass in how to
network. It's a masterclass in how to run a networking
event. Right. And the way that Tolstoy describes
Anna Pavlovna going through and like making sure everybody's talked
to and everybody's got engaged with you, but it's, but it's old school,
aristocratic 19th century politeness. Yeah. That
we have just totally blown up and abandoned. We had a whole conversation about that
on our podcast to kind of the similar to the one we had of about
way of the samurai, but in a but in a Western, a more Western, a
more Western context. But mean, I like And that's
the archetypes that that that these these authors are building or archetypes. I'm
sorry. So one of my big shifts around networking was around this idea. Like,
I I hated small talk. Right? And my coach was always like and
and I was going to a sales coach. That way I could be a brass
tacks type and not have the small talk. Right?
Completely holding it with the wrong intention. Right? And,
my coach was like, you know what? You don't have to learn all this stuff
if you just play with people who were, like, good to play with.
Right? And he's, like, even trying to put it in my vernacular as a poker
player so that way I can understand it. And I'm still like, what? You know?
And he's like, don't try to sell people that don't want what you got, idiot.
You know? But I wasn't clear enough to see any of that stuff at the
time. But I network a lot now.
Right? I'm on I'm on Lunch Club, which is an AI driven
matchmaking service for networking. I've had 300
meetings alone on that platform.
And the the trick, the trick, if you will,
the my goal is I'm trying to find your kung
fu. Right? And so people come on the thing, and I'm not like,
well, how's your week going? What's the most exciting tell me about a time when
you struggled in your work. I'm like, what do you do on the weekends? What
do you do when you're not working? Right? And then and I'm going somewhere with
this because kung fu is a craft. Jujitsu is a
craft. Writing is a craft. Sales is also a craft. But if we don't have
this conversation, there's no way they're gonna be able to see it as a craft
unless they come from the territory kind of situation.
Yeah. So what I have found is the craziest
depths of, like, community and passion and
drive. Like, I talked to a guy who had 7 Cantina
Racer motorcycles inside of his garage because, like, that is his kung
fu, that is his jam, and he spent all of his all of his all
of his improvement time, his development time, his meditative time, his kaizen time, if
you will, on that. And I've met more and more people
that have odd, odd hobbies. Right? And I'm
saying this as someone who often gets looked at for having the weirdest hobbies on
the planet. Right? Like martial arts and poker and these sayings, I get
it. But it's only weird because you don't do it. Right.
Right? And so I think I think that
people have these drives to where they can be
that driven and that oriented and stuff. I just don't think that
people see it for what it is. Right? People are scared to turn
their hobby into their livelihood for all the reasons that make sense.
Right? There's lots of people like, I I had to have this
conversation with someone else of, god, do you really wanna carry
that much weight for someone else's thing? Because
you might just be someone who's better off working on your own, so that way
you can have the wider lane and stuff. And, you know, we all need
different things, but I think there's drive for everybody. You just have to
kinda, like, look for where you're already driven and pull the elements away from,
like, what makes you drive there and instill those in this other thing, and then
it's easier to drive. Well, and I think
And we gotta we gotta wrap up. We're we're way off on this. But, hey,
surprise, guys. If you listen to the other ones, you knew this was gonna happen.
Right? Congratulations. Everybody drink. Take your shot.
Well well, one of the this well, that actually it actually ties into where we're
gonna gonna go towards at the end here.
So one of the things that that kind of that I'm sort of starting to
noodle with another idea of sort sort of starting to do with I'll do it
through the science fiction books because we're gonna read dune here. Dune's coming
up. I'm finally on the back end of Dune.
Well, I found a person who's really passionate about Dune, like really passionate
about Dune. I wish it was me because, like,
my wife is, like, a Dune fanatic. And I'm just like talk to
her. You should have heard her. Like like, when
I finally read it because I read it late. I didn't read it, kid. Right?
And so then reading it late, I was like, oh, this is the same messiah
story that I've just seen over and over and over. And she's like, no. It's
the messiah story. And I'm like, no. It's not.
No. But,
like, that idea, right, talking about writing and
everything. And I I got kinda got stuck on my book, so I dug into,
Brandon Sanderson's lectures on creative writing.
Right? Mhmm. A little stuff. And the thing that he says in there that blew
my mind is that it's always a cliche until you do it so well that
people forget that it's a cliche. Right. Oh, that's like some
Robert McKee level stuff right there. Man, it I was like,
oh, I'm so glad I'm watching these free YouTube videos. Like, well, you know, like,
I could be watching cat memes, but this is inherently more specific.
This is better. A bit. But I think I think when
we the idea in science fiction
is that tomorrow well, no. I've been playing
with a couple ideas in my shorts episodes. First off
that most science fiction, particularly dystopian science fiction, even utopian
science fiction, but let's talk about the dystopias because we always like those better. Oh
yeah. Dystopian science fiction is a reflection of whoever
the author is, their current anxieties or whatever moment they're writing it. A 100%.
And a buddy of mine actually told me that years ago, and I was like,
you're full of crap. No. It actually turns out he was correct. I was wrong.
He was right. Okay. He'll be he'll be happy to hear this.
We have that kind of relationship. He'll be happy to hear this.
But the layer that's on top of which is why, by the way,
Star Trek can never really fully be replicated, and I'll just
I I don't believe it fully can be. I think the Paramount will always continue
to screw that property up for a very specific reason. And the specific
reason is that Gene Roddenberry created something that went
against the anxieties of his of his era, and
he went into positive direction. And it's really hard to do a
positive. It's easier to do a negative. That's why you have so many dystopians or
dystopias versus utopias. Anyway And, like, it's perfect
except this one big, huge clearing hole. You know what I'm saying? Because it's Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah. We're all just jaded. All just jaded. Exactly.
Yep. But when you look
oh, I got that. What oh, I heard you.
One of the things that's interesting to me, and I I think about it in
the context I mean, you have kids. I have kids. I think about it in
the context of our children is what do we owe?
What are the people living now? Oh, the people that are yet to be born.
What do we owe? Because there will be people tomorrow. This is like, and maybe
it's a thing where I'm starting to really comprehend my own mortality now,
in my mid forties. Mhmm. But there will be a time when Haysan Sorrells
and John Hill and all of the other hosts that I have cohosts that
I've had on my show, our voices will no longer be in the world.
They just they just won't be there anymore. And yes, the internet,
the riff off of Ronald Reagan a little bit, the internet might be like a
government program. It might be the closest thing that we have to immortality,
which, you know, I don't know that I want
my voice and I know the AI has come along. I don't know
that I want my voice resurrected with my old. You
know, podcast episodes so that people can hear. I don't know that I want
that. I'm kinda I'm sort of struggling I'm sort of
struggling with the idea of that right now. But the
concept even deeper than that is,
if I just put out Pablum, then Pablum is gonna influence the
future. Yes. So there's not real wisdom there. Right? So if
I put out wisdom, then wisdom will influence the future. Right? So what
do I owe people who I will not
meet? Because at at best, if I live to be a 100 years
old, which by the way, I consider middle age to be 50, middle age meaning
the middle of between your porn and your die. So I like, I mean, I
don't I don't plan on dying at, like, 90. I'm sure you're looking for
happen. It's like they might yeah. I I have, like, 10th century. Now, of course,
especially plants with mice and men, I'm not in charge of that. Okay. I am
I am I have a I have a death list of things that I
must do, and that is set to complete by the
time that I'm 75 because, you know, I'm
not, I'm not pushing everything off to the right. And
I think that that's where people start to get sideways with this stuff, but I
have the bucket list that will be done by this time, but I am hoping
to hit triple digits. Okay. So so it's a it's a it's a very interesting
kind of duality, I think. But the
relationships that we have are the things that that go to the future.
And even that they only go maybe 2, 3 generations down. And then our names
sort of fall out of like, how often do you think about your great, great,
your great grandfather or your great, great grandfather, right? Like not a
lot, you know? And so, and eventually, at a
certain point, the name of Hazon or the name of John is
just we're done. Like, we're out of the right? But the things that
we leave behind, the things that are permanent, the things that are important
are the things that we owe the future. And
I don't think we can experience apathy in the face of that,
but I also don't think that frenetic action is is is the way
for it either. I agree. And so these
books, these science fiction books create a template where
unlike maybe a tragedy like king
Lear, right. Or a epic tale,
like, you know, war and peace
or a set of poems. Like, we covered the the Shakespeare sonnets love poems. We
just did that. Right? Or Lolita. That was a tough
book. Oh, yeah. Nabokov. That was hard. And by the way,
I was not the one that suggested it. It was my female cohost.
So I would not have I would not have touched it, but she suggested it.
And we we we went through it. You're gonna go you're gonna wanna go listen
to that episode. Yeah. That'd be great. Yeah. It
was it was a hard read. But what do we owe the
future? Right? What do we owe people that we have not even
met yet? And science fiction plays with that.
Science fiction plays with the ideas of what happens in the far flung future, what
happens with people 50, you know, a 100 years from now
who we'll never meet. Isaac Asimov talks about this
or really, this is the underpinning of I, Robot. This is also the underpinning
of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, weirdly enough. This
is the underpinning of, do androids dream of, you know,
electric sheep. This is the underpinning of Heinlein's
almost all of Heinlein's work. In a 100 years, what
will we owe people because of the decisions we've made now? And
that is something that I'm sitting with right now because I don't know what
the answer to that is.
I do know that the container, for me anyway,
for my mileage, the container of the republic is the thing
that I'd like to see last another 100 years, but I'm not in charge of
that completely. I can do my own little contribution to that.
But, fundamentally, it's gonna take 300,000,000 people to, like, agree and
walk in the same direction and Yeah. Look at that. Do that. Right.
Oh, well, I think I think if you get more than 50%, we're gonna walk
in a particular direction. Like, that's I think that's just sort of how it goes.
And everybody else then just gets dragged along in the wake of it.
But beyond that, I will be honest.
I don't know. I don't have a
clue. And I don't have a clue
because I'm not blown away by gee
whiz technology anymore. I'm not blown away by the next
technological revolution anymore. I've been through 4
technological revolutions. You have too. We've been through 4 technological revolutions. I
mean, remember when blockchain was gonna change everything? Mhmm. Mhmm. Do you
remember that? Yeah. Okay. Right. And now we're onto, like, AI that has
run out of quality to to run out of quality
content to scrape off the top of the Internet. And now
the AI researchers, the wizards are smart, wanna use AI
content created by other AIs.
What are we doing? Agreed. Right. So I've, I've
already had, and maybe it's my Jada gen X idea,
but I'm, I've been oversold the revolution and I've been through 4
of them already. Mhmm. Go ahead. Hit me up with the 5th one, maybe a
6th one. It's fine. There's things that are still gonna be
permanent in that. Right? Yep. But, again, what do
we owe the future? What do I owe those people ahead of us? And I
think Bradbury would say, we owe them books.
I think he would say that we owe we owe
them ideas. That's why favor speech is important. We
owe them those three things. We owe them quality, leisure, time, and then we
owe them the pores of the ideas that the books have.
And then we just sort of admit that we have no control over them, and
we just let them go make the decisions that they're gonna make,
whatever those decisions are.
But and I don't know if that's the whole answer. I think maybe it might
be a part of the answer. I think it's so funny because we were both
talking about being stuck in our writing a little bit before
we turned on the recording, you know, just kinda limiting. And,
you know, I wanna do a really good job. Right? Like,
I'm trying to write, like, a quality of dialogue and content
that's supposed to reflect that mentor mentee relationship.
And, like, when you're in that kind of flow state of conversation
and there's trust, but you're being pushed, you're you're having perspective shifts right
there in front of another human being, I think that that is dope
and rad. And I'm putting myself under immense pressure to do this and do a
good job of it. And then I'm also also trying to hold, no one's
gonna care at all, man. And,
like, not even 25 years from now, like, no one might even
care, like, the day after I put it out. You know what I'm saying? And,
like, then do I still wanna do it? Do I
still think it's important if I if I if I pull that much
zoom out in, like and I think that
that's where it meets the road, like like like for what for what is the
purpose. Right? And I liked what you said about, you know, you don't
want to be reanimated later so that way everyone can, like, make fun of you
because the ideas will have shifted because that's that's, like, how we do. But
I was reading an article and it had one of the Beastie Boys on there
and he was talking about how, like, no one who's 14, 15,
16 should be listening to the Beastie Boys because, like, it's not for
them. You know what I'm saying? That's true. He's he's probably right.
Listening to brand new punk rock that's, like, let's that's causing
awareness and getting political about the things that are important now.
And I just really appreciated his, like, I'm really glad that
we've gotten to do this cool stuff, but, like, I'm also very aware that, like,
we're, like, aging on the shelf. You know?
So I think I think where people go wrong is the is the
they want to make it too much about like their idea.
Yeah. Right. And I I've seen this in books. I know you've seen this in
books. I mean, you've seen this all over LinkedIn and everything. I was like, I'm
going to take this idea. I'm going to slap new labels on it. And then
it's holistically mine. And, like, look how great I am. And, you know,
it's, like, that game is not
winnable, I don't think. Right? And you're just gonna get your
ego crushed and, you know, find something else to do.
But, like, I think if you're coming from, like
and this is the hardest part because, like, we're not even aware of the biases
we hold. Right? Like,
I love the idea a couple years ago that there was this big thing about
what was it, is digital photography. And black
black people didn't show up well on digital photography, and and it was
like this big bias. And and, like, yeah, it it it it is a bias.
It's something we need to work on, but, like, it wasn't intentional.
You know? Like like like, no one was like, hey. Let's let's build a technology
that, like, puts white people, like, in photos, but but not black
people. Like, it was, like, it was unintentional. It needs to be fixed.
Right. But let's not go demonize the people that were, like,
found something that forever changed everything else after
them. Right? So, like, I think we get way too fixated on our
impactful change, like like, at an individual level
Mhmm. As opposed to, like, thinking to where, like, we could have a meaningful
change. Like, for me, for my sales stuff, I'm I'm
under no delusion that a
100 years from now, people are talking about Sherpa and the way that I
talk about it, the way that I talk about it, unless something changes and I
start growing and and build an empire and all this other stuff.
But I, like, I also can't think about
I can't envision a world to where the ideas that I'm talking
about won't benefit the individual.
Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And I think some people
and business books are this way as well. Here's the thing I did once, and
because I did it, it was epic. Right? The whole Nassib,
or Nassim Taleb stuff. Right? Like Oh, yeah. Mhmm. Like, just because
you did it, doesn't mean you can do it again. You know? Right. It's not
a non what is it? Something about non repeatable. I can't remember what you're talking
about. Yeah. Right? And it's like, we we have those people. I did this once.
It's gonna work a 1000 times. Like, you should buy my course in my program.
It's only 47.99, and here's a step up to, like, $9,000 and all this stuff
that we're seeing all over the place. And it's, like, I think I
think if you're too ego driven around the change that you wanna
make, you bog yourself down to where, like, it's impossible to have any
lasting impact if you're not suspicious pushing that rock up the
hill. But I think if your intentions are
solid I'm not trying to tell I'm not trying to teach people how to
sell at the expense of other people. I'm teaching
people you need to listen, you need to ask better questions, you need to have
some curiosity. I hope that continues to be, like,
needed and and, you know, a best practice a 150
years into the future. Now my version of it probably doesn't need to
continue the way that it is, but I'm hopeful that the foundation has some
value. I think that's a good place
to stop. I'm thinking we'll let John have the last word
today. And all I'm gonna say is, well, thank you,
John, for coming on the podcast today. With that,
we're out.