Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the
Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number
one forty three. Today
on the show, we will be talking about we'll be
dissecting. We will be examining,
what some folks might consider to be gossamer,
humorous doggerel, a little bit of light
verse. We will be looking at the
rhymes, verses, lyrics, and poems of a what I
consider to be a genuine poetic master, a
person who came out of the middle part of the twentieth century
and started in the world of marketing, way back
when they really needed a jingle. They really needed something to
rhyme for you to remember, the name of
the product. He was somewhat good at that, but then he
turned his hand to verse. And, well,
poetry is really, in essence,
the, soundtrack of our lives. Poetry is everywhere.
Poetry is in music. As my daughter tells me,
poetry is in, is in the marketing
and it's in the jingles, but poetry is also in the air.
And so we are going to talk about we're going to examine. We're going
to dissect, like I said, what might be considered by some to be
lighthearted gossamer and a relatively lighthearted conversation,
with our very special guest who also talked with us about
poetry a few episodes ago, and I'll introduce him in
just a second. But today, we're going to be
covering, the selected poetry
of Ogden Nash, a truly
great American poet.
Leaders, if you're going to write poetry, at
least make it something that rhymes at the end.
And today on the show, as I said, we will be joined by our special
guest who, just discussed Tennyson with us with
Moumin Quazi. You should go back and check out that episode,
from November of He was awesome. Yes. He was awesome for November of
last year, and who also has come on and talked with us
about Othello and was on with us with the one hundredth
anniversary episode. Longtime personal friend of mine and a good friend
of the show, Ryan Stout. How are you doing, Ryan? I
could not be better, my friend. Thank you kindly for the gracious introduction.
It's, it's, wonderful to be here as always.
Absolutely. Absolutely. It's Wonderful to have you. So we're
going to start off here with a bit of poetry
from Ogden Nash. Let's start off with this one.
Old is for books.
A poet named Robert Browning eloped with a poetess named Elizabeth Barrett.
And since he had an independent income, they lived in an Italian villa instead
of a London garret. He created quite a furer with
his elusive caesura. He also created a
youthful sage, a certain rabbi, Ben Ezra, who urged people
to hurry up and age. This fledgling said, grow
old along with me. The best is yet to be. I term him
fledgling because such a statement, Surcedes, could
emanate only from a youngster in his thirties.
I have a friend named Ben Azara who is far from a fledgling.
Indeed, he is more like from the bottom of the sea of life, a
barnacled dredgling. He tells me that as the year slipped
by, he has become utterly dependent on his wife because he has
forgotten how to tie his tie. He says he sleeps after
luncheon instead of at night, and he hates to face his
shaving mirror because although his remaining hair is brown, his mustache
comes out red and his beard comes out white. Furthermore,
he says that last week, he was stranded for thirty six hours in his club
because he couldn't get out of the tub. He says he was
miserable, but when he reflected that the same thing probably
eventually happened to rabbi Ben Ezra, it relieved
his misra.
From the selected poems of Ogden Nash, I'm going
to put some information from the
introduction by Archibald MacLeish from my my
version of the selected poetry of Ogden Nash and a little bit of the life
of Ogden Nash.
Archibald begins with Ogden's death, his obituary,
actually, in the New York Times, which was titled under the
heading master of light verse dies.
MacLeish takes umbrage, such as it were,
with the the three things that are wrong in
those five words. He says that Nash's most important
and most characteristic work is not inverse. It is not
light. And his mastery, which was real enough, had nothing to do with a
combination of the two. Talks
about, Nash and talks about,
how he put together his work, but this is
maybe more important. Nash's first New Yorker
publication, this is quoting directly from MacLeish, shows how the form
began. It was a piece written in 1930 when mister Herbert Hoover's
plateau of permanent prosperity had collapsed into the great depression, carrying a
generation with it. Most painfully, a generation of the young.
Nash was 28, a failed prep school teacher, a failed bond salesman,
a failed sonneteer, supporting himself, if that is the term, by
composing advertising copy for a New York publisher. He was
approaching the age at which a young man's commitment to art can no longer survive
on hope. After 30, failure
begins to taste of finality, and it becomes harder and harder to try again. But
as one approaches 30, things have a way of happening, and they
differ Ogden Nash in his grubby office. On that nineteen thirty afternoon, he
found himself, or if not precisely himself, in a form of language he could
speak. It fell into a half a dozen more or less rhymed couplets, which he
might have well called, but didn't, portrait of the artist as a young
man, and it changed his life. It ended the failure, began
a considerable literary success, and more astonishing than either
altered or began to alter the relation of his contemporaries to the time
in which they lived. And by the way, we give an example of this,
MacLeish quotes from, Ogden Nash's
poetry. I sit in an office at 02:44 Madison Avenue,
and I say to myself, you have a responsible job avenue.
Why then do you fritter away your time on this dogga roll? If you have
a sore throat, you can cure it by using a good dogga
roll.
Ogden Nash is considered to be by many
a satirist. Right? He's considered to be not a
serious poet, but that's a mistake. He
was deadly serious about putting together his verse and
putting together his poems. He was also deadly
serious about getting them out into the public. And he was, of course,
because he was writing advertising copy, and because he he started out writing
matter writing, advertising copy. He was deadly serious
in marketing himself. But in all other areas, he
was not deadly serious at all. So we're
going to talk a little bit about Ogden Ash, the American poet,
who was born August '2 and died
05/19/1971.
And he wrote 500 pieces of poetry and was considered
by The New York Times, again, to be the country's best known producer
of humorous poetry. So let's start
off with this. Ryan Stout, what do
you like about Ogden Nash or dislike?
What is that? Creating your own words
Need to love that. Fulfill a rhyme scheme
Mhmm. Is
so, like, perversely genius and
also, like,
it's it so there's there's a I think I brought this up before. There's a
there's a scene in Thank You for Smoking Mhmm. Yes.
Where, Rob Lowe is talking to Aaron
Eckhart. Mhmm. And they're like, yes. That's when we introduce
smoking into outer space. And then it's like, yeah. But you can't smoke in
space because the oxygen. And it's like, yeah. But that's just one line of dialogue.
Right. Thank god we could smoke in space now because so and so invented
the blah blah blah. Right. You know? So,
it's it's he reminds me of, like
Oscar Wilde and how there was,
well, sort of like a there's a farcical. There's a
there's there's a the humorous you know, it's
it's this it's this other sort of thing that takes its
own intelligence and seriousness in order to convey
and still remain humorous. Mhmm. I don't think you can do the
one without the other because the depth,
I don't know, exists if you
just throw whimsy on the wall without Right. Without the foundational
understanding of, the intricacies of how those
things weave together. Well, he also seemed and in
looking at his, Wikipedia article, which I'll read a little bit from that as well.
He, it seemed as though he had a, to your
point, had a knack for thinking around a corner. So
maybe one of the reasons why I like his poetry, a, because I have a
prejudice in favor of poetry than rhymes.
Tennyson was a real struggle for me, I'll admit. And most poetry is a real
struggle for me, because it doesn't rhyme, and I see no point in it. And
then I've gotta, like, get my brain to to operate in sort of, like,
contemplating a run on sentence, and my brain hates that. It just
it's friction. It's like a little little grit rolling around in, like, the shell.
Right? And I can do it. Like, I have the discipline for it. And I
keep waiting for a pearl to pop out, and it just it just doesn't. Yes.
But with Nash, Nash is more like Eminem
or Kanye West, where, like, they're just making up words at the end to fit
to your point to fit a rhyming scheme. And I think that actually is
more requires more creativity than
sort of the more prose versus
nature. I I don't know. Am I wrong in that? Because I'm not a I'm
not a poetry guy. It is you know, it it's
some some men like no salt for their affair.
Other men live on straight pepper diets. It's really like what is
I mean, look at E. E. Cummings. Look at so many
poets who it's it's not necessarily the genre
or the verse or the stylings that it's like you
know, just like, who's the splatter
poet? Oh, Jackson Pollock. Jackson Pollock. I mean,
Jackson Pollock could could paint an exact replica of
you. Oh, yeah. But he arrived at
that. Do you know what I mean? So it's like Ogden
Nash had to go through all of the copy and all of
that because that provided all of the insight and all the
knowledge and all the, like like, the he got, like, a a a,
like, a a doctorate in
what makes people tick Right. And and
contributing to that. So, I mean, there's there's so
stylistically, I think it's kind of whatever
kinda comes out of the you know, I think most writers,
you know, would say that I mean, it's coming from somewhere. They're just kind of
like the you know, they're just the channel or the The channel. Vessel. You know?
Yeah. Yeah. But Well, that's okay. So that's interesting.
So, like, Stephen King on writing. We've talked about on writing before on
this. I met Stephen King before. So let me not let
me not mention him again other than say his name there. Many
writers I was actually just looking up something the other day, and I was trying
to find, like, Ernest Hemingway quotes about writing. Right? You
know? And Hemingway
believed that talking about writing killed
it. And so he would he didn't really like talking about writing.
Right? And a lot of writers believe that. Right? Because, like, he's walking
around with f Scott Fitzgerald, and that guy's wackadoo anyway.
And so, like, you know, like, the less you get f
Scott to talk about writing, the more maybe he'll actually go out and do the
act of writing. And so that imprinted on Hemingway, I think, very young, and he
was like, oh, I'm gonna take that lesson. But
poets seem to be
they seem to operate in general versus prose writers. And
Tennyson is one of those guys that sort of is a crossover guy. Right? So
he's the Allen Iverson of, like, all of this.
But and and probably Shakespeare too, writing sonnets,
then going off in writing plays. But the
the mental switch you have to do
to write verse and then to go
back into into write, and to write
prose seems to me
to be not innate. That seems to be
something you really have to struggle at or you really have to learn. Is is
that am I onto something here? My my my
experience my experience writing poetry, it's it is interesting because you
talked about spoke about songs. And it's I've been writing
poems and songs for,
you know, twenty year over twenty years, and
none of my poems are like songs.
You know? Do you know what I mean? So it's like this weird there is
this weird it's like I can look at something that's eight lines
and say, oh, that was supposed to be a song. Or look at it and
go, oh, no. That's a that's a poem. Absolutely. And so and when
I look at my own writing, it is clear as day if there's a
distinction between the two. Now what's motivating
it? And and
back to your point about, like, the stock, I often would write
things in chunks. Okay. So I would write,
like, 10 songs in one sitting or write, like,
25 poems in the course of, like, you know, a six hour
period. Okay. You know? So there's a lot of times I would chunk
the work. Right. And a lot of times,
it was basically starting off with an idea, and
then that idea became five or
six different things. Oh, okay. To kinda, like, pick and choose the best
one out of that. Okay. Because that's more of along the lines of,
like, Anne Lamott, who did a book called Bird
by Bird. Okay. It's it's incredible. I've I I I recommend it
to to anyone who's aspiring to writing or just to wanna
read a good book around writing. She's really hysterical. She's also in recovery
and and talks about her son a lot.
And one of the,
you know, she she one of her exercises is you start with an imaginary
picture, and then you just frame. You just you
just create a frame, and then what do you see in the frame?
And then you write that out to depth. You write the scene until
and so so much of it is just about
the act of writing and doing the writing.
So I'm not sure if, you know, Ogden
Nash was like, I'm gonna sit down and write a poem called oldest for
books. Right. And then kind of came up with
this, which because he came from the
copy world, very much, well, could have been the situation.
Right. Well, like you said, thank I can thank you for smoking. We're gonna smoke
in space, and then we'll work backwards from there. It's fine.
Well, in marketing writing so this is the thing. So we covered
David Ogilvy's great book. So we're throwing out books
here. Gosh. In an episode earlier
earlier this year, the beginning of this year called the Confessions of an Advertising Man.
Right? And Ogilvy's writing
and we don't cover business books on this podcast. We just we just don't. That's
not something that we do. But Ogilvy's writing
is so
much like fictional prose
even though he's giving facts.
But you see how he came up with advertising copy in the sixties and
'7. Like, he was he was a giant of advertising copy. So the show Mad
Men is based off of David Oglebay. Yeah. That's the guy. That's the
guy. He's the guy. Like, when he says,
you know, we're pitching this in this
particular way or one of his great one of his great lines in the book
is, oh, yeah. Check your parks in all of your cities. You'll
find no statues to committees. That's brilliant.
That's that's brilliant. That's brilliant. Or,
like, if you look at any Life magazine or Time magazine
between, like, 1962 and 1982, he
probably wrote the copy for all of those ads you're reading.
Mhmm. Cigarettes, bourbon, cars
within, the American, like, post war
dream. He created all of that in market. And so you all he almost
had no choice but to become at least a cursory
sort of superficial I I know this is an oxymoron, but, like, a
superficial expert Yeah. On myriad
of of of goods that people are consuming. So you get
inside the human psyche. Right. And and you
play around in there. That's that box you're talking about. Like, that's that frame. The
frame is, like, just a little tiny piece. I love that. The frame is a
tiny piece of the human psyche, and then you just jump into that. And he
used to always say, I I don't know if he wrote it in Confessions of
an Advertising Man or his second book, Old Beyond Advertising. You should get
both of those. If you don't care about advertising, you should get them because, like,
my god, the writing is just insane. But, but,
he said that, people would always ask him, like, how do you write? And he
would say, oh, I go into my office with, with a bottle
of bourbon, a glass, a notebook, and a, and a number
two pencil, and I come out and there's stuff. And
I'm like, that's that's brilliant. No. I would I
can't I can't write with bourbon. I can't write on bourbon. I've tried. I can't
write on bourbon. It doesn't work for me. Well, I said, who's who's who is
it, I guess, may it may have been,
you know, work drunk edit sober, whoever that was.
But that's a some some famous writer said that. I'll
it might have been Cormac McCarthy. That's usually something he would he would he would
advocate for. Anyway, I can't put that on the man. I can't. But
anyway, I I don't know for sure. We'll we'll look that up. But my point
is, like, Dolby was brilliant, and Nash came out of that
that era of time when the model a and the model t
were really coming into the forefront. And so there were new these new products and
goods and services that needed to be sold to people,
and radio was the primary way of selling it.
So you had to build just like with podcasting, you
had to build a story for people that they could connect
with. And by the way, these people were way the hell more literate even than
we are. Like, we're, you know, a hundred years into
overwhelmingly being an overwhelming visual culture.
These people were not. They were coming out of an overwhelmingly
literate culture. Like, everybody knew the bible back and forth whether they
believed in it or not wasn't relevant. They knew it. And
they read novels. Novels were designed to be read out
loud, and the new medium of radio
was wrecking everything by creating
real time, information for folks. And,
of course, advertisers were doing as they are doing right now with the
Internet and with AI and every other freaking thing. They were
using it just to sell people more stuff and to separate them from their money.
Well, it's kind of the beginning of consumerism. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The twenties and thirties? Oh, yeah. I mean, that kinda got a
dent into it. It was a dent was laid into it with the great depression.
But, yeah, in the in the twenties in The United States, people were spending like
drunken sailors. At least that's
the myth. That's the myth that we're told. But it it it it just it's
kinda it's so congruent with that because it's sing songy. It's
fun. It's new. It's like you're saying. It's whimsical. Mhmm. It's
memorable. And so you have like you're saying, I
mean, you know, like you were saying earlier, it all kinda checks out. You know,
it was it was the zeitgeist at the time was moving this direction,
and Ogden Nash, you know, he was part of it. Part of the zeitgeist at
the time. That's funny. I do. I do like that word
zeitgeist. I do. I must admit I like that word. Archibald MacLeish says in
his introduction to, to this book of poetry and I
wanna read this because we're talking about verse, and then we'll go we'll go back
to the back to another poem. But he says verse, as distinguished from
prose, is a form of composition founded on the line.
Even what used to be called a quote, unquote free verse, particularly what used to
be called quote, unquote free verse, I don't know why that's
that's twice, is composed of lines. In prose,
the basic element of structure is the sentence. In verse, the sentence makes its
peace with the line where the whole thing collapses. In
prose, the hearing ear pays no attention to the lines end at the margin of
the page. In verse, it is the lines end the ear is
waiting for, close quote. I thought
that was and and, actually, that kind of broke brought it home for me a
little bit for why I like NASH because it just sort of it
it hangs there, but then it rhymes with the next thing. And so it kinda
brings you mentally it it sort of mentally dominoes it for you,
and then it, like, closes at the end versus something that's free
verse where you're just sort of wandering around at the end of a cul de
sac. Yeah. It's kinda like, you know, total music versus
atonal music or, you know, pop music versus you know, there's
there's, it's it's
it and and to go through, like, different phases and stages
because, it, I mean, if correct me if I'm wrong, but it's
in the first isn't
machinery doesn't answer. But
that's that's that's written in a
a prosy. But it it it It yeah. It's
written in a prosy kind of styles. Yeah. Form.
But, yeah, I guess it but in the same sense, it's
it it rhymes. Right.
Definitely rhymes. It rhymes, which, I mean, to me, again, I I like
my I I and you know what? My kids tell me that I have a,
I have a terrible ear, but I I do like my
poetry to rhyme. I don't know. I'm a terrible person.
It's but it's it's it's no. Insaniacs?
Come on. Yeah. It's a tremendous
word. It is a tremendous word. Well, and to your
point, like, the idea that
you would make up a word, right, in
order to just to get a rhyme.
Just to like like, that takes that takes a certain level
of just commitment to
and this comes from the copy world, the advertising world. This takes a certain
level of commitment to for want of a better term,
and if you're listening to this in a in a in a car with
a child, you know, mark this and then mute it and
come right back. But it takes a certain level of
willingness to fuck with the audience.
Yeah. You know? And and and
I think that's what would exhaust certain people who like more of the free
verse kind of poetry because it's a little
it's a little more like, oh, serious, literary,
Alastair Begg. You know? Whereas, like, Ogden
Nash is more like, I don't know, Laurel and Hardy.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because of yeah. So let's move
let's move on to, what's the next one? Every day is a Monday.
Every day is a Monday. Yeah. Let's move on to that one. Let's take a
look at that. Back to the book, back to
the collected poetry of of of Ogden Nash.
We're gonna we're gonna do this one. Every day is Monday.
Monday is the day that everything starts all over again.
Monday is the day when just as you are beginning to feel peaceful, you have
to get up and get dressed to put on your old gray bonnet and drive
down to Dover again. It is the day when life becomes
grotesque again because it is the day when you have to face your desk
again. When the telephone rings on Saturday or Sunday,
you are pleased because it probably means something pleasing, and you take the call
with agility. But when it rings on any other day,
it just usually means some additional responsibility.
And if in doubt, why the best thing to do is to answer it in
a foreign accent, or if you are a foreigner, answer it in a native accent
and say you are out. Oh, there is not a weekday
moment that can't ring a sigh from you because you are always being
confronted with people who want to sell you something. Or if they don't want
to sell you something, there is something they want to buy from you.
And every shining hour swaggers arrogantly up to you demanding to be
improved. And apparently, not only to improve it, but also to shine
it is what you are behooved. Oh, for a remedy. Oh, for
a panacea. Oh, for a something. Oh, yes. Oh, for a comma
or a swoon. Yes, indeed. Or
oh, for a coma that would last from 9AM on
Monday until Saturday noon.
So so he uses he uses comma
and coma.
So alright. Well, you asked me my favorite. So he uses he uses
Yeah. In, old books Yes. At the
end of a line Yeah. And it means to cut a line in
half. So that's I
thought that was really funny and and and sharp to end a
line like that and then the the following line. That's funny and sharp.
The co coma and comma. Coma and comma.
Okay. So what would like, here's a here's a question for us. What would Ogden
Nash make of Twitter? Would he be a Tweeter?
I think he would he'd be the person
that it's just understood that everyone follows. Right.
Yeah. I think that guy would get lit on there. I don't think he would
get into literary fights with other folks. Like, I don't think he would have, like,
he'd be, like, chirping at, like well, I already mentioned
Fitzgerald. I think the Fitzgerald and Dos Passos and Hemingway would all be torp
chirping at each other, like, all the time. Like, Hemingway would just threaten to come
over to somebody's house and kick his ass if he was aware.
Because that's just how Hemingway acquired. And I think he
would have been, like, really, really, what do you call it,
susceptible to the dopaminergic rush of Twitter of tweeting. I
think Fitzgerald would have been one of those people that tweets and then runs
away. And Dos
Passos would have tweeted, like, like, just walls of
text. Just walls of text. Just for no reason at all.
Just like to explain stuff. You're just an explainer, aren't you? I've I've
been every single one of those people on different
I'm not on social media anymore at all. But, like, at some point or other,
there's been, like, I was gonna all those dudes. Right. And it's I don't think
any of them are great. No. They're not.
But I I sort of laugh because, like, one of my assertions on
the show is that technology doesn't
make us what we are. It just exposes
more of what we always were. Right? It's just another door to
open, like, with the LL with the large language models and the and
the artificial intelligence models that people are using now, some of
which they're using to write novels and write poetry and claiming that it's as good
as anything that humans produce, which we're gonna talk about that in a minute.
But, you know, the idea
that a large language model is going to
somehow, you know, reveal a new level of evil in human
beings is no. It won't reveal a new level. Like, there'll be
the same old level that it's always been. It's just a new tool to get
into sort of, you know, manifest that sucker in the world.
And so I look at things like Twitter, and I think of these these these
literary folks. And I think Ogden Nash would have been
the fourth kind of Tweeter who who tweets really, like,
quirky not quirky. He would have been the Norm
Macdonald of Twitter. Norm Macdonald, when he was alive, he tweeted one
tweet every year, and everybody, like, waited for it, and then he just walked
away. And it was, like, the most brilliant move ever
because it's so, like, I don't need this.
But, apparently, you people do, so I'll throw you,
like, brick top in a Yeah. In a in in a what was that movie
way back in the day? A a a snatch. Snatch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. When
I throw a dog a bone, I don't wanna know how it tastes. I just
want you to say thank you. Yeah. It it's
I like, sorry. You might have to edit this out.
I've I've I've there's there's one thing that I want to say and talk about,
but it's it keeps sort of escaping me. Okay. Well,
just talk around talk through it, and we'll get to it. Wait. We'll get there.
We'll get there. One of the things that
you see about that is Every day is a Monday. Yes. Every
day So these are all, like, these are all very, like, relatable things
Right. That people can see. And so when you see a reflection of
yourself in someone else's artwork or words, there is something
that is, that does have an effect. I don't know if that's
inspiring. You feel heard, related to. So there is
also, like, the human condition Mhmm. Element of
the so very, very similar to what you're saying is, like, say
Harper's Weekly. Okay. He has a he has a residency, and
so every issue he has for the year or whatever. And so
people, you you start to grab fans that way, and
Right. You grab the inside of the author as well.
So, you
know Well, I I think
if you're a guy like Ogden Nash and you're
writing rhyming verse and by the way, you're getting famous for
this because you're getting famous during a time where, like, this is what
people want. Right? Like, you're giving the people what they want. Right? It's one
of those, right place, right time
sort of moments. Right? You meet you meet the time. You meet the technology, which
is radio. You meet your own
talent. I don't
I'm gonna go very Joe Rogan here for a minute. I'm gonna, like, kinda lower
my voice and stare off into the ether. You'll hear you'll hear it on you'll
hear it on the show. I'll pull a Joe Rogan moment. I don't think that,
like, people
really understand how this works, man. I think it's just a
big mystery.
The the the creation of Yeah.
The idea? Like, the creation of the idea. Like, I think it's just,
like, a huge no one really understands, man. Like, it's
just You get low?
Oh, so that that that was terrible. Don't don't bother Joe with
any of this, for listeners that we all have. No. Don't bother Joe.
No. I think that when time,
technology, and talent meet each other, you're in the right place at the right time,
you have the right technology, and you have your talent there. Something something amazing happens,
and I think that that was what happened for Nash. I think that for a
lot of other poets, it doesn't happen like that. Like Charles
Portis, the writer, right, who wrote,
oh, what the freaking movie with
Rooster Cogburn in it and Maddie Ross. True Grit.
Right? True Grit. Okay. True Grit is one of
those books that when you look at the history of Charles Portis,
Portis wrote in one fell swoop.
He he had a background as a,
oh, he had a background as a he was a
newspaper guy. Right? And he was gonna go to London.
And, and, he went to London for,
like, two days and was like, I don't wanna write from here. He went back
home. I was like, this
sucks. And he quit, and he told everybody he was gonna quit and write a
novel. And most of the time, people tell you they're gonna quit and go do
something, like, creative. You're like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever.
But, who's the guy who wrote bonfire of the vanities? Tom's Tom Wolf. Tom
Wolf knew him. And Tom Wolf was like, the son of a bitch. I'm
cursing a lot of this episode. But the son of a bitch went to Arkansas,
and he did it. He wrote a freaking novel. Wow.
It was, like, the only novel that Charles well, not the only novel. It was,
like, his most famous novel. I think he wrote, like, two or three more after
that. And then that was it. Like, he lived off of, like, true
grit and the royalties from both of the movies and, like, a
cabin in Arkansas for, like, the rest of his life. And he didn't do
interviews. He didn't talk about his book. He just
he's like, he pulled a JD Salinger. He just, like, went off into the woods
and just like Sounds sounds awesome. Well, Tom Wolf was
angry angry. He was angry because he's like, yeah. I have
to write all these freaking books. Like, a lot of
books. Like, a lot of books. A lot of books, dude. So many
page books are so big. Oh my god. A man in full is,
like, this huge, dude. It's huge. It's huge. And he's like
that that he did. He that that's a direct quote. That's so so it's
worth it. It's like it's like a writer's dream. Like, who does
that? I think
Ogden Nash was like that, but, like, for poets. Like, he
so he liked baseball. He wrote poetry about baseball and
baseball games. He liked the Baltimore Colts, and so he was able to do
some some some, some poetry and some writing for them. He
married once. He had one daughter. He he didn't
doesn't seem as though he had any deep, dark
stuff going on. You know? He seemed to, like, keep his stuff at home,
which, you know, typically I guess, people of that generation, that's where they he's
part of the silent generation, so that's part of that's kinda what they did. They
didn't to paraphrase for Tony Soprano, they didn't cut
themselves and bleed all over the place.
You know, Gary Cooper, the strong silent type. You know, you don't put Gary Cooper
on a couch. You don't wanna you don't wanna get him talking. You want him
to stay quiet. But I think But
but but to add to this, what what what I wanted to add,
is he kept at it. Yeah. He did. Like, regardless
of it seems like he was, like, figuring out what worked,
but, like, he just he did keep at the practice
Yep. The actual practice of the physical sitting down and doing the writing.
Right. The the the the putting in the work. The work. Right? Yeah. What's
his name in the war of art, you know, talks about this.
I think I recommended that book to you. Oh, yeah. I read it. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. And, like, you know, he's talking all and that's, you know, that that
book is Steven Pressfield. That's, like, the greatest book ever about the
resistance. Greatest book ever. You know? Because resistance just shows
up everywhere. Like, this, this this business
project I just I just killed, right, that I was telling you about before we
hit record. Right? Like, there's all kinds of resistance in there.
And I'm just like, I don't I don't feel like dealing with this. I'm just
gonna kill it. Yeah. Yeah. And it's nice to get
to a place too that you can do that with minimal,
collateral damage. Mineral yeah. Minimal blowback. Yeah. I mean, oh, don't
get me wrong. There is blowback, but, like, it's not
You still have a place to live. I still have a place to live. Right.
Well okay. So I have never said this on the show before, but one of
the things that I live by and I think you and I have talked about
this kind of a little bit offline. But one of the things that I live
by, because I've got kids and a wife, and I talk about my kids sometimes
on the show and, you know, whatever, because it's my life.
Right? And I think leaders
finally, we're getting to a leadership lesson in this show. But I think leaders
probably should take heed from this or heed to this or pay heed to this,
not take heed pay heed to this. But I've tried to construct a life where
if I fail, my kids aren't out on the street.
You know? Like, if I fail, it's on me,
and my kid isn't living in a cardboard box because I made a
mistake. Like, I get it that some people can
handle that kind of pressure, and I get it that some people, like, they thrive
underneath that. I
it's not a matter of not trusting myself. It's a matter of I
don't want to experience that. It's a it's not a matter of
trust. I don't I don't want that. And in a in a world with a
plethora of available options,
and in the in the country that I live in, in The United States, with
the ability to pick from those options, I can pick the option
of not experiencing that consciously and intentionally
and everything that goes along with that. And maybe that means to to your
point about putting in the work, maybe that means I put in the work I'm
looking on my I'm working on my fourth book right now. I put in my
put in the work, and, you know, I might self publish six, seven,
eight books before, like, anybody cares because there's just a long
enough timeline Mhmm. Before I, like, hit the thing because I had to
work through all of the things I intentionally I think about this a
lot. I I think about this a lot, particularly when I kill projects like I
just did. They just weren't working. It just wasn't working. Like, why would I
bother why would I bother putting in more effort in
that when at the end of it, it's just gonna
it's gonna suck up my whole life. It's gonna destroy Well yeah. And and and
and to to kinda piggyback on what you just said, it's like it's is that
really how you wanna spend your time? Right. You only have so much. You know?
And then you have family, kids, and and all this stuff, and it's like, wow.
It was a good idea. You know? You took it as far as it could
go, and then also knowing when to stop is a is a
is a huge is a huge I think, probably
something that's not, it's it's weird because there is a fine
line between too much and not enough.
Okay. Speaking from your particular background Mhmm. I
don't know if you mind me saying this in public, but as a as a
as a it's is it is it like a former marine or
an ex marine? Which one is it? A former advocate? I just say, you know,
I'm a I'm a, I used to engage in
in lots of psychotropic
activity. You know, I just said, yeah, I'm an alcoholic and
drug addict in recovery. Haven't had a drink or drug in quite some time, and,
yeah, I used to really, really go wild. There you go. Alright.
So as a person who engages in
that, what is the line or did engage in that? What is the line
between there's you know? Like, how do you figure that out? So
well, I mean, if you if you wanna get to the the the,
the physiological aspect of it. Yeah. As far as
alcoholism, how it breaks down in the body, one of the things that it breaks
down into is, cetaldehyde.
Cetaldehyde is let's just call it a a a type of sugar.
Yeah. And sugar is creates a craving for more sugar.
And we all know this because we eat candy. And so the
genetic makeup of the nonalcoholic
processes acetaldehyde quickly, that
it exits through your sweat, your urine, feces, the whole night.
The not or the alcoholic, like, cannot
expel acetaldehyde at the rate that it consumes it.
So it builds up and builds up and builds up. And that's essentially, like,
what's creating the compulsion to keep drinking because you're not
expelling acetaldehyde. So you just have this mass kind of
like a magnet for Yeah. More alcohol. And that's Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Got a big chunk of, like, sugar. Yeah. So there is
no I mean, that's the I think that's the the issue with, you know, addicts
is, like, the line is nonexistent. Right. You know? And then after a
while, it was just the line was like a coffin. Right. Right.
Right. Yeah. Well and, actually, that's interesting because I was
I was telling my daughter who's dealing with a friend of hers
who is displaying addictive behavior around one of
those socially acceptable addictive areas of,
of, well, he's a young
man. So pornography. That's socially acceptable. But oh, well
well well and you say, because you and I come from a generation where it
was hard to get, it was dirty, like all that stuff. Right? Like we
all have that those, but now, like the first exposure that young
men have to pornography is at eight years old. That's
insane. That's absolutely insane. And it's
because we're putting the phones in their hands. Like, I I I
was at a restaurant the other day. I'll tell you the story. I was at
the restaurant the other day with my family. We're sitting in
the booth. It's after church. Yes. I do go to church. He
free the lord forgives me for all of my cursing. Thank you for asking.
And, I'm sitting in the booth and I'm
talking to my wife and talking to my kids, whatever. And we're
looking over into my right, at a longer table or
four top table. Right? That's been pushed to four top tables that pushed together.
There's this little kid, these two little kids.
And, there's a mom and a dad. Looks like it's two families, like, eating out
together after after church, whatever. And there's a baby and mother stuff. Okay.
Cool. And the little girl who can't be more than
three, has in front of her an
iPhone, and she's watching Big
Hero six on the iPhone.
And the and the little boy next to her, who I don't think was a
brother. I don't think they were related. But the little boy next to her is
watching, like, some Minecraft thing, and he can't be any older than her. He's
like, maybe two, three. That's where it
starts. Like, people blame the drug dealers. I I was reading a drug
dealer's substack one time, and he made a good point. He's
like, people blame the drug dealers for the drugs that wind up in your kids'
veins, but you're the ones that put the iPhones in the kids'
hands. It's you, not me. I didn't do that. I didn't show I
showed up way the hell later down the road. Yeah. Or you created the
situation in which they felt escape
was the, you know, the only so, you know Right. And so we now
have a problem in this country with where children younger
and younger, both male and females, by the way. For males, it's eight, the
first exposure. For women, it's like for girls, it's like nine to ten.
That's the first exposure. And then from there, like, you're off to
the races. Right? And so my daughter's dealing with with a kid who's, like, coming
to her and saying, hey. You know, I got this problem, and I don't know
how to handle it. Right? And I was talking
with my with my daughter about how to handle this because she was like, why
don't you go talk to him? I'm like, I don't know this kid. You don't
want me to do that. That's not that's not the right one.
Yeah. Like, where where is this kid's parents?
Yeah. They're like, it'll get addressed, but a whole bunch of
other stuff will get addressed too. It'll get addressed too. That's right. That's right. It's
gonna be a whole heap of help into that heathen. It's gonna say that kind
of day. And so my daughter and I are going back and forth about it,
and we're talking about it. This relates to the line piece. I told her, listen.
There's a line you can't cross with this kid because
you may wanna help him because you have a helping heart and you wanna be
helpful and blah blah blah. You're a nice person. Right? But
if he and I told her what to do about some research and getting
other people involved and blah blah blah. I was like, if he doesn't take advantage
of any of that, because he's, like, 14 or whatever. If he doesn't take advantage
of any of that, he doesn't want to be helped. Mhmm. And
he has to hit bottom. And if he doesn't
know where bottom is and because it's pornography, there is no
bottom. It's just an abyss. It's just an abyss.
Now we can assert because adults will say, who have come out of
porn addiction, they will assert that the bottom is only
fans or prostitution or something or, you know, whatever.
Right? But there's a long way to go between,
like, 14 and that. And I said, if he doesn't hit
his own bottom, if he doesn't figure out where his own line is, you
cannot help him. You can't be there for that. You
have to back away from that. Yeah. I mean, until it's it's
really it's it's just, the individual just
acknowledging how they are spiritually bankrupt.
Right. And how are you gonna do that if you're 14? Yeah. You don't know.
You don't have the only I have no idea what any of those words mean.
Right. Right. And so
and she was like, well, why don't you just tell him that? Like, that that's
not gonna I'm not the guy to deliver that message. I'm I appreciate
the fact that you're coming to me and that you trust me to, like, do
that. But at the end of the day, this kid, he's gonna have to go
to his mom and dad. And there's some other dynamics with the mom and dad.
I can't get into all of it specifically, but, you know, there's some other dynamics
there. But at the end of the day, there still has to be a line
for that kid, and he has to find it. And he has to figure out
what's on the other side of that and not make a conscious commitment and not
go over to the other side. At least that's what I think. Think. Now I
might be wrong. And, you know, I've
I've flirted with my fair share of addictive behaviors,
in my time. But Well I don't know. It's
but I hung out with my friend Seth this, past weekend, and he was like,
ah, I don't know. And I've been hanging out. I've been partying with Seth, not,
you know, last couple years, but Yeah. Yeah. I've been I've known him since I
was 15 years old. You know, we got down, and it was and he was
he was like, I'm going to bed, man. He's like, I he's like, I just
at a certain point, I just can't drink anymore. And I was like, you
asshole. You're you know? Like, that's awesome. That's all I ever wanted. You
know? And he started laughing and went to bed. I was like, dude, you
gotta you struck the lottery. Right.
It's like, well, you've I didn't know that you're trying to, like, not
stop. Right.
You know? It's Well, at what point okay. So and we'll we'll wrap
this conversation. We'll go back to the poetry, and we'll sort of talk about leadership
lessons from this. But I wanna ask you another question. I've wanted to ask you
this for a while. So we see the
digital dopaminergic world. Like, you recognize all of
it. Like, the thing that drew you into addiction is
the same reason why you're probably not on social media. I would imagine both those
impulses either run parallel to each other or are close. Well,
it well, it what drew me to addiction
I remember the first time I drank, I mean, I just remember,
oh my god, dude. All my problems are solved.
Right. Well I just remember thinking, like, dude, I'm gonna do this every day and
everything's fine. Right. She's like 15 years old. Right. And
just the whole life sucked. You know, my dad was a maniac and
narcissistic and, you know, stuff. So that that was kind of the, you know, the
escape and you know?
And then but you're what's the question? Well, my my my thought is
so as a person who recognizes and has worked through all that.
Right? Oh, alright. You know, you can't you're looking you are
now operating as a as a as a man in your approaching your
fifties, as we were saying before we were recording, in a different kind of context.
But you're looking around, and you're sitting in a restaurant just like I was this
weekend, and you're seeing a three year old who's got an
iPhone in front of her because
that's the thing that's gonna distract
her while the adults are having a conversation. But the problem
is the people who put the content in that iPhone I see. No. I I
see what you said. They're designing it to push certain buttons inside of her that
are gonna land later on for her on, like, Snapchat
or some other godforsaken place. And then from there, it's gonna go wherever.
Once I hit about, I wanna say, twelve
once I was, like, twelve years sober Mhmm.
Like and I had some of my faculties
back. And
and I I don't know. I just started to now I understand what you're saying.
Yeah. Because it just became it it was almost like
wildflowers. Right. Because, so now you
have iPhones getting smaller and smaller and more
advanced, tablets. Yeah. The
level of, platforms that people had exposure to.
Then you have how, gambling
I was just watching the gambling thing happen for, like, the last, you know, decade
and be like, wow. This is gonna be this is gonna be interesting. And then
Yeah. The marijuana is legal in a lot of places. And
and so just to Like, what do you even think about that? That's
a whole side question there. But, anyway, sorry. Well, I I mean, I can I
can tell my my aunt Elaine, who's 77 years old, asked me the other
day? She's like, I don't wanna she's like, I am, like, I'm sad.
Like, I don't my husband's dead. Like, I she's like, I I
wanna like, what's it you know, is it I wanna go to a a dispensary.
It's legal. I wanna I wanna see what's going on because and so
then there's the ask there there's like that. You have, so it's it's all
and a lot of it is just intention. Yeah. You know? And it
it yeah. It's it's intention. So that's that's like, we were
saying before, like, I'm not the the girl as I dropped that girl
off, she was like, will you go bowling with me again? And I was like,
sure. And then, you know, never
but but it's like, I don't wanna go
so so so the the it's it's really paying
attention to the, you know, to the
troubled areas. Yeah. You know you know, like Well, and there seem to be
there seem to be so many places. The girl I was bartending. I met her
at a bar. She was drinking pretty heavy on her day off.
Like, I didn't need to ask her out. No. No. No. No. No. That
was probably That's the only person in six months since I lived here that I
hung out with outside of, like, family members. So for the evening, it was great.
Never see her again. But Right. But also but
it's having it's having the wherewith. But yeah. Well
and I think it's gonna become more and more difficult, particularly for
the younger folks of us who are in our audience.
I I do. I have I have a lot of
I wonder
how strong
that ability to, well, first, the
ability to recognize the gateway that's going to get you down that
road and then the ability to walk away from it
or close that door. I wonder how good that's gonna be in
the in the future, like, twenty years from now. In the
lates the the the younger millennial generation, folks who are,
like, forty to thirty, right, or forty to thirty
four. And then the Gen Z ers, the eighteen to thirty four year olds right
now. I just I wonder. And then the
generation behind them, who my youngest daughter was part of that generation and
my youngest boy who's, you know, eight, Like, the
world that they are going to be stepping into is gonna
be a world where, to your point, it's like wildflowers. All these gateways are open
just like wildflowers. Like, for you and I, you know,
at the tail end of gen gen x, the tail end of the thirteenth
generation, there were only certain doors that were open, and we knew what they were.
Yeah. You had to search for them. You did a search for them. You did
a little bit of work. Risky. It was kinda fun. You know? It was like
an adventure. Yeah. But now, like, you can see that crap on
YouTube or on and I'm I'm putting a lot of a lot of it. I
am. I'm putting a lot of it here on social media because that's the thing
that we're just exposing people to right away, but it leads to
all of this other crap. Like, if you wanna know why
this is not anything that I can prove, it's just a theory I
have, I think the ADD and the ADHD,
diagnoses that started two generations ago came about because
kids were eating sugary cereals when they were
kids. And so the sugar jacked them up,
got their biochemistry all wackadoo. They go into
schools, particularly young men, low impulse control anyway,
lack of responsibility anyway. And now we're diagnosing young men with
ADHD, ADA and and add. We're giving them Adderall.
Adderall then begins to lose its power, right,
couple of generations in, and now they're moving from Adderall to
speed to whatever. Right? And these
and we don't we don't connect those this is what RFK Jr. Is basically talking
about. We don't connect all that stuff together in our society. We just go, oh,
this is an island here. Oh, this is an island here. Oh, this is an
island here. Or to your point about wildflowers, I'll just run through the field and
pick all these wildflowers of options, and it'll be fine. Or I'll give them
to my kid, and it'll be fine, or they'll never notice. No. They do notice.
Like, they they are gonna notice. And I don't know and I
won't live long enough to see, because I'm in my forties. I won't live long
enough to see all the all of the I won't
live long enough to see the results of all of this down the road. I'm
not gonna if I live to twenty seventy, I'm gonna count
myself lucky. And well,
I mean, I'll like, 90 at that point. Did you did you see the latest
did you see the latest information about the pyramids in Giza?
Somebody somebody texted me that, a a friend of mine.
And he he's like, you need to watch this. And I have watched We're getting
way closer to whatever we're doing, meaning absolutely nothing.
And everyone acknowledging, like, dude, everything that everyone is
doing is completely irrelevant. And we all just want to
stop. Okay? Everybody calm down. Just stop. That's what
it that's what it kind of, like, feels like to me. There's
gonna be a moment of, like, Well and, you know,
look. If if to go full Joe Rogan, you know, if there's
good stuff in those pyramids, man, like, we gotta
Gotta get there. We gotta get there. We gotta pull that thing out.
Alright. Wild, though. It's pretty wild. The information is pretty wild,
Ben. I'll tell you what. I'll I'll take a look at that video. I've been
kind of like I've been busy with other stuff. I'm busy killing businesses and stuff.
So I gotta I gotta get back to, I gotta get back to that.
By the way, the reason why I picked the poem every day is Monday is
because literally this entire quarter of this entire business quarter, the first quarter
of twenty twenty five, I've been waking up literally almost every day with
the quarter, with the exception of Sundays, going, hey. Monday,
what do you got for me?
Yeah. That'll that'll do it. That'll do it. Well, and that well,
that's the thing too about the relatability and the human condition,
whether it was intentional for his readers. But if you're writing copy, you're trying to
connect with other people, And probably underneath a lot of all of
this is of wanting that's, you know, essentially what people wanna do
is to connect in with with another person. So
it it's it's
in in such a, like, unintimate era
of American culture. Right. You know, during the
wartime, 20 so, you know, that this
is kind of the beginning of of a almost,
I don't know, bringing whimsy into the home or lightheartedness or or
I'm not I'm not sure who was going on in the poetry in the twenties,
thirties, forties in, in, in in mass
publications, but I can't imagine that it was fun loving.
Oh. Because this was, you know, that that's we we talked
about Tennyson, and and and that's Yeah.
Well, I mean, you just came out of you just came out of the Victorian
era, you know, in in England. And to
your point, I mean, it all was post World War one. Everybody wanted to be
happy, you know, roaring twenties, all that. But at
the same time in Europe, like, they're putting themselves back together out of
the, in the twenties, out of the nightmare of the Somme,
and Verdun. You know, the German German
culture is completely falling apart because the Weimar Republic can't
hold on to anything. They they can't even
they can't find a government with two hands and a flashlight, and that's an insult
to both their hands and the flashlight. Like, they just they were they were in
trouble left and right, because of internal German politics and
just things they couldn't get their arms around. And, of course, in communist Russia,
you know, Stalin had taken over and was busy
was busy was busy killing a bunch of people,
and consolidating consolidating his power after the death of Lenin.
So you had a lot of dynamics in a multipolar world,
that were about to come together. They didn't know that at the time, but were
about to come together with World War two.
And and the end of the the official end, which was what World War two
was, the official end of the old aristocratic, monarchal world
order. And people in Europe weren't ready for
that, and people in America were like, dude, we showed
up. We dumped, like, what, a million men, you
know, into, into the war.
It all worked out, and then we came home. We got to walk around and
look at European capitals that we'd never seen because we're farm boys from Kansas.
And And then we came home, and now we're done with you people.
Like, go away. We wanna party. Oh, and Calvin Coolidge was president.
Cool cow. Guy who never smiled, never spoke more than two
words, and had nothing to say. And it was probably our closest thing we've ever
had to an actual libertarian as president. He signed nothing. He did
nothing. He said nothing. Just hung on golf all the
time. And it wasn't as if he had, like, a bunch of aids like Joe
Biden did. No. No. No. No. He didn't have a treaty Palace Of Versailles running
on the Potomac. He didn't have that crap. He had no aids. He's like, yeah.
Just I don't know. Go in. Like, the country will run itself. It'll
be fine. I I like
it. Of course. It's the dream. Calvin
Coolidge. But, you know, then he was replaced by Herbert Hoover, who was much
more progressive, progressive Republican,
who looked at all that and said, well, we need to progress,
which is always a danger. I just remember,
Hoover don't miss Oh, yeah. In the Great Depression.
Yeah. That's what I remember. Mister Inocencio. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Well and and people people piss on Hoover a lot,
but that's because progressives write history books. They do. Progressives
write the history books. And so, you know, you can't
have you can't say the truth about Roosevelt, which is a lot
of his policies in the thirties.
The reason that they pulled they pulled us out of the depression is
because the world World War two came along. That's why.
And because you basically took the federal government basically hoovered
up literally all the money that was available,
in the country. I mean, Roosevelt was notorious during World
War two for saying there will be no wartime billionaires. Like,
nobody's gonna make any money. We're gonna have it all,
because the new deal wasn't working and he tried to pack the courts and blah
blah blah blah blah. And the reason they're called the great the great depression is
called great is because it lasted so long here in The United States,
whereas in the rest of the world, the I mean, yes.
The stock market crashed in what was it? Thirty two?
Yeah. And then, and
then things were over by, like, '34 in the rest of the world
because they found the one thing that cures depression. That's
shooting people. Yeah.
But don't let me give anybody any tips. Alright. Back to the book. Back
to back to the poetry of Ogden
Nash. There were giants in those
days, or maybe there weren't.
When people bandy about bright things, they like to attribute
them to celebrities celebrated for their witticism, hoping
thereby both to gain prestige and forestall criticism.
Thus, many people in London have had their dispositions soured by
being cornered by other people and told stories attributed to
mister Shaw or Noel Coward. Well, over
here, people tell an anecdote either hygienic or spotty, but they
attribute it to Dorothy Parker, only they usually cozily refer
to her as Dottie. I have never heard an
anecdote attributed to William Henry Harrison or Rutherford b
Hayes. So let us respectfully attribute to the following tidbits to their
posthumous praise. When William Henry Harrison faced
a knotty problem, he didn't wonder what general k Smith or Earl
Browder do. He simply recounted the story of the two jealous
Indian Rainees who met on elephant back. And one Rainee stroked
her coiffure and said, here's a pretty hairdo. And the other Rainee
stroked her elephant and said, here's a pretty how to do.
And once, when Rutherford b Hayes found himself losing at
backgammon, why he casually upset the board and asked, did
you hear about lord Louis Montbatten? He asked a soldier in
Burma, are you Indochinese? And the soldier said, no, sir. I
say outdo Alabama. Kindly,
I do not attribute these anecdotes to the undersigned.
Kindly attribute them to these two hitherto
unsung statesmen who are dead and probably won't
mind.
Had to do that one because you kinda like,
one of the things you note about poetry and you note about people and
prose, back in the, back in the, back in the, quote, unquote, good old
days, is that people were very, how can I put
this, direct in their communication?
Dare I say they were almost racial in
their in their communication in ways that we
do not tolerate now. And so if I try to write that poem
now, short of reciting
it on the podcast, I'd probably be booted from polite society.
The guy the guy today Yeah. Earlier, he he was he
was like, if the coaches he said when he was playing football when he was
a kid Mhmm. Like Pop Warner football, the coaches
would bite the kid children's noses
if they weren't, like, running fast enough or something, and they had to, like,
squeal super loud for the coaches to let go.
I was like, two for one, man?
What? Yeah. That's that's, Okay. Well, let's okay. Let's
talk a little bit about that because because I think the seventies was probably the
last time, maybe the eighties. It was probably the last time you could probably casually
abuse a kid. Oh, this guy was, like, 60 years old. So this is, like,
a while ago. This is a while ago. Yeah. Yeah. It checks out. So yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. No. That checks out. That that tracks. I mean, he would have been
doing pop order in the sixties and seventies. Yeah. Okay. So yeah.
Like, up until about the eighties in this country, you could just casually abuse
a kid that wasn't yours, and no one would, like, say anything. And and I'm
not talking about, like, oh, hey. Pick up that piece of trash on the street
or, oh, hey. I'm gonna tell your mom on you. We're not talking about, like,
that kind of, like, neighborly, like, watching people. Dude, I had strangers slap
me. When I was little, I had a fucking stranger because I did something
stupid. They were like, what'd you do? And I was like, oh, shit. I probably
shouldn't have done that. So
are we I'm gonna ask you as a non parent.
Love that being a non parent is. As a non parent, as a person who
is not you know, got little Ryan Stouts running
around, at least not that you're aware of,
what do you think about this? Should should I have the ability as a parent
to, like, go straighten somebody else's kid
out, or or is it a better society because we don't do that?
Oh, well. Because, see, here's here's the reason I'm asking a non parent this
because you have to live with the results of my raising my children. You have
to live with those results. Like, if I screw up raising my kids,
you're the future employer or the future, like, jailer
or in your case, the future whatever, like, teacher.
Like, you're that person who shows up with that kid's future. And if that kid's
not appropriately ready for you, it's a real problem for you.
Well, I mean, today is today is is a little weird
because, I mean, there's probably parents. You can be
like, yo, your kid was gonna, like, push this kid this
baby into a waterfall. And to
stop them, I had to, like, throw them both on the ground. And there's probably
parents who you did what to my kid? Right. You know what I mean? So
they would just see it's just that you know, it's like the it's like the
the parents who their kids getting d's.
And they're like, what's going on at school? And so what's going on at home?
Are you Right. Creating the hope our home. Right. You know?
So Yeah. He's watching a little too much Big Hero six on his iPhone.
That's what's going on at home. That's the tie in from that. Well,
actually, to close that story that I told you about the kids at the at
the table. So we're sitting there. We're eating, whatever.
And the one little girl, she, like, gets down off of
the high chair or whatever. It's one of those, like, plastic,
like, high chair support things they put in the chairs, right, at restaurants.
So she, like, climbs out. This kid's, like, three. She climbs out. She picks a
fork up off the ground and gives it to her brother. And I looked at
my wife, and I I saw it out of the corner of my eye. I
looked at my wife out of the corner of my eye and I go, well,
that's gonna be a problem. I don't think it's gonna be with that fork. That's
disgusting. It's a terrible restaurant. I mean, it's good food, but,
like, not Newton the floor place. And it's a hard concrete, like,
polished concrete floor. Right? Well, the kid, the girl little girl
climbs back up into the seat, and the
seat is, like, sliding slowly off of the chair. And the kid's, like,
leaning back while she's, like, glued to heroes. And none of the other parents are
paying attention. And my wife who, like, looks at the little girl,
and she's, like, sitting over to the left of me, so she's in the booth,
so she can't do anything. And my other daughter is not paying attention. She's like,
And my wife's like, oh, Hasan. Hasan. You gotta get the kid. You gotta get
the kid. And the second, like, she had it out of her mouth, like, I
go I literally, like, slid. Like, I shot
out like Superman, and I reach over, and the kid's, like, falling.
And I grabbed the kid, and I grabbed the, like, the, like,
the high chair seat thing. And the kid's like, what? What?
What? What? What? What? What? What? You know? She's like, ball whatever. She doesn't cry
or anything. She's just like, what? What? What? What? What? What? And I, like, put
her up, and I I skinned my knee, and I scraped my knee across there,
ruined my jeans or whatever. It was fine. And I put the kid back
in the seat. And the father, like, sees, like, what
happened, but he didn't have enough time to reach across the other kid to, like,
get her. And so I get the kid. I put it back up, whatever. The
father's out of the chair, and he's like, oh my god. Thank you. Like,
you avoided, like, my kid having brain damage or whatever. And, like, the
lady behind me I know. And the lady behind me, she goes, are you okay?
Like, are you alright? I'm like, ma'am, I'm fine. Like, I'm
good. Help that kid
today. Right? Because that kid isn't that kid wasn't paying attention. The kid was
so dialed into the thing they were doing,
and the other adults weren't paying attention. And it's just like it's
how much more could that I mean, that because they could've been like, life could've
been ruined if I hadn't, like, moved. It's it's yeah. It just it
becomes the convenience of of,
of, automatons raising children. Right.
And And I shook the guy's hand, and I was like, dude, we gotta watch
out for each other. Like, you gotta pay we gotta pay attention. And to his
credit, he did. I mean, he did, like, take the highchair stupid thing out,
and he did take away the phone line. Okay. They done. You're done. You gotta
pay attention to what the hell you're doing. Okay. That was such an
inspiration. Right. Yeah. But that's an example of just, like, I'm not
exactly parenting that kid, but I'm, like, in a
society where, like, if that kid smacks their head on the
polished concrete at three, like, that
ruins like, her entire life is done.
So, we were watching Maybe she'll be fine. Maybe it all works out
in the end or whatever, but let's not even go down there. Right? But we're
we're watching my brother and I were watching the inauguration. Yeah.
And so Trump has looked there like, mister president, we have
the whatever, army
or marine, in South Korea. Yeah. And and,
and he's like, oh, you know, drops like a bunch of good looking guys, blah
blah blah. And he's like, hey. Do you want do you wanna say anything? And
it kinda, like, took him by surprise. And then their their leader was like,
no. We we stay hard for you, sir.
And I know that some marine things stay hard. Like, that's but,
you know, the guy's on his heels, and then he just says he stays. And
so what I was thinking about, I was like, yeah. It sounds wildly
inappropriate in context. And then I was thinking about it, and I'm also thinking
about the dog, Chewy, that lives here. Yeah. Chewy
stays hard. And when I so and
this is is is in alignment with what you're talking about.
Okay? Yeah. It's like, at some point,
I because I think I felt like I was always
on edge. Yeah. She's just I kind of, like, regressed
and calm down. And now now after, like, a year or two
of, like, really chilling out, I'm seeing
the benefit of the idea of, like, stay
like, I'm of the age
and the disposition that I see and what for
myself that I need to be
in line with the behavior you just ex it it Yeah. Exhibited. Yeah. Let's
be aware. Like, I did I'm I'm able-bodied Right.
Relatively intelligent. Like, I should be someone who's in the community that
is, like, aware. Right. And so I think
that's a, I think it's a level of responsibility
that has kind of, like, dwindled with generations.
Yeah. And there is something,
like, kind of this feels good,
almost, like, romantically that there are
individuals who are out in the world just doing the right
thing. And, I mean, we're not we're not we're
relying on that person to save our child when they're falling
backwards, but just knowing that, I don't
know, that not everyone's bad. Yeah. That
somebody will somebody's got your back. Right? Like,
even if you've never met that person, you have no relationship with them.
Like, we have to and,
look, I'm not telling this story. I didn't tell this story for collapse. I wanna
be very, very clear on it. I don't want collapse. I don't want congratulations. And
that way I told it. I told it because it serves both parts of it
serve as an example for what we're talking about here today, and it happened recently.
So it's the most fresh thing, right, like, in my mind right now.
But, you know, like, a month from now
actually, more than a month from now, like, two weeks from now, I'm not gonna
bring you that. And, like, if somebody's kid is, like,
I don't know, barreling down the street, right,
you know, on a runaway, I don't know, shopping cart or something.
Right? Like and I see they're gonna run over,
like, some neighbor's dog somewhere. Like, I'm gonna go chase that cart.
I'm gonna go full pal mail out. I'm gonna go chase that car and go
get that kid. Or, you
know, I'm I'm the knucklehead who
if I see somebody pulled over by the side of the road, it looks like
they need help. Like, I'm gonna I'm gonna help them. And and and,
by the way, like, I'm not, again, I'm not trying to be a hero. This
is not that. This is that person needs help. That person's in
society. Go help them. Right? Because eventually, at a
certain point, I'm going to need someone to stop
by the side of the road to help me. I'm gonna need somebody when
I'm not there, right, on the soccer field and my kid does something
either stupid or not paying attention or just, like, whatever, la dee da,
to reach over and grab that kid. You know, like, you know, keep them from,
like, falling, you know, wherever. Right?
And I've got remarkably good reflexes too. Like, so the I mean, I might as
well use them. Like, they're they're they're remarkably good. One day, I'll tell you a
story of something happened at a Super Bowl party. It was insane, but one of
the ladies there, she was like, oh, you saved the drink and the kid.
I didn't get a drop on your nice white carpet. Soft hands,
ma'am. We had soft hands for years. Oh, that's beautiful.
But, like, I've reached that point in my life where
like, I can see that thing, and I can go get it. I can I
can go ahead go help that person? If I can enter like Yeah.
You know, the the the Bill Gates speech that he gave about
yeah. So after you graduate, instead of running around the world
and, you know, curing or helping with the termite
infestation in South Africa or Africa, be sure
that the, you know, the the termites eating your parents'
porch Right. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's put your seat belts on
first. So Right. It a lot of this so this
is this is pretty recently. This was, like, the kinda coming out of
Cincinnati thing is like, oh, wait, man. I have a huge responsibility
Mhmm. To everyone else in my life
Right. To, you know, follow through through and be a
good outstanding citizen and and, like, take all of the
things that I probably,
been unrightfully putting at the top of the list or or
something like just just having the proportions a little bit
off. Mhmm. And now kind of, like, that's what makes
me Yeah. That's what these
poems make me think of, that life is not to be taken so
freaking seriously. We get all, like,
clammed up over little thing. I mean, you're talking about, like,
wine and a podcast, and it's like, wait.
You're supposed to well, you're having wine and talking about fun loving things, and it's
like, this is what happened. A person had a a breakdown? You
know what I mean? So we're we're we're we're we're assigning too much,
clout to aspects and areas of our lives. And while I was speaking of myself,
my life that is not necessarily benefiting it it for the long
for the kinda like the long haul. Yeah. Some things weren't
meant to carry that much weight. Yeah. And and kind of,
like, figuring, you know, what is what, what works for you.
Yeah. I mean, that's that's the relatability and, like, that's what I'm
kinda taking off all of these. You know? You can read it and see how
aspects of my life apply to what he's speaking about. And
then you know? And we're so you're talking about the leadership lessons. We're sitting here.
We're talking about it and talking about ways to apply
these seemingly ancillary behaviors.
Mhmm. Interactions throughout the day is is, as
advantageous to moving forward, you know, in our in our lives and
and applying it instead of just like, hey. It's really nice when Avda Nash
was really nice in that poem. You know? There's
There's always something more. And,
yeah. And so doctor Drew says, you know, the best exercise
is the one you'll do.
I like that as the close. So with that,
well, we're out.
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