AI Hallucinations, Business Lessons in 90 Days, and A Voice Crying in the Wilderness with Tom Libby

Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number one forty six. So this is going to be a catch up episode. If I sound a little bit hesitant, that's because it's been a heck of a first quarter here, around the, the podcast area. And so, we should probably do these, like, once a quarter. Just catching up, answering some listener questions, talking about some things that are going on behind the scenes of the podcast.

And, I've got a little special treat that I'll be talking about with you all today as well. And, of course, my good friend and partner in crime, Tom Libby, is joining us today. How are you doing, Tom? I'm doing well. You you cut me off in that last rant just before you hit the the record button, but that's okay. We could go back to it if you want. No. No. So we're gonna we're gonna go we're gonna go back

to the this is what we're gonna start. This is where we're gonna start. So so let me let me set the table for people who are just tuning in. If you are just tuning in and you are scoring at home, which you should be, by the way, if you are scoring at home. I remember when Dan Patrick used to say that back in the day. If you go into Google, like, I I have my my my curated discover on my Google tab. And the first thing that's at

the top of my discover tab is the headline from the New York Times. It says, and I quote, AI hallucinations are getting worse even as new systems become more powerful. Alright, Tom. Go. Well, as I was saying, a few minutes ago, I mean, this is not surprising to me. Right? Like, we've been talking about this. I mean, you and I probably spoke about this several times in the past six months when people what was it? Probably a year ago or so where the world first started kinda getting, AI

crazy. Right? Like like, AI has been around for a long time. This is not anything new for us. We've seen No. We've seen versions of AI coming out for, give or take, fifteen or twenty years. Right? Like, we've seen some of this stuff coming out. But it's really hit the the tip of the tongue of the public the last year or so. And Yes. And and we're talking in the what some of the stuff that's what they're talking

about, hallucinations and this and that and the other thing. Right? So about a year ago, we were talking about it, and we were we've said, it's only going to get worse. And they believed us, and now they're seeing what they're and and and here's why. And this is this was the this is the rant I was on a few minutes ago. So people are using AI to generate content. Great. I wanna create a a a you know, what are the five best things about marketing in 2025? And Sure. I put it in

the the AIs of the world. I'm not gonna name any specific because I won't I won't, you know, I don't wanna say We don't wanna be we don't wanna besmirch any comp...any competitors. Exactly. Exactly. So we put it into the AI, and it spits out a blog. We go and we read it, and we go, oh, that sounds great, and you publish it. Mhmm. Now if we do real due diligence and we fact check it and we do all this stuff and we make alterations to it and we fix it, great. But I guarantee

you, a small percentage of people are actually doing that. Most people are reading it real quick. They're perusing it, and they're going, that's close enough, and they publish it. So the next time somebody puts in the the bet so let's say we do that in February. And now in May, another person says, give me the five best marketing ideas of 2025. That AI generated gobbledygook that's a bunch of BS is now part of the web

scrape that the AI is doing for the for the content. So it's going to read stuff that wasn't validated, which means it's just gonna produce more crap. Excuse the language, but it it and and it's gonna continue on that. It's gonna compound on itself. We all we all talked when we were little kids, we we learned about compound interest. Right? We did. This Oh, yeah. This is the same thing with with compound crap on the on the output of the AI on

the AI infrastructure. And by the way, the idea behind having more powerful system just means we get more powerful crap. But we we get more crap delivered to us out of the fire hose faster and better. There's a guy there's a guy who who works in the, place where I work at now, the the desk literally behind me. And he has a side that says caffeine, doing stupid, pardon my use of the term, but doing stupid "shit" faster.

Exactly. Like the lady holding the cup of coffee or whatever. That's what you're talking about, though. Like like Exactly. Okay. Okay. So how was it that you and I, who are two sane thinking individuals? I mean, we may not agree on everything, but we're sane thinking individuals. Right? How is it that you and I managed to figure this out and yet yet Sam Altman, it still gets billions of dollars? This is the question. If we're so smart, why aren't we richer? I think part I think

part of the problem is, think about this for a second, Hayson. We both work we both work and help we we we help the startup ecosystem in a in a sense. Right? We we have we have a whole startup ecosystem. And what are we always telling people? That their startup has to you have to solve a problem or you don't go anywhere. Right? Correct. That's right. The Sam Altman's of the world think about it. The the the solution to the to to what he's giving people is ease of use, speed of use, and

the the and and without the like, there's no complexity to it. It's so simple in it in his theory, and he says, just put in a prompt. It spits out the information. If you like it, it's yours. Like so there's no thinking involved. That's why he's rich and we're not because we use our brains, and we're trying to get people to think these things through. And, like So so what you're saying is we're too smart to be rich. Oh, maybe the word smart is a tough one to solve. It's

it's we're too complicated. I think it's it's like we we we complicate as as much as we try to simplify our own way of thinking and our own thought process, and then you and I talk a lot about a lot of different things. But it's Oh, yeah. But it's it's he totally simplified the output of content. If that

like, if you think about that from that statement, like Well, I will yeah. But he never end he never he never suggested or or projected or or gave people the false sense of security of thinking that what the AI is producing is really good or really, like, like, there's no he tells people right up front, you have to fact check this stuff that AIs hallucinate, but yet we're not. We're just throwing crap at the wind and seeing what sticks. So I think you're I think

you're onto something here on a semi serious note. I think you're onto something here because a few years ago, maybe about four or five years ago coming out of COVID, it occurred to me like a lightning bolt out of the sky or like a phoenix rising out of Arizona that I that I had overcomplicated my business Yeah. And that everything could be simple. And I thought, because this is how my brain works, the complication part, I went, okay. I'm overcomplicating

my business. I immediately, in my brain, leapfrogged all these other people that were overcomplicating their businesses, all these other businesses that overseeing. And I started thinking, how many businesses are just built on simple, to your point, simple concepts? And the simpler the concept, I think this is a business idea that folks should take from from listening to this. The simpler the business

idea, actually, the more money it will generate. And when I had that epiphany, I immediately went back to my complicated business. But, like, but, like, it it's it's true. Like, you're right. Like, I think there's a nugget of a semi series. I think there's a nugget I mean, nugget. I think there's there's that's an element of truth. And and you're the guy on the project that we're involved in. You're the guy who is always, like, how can we simplify this? How can we simplify this? How can

we simplify this? How can we scrape more garbage away from this to get to its genuine essence? And I will say, I mean, you're right. Like, I see this in and and I'm gonna mention this early because it's once a podcast I have to mention it. I see this in jujitsu. Like, it's it it it looks so simple. And then I complicate it, the move, whatever the thing is that I'm supposed to do. And I know that at a certain point in time down the road, it

will be simplified, but it's not simple to me now. It doesn't look simple to me now. And I think a lot of amateur athletes, amateur business people, and now AI, amateurs with AI, don't understand that that simplicity concept. But But that goes back to what Einstein said, which is if you could explain relatively and I'm paraphrasing here. I'm sure he never said this. But if you could explain relatively to a five year old, then you understand

it. Yeah. Because it has to be simple. Oh, and we recently had one of our, one of our joint colleagues, and we we told her that she should simplify simplify her pitch deck so that a three year old could understand it, and she had no idea how to do that. Right. She's like, what does that mean? How do I do that? And I was like, okay. So, okay, just take a step back. Take a step back. Take a layer off. Take a layer off. What is it at the core? What

is that at the foundation? Like, tell and we went through this whole process with her. And, eventually, she was like, oh, so if I say it this way, and we're like, yes. Say it that way. Because it it's just you know? And and again, it I'm I'm I'm speaking in riddle here just because it's Mhmm. Yeah. What the content is. But but it it applies to pretty much everything. And in your and in your case, with me, and I do it with everything. It's not even just like theories or ideas or thought. I mean,

somebody sent me god bless him. But another one of our colleagues sent me a new book that he wrote, and he's like, what do you think of this? And I read it, and I was I I started reading, and I I read I got through two chapters, and I stopped. And I and I scheduled a a call with him, and I go, you you need to stop with the words. What are you doing? Like, why like so I pointed out particular words in here in there, and I go, who are you trying to send

this to? Like, college professors? Like, who's reading? Because if I'm reading this, I don't want any of these words in here. And he goes he goes, well, you understand what those words mean. I go, yeah. But they're SAT words. Like, you're throwing those words in there just to make sure that people know you're smart. Who cares? The the smartest people on the planet know how to say what they

need to say at a fifth grade reading level. Like, that's like, the the even, like, the best authors in the world, the Stephen Kings of the world. Like, the these guys write at a level where the masses can understand it, not a handful of people. I will I will tell you. So I picked up, I've had I've had this book for a while, but I finally pulled it off my bookshelf because I have so in case you folks don't know, I have bookshelves at my home.

You probably imagine. I have a lot of them. A lot of books all over my house. It's not a goodwill hunting piles on top of piles of books kinda situation yet, but I have lived in something similar to that. I wasn't quite there, but I I could see they're coming. I could see the exit coming up on the highway. Anyway, so I under Good Will Hunting, absolutely. Man after my own heart. And I have books on those shelves that I have

never read. I never cracked the cover of them. I just get them. I'm like, oh, I know this author. Oh, I know this title. Oh, this is something that might be interesting. I put it on the shelf, and I'll revisit it later. Okay. Cool. But I did pick up recently well, not recently, but I opened up, the book, A Song of Significance by Seth Godin, which was not his latest book, but his book before this one, whatever. Because the man's publishing he publishes books like it's a bodily function.

And, he does. He would he would admit that. And, after swearing that he was never gonna publish a book again, I heard him talk about this on a podcast years ago. And he's like, oh, I don't have any more books to publish because all publishing is dead, and nobody reads anything and and then he sees published three more books since then. I'm like, shut up, Seth. It's in the blood. But I picked up the book. And the interesting thing about the book is the cover is complicated

and it's a put off. And then you open but you open up the book itself, and the content inside is simple. And I'm interested in his books, not necessarily for the content because I I got the joke. He's been saying basically the same exact things in marketing and in leadership and in people being good human beings. And and you probably know some of Seth Godin's work, Tom, from the space that you're in. But the man's been blogging for, jeez, thirty years, forty years on the Internet. He's an

institution by this point. So he understands I've got the joke, basically, is what I'm saying. I've got the joke and understand, what he's talking about, complicated, but the word's simple. And that goes to your point about about authorship, and I'll talk a little bit about a book that I've got upcoming. I go in the opposite direction. I make I try to make the cover as

appealing as possible and as simplistic as possible. And then one of the greatest compliments I ever got on a book I published years ago was the guy started reading it, and he stopped. He said, I have tried to read this book five times, and I cannot finish it. And you know how thick the book is? It's only, like, 90 pages. And I was like, it's it's okay. That means that on the sixth time, you'll finish it. And then, by the way, there's some movies like this. You're

a movie guy. So A Clockwork Orange is like this. Oh my God. Like, I've watched that I watched that movie literally 10 times before I, before I worked in an independent theater way back in my twenties when I was a film projectionist when they still had people manually create the films. And it wasn't just, like, plug it into a projector and then go, like, your DVD player at home. And, we got an original silver nitride version of

A Clockwork Orange. And here's what people don't know if they never did film projection. So back in the day, when people would build films, films would come in canisters. Like, Lord of the Rings came in, like, 13 canisters. It was gigantic. It was stupid. And they had security and all this other kind of stuff. Right? Because they're delivering film. If anybody rips it off, then it's a problem. Okay.

Well, old school films all come in these gigantic canisters. And so Clockwork Orange, I think, comes in at a little under two hours. I think it's somewhere around there, which is about, six to eight reels of film, which means it's gonna come in, like, two cans, two of the old school metal cans. Right? And so the job of the film projector projectionist is to put together the film and to cut it and make sure everything links together.

Martin Scorsese once said that, the film projectionist is the final editor, has final edit over his film every single time. It drove him crazy. That's why that's why Scorsese and Coppola and Lucas and Spielberg, all those guys, they all love to digital, and they all push for digital. Well, not Scorsese. Scorsese likes film preservation. But they all push for digital because they didn't want that final edit from guys like me. Go ahead. Yeah. Sorry. No. No. I said they they

pushed it. They wanted it quickly. Just Oh, yeah. They wanted it real quickly. Yeah. Especially Lucas. Lucas was pissed at guys like me. He hated us. He hated all all projectionists everywhere. He said you're ruining my vision. Lucas, palm your cheese. Chill out. Telling a space opera story for god's sakes. Yeah. Yeah. You're the Jack Sparrow Lucas. Story that was sold for $4,000,000,000. That you sold it for yeah. And then Disney ruined it. Don't get me started. Anyway Yeah. So okay.

So I'm there. Right? I put together the film. It's Stanley Kubrick. I know it's A Clockwork Orange. I've seen it five times on TCM. I can never get through it. I have to watch the whole movie to make sure I didn't screw up the final edit. Right? So I put the movie on. I go in a theater. I sit down. I watch all of A Clockwork Orange. And on that sixth viewing, I finally got it. I was like, got it. I

got Rick's joke. Finally. And after that, I have never watched that movie ever again, and I never will. And my books are kind of like that. I'm the Stanley Kubrick of book

writing. Like, if you look at any of Kubrick's films, Paths of Glory, Doctor Strangelove, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, which by the way is my favorite film of his Eyes Wide Shut, Full Metal Jacket, which is, like, parts of full metal jacket that everybody remember are Lee Ermey yelling at everybody, the drill sergeant yelling at everybody, and then the movie falls apart after that. Like, all the Vietnam parts are, like, shot on a back lot in, like, England somewhere

because he didn't wanna leave his house. You know? You know? I even watched a biography about Kubrick on Amazon Prime recently. This is why I have it in my head. And I still don't know what the hell the man was doing. I still have no clue what the hell he was doing with him. And, apparently, nobody else does either as a director. So, anyway, I'm more in that direction. And the reason why I'm bringing all this up is because you're right. If you could explain something simply, you will sell

billions of copies. If your business is simple, you will make billions of dollars. If you were Sam Altman and you were doing simple AI, you will make billions. But if you're more complicated and you wanna thrust your complication upon people, you will not make billions. You will be lucky to make hundreds of thousands. That's the only lesson that I can think of out of that entire land. You'll be you'll be Jesan and I. And I'll be Jesan. Yeah. Exactly. It'll be a hundred thousandaire.

Slumdog Hundred Thousandaire. Anyway, speaking of speaking of that, so we've got, a couple of different things that we're gonna do here today. That'll be started with the AI thing. We're gonna transition into this little gem of an adventure. So speaking of starting a business, I had a podcast media agency recently that I started. So to to rewind this, sort of lay the foundation because Tom

doesn't even know the story. So back in July of last year, June of last year, I started talking to the owner of a local coworking space in the town that I live in, because I was recognizing that podcasts were coming along. People wanted to do podcasts. People wanted to experience podcasts, and that I thought podcasts could be a part of a local community. In particular, moving away from sort of a Joe Rogan big idea podcast and moving more into local podcasts that

serve a local market with local people doing interesting local things. Sort of like a re a regeneration of local media that has, that has been hollowed out just like local newspapers. Right? Now Tom lives in the Northeast, in a large city in the Northeast, large metro area of the Northeast, so he probably doesn't notice this as much. But I live in a rural area in the, in the Southwest, and, you know, if it ain't if it ain't breaking on Facebook, people ain't

people don't know anything about it. You know? That has, like, substituted for all that. And I'm sure this is happening other places. I'm sure it's not just my my spot. Or I'm not ego driven enough to think that it's just my spot. Anyway, so I looked at this and I said, there's a market. We could do podcasts. And because podcasting was the hammer, there was a nail, hammer meet nail, boom. And so I met this

guy, started working with him. We started doing we did a couple of work I did a couple of workshops to convince the local people that, you know, podcasting was something that you wanted to do. Got a lot of interest out of those workshops. Made a little money off the workshops. Sort of a proof of concept. Right? It was a proof of concept tool. That was in July, August, September, and then we launched the

well, not we launched. We we began the process of building a podcast studio, and that took us from, like, September to January because they had to put together the studio. There's a lot of complications involved with that. Whatever. January, we go out and get our first clients based on our podcast workshop, start pitching it to the local community. Bunch of people signed up, at max because, you know, this is not a thing that you do at scale. I figured I could probably handle 10 podcasts. Right?

And by the way, from soup to nuts. So doing everything from the editing to the, the video editing, audio editing, distribution, setting things up, setting accounts up, doing all the things that people don't wanna do, making it turnkey for the creator to just come in, sit down, do their thing, and then leave. Right? And started in January. January '1 is when we start well, January 6 was when we started and shut that business down two weeks ago as of April yeah. April 20

no. March March thirtieth. March thirtieth. April first was our last our last client day, basically, or less day of client work. So March 29, March thirtieth, March '30 first was done. I have never started a business, opened a business, and closed a business that fast. And there are some lessons that I can I think I can impart on this show, particularly for leaders? And I I don't know if any of this will resonate with Tom. But one of the biggest lessons I learned is this one.

Just because it's an idea in your head doesn't mean that it needs to be a business. Yeah. For sure. That was probably the hardest one because the way I wired, I would just keep going. I would just keep I think I I'm like, I can make this better. It's fine. Like, I'll just dig in. I'll put in personal will. I'll sacrifice time with family, other businesses. I'll do all of that to make this work because, well, it's a good idea. Of course, it should

work. And I realized I had a sort of a again, another flash. I'm getting life lessons all over the place this year, actually. But yeah. But I had another flash. And the flash was that's just ego. And how many of us are running businesses that don't need to be run for a population or a market that doesn't need our product or service and wasn't crying out for it just based on ego? And I don't think that's a minority report thought. No. I agree.

So that was the first big lesson. The second big lesson was that just because you're good at something for what you do, like, I'm really good at what I do for this podcast. And I thought, well, I could take what I do good that's what I do good with this podcast and scale it up to other people. Right? Because other people need it. But just because you do something good doesn't mean that other people need to take

advantage of you doing that thing good. Oh, well, in in the same sense, like, just because you do something well for yourself does not mean that you can replicate it and do things well for somebody else. Bingo. I I like one of the things that started bugging me in, like, February and and early March before I finally decide to pull the trigger was thinking about Joe Rogan. Like, thinking about how successful Joe Rogan has been with podcasting.

Right? Yeah. And yet he doesn't produce anybody else's show. He's like, y'all go off. Good luck to you. Like, you figure it out. But his secrets, his tips, his tricks, how he's doing, what he's doing, all of that, he's not sharing that with anybody. And he's got a crew of, like, four, four, five people. He's doing that well himself, and he's done. And he's like, I keep it small. And I think that's I think that's lesson number two. Keep it small. He kept it simple. I knew you

would love that. It's like, why overcomplicate this by making it a big production company. Right? Like, it's Right. And he's making millions off of the podcast even. Like, he like, it's so, yeah, I I I I like again, it's it's a good lesson to learn. And then the third lesson I think I learned, because it always comes in threes with me. The third lesson I learned is, and you'll appreciate this because Tom just had a birthday. Tom went to, went to a foreign location, and, ate

fermented shark. And, he did not drink vodka out of an igloo, although we did encourage I did encourage him to do so. Because I hear at that location, the vodka is pretty good. And I know he's not a drinking man, but, really, like, sometimes you just gotta, like, take a sip of something just, like, have the experience and say, yeah, the experience. We call it in our house a "no thank you" bite. You take the bite. You go, no. Thank you. I've I've now tried it.

That's just being polite. You don't wanna offend an entire country. We're doing enough of that later on. We're doing enough of that right now. We don't need to we don't need Tom to be doubling down. But, I'm with you on this too. We don't need you don't need Ukrainian international incident. But he he did eat fermented shark. So if you know where fermented shark comes from. But, the third lesson that I learned was that I'm too old to put up with nonsense.

I finally and and I don't have to be so I thought I ten years ago. I did. I thought I was too old to The thing is, I realized I don't have to be loud about not wanting to put up with nonsense. Yeah. I just have to say very quietly and respectfully to everybody, it's not you, it's me. It really is me. It's really not you. You're fine. You're doing what you need to do as a client or as a partner or as a sponsor or as a vendor or whatever. That's fine.

You're doing you. I don't have to own your business. I don't have to run your business. I don't have to do any of that. But it's me. It's me. I don't wanna put up with this nonsense, and I don't have to. Even if it like, there's there was a potential inside of that idea for at least a half million bucks, which is not life changing money for a person like myself. But if I put it into a, you know, interest bearing account, that might be life changing money for, like, one of my kids. You

know? And so the stage of life I'm at, the level of, for lack of a better term, material comfort that I have, the level of confidence that I've got, I was like, I don't I don't need this this kind of stuff when I go home to, like, my homestead, and I'm like, I wanna punch a cow. Like, I shouldn't have to I shouldn't have to thanks. You know, I shouldn't have to have that desire. You know? And a cow can handle it. I mean, it's

2,500 pound animal. It's fine. But all it'll do is try to kick me, and then, like, we're gonna have a whole thing. Yeah. We we are the mosquito in that in that equation. We are the mosquito in that equation. We're the small thing. Yeah. Small, annoying thing. I have a brother I have a brother that, that was, he lives in the in Missouri. Mhmm. And, he was telling me that he worked on a cattle ranch, and he was trying to get the cow ready to do something that the cow just did not

want to do and ended up getting he ended up getting kicked. And he was, like, out of work for, like, a week and a half. We are the mosquito in that that circumstance. I always tell my daughter who loves horses. She's a horse person, my youngest daughter. I always tell her I've been telling these kids this for years. You don't wanna be caught on the north the southbound end of a northbound cow. Like, you just don't.

You don't wanna be down there. So, especially not to get kicked because that's where they kick you from. Like, they don't kick you from the side. You know? So, but those are the three big lessons. Right? I don't have to put it with nonsense. Just because I do something well for myself doesn't mean I have to do it well for others. And every idea should not necessarily go to scale and be a a business. And I learned how to check my ego in the last, like, three months.

And that's like I'm a bit a major business turning point. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or any any Oh, I think I think it's interesting because, you know and I've known you for a little while now, and, like, we're you know, if we had this conversation two years ago, I might have a different perspective. But

Yeah. You know, knowing you for a while now, I think it's interesting the way that you were, you know, checking your ego because I feel like when you interact I'm just talking about you personally, not necessarily, you know, the the podcast per se or this particular venture that you're talking about. Sure. But but when you interact with people, it's not it it's very rarely egotistical, and I mean very rarely. So when when you say that, I'm thinking you're talking about within.

Meaning, like, you can check your ego from within, not necessarily with with your interactions with people. And that is a different ball of wax. Being able to check your ego from within and and, like, check yourself and be able to know, understand know, observe, recognize and understand that you that your ego needs to be checked is damn near impossible. So the fact that you figured that out is pretty

good. It's pretty good. You know, it's it's it's it's it's so there's a great moment in the Old Testament when the prophet Elijah, who literally is a man from nowhere. Like, he comes out of nowhere. How he's introduced to first Kings is amazing. Just he just shows up at, like, Ahab, king Ahab's, palace, and he says, listen. The Lord God's gonna shut up the sky and not give you rain for three years. You're gonna have famine because you're basically worshiping idols ridiculously.

And then he just walks out the court. It's like the most it's the most sort of thug move ever. Sort of like a prophet in the Old Testament. No. No. No. No. It's not the it's like the it's like the the first thug move. Like It is the first thug move. Like the OG thug. The OG thug move. It was. And, actually, Elijah would probably appreciate that. And then, of course, at the end of Elijah's story, God just takes him up in the

sky in a chariot. Like, Elisha's just standing there and he just goes up in the sky in a chariot because God's like, "I can't even with this guy." I just gotta go grab him. Thank you. It's amazing. Gabriel, put down that horn. I'm gonna call him myself. Okay. Go get it. That's right. I gotta go I gotta go snatch that Negro. I can't let anybody else take take on this one. Sometimes you gotta go take it and stuff personally. Like I said, that man arrives. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. Anyway, so after Elijah, puts on a show basically for the people of Israel, and he has a fight not a fight, but he has a showdown of the Pepsi challenge of prophecy in the old testament with the prophets of Baal. And he, like, oh, and he's talking smack. If you ever have an opportunity, it's in first Kings. Just read it just for the narrative structure of the story. It is so good. Like, you read the story to, like, middle schoolers, and they're, like, particularly middle school boys.

They go, that's the coolest story in the freaking Bible. Why don't we ever hear about this? I'm like, well, because they don't want you calling down fire from heaven. Like, chill out. You're 10. But, but he does that. Elijah winds up in a cave because he's running away scared from Jezebel, proving that even a prophet out of a man out of nowhere could be afraid of a woman. One could still still put fear into a man. Anyway, but, there's like a

there's like a wind, but god was not in the wind. I love this quote. God was not in the wind, and there was a fire outside. God was not in the fire. There was an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake. And then Elijah went out, he wraps himself in this cloth. And, it says in, it says in first Kings that Elijah paused, and he heard a still small voice. And, basically, the still false voice is, Elijah, what are you doing? Like, what what are we doing here? Like, stop

feeling sorry for yourself. Stop hiding in the cave. Yes. I understand that you think you're the only one in Israel that worships god, basically. And everybody else is in idolatry and is terrible. And go get a disciple already. There's a there's a guy named Elisha. Go go bother him. You need you need a friend. I like him who needs a friend. Use the buddy system. Use the buddy system. That's right. And I don't I don't wanna minimize the story because it's a very

powerful story. And at the same time, that's for me what an ego check sounds. It's a still small voice. That's why I said all that. It's a still small voice inside of myself. I think other leaders if there were any tip that I could give, there would be a practical tip out of this entire sort sort of nonsense that I've given about the media agency and all this stuff, this no. Not stuff. But all this story that I've related is you have to find that still small voice. Because if you don't,

you you and then you have to listen to it. That's the other piece. But first, you gotta find it. And moving away all the noise and stuff that's inside your own head and inside your own heart and that's outside for even just the outside noise. It's just it's just really hard. And so if you could do it, you'll hear that voice, and then you'll be able to check your

own ego and check yourself. Here's the thing, though, Jesan. Everything you just said, like, if you think about it, like, you should be doing if you if you are part of the small business world and you are or an entrepreneur and you're you're trying to get something started or whatnot,

all of what you just said applies. Right? Like, you have to you have to clear away all the clutter, select select what you are going to be leveraging as your North Star, and you go forward toward that North Star, and you keep all the clutter out of the way. Right? Like, so so to your point, that inner voice is your North Star in your company's growth pattern. Mhmm. And you you point and go. And if something deviates you from that from that direction, then you don't do it.

Like, we we've talked about this too in in a couple of the, in a couple of the ventures that we've got going on, which is, like, we've got all these people throwing tasks at us. Do this. Do that. What about this? What about that? And we never stop well, we we do now. But we didn't stop and think, like, oh, that's a good or or sorry. We kept oh, that's a good idea. Oh, let's try that. Let's try that. Let's try it. What what do we think? We never stopped and said,

does it satisfy our North Star? Like, is it does it keep us moving in the direction that we're supposed to be moving? Because if not, then we're gonna skip that for now. We can come back to it later if it if it if the idea or go simmer on the idea. Fix it. Like, so to your point, now you might have gone through all of that whole process in your head without realizing it coming to the understanding that you need to shut it down because maybe there was no

North Star. Maybe there was no may maybe there was no there there was no, you know and I understand what you're saying. Like, maybe something you do well for yourself, you can't do for other people or shouldn't do for other people. But, again, that means it has no direction, has no North Star. Right? Like, there's, like, it's the same like, we're saying the same

thing, but we're coming at it from a different angle. Well, and how many how many people how many businesses do you think just operate on, for lack of a better term, directionless money, directionless revenue. Like, they've lost their North Star, but they still get so much revenue from when they last had their North Star that they're just running on that inertia of directionless

revenue. And I I I I mean, obviously, you could think of big organizations that do this, but I'm thinking of, like, small from maybe your your family size to, like, a mid level size company in that range. Right? Because those are the kinds of people listed as podcast. How many of them like, I was talking to a guy, the other day who whose company is a second generation robotics company, and the tariffs are crushing them right now Oh, yeah. Because they didn't they didn't but

they all but but but but they all voted for Donald Trump. So they're all, like, on board, at least everybody in the company. And I'm it's not about voting, by the way. They're all on board with, yeah, we're gonna have to go through some pain. And that, by the way, case come from leadership. Right? But I wonder where the minority report, to use that term again underneath, is does your company really still need to exist? Like, yes. I get second generation company, but have you made so much

revenue that you've lost your North Star? I wonder that. I don't know what the answer to that is. I never I didn't ask that person that question because it wasn't appropriate for the for the the thing that we were doing, but it is something that occurred to me. But you can definitely see that in companies that have recurring revenue models. Right? Like, some some sort of, like, monthly subscription or annual subscription or what like, any kind of

thing like that. I think that happens a lot more frequently than people think it does. The company's just lost its way, but it's got, you know, it's got 15,000 customers spending a hundred bucks a month. Let it ride out. Why not? You're not you're not you you're just gonna keep pocketing profit. Why not? Like but but does the company actually still solve problems? Does it is it is it going to is it gonna create generational wealth? Is it gonna, like Right. There's a lot of other things.

Now if if that's not important to you and you're just gonna run it into the ground, then god bless you and keep going. You know, do what you gotta do. But, but I no. But I to your point, though, I and and by the way, I'm not suggesting that the North Star can't change. That's Right. Yeah. That's what we call a pivot. You can pivot. Like, sure. But if your pivot is to nowhere,

that's not a pivot. That's giving up. Right? Like, that's just saying I'm gonna let it ride, and I'm just gonna take all the money I can out of it. Maybe you have some IP that you can sell at the end of the day or whatever. I don't know. But I'm just saying, like but if you don't have some sort of driving factor, some sort of North Star, some sort of way to, you know, mechanism to make sure that you're on the right path with whatever goals are or that you're

trying to accomplish, then what's the point? Like, what is the point? Like, like, and to your point, when do you decide to wrap it up and close it up and whatever? I mean, to me, that's it. Like, now now your wrap up could could be, as we just said a second ago, just letting it ride out. And as customers fall off, they just fall off and you just walk away and you walk into the

sunset with whatever money you ended up making. Yeah. You don't that doesn't necessarily mean that you have to literally quote, like, the way you did the the media agent, the podcast media agency where you literally closed up shops, stopped taking customer. Like, you're done. Bam. All done. Nothing else. Like, you know, there are ways there there are come a lot of companies out there that don't have to do that. They just let their come their let their, you know,

their customer base ride it out. Now I'm not a big fan of that, but that's just me. Well and and when you let your when you let it you talk about the so I like that you mentioned the recurring model or the subscription model because that's the place where it's the most notorious Yes. Particularly in large media companies that are built on subscription models. And I'm gonna say too that everyone will know, Hulu and

Netflix. Like, you could see this in both of them. Like, the level, like, the level of content. Well, this ties back into the AI thing. The level of content slop that's on that platform that didn't used to be there when they were mailing out DVDs Right. Is is kind of astonishing now. Like, I I I mean, I pay for Netflix. I can't think of the last time I actually sat and watched an original Netflix anything that was good. Mhmm. And that's because they're letting the

model just run. Did you see And by the way, they've got enough they've got enough money to for run it for another twenty years. I'm I'm not knocking that. They got enough money for twenty years. So maybe they'll find a North Star in the next twenty years. I don't know. Did you see so speak Netflix and and to your point, the the last Netflix original movie that is currently in the top 10 is a new movie with Tom Hardy called Havoc. And I

read a couple heard of this. Yeah. I've read a couple of blog posts about it, and then I was talking to my wife. I was like, oh, we should we're both Tom Hardy fans, so whatever. Like, we're like, alright. We should watch this. It was Netflix produced, and I said I leaned over I I looked over my wife at one point about halfway through the movie. I go, this looks like a live action version of Sin City.

Do you remember the the like, the Yes. I I couldn't think of an a better way to explain it, and it was just not good. I don't understand. Like and here's the worst part. Here's the worst part. And I don't know if it's because we're just you know, we're we're we're a we're a solid fan base for Tom Hardy. Right? Like, I I like I like a lot of his characters. I like what he does in movies. He's really good in Mobland. I don't know if you're watching the

show the series show right now on on Showtime. I saw I saw an ad for it on Paramount plus or wherever, and I was like, oh, what's that? You know? So He's good at he's good at Mobland. My daughter my daughter and wife loved him in Peaky Blinders. Like, he's a good actor. Right? So I don't know because I just like him. I thought his character in the movie was good. The movie around him was

bad. Was bad. Yeah. You know? And, like Yeah. And they I think they tried to get a little star power in there too because they had Timothy Olyphant in there, which, again, usually No. He's usually pretty good. I I think Timothy Timothy Olyphant's a pretty good actor. But the movie itself, what were they thinking, man? I was like I was like, what are they doing? So there's a there's a phraseology that I'm gonna dump into your brain that you will that

will that will identify what you just saw there with Tom Hardy. And by the way, I'm a fan of Tom Hardy only in that he does jiu jitsu. He's a blue belt in jiu jitsu. Yeah. And he, he's might he might be a purple belt by this point. And, he was once interviewed about doing jiu jitsu, and he said that his favorite part of it was, that he got to crush people. And I was like, oh, okay. I see what kind of game you play. You play a pressure pass game. Got it. Got it.

I do not play that game. I don't I don't play that game, but I understand. I understand you played that game. Alright. Anyway, but, he, he the the phrase that's used typically when an actor is better than the material around him from the directing to the sets to the whatever is he elevated the material. Right? Now we typically think of elevated as in he brought everybody else up with him,

but increasingly not increasingly. For probably the last twenty five years in Hollywood, it's been it's with increasing frequency, you get these actors that come in, and they are like mercenaries. And and Hardy's definitely one of those guys. Colin Farrell probably started this. One. Yeah. Yeah. Started this path really, about twenty years ago now with his career, where he just comes

in and he just chews scenery, and he just eats up everything. It eats up everybody, and everybody collapses, You know, it's it's not meeting his level, and he's okay with that. And Tom Hardy just just go through it, like, hot like, pooped through a goose, and I did my job to the highest freaking possible level, and all of you are being players. And now everybody can see it. And I don't know what you do with that, by

the way, as a film editor and as a director. When you're in the, when you're in the room looking at the rushes and the dailies and you recognize that, like, oh my god. He's elevating the material, and everybody else is, like, just standing around. They're like five year olds. Yeah. Like, but how do you not recognize that as a director? Right? Like, you're looking at this from, like, the, like, from the lens of how do I make this movie better as we go? How do I how do I direct people

to be better? But that's your job. You're the person who directs people to be better. So I think it's hard in a creative so we saw the I saw this in my media agency. This is sort of the one of the sub lessons. Right? Because and I'll frame it out this way. The person who gave me the space in the studio was like a producer. He was a sort of a producer role. Right? Then we had the creative talent that was coming along and hosting the podcast or writing it or whatever. So that's your that's

your actors and your writers. Right? What's my role? Well, my role is to direct. And so I'm thinking of one particular client where I had to be very careful how I talk to them because they're creatives. And so the way you talk to a creative person who is not engaging seriously with the content is different than the way that you talk to a creative who is engaging seriously with the content. Particularly if the one who is not engaging seriously with the content is considered to be the linchpin

of the entire project. Yeah. For whatever reason. Maybe they bring a certain charisma or they have an ego or whatever. Right? Or maybe they're bringing money. I don't know. But they're not elevating even though they have status. Meanwhile, you got this person over there who you can sort of jerk their chain a little bit, and you do, and they elevate. And now you've got a weird dynamic in the creative

process that directors struggle with. And I think there's and so I had a mini version of that, a very, very tiny version of that, very small. Right? But you see it, I think, at much larger versions in its scale in, in Hollywood productions. And I think these young directors if you're a director who's under the age of, like, 65, you probably have never really not even younger than that. Let's say 55. If you're under the age of 55 in Hollywood, you've never really had to deal with, like,

a Gene Hackman or Clint Eastwood type. Those guys are long gone. Even even someone like, a Lily Tomlin, right, or a, Gilda Radner, right, who would elevate material, or a Glenn Close or a Meryl Streep. Okay? Blake Lively is not Meryl Streep. Yeah. She thinks she is. I shouldn't I shouldn't laugh. No. Go ahead. Laugh. It's fine. Like, her and her husband are getting exposed right now because of their nonsense. Because they finally ran across a director that was like, oh, really?

I have Instagram too. Like, what are we doing here? Yeah. Like, you wanna you wanna go I was thinking of the movie Tombstone. You go ahead. You pull that smoke wagon. You go right ahead. You pull that and you watch what happens. And she did. She went ahead and she pulled that smoke wagon. And she's gonna get some. She found her Huckleberry. And, you know, someone is like, oh, yeah. That's just my game.

I got the receipts. What do you wanna do? And this is the dynamic, I think, in the Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, and whatever that director's name is, triangle of nonsense in lawsuits that you're seeing the inability of a director to wrangle someone who has the ego but doesn't have the chops. Yeah. And he saw the gap between the ego and the chops, and I bet he tried to control yelled at her on day one. But then, like, Ryan Reynolds is standing back there.

And, you know, you gotta deal with that guy, which, by the way, there's an easy simple way to deal with that guy, but I'll just leave that aside for just a minute. You know, you gotta be the director who's like, no. No one comes on my set unless they're actually on the movie. Right. Oh, your name is Ryan Reynolds? I don't care. This is not your movie. Go do another Deadpool four. Leave me alone. Go hang out with Hugh Jackman or whatever it is you do. Like,

go away. But you don't have that kind of dynamic, I think, in young directors. I think that's one aspect of it. Yeah. But so in Havoc, you get a director who's just sort of letting Tom Hardy just eats eats scenery, and Tom will will he'll accommodate. If he's a Brazilian jiu jitsu guy, I know how his brain works. He'll accommodate you. But, you know, it's funny too because, like, I was even saying to my wife, I was like, not not

only that, like, I I like his American accent. Like, I think he's good. I I I think, you know, he's got that, but he he's got a charisma to him that I just think is is missing in a lot of people in the in the the diver the diversity of his of his craft. Right? So, like, he's it's not like he's like, he did a movie like Venom, and he didn't get typecast like everybody else did when they did those MCU movies. Right? Like, everybody else Right. Kinda like Yeah.

You know, they got stuck in or whatever. Or, like, like, the Jason Statham's of the world. Right? That just kinda, like, he's your action guy, and Tom Hardy ended up doing some action stuff. So now he's your action guy. And he was like, oh, hell no. I'm gonna go back, and I'm gonna do another TV series. And I'm gonna do a small screen, and I'm gonna show you that I'm not just an act just an action guy, and I can actually act. Like, you know, like so I don't know. I just I

I like them. Anyway No. No. I I I think you're I think you're onto something. So, like, the the whole but, again, this how do you go ahead. So I was just gonna say, so on the flip side to that, that's why I brought up the the Netflix, you know, top 10 movies. On the flip side of that, the movie that just took over number one is called exterritorial. It's actually a German based film where Okay. The filmography and the cinematography is mediocre at best. The dialogue

was mediocre at best. The acting was okay, but the story was great. Like, it was it was weird. Like, the concept of the story carried the movie. Like, it was it was kind of an interesting now there are some Farfetched BS stuff that happened, and anybody who watches it is same as my wife and I did. We watched it, and we were like, let me get this straight. You're in this type of environment, and there is no human being around? Like, what is going

on here? Like, that's stupid. Like, you know what I mean? Like, rent parts but so that was in a case where the material was probably better than the environment and the actors. So it's like the opposite effect, but but it was still a decent movie. In my opinion, it was better than Havoc. There's a reason it it took its place at number one. It's it's it was just a better movie, but it wasn't better acting. I thought Tom

Hardy was better than anybody in that other movie. The script writing was not all that much better than Havoc. The act it just it was the storyline. Like, the actual story was compelling. Okay. Let me ask you one question, and then we can we can switch to another we transition to another topic because I wanna talk about the books and the format of the show because we're

gonna do do do some different things. They're going into the, the remainder of the second quarter, and, the third quarter and the fourth quarter of this year. I'm gonna shift some things around. I wanna talk about that for the listeners. So here's my question. Which matters to you more, the acting or the writing in a film? I don't think there is one over the other. I think it I think, ultimately, I would love to have good acting, good writing. I mean,

obviously. Right. As long as one is really good, I can tolerate the movie. Okay. So I don't I don't have a preference of one over the other, but I one needs one one has to be there. One has to be good in this either the storytelling or the the story or the acting is just so much better than than, you know, than the the material. As long as one is present, I can tolerate the movie. Okay. It's interesting. See, I I used to I started out with actors, like, way back in the day when I was, like, 12,

13, 14 years old. And I started watching a few more movies, and then it switched to, like, directors. I was like, okay. This director will elevate material. Right? And that's where I go into, like, Kubrick and not understanding him and going through this whole oeuvre. Oh, but then also directors a lot, whether it's Jordan Peele or, like, you know, Christopher Nolan. Like, you know, Christopher Nolan Christopher Nolan. Directors a lot. So I totally get that. I

definitely get that. Like, directors still do matter to me. I agree. But at a certain point, and I don't know it's if it's when I crossed over my thirties, I started caring more about writing. Mhmm. And I started recognizing that there's some writing and some stories that the ways modern scripts are written make no sense and probably didn't need to be made. So for instance, what's a movie where the writing doesn't hold again, doesn't hold up? This is a

modern more modern movie in the last ten years. Oh, mister and missus no. Well, no. Not mister and missus Smith. Well, no. No. Not that one. Because action movies are too easy to, like, bang on. I was just gonna I was just gonna say that. No. No. It's like action movies shouldn't apply. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Also, it's kinda writing

and action movies are terrible. They're terrible. Okay. I I gotta go back I gotta go back at least ten years just to make it sort of a movie that or more than ten years, make it a movie that, that no one will will recognize. So Mulholland Falls Mhmm. Which had Nick Nolte in it back in the day and whatever. That movie doesn't hold together. Yeah. Matter of fact, if I remember correctly, it's been a little while since I saw it. Although, recently did pop up in my Amazon Prime, so I might go

revisit it. But, it it falls apart in the third act. And that's typically, by the way, where most movies fall apart is in the third act. Like, this is why one knock with Christopher Nolan when he tried to break the three-act structure as a director, with Batman, particularly the third Batman movie. The three-act structure exists for a reason, Chris. Like, don't mess with it. You have to have three acts.

You have to have beginning, a middle, and an end, and you can't crack the middle and have, like, a full, like, throated ninety minute beginning and a full throated ninety minute end. Like, he just doesn't the only person direct that I'm aware of who is able to successfully crack the three-act structure and do it in a way where you don't notice it was Alfred Hitchcock in Psycho. Sorry. Two, I think. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. There you

go. Yeah. I'll throw that one in there too. Yeah. Yeah. He's the only one. Spielberg doesn't even doesn't even screw with the Three-act structure. Yeah. So in the third act, the writer has to either, like Chekhov's gun, has to give me something and work with it

and bring it to conclusion or not. And if things aren't working, and I'm noticing this increasingly in movies, if things aren't working in the first act and then the second act, like, if people aren't saying the right things and behaving in the correct ways and ways that and by correct, I just mean correct for the script to correct that it's believable. Yeah. Like Snowpiercer, the movie that entirely took place with Captain America on the train. Those, like,

going around the globe or whatever. Yeah. I know. Yeah. I don't like nobody understood how right. Like I had the same feeling with Knives Out. Like Oh, well, there. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. Like, knives out. And and even worse off because the star power that was in that movie. Right. Right? Like, I had really good actors in that movie. How did how as a director, are you not able to make that movie phenomenal? Like but it wasn't. I I I thought it fell into your point about connecting the dots

between the three acts. I thought act one was actually okay, and then it just got worse for me. Like, like, it just it just moved more from, like, right right after the like, because they did a good job with some of the introductions and why the why the family members, who why they were the way they were, why who they were who was who, and, like, that was all fine. And then it just continued to go down downhill from there for me.

I'm gonna look up Knives Out, but I think that was directed by, yeah, 02/2019. That was directed by let me see just so that I'm actually correct. Because that had Daniel Craig in it and all that. Yep. Yep. And it was directed by I'm pulling this up. Chris Evans. Christopher Plummer. Mhmm. Rian Johnson. Okay. Can I tell you something about Rian Johnson as a director? Well, Jamie Lee Curtis I mean, I can already tell you I'm I'm probably not gonna watch a lot of

his movies. Well, you go ahead. Okay. Well, I'll tell you a movie that that he should not have been allowed to touch, and and everybody that the next movie that came in the series had to undo everything that he did in the movie, and it wrecked the entire series. Rian Johnson directed the last Jedi. Oh. A movie that totally and completely has turned me off of Star Wars films for the rest of my life because they let him touch that. Yeah. He believes fundamentally in subverting expectations.

That's his whole, like, shtick as a director. Except the problem is, Rian, you're not talented enough to subvert anything. And you can record this and send it to him. He won't care. He's European. He doesn't care. He's gonna keep getting stuff because he's whatever. He's paid up with the right people, however it works in Hollywood. I don't know. But my point is, he has a history or track record of looking at a script and going, I will do whatever the hell I

want. And then he just goes off and does whatever the hell he wants. I mean, he thinks that makes him an auteur as a director. So he breaks the three act structure or in The Last Jedi, he totally undo undoes all of the character motivations that were set up, quite nicely, actually, weirdly enough in the first, you know, of those three movies, and just totally train wrecks it. And by the time you get to the third act of the last not even the third act. The end of the second act of The Last Jedi,

I did. I I now, arguably, I will preface this by saying, when I watched The Last Jedi, I was already irritable, and I didn't wanna watch it. So that was color whatever. But I turn and I was I probably had too many vodkas out of any igloo by that point. But but I just just for full disclosure there, transparency. But I turned to my wife. So my wife was watching, and my wife does not care about Star Wars. Like, at all does not care. I'm a huge Star Wars guy or at least I had been a huge Star

Wars guy up to that point. Whatever. And I look at her and I go, I can't handle any more of this millennial...millennial whining. I just I can't handle it. It's too much of this movie. I'm done, and I shut it off. I don't even know how The Last Jedi ended. It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. Because the movie that came afterward, The Rise of Skywalker, the JJ Abrams had to, like, direct to undo all the nonsense in The Last Jedi, I didn't watch that movie either.

And I not I won't I won't. I refuse. I'm done. I'm off the train. Yeah. I'm off the train at the station. I don't watch any of the shows. I don't care about it. I get it that it's it gives people a lot of people angina, Disney does, what they do over there. I'm done. I'm off the train. You everybody should have gotten off the train with Rian Johnson because the fact that that that Disney hired that guy with his track record, who then later on, by the way, went on to do Knives

Out at other films where he's breaking Come on. The the guys don't wanna be European auteur director. Let him go to Europe and direct small films and no one will watch. Right. Yeah. I Please. Just go do that. That's where you can break the structure and do all the things. Whatever. Anyway, sorry. Yeah. No. I'm with you. But, again, I I but at least now I now I understand. It's it's it's it's just a hit. It's him. It's it's him.

Knives that was his problem because, again, my point my point to that rant was with the star power that was in that movie, it should have been awesome. It should've worked. Yep. Like, could you imagine Christopher Nolan or Jordan Peele or Spielberg or any of those guys with that cast? Come on. He was also the writer of Knives Out. Oh, well, that makes sense then. Never mind. It was not a good movie. I was I was very had very high expectations of that movie. It was not very good. Well, he

subverted them. He successfully subverted your expectations. Exactly. There you go. Alright. Anyway, let's get back to let's get back let's get back to books and leadership here, Hasan. We are off the rails. Well, we do this once a year. We did it a couple years ago with Oppenheimer. It's fine. That's true. Yeah. I forgot about that. I forgot about that. It's fine. Except this won't be a bonus episode. This is the episode. This is the whole

thing, folks. Okay. So the podcast. Right? So Leadership Lessons are the great books podcast. We have a podcast here. We read books. The philosophy of the podcast is is dead simple. We we read books. We pull leadership lessons from them, and we try to apply those leadership lessons to your real live life. We do it with a variety of different, guest cohosts, most notably Tom, but also others like Libby Younger, and, and many, many other folks. Some of whom are on with us regularly,

others which, others of whom are on with us intermittently. We also do shorts episodes. We have a shorts format, which are two to three minute, sometimes three to six minute long rants where I just talk at you, about something that bothers me. You should listen to the one that, came out, last week where I'm beginning to talk about work and significance, and the one that came out this week, where I further go into this idea that the workplace

it's something it's a new idea that sort of captured my mind. The workplace isn't a place where we should be seeking, or where we should even be hearing, to paraphrase from Seth Godin, the song of significance and meaning in our lives. I don't I don't think work was meant to carry that kind of weight. No. Family, tradition, community, that's where those things that's where that weight should be. Work is built into the fabric of reality. I fundamentally believe this because

of my my Christian beliefs. I fundamentally believe this. I I think it was relevant at one point in history, but no longer. But no longer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well and I think I think this is part of the renegotiation of a post industrialist, and actually not even post industrialist, post post industrialist, post fourth turning, as we get into the high of the next turning, west. I I I think we're renegotiating this now in real time.

And I'm not the only person that I know who is looking around at the systems and the processes that we have that are based on work and going, this can't be a place of significance. The significance has to be someplace else. And and and postulating that things were better in the West overall. I can't speak for

every any play any place else. But the West overall and America in particular and my particular state and neighborhood in very particular when we were more focused on things like family, tradition, and community versus what the industrialists of the twentieth century and the mass marketers of the twentieth century strip mined out of us and didn't and and replaced only with cash and status and power. So I'm working on an idea here, and it also ties into another idea that I have about people

who are serious versus people who are unserious. I'm a little bit irked about that. I did a whole rant on that. I'm tired of the unserious people. I don't think leaders need to put up with them anymore. And you can be serious about something like this podcast, without taking it seriously. But you cannot be unserious and foolish about something like this podcast

and expect to be taken seriously. And what we've had in our culture, I believe, is a and particularly over the last twenty five years, has been the rise of the unserious people. And this is not just in our politics, although that's where it's most bald, because everybody Where's the most obvious too? Correct. That's right. But I think you see it in the way in which the decline of the

neighborhood 711 let's go to the neighborhood 711. When I walk into my neighborhood 711 and this is not the fault of the people who are working there. This is a bigger thing that they are operating in. But when I see someone barely wiping down the Slurpee machine and they can't even do that well, that's because they don't take that stat act

of wiping down the Slurpee machine seriously. They just wanna get paid their $18.33 an hour, barely wipe the surfing machine and go off while they have the little earbud iPod earbud in their in their, in their ear, maybe listening to a podcast. I would hope, but more likely they're not, they're not. And so that's unseriousness. And, again, it's not their fault. They're operating. I don't

blame individuals for this. I don't even blame or hold accountable, seven eleven for this, because seven eleven can only operate within the parameters of what they're given as far as human capital. I blame families and communities and traditions. That's where the blame lies. That's where the fault lies. That's where the accountability lies. And quite frankly, that's where the saving of all of this will lie. So I'm working on a couple different ideas in the

shorts episodes in drips and drips and drips. You should listen to those, every, every week. It's my it's my basically, my version of Seth Godin just dripping an idea out over the course of twenty five years. And I might write a book about it. I I did an outline this weekend of another book. I'll talk about another project that I've got going on here in a little bit, but I'm I'm a big fan of essays. I think

that's I think that's gonna be the way to go. Anyway, so the podcast format, the main format of the podcast, though, is the book. Right? So we read War and Peace. Like, we're supposed to read War and Peace today, and I'm already five books behind. Right? Or Tender is the Night. We just covered Parade's End. That was our most recent new, quote, unquote, content episode with,

with Libby Unger. I read Considering Genius, the writings of Stanley Crouch, because I am obsessed with this idea of improv improvisation as a method for getting us out of leadership problems. And it's improvisation that's unique to America because jazz is unique to America. No one else does it the way that we do. And and and in in that lies the keys

to our successes in the next turning. We also talked about Shop Class's Soulcraft this year on the podcast, a book that if I had read it thirty years ago when I graduated high school and everyone and it was sort of introducing Google to me and was talking about how the entire future was going to be high-tech. If I had read Matthew Crawford's Shop Class at Soul Craft, I probably would not be doing this podcast right now, or it would look totally different because

my life would have been totally different. It was one of those kinds of books. I looked at it, and I thought, my god. Like, I I'm 45, and it's too late. It's too late to make the shift now. But Mm-mm. I can give it to my 19 year old. So I did. I gave her a copy. And I said, read this. Read this. So those are the kind of books we cover on the podcast, fiction, nonfiction, covering a wide variety of genres. But we're going to shift our focus a

little bit coming up here on the podcast. So, normally, we take larger books like Brothers Karamazov or which is, like, a thousand pages or War and Peace, which is, like, 1,200 pages or, Augustine's, not Confessions. I'll think of it in a minute here. But, books by Augustine. Right? The big thick tomes that really sort of defeat people. We take those books and we divide them up into smaller parts, and then we talk about them. Right? And each one of those is right around a

two hour episode to cover a larger book. But I'm increasingly believing that we should take smaller books, such as f Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, which I'm reading right now, and really break that down into smaller parts. Because I think there's things I'm missing, things that we're missing, gifts that I'm not bringing to you all as an audience, that I think need to be brought to you. I'm also not sharing these gifts, I think, at a at a comprehensive enough

level with my guests. So for instance, Parade's End, which we just covered with Libby Younger. Great episode. Go back and listen to it. We spent the first probably forty five minutes of that episode just talking about European politics. And I was giving her a historical dive into European politics. Most of the history, I probably got wrong. My timelines were all screwed up. But But at least I understand a little

bit about, about, European politics. And she asked me a question projecting forward European politics, right, to to the next, twenty five years because I am a little bit obsessed with the future and where we're going. And and that consumed forty five the first forty five minutes of our conversation. But that means we had less time for parade's end. And inside of parade's end, there's so much

information in there. There's so much good stuff about feminism, male and female relationships, World War one, British colonialism. How do you lead when when you have, to paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, the white man's burden, whether we agree with that framing or not, it was there in leadership. And I'm saying this is a minority, and Tom's a minority. And, yes, it's there. Like, you you just there's certain things you just cannot overlook. The book was written in 1934. It was written for a

Victorian audience. And so how do we deal with those kinds of things in a really meaningful way, that a deeper way on the show? And so I'm thinking we're going to we're gonna take smaller books, and we're gonna take longer time with smaller books. So one of the books that I wanna get to this year, I do wanna get to the Empire of the Summer Moon, before Taylor Sheridan gets his

hands on it and releases to the public whatever it is he's doing. I wanna get ahead of him on that, and he's fairly he's pretty quick, and he's a good writer. So I gotta get ahead of that guy. But there's other books that are on our list, to cover, this year that do deserve more time spent with them, even though they look small. So we're going to start having more multi episode or multi episodic, covering the same book. Multi episodes covering the same book, coming up here on the podcast.

So maybe three, maybe four, maybe two. It'll just depend on the length of the book and what I can pull what I can pull out of it. Because I will admit right now, I'm about 75% through Tender is the Night. And probably about once every 30 or 40 pages, I'm getting a theme pulled out of there. And so I'm gonna have to really go in there and really pull some things out. There are valuable things in there, but you gotta read it to find those

valuable things. So, this is the first time I'm sort of bringing this up. Not I'm sort of this is the first time I'm bringing this up with Tom. And he is my my, my ride or die homie on this one with the guests. So, Tom, what do you what do you think about that as a potential cohost? Like, where do you see the problems, the pitfalls, the challenges? You know what kinds of books you've read here.

I mean, come for god's sakes, I I started you off with Pearl Buck and the Good Earth, which we couldn't revisit that, and we wanted. And I I I convinced you that we could do something decent with the Good Earth, and now you're you're like, okay. I'm all in. This guy's crazy, but I'm all in. You know, it's funny as you were as you were saying this. Right? Like, as you're you're so my mind my mind starts spinning because, again, I'm I'm I'm listening to understand and I'm

listening Mhmm. I'm not I'm not listening to reply. Right? I'm listening to to absorb and understand and and and be able to, you know, and be able to really digest what you're talking about. But one of the first things I I I City of God, by the way. That's Augustine. City of God. City of God. Sorry. One of the first one of the things I thought I'm thinking, wouldn't it be interesting? Or or or or how interesting

would it be? Because the cohosts that we have on this show come from different walks of life, different ethnicities, different genders, different well, I mean, really different just totally different ways of thinking. Right? So could we take something like I'll just you it was literally the last book you

just said, so I'll just make that as an example. You know, the good earth with pro Buck, could we do an episode with myself and then the next episode on the same book with Libby, the next episode on the same book with somebody? And what because of our different backgrounds, we're gonna have very different views or vantage points from this book, very different explanations for leaders and what they should or or could do. And it might there might be some opportunity to resonate with

people. So again, I I I don't know what your download, you know, I don't know what the download volume is or how many people are actually listening to this, to this podcast. But there may be some there may be some validity to audience sharing. Right? Meaning, like, maybe you have an audience that that chimes into Libby more often than other cohosts or Mhmm. Do, you know, I just lost his name. You have another pretty regular cohost. Dorel O'Nickson.

Dorel. Thank you, Dorel. Yep. Like, like so, he was the one I was thinking of, by the way. So Dorel, like, you know, somebody that chimes in like, when they go down your podcast list and they see Dorel, they're like, oh, I'm just gonna listen because I like I like listening to him. I like listening to,

you know, whatever. Yep. But if they see it's the same book, would they be more likely to go, oh, well, what are these so all three of these people were talking about maybe I'll go listen to what they because maybe it like, they're sitting hearing something that I say and they go, oh, Libby was totally off. Like, they're totally in a different direction.

And, like you know what I mean? Like, again, as as you were saying this, I was thinking I start my wheel started spinning going, so, hey, San, stop reading 800 books a year. Meaning, just need 12. Maybe I just need 12. One a month. One a month. This is also selfish. I will for you. I know. I will admit this is selfish. Right? Because I do look at the list books that I haven't prepared every year, and I go

and I and I breathe out. But and then I take as I as I tell my son sometimes when he gets when he gets hurt or taken by surprise and, like, in soccer, Deep cleansing breaths, son. Deep cleansing breaths. Yeah. Well, and then there's books that are a total surprise. So every year and and Libby Libby knows this. I've been I've been for two years, I've been trying to crack brother's car and resolve with Libby, and I just can't get there. I

just can't get there with her. And it's not a it's not an issue of her or or really or really me. It's a challenge of the book. Right? It's Dostoyevsky. Like, it's like, we did Crime and Punishment, and we only did the first chap four chapters of Crime and Punishment with, David Baumrucker. I I I I'd then I so what I did as a result of that was I sicced Baumracker on to the brothers Karamazov and still haven't come there. So, you know, it's it's it's one of those things where

there are certain books that are just hard. They just aren't. You know? Like, we have not covered, and we won't until next year sometime, James Joyce. Like, I I started reading, Finnegan not Finnegan's Wake, the other James Joyce book. But Finnegan's Wake will serve for the time being. You start reading Finnegan's Wake, and I realized this was Joyce. I realized when I was reading that that I'm probably not smart enough to analyze

this. And I don't think I'm a dumb guy. I don't think I'm the smartest guy on the block, but I'm I know I'm not, like, trailing it right in the back end of the the the IQ pool. So but even I found Joyce to be hard. Right? Ulysses. It wasn't fitting its way. It was Ulysses. I read, like, the first probably 20 pages of Ulysses, and I and I struggled not because the words were hard, but because the ideas

were complicated and layered, and there's a lot of meaning. And he wants you Joyce wants you to go into that book with respect because it's a serious book. And so if I'm gonna bring Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake or the Dubliners, I think you wrote that too. If I'm gonna bring that to this podcast, I wanna treat it with the weight that it deserves. Same thing with the

Russians. I wanna treat it with the weight that it deserves. Now, Tolstoy, on the other hand, I've been a fan of Tolstoy since I re first read Anna Karenina back when I was 15. I don't know why I was able to bang through that. I just was. And then I read, the, War and Peace, a couple years after that, and I've never been defeated by Tolstoy. Probably because he was a guy, like, I would have hung out with. Like, personality wise, he seemed like a guy that I would have

been, like he and I would have been okay. That's my ego talking there. But, but is the way he writes, the way he sort of frames things, the way he frames his world, the level of cynicism he has tinctured by wisdom. I resonate with that. And so I've never had any trouble with Tolstoy. Matter of fact, I I always have to slow down with him because I'm speeding up too fast. Same thing with John Steinbeck, reading Easterly. Just gonna say Steinbeck. That's

Steinbeck for me. Right. You know? Steinbeck. Your Tolstoy is my Steinbeck. Yeah. So you know I would read that. If that guy wrote the yellow pages, I would read it. Yeah. And it's just and it's just easy. It just, like, falls off the you know, it just falls off your consciousness. So okay. So this idea has some merit. I want to run this by And by the way, I'm not suggesting we do one book a month and everybody gets a crack at

it. Maybe it's two. Right. Maybe maybe you think of the pairings. Right? Like, maybe one book is, you know, Libby and Dorel. One book is Dorel and I. One book is, you know, myself and some someone, you know, JP, whatever. I think, like Whatever. But I'm, like, I I I like I like the

idea and the oh, and then and then. Right? You could wrap it together with having, like, if you're struggling for episode like, episodes to to fill because you're you're not able to catch up on reading, if you're doing this two episode per book kind of philosophy, you can have a third episode with both guest hosts on at the same time. And then you can talk about you could talk about the varying degrees of of thought processes behind a a like, whatever concepts are being drawn out by the

book. One goes one way, one goes the other. Now if all three of us are on the same page, that itself could also turn into an interesting dialogue, right, of, like because just because just because philosophically, we think the same thing doesn't mean we all get there the same way. Right. Well, so a book like, have you ever read Alice Walker's The Color Purple? No. No. No. But So we did color yeah. We did Color Purple this year. I got to admit, I read Color Purple, and I was not a fan.

And, partially, it is because the leadership lessons that you get from The Color Purple aren't the ones that Alice Walker thinks she's giving. One of the ways she doesn't think she's giving leadership lessons. But if she were Yeah. Yeah. They're not the ones that the text would sort of put forth as this is the lesson. Right? So there's a whole to to be to give an example, there's a scene in there or not a

scene. There's a episode in there that is related where, an African American lady and her husband are walking along, are walking along the sidewalk or whatever, and a mayor and this is in an all white town. Right? And there are black people in an all white town in the South, back during segregation. And so, of course, if white people show up on the sidewalk, you guys step aside. Okay. Fine. That's sort of the framing, right, of this of this episode in the book or this incident in the book.

And, the mayor's wife who, you know, is walking on the sidewalk stops the, children of the, the African American woman and her husband and, starts touching their hair and starts talking about them and asks if they wanna be servants. It's a whole it's a whole scene. And I know why Walker set up this scene. Right? I know why. Because these are things that she witnessed in a pre civil rights south, and these are things that were told to her that happened to African Americans in a pre civil

rights South. In particular, African Americans who were not, let us say this, of the status of, like, a W. E. B. Du Bois. Okay? So they're poor, beyond poor, like shanty poor. Right? Shanty poor African Americans in Mississippi. Check mark all the boxes. Right? And so in the incident that is related in the book, the African American lady ends up getting into a fist fight, ends up punching the mayor's wife, and gets into a fist fight with the mayor and the cops.

And the cops, like, beat her half to death. Right? And then they holler, of course, off to jail because that's what you do, because she was the inciting person even though she was really whatever. But they holler and I'm saying whatever, but, like, this is how things happened. Right? And so they holler off to jail, and then there's a spiral of degradation that that this pulls this family into. What's the leadership lesson from there? And so I read this, and that's my

first question. Like, what is if I'm a leader and I'm reading this, what am I getting from this? And the the only thing that I could pull from that was the lesson of demanding it's a Malcolm X lesson. Demanding respect. Like, you're going to respect me, and if you don't, I'm going to clap you. Like, he actually said this in one of his speeches. Right? He

said, like, you Christians, you have the religion of turn the other cheek. I have the religion of if I get hit, I'm gonna crack you back twice as hard. Yeah. And that was Malcolm X. Right? Because he's militant. Right? Eldridge Cleaver, same thing when you read Soul on Ice, which you also read this year. Same idea. And this is the thing with with a book like The Color Purple. I, as an African American,

am removed from that. I I don't have those kinds of troubles, and by the way, neither do my children. Because, sure, you can argue and you can assert, and people do, that people like Alice Walker and everybody who came before them go through went through this so that you don't have to. Okay. Yes. This is the idea of family, tradition, and community. Absolutely true. For true. For sure. I agree with all that. And yet

and this is the direction I went in with The Color Purple. The revolution is over, and African Americans won. We won the revolution. We really did. And I'm not talking about the poor African Americans, because poor African Americans just like just as poor whites, poor Hispanics, poor anybody, regardless of race are going to have those same kinds of challenges. They just

are. But when you get into not but because two things seem to be true at the same time, and when you get into the middle class and the upper class, those challenges have now fallen away in a way they did not fall away pre civil rights or even up to probably the nineteen seventies or even nineteen eighties. Yeah. So what do you do? And I'm obsessed with this idea or was obsessed with this idea during Black History Month. What do you do when you've won the revolution

and you're shocked? Right. And you're shocked that you won, by the way. No. You start a new one. What do you mean what do you do? You you look for the next fight. This is this is this is not this this is not a completion thing. This is not something what are you talking about? Well, and also, as a as a Christian, I believe in reformation rather than revolution, and those are two fundamentally different things. Yeah. Sure. Because because revolution

revolution gets you into a different you forgot. Revolution is always in a hurry. It's just like sin. It's always in a hurry. K? And so I'm using The Color Purple, and I'm using that book that we covered in the way that I approached it to say this. If I had had four other hosts feeding into ideas on that, I might have come to some different conclusions.

I could be persuaded. I think Yeah. Yeah. So because yeah. Because I I I don't, again, I I think I don't think I don't think the black community or the African American community won yet. I think I think I think there's going to be a winner and loser when the poor it that you just made mention. The challenges that the poor face regardless of race, color, or or or religion religious beliefs, whether they're black or white or Hispanic, it doesn't matter.

The the poor I think we're gonna win when all of them collectively are fighting the same fight. That's when we'll win. Because right now, to say that you won yeah. No. You won a battle. You didn't win the war yet. I think the war is still going on. The war is just changing the battlefield. Well, I I mean, a new a new battlefield. And you know what? You wouldn't be the first person to you wouldn't be the first person to say that. So John McWhorter says this all the time with, when

he's on, the podcast with, Glenn Lowry. Because Glenn Lowry very much who's been through the wars, he's an African American writer and thinker, been through all the wars literally, went from being conservative to being progressive back to being kinda sorta conservative, not really. You know, and John McWhorter always been a progressive leftist, always been that guy. But he's progressive leftist with a brain, which is kind of amazing, right, these days in our culture. And so, you know, they'll

get on and they'll they'll go after it. And McWhorter does just basically agree with with you. He's in he's in that position. Whereas, Lowry would probably be closer to my position where, you know, fundamentally, at a certain point, particularly in America this is where the American struggle is. I can't talk about other countries. But the American struggle, particularly around race, is what happens when racial groups in this country wind up getting everything they asked for?

And it still wasn't enough. Now maybe your ask was too small. That I can maybe accept. But even if your ask was gigantic, right, and you got it, you have the the curse of the victor. You know? I think of the Amy Mann song from the movie from the movie Magnolia. You got what you wanted, and now you can hardly stand it. And I think African Americans over the next, I would say, ten years, maybe fifteen. George Floyd was a blip. An important blip,

but a blip nonetheless. Because there's a trajectory. There's an arc that's happening in the African American community that I could speak to because I see it. There's an arc, an upward to the right j curve. It's it's just it's slowly happening, and it's it's going inch by inch, step by step as is the usual with African Americans in this country, inch by inch, step by step. But every generation of African Americans has to they're not

refighting the revolution. They're fighting a new thing on new ground every single time. So and like I said, I believe in reformation because reformation is the leaven through the loaf. It's it's slow. You know, sometimes it requires a blowing up of institutions and systems and processes, and I'm fine with that. But you have to have a replacement for it. And that's where I always get off the train with revolutionaries because they never have a

replacement for it. They just wanna blow crap up, cause chaos, and then move on. Like, what that is not helpful because then all of us are still here. And what are you gonna do about the kids? They gotta build after the chaos. Yeah. Yeah. You have no plan. So anyway, but that's a conversation that would have been interesting to have with you and Libby, Libby Younger and Derulo Nixon and Dave Baum Rucker. Like, I could have aligned, you know, aligned for all four of you.

I haven't had that interesting conversation. And I would and you're right. I would have gotten four different perspectives. So that would have been that would have been fascinating. And it would have been fascinating for our listeners, I think. So And so I I wonder if the formatting I I wonder I like I I do like the idea of having, having one book. Now I I I don't think it would be effective to do it from the beginning with two guest

hosts. Right? Like Yeah. It would be too it would be too much. It would be too much of all all at once. But if you did the same book, two episodes with the same book, two different cohosts, and then possibly a third episode with the both of them on, and maybe the script is for you. Like, I wanna talk we don't need to go through the the verses of the book again. We just need to go through your opinions about this this particular like, okay. We talked about, you know, chapter chapter

three. This topic came up. Tom answered it this way. Libby answered it this way. Dorel answered it this way. I'd like to talk about where's the overlap and where's the the discrepancies, and what do we do about those, and how do how do leaders decide which version of this should be on the forefront of their mind based on what? Based on the type of company they have, based on, like again, you decide on the script what, you know, what what that question

looks like. I think it could be interesting. Yeah. I think I think we're going to start the amount of books you have to read. Yeah. Exactly. Give yourself a break. Oh my gosh. You have no idea I'm drowning. Oh, I got them drowning. I got too much other things, too many other things going on. I'm killing businesses. I'm picking up other ones. I'm doing this. It's the whole thing. Okay. No. I I think I think I want to run that by you. I want

to run it by you live. I think this is going to be something that we are going to do. I think we might start with Tender is a night, or we might start with the book that comes after that that was supposed to come after that. But, but, yeah, we're gonna we're gonna rejigger this format a little bit midseason, kinda see if things

work a little bit differently. I do also like the idea of maybe, like, a quarterly or maybe biannually recap where you bring on all of your cohosts, and you just talk about overlying themes that happen throughout the course of x number of books, or whatever that you were you know? So and you you should be able to you should be able to kinda, you know, basically categorize where where the, like, the top five or six

themes of, like and then say, alright. Now as a panel, I want let let's talk about theme number one, number two, whatever, and, like, let's kinda I I think it would be cool. I think it could be interesting to have an extended version of the podcast episode. Maybe it's not an hour. Maybe it's two and a half three hours, three hours or whatever where we go where you can take, you know, a a whole quarter's worth of podcast episodes, get four four guest hosts on all at the same time, and now really

attack a a really good subject matter. Like, maybe it's maybe it's three different subjects, but it's really in-depth conversation about it. And let's let's get down to the nitty gritty about, like, you know I mean, we're we're not all leadership. I get no. I guess we're all we're all leadership people in our own right. I mean, I know I understand you're you're probably the guy being the you know, like,

you coach leaders to being better leaders. None of the rest of us really do that, but we're leaders in our own right in different versions of our of our life. So I think it could be I think that also could be very interesting. Yeah. Like, maybe it's not once a quarter. Maybe it's twice a year. I I don't know. I don't know what the time maybe it's once a year. I don't know. But something like that, I think, could be interesting as well. Yeah.

Okay. We're going to we're gonna we're gonna futz around. We're gonna move some things around listeners. We are going to and, hopefully, this will answer some listener questions, that they have about format, about books. We did we have been starting to get some interesting listener feedback from, episodes that we posted, on YouTube. So keep keep keep sending us that, keep sending us that feedback. Also keep correcting us when we miss small things. I love that as

well. I love being corrected. I don't know everything. Sometimes the Internet is smarter than me. Not often, but sometimes. Reminds me of that. Do do you remember the stand up comedian, Steven Wright? Oh, yeah. Probably the most dry Yes. Monotone person on the planet. But one of the comments that he made, I just every time I hear it, it still makes me laugh, and you just said something that was close to it, which is he said when he comes out of the stage, he goes, you can't have everything.

Where would you put it? That was maxed me up. I was like, damn. He's right. Like, where would you I don't understand. Like, we just leave everything where it is and just claim it as yours? Like, how are you gonna That's brilliant. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. Cracked me. Oh my gosh. That that's that's killer. He was he was he was a genius comedian. He was. He was. Oh, Steven Rayne. Oh my gosh. I

haven't thought about that dude in years. But Buzzfeed He was from my neck of the woods, just to let you know. Oh, of course he was. Of course he was. Of course he was. Of course. One day, we're gonna talk about that neck of the woods, but not today. Not today. Not today. So as we close our episode, today, and thank you for listening to the leadership lessons for the great books podcast, I have an announcement to make, saving it for the end of our of our episode today.

So from three time least selling author, a guy you would know, comes his next book, a book on culture, a book on the challenges that we face in various areas, a book about what we do here at the end of the fourth turning about the business of living in the world and his own personal issues. Because what the heck? When you write a book like this, you want to put a bit of your

own self in it. A book written in somewhat the tone and the style of a James Baldwin, Notes from a Native Son, or even a Joan Didion souching towards Bethlehem Essayist or reportage type model of essay, but without all that Hunter Thompson, Gonzo journalism kind of thing going on.

A book that does feature, political, opinions or at least ideas, but it also features things like or or features essays, actually, that focus on being our human beings, being our pets' emotional support animals, which we are our pets' emotional support animals, or what we're going to be doing and what it's going to look like in a post Christian twenty first century in America or how ideas spread or how fictions give people meaning, which

by the way they do. This is a book that will talk about closing gaps in anticipation of net of the network leap, and, of course, per se or not per se, per pursuant to our previous conversation, a book about revolutions and realignments. By the way, there's a quote in this book. If you're from, from Citizen Kane back in 1941, you're the greatest fool I've ever known, Charles Foster Kane. If it was anybody else, I'd say what's going to happen to you would

be a lesson to you. Only you're going to need more than one lesson, and you're going to get more than one lesson. By the way, this is an essay writing about the Democratic Party and where they need to go because we do still need two functioning parties in America. A book from your host, Ehsan Sorels, wartime soon to be, wartime, least selling author. This is the this is the desk copy. That's why all its stuff is sticking out of it if you're watching

the video. A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, a collection of literary essays by Haysan Sorels. This book will be coming out in July of twenty twenty five, available for late summer purchase and just in time for the holidays. I am also going to finally knuckle under in my recording location deep inside the back end of a warehouse somewhere in an undisclosed location. I'm finally from there, going to record the audio version of this book with me reading the essays, some of which you can see on my

or read on my substack. And so I do have proof of concept that people will actually click on them and read them. Whether they'll read them in book form is another matter altogether. But this is a book that I probably should have published last year, but I couldn't finish it because it didn't feel as though it were the right time. This feels as though it

is the right time. So look for A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, literary essays by Haysan Sorels, a cultural commentary book coming in July of twenty twenty five from my company, HSCT Publishing, and it will be available everywhere where you get books. So Amazon, Barnes and Noble, IngramSpark, Kobo, all those virtual places print on demand. And, of course, the audiobook version will be on Audible, and that will be coming out looking like November or December of twenty twenty five.

So a collection of essays divided into three parts covering a lot of different areas. I think you're going to like it. I think you're gonna enjoy it. And, of course, when it comes out, we will talk about it on the podcast because why wouldn't I do that? It's a little self serving thing that I could do, and what the heck I talk about Tom. Kinda seems like you'd be crazy not to. I also talked about Tom Libby's book, so I don't feel bad. Maybe I'll bring Tom on. I'll send him

a copy of the book. He'll read it. He'll tell me there's too many words in it, and then we'll talk about it'll be great. By the way, I do use the term Eshtikon and in the book. So I'll be I'll I'll bring up Hasan, do you remember back in May when you told me it was 215 pages and you reformatted to now it's two sixty seven? Guess what? It should have been two fifteen. It should have left. Should've avoided that Libra Baskerville type. Avoid all of that. You should use Cambria. Use Cambria fonts.

And I don't wanna hear about it monetizing or whatever the word is anymore. Exactly. Oh my. Stop using SAT words. Stop using SAT words. We all know you're smart. Quit. So this book is coming out, like I said, in, in two formats. And, we will we were we are flirting with the idea of doing a hardcover format, as well. That'll be a little bit smaller. That'll fit right there on your, on your desk. But, yeah, this is my fourth book.

And I do know self publishing it in a little bit of a different mode than I did before. So, it's been very interesting. It is the most personal book that I've released, that I've released so far, really talking about particularly in the personal issue section, things that actually may have or may not have happened to me in the course of my life that, have influenced how I think, how I act, and how I walk in the world and decisions that I have made thus far.

Alright. Final thoughts, Tom, before we close out this episode. Here's a fun thought. What if what if we took what if we took all of the episodes of, well, not all of the episodes, but let's say we took our favorite episodes of this podcast, took the transcripts, and coauthored a book that was basically a leadership book based on I'm just thinking out loud here. No. No. No. No. I've I've already thought of that, and I have I have a repository of transcripts that's just sitting there. So

I I I do have an idea. I I actually have a so I have a journal. It's a black journal that's that was made out of an old album cover. So it has, like, the album, the old 45 RPM actually embedded in the cover. It's kinda really cool. Oh, that's actually I like that. It's kinda slick. Found it in, like, a used bookstore, like, walking around here locally. I was like, oh my gosh. I know that I got a piece. Anyway, so, I write in in all of my book ideas, my premises,

my essay ideas, things like that. And it acts as sort of a and I haven't in one of these journals in a long time, but it acts as a repository for that. And so interestingly enough, probably about a month and a half ago, I started noodling on the idea for a podcast because I've wanted to do a podcast book for years, absolutely years. But I wanted to make it, you know, hardcover with, like, full color photos in it and and just make it real fancy, make,

like, a collectible. And, people who know me tell me that I am crazy, and that is a ridiculous waste of resources. But I think it would be cool to pull off something like that at least once. Yeah. I I I think it could be again, potentially, it could be very cool. Well, we'll we'll sit down, and we'll we'll talk about it. Maybe we'll come up with a sales plan. We'll we'll figure

it out. Because we do need a sales plan for that sales and marketing plan if we're gonna do something like that because, the the inputs there I and I do have the number for what the inputs are for doing that. But the inputs going into that to make that worthwhile, you gotta have the output on the other end. You know? You you just you have to. You know? Yeah. Yeah. So to make that worthwhile. But, Amazon is doing doing really, really high end hardcovers

now. So that's Yeah. I saw that. It's really good. Cool. Cool. Alright. Well, no. That was my last thought. Alright. Awesome. Well, that's it for today. Thank you, Tom Libby, for joining us on the Leadership Lessons for the Great Books podcast. And with that, well, we're out.