Leadership Lessons From The Great Books - Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury w/John Hill aka "Small Mountain"

Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the leadership lessons from the great books podcast, episode number 122.

With our book today, written by an author who epitomizes the idea, the concept, the genre of high science fiction, his writing in the mid-twentieth century set the gold standard, for how literature and genre could overlap each other and how a genre of writing could transform from being mere quote unquote kids stuff to being something approaching high art by the way, along the way through transforming a genre, he also wrote screenplays, poems, and many, many other works

along with Isaac Asimov Robert Heinlein and the ever cigarette smoking rebel writer, Philip K Dick. This writer's works will be read long after the genre of science fiction transmutes as it is doing in our own time. And before our very eyes into the reality of science, fact, through the alchemy of imagination, deep in the recesses of engineering minds. I'm almost right. Like a sentence, this author might write today on the podcast to kick off our late summer and early fall

tour of the genre of science fiction. We will be stubborn and addressing for leaders, The themes inherent in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. We'll be joined on this March into the literary fire, such as it worked with our returning guest host for episode number 98, where we cover True Grit by Charles Portis, John Hill, AKA "Small Mountain." How you doing, John? Welcome back. Thanks for having me back, man.

I am so excited to talk about this book and because, I don't know if you're gonna talk about this, but you put out the list of books you wanted to cover. And I said, I wanna do this one. Mhmm. Yep. Right? And we're gonna talk we're gonna talk about why here in a little bit because, yeah, I'm just excited to be back. It is it is a book that I have read probably at least 2 or 3

times, in my life. And reading it now, the stage of life that I'm at with all of the current shenanigans we have going on in the world, in the West in general, in the United States in particular. And when we're recording this, we are coming off of a second set of shots fired in presidential candidates. We are living in perilous times. And while I am a person who believes that we will come out of it on the other side, I do believe that coming out of it on the other side of it

is going to be a close run thing. And this book, is about, at least in my mind, this book is about what happens if you if you don't come out on the other side of it. So we're going to start with Fahrenheit 451 by, by Ray Bradbury. Now the version that I have is the Simon and Schuster version, published, oh gosh, back in, probably

1995. And while, normally, I don't read directly from copy written books on the podcast, you know, particularly ones like this, I don't think Ray Bradbury's estate would have a problem with this, actually. I think they would want people to read this book out loud. So for Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, chapter 1, the hearth and the salamander. I'm gonna open up quickly. It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things

eaten, to see things blackened and changed. But the brass nozzle in his fists with this great Python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his symbolic helmet, numbered 451 on his solid head and his eyes all orange flame was the

thought of what came next. He flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. They strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace while the flapping pigeon wing books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with

burning. Montauk grinned the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame. He knew that when he returned to the firehouse, he might wink at himself. A minstrel man burnt corked in the mirror later going to sleep. He would feel the fiery smile still gripped by his face muscles in the dark and never went away. That smile. It never, ever went away. As long as he remembered. And that's how we open Fahrenheit 4 51, the temperature, by the way, at which books burn. As usual, we are going

to talk, right away. We're going to gonna delve right away into the literary life of Ray Bradbury because this guy was a hell of a guy who was actually born. And you can tell this by reading his biography on Wikipedia. He was born at exactly the right place at exactly the right time in exactly the right century to be a writer. And I would not call that luck. I would call that providence. He was born to well, write the things that he wrote and he turned his talents to exactly

where they needed to be. Ray Douglas Bradbury or an August 22, 1920 died June 5th, 2012 was born in Waukegan, Illinois to Esther Bradbury, a Swedish immigrant and Leonard Spalding Bradbury, a power and telephone Lineman of English ancestry. Bradbury, attended Los Angeles high school after his parents moved around a bit and was active there in the drama club.

He often roller skated through Hollywood in hopes of meeting celebrities among the creative people he met while roller skating through Hollywood were special effects pioneer, Ray Harryhausen and radio star George Burns. Bradbury's first pay as a writer at age 14 was for a joke he sold to George Burns to use on the Burns and Allen radio show. And I'm a big fan, by the way, just as a pause, of old time radio. That's one of the things I very rarely talk

about, but I will listen to old time radio shows. And then the Burns and Allen show was was a really good one. The Charlie McCarthy show was a really good one back in the day. People forget that, drama, comedy, detective stories, science fiction, film noir. Radio was the first place for a lot of these genres that then transformed or transmuted to television.

By the way, the basic the biggest example of this of a show that made the leap from radio to television was the show Dragnet, which everyone forgets about, by the way. By the way no. Not by the way. But, this is the memory that Bradbury has, or or was quoted about in an interview about selling that joke to Burns and Allen. He says, I suppose the most important memory he has is of mister Electric Joe. On Labor Day weekend, 1932, when I was 12 years old, he came to my

hometown with the Dill Brothers. He was a performer sitting in an electric chair and a stage hand pulled a switch and he was charged with 50,000 volts of pure electric. Lightning flash in his eyes as hair stood on end. I sat below in the front row and he reached down with a flaming sword full of electricity. And he tapped me on both shoulders and the 2 of my nose, and he cried live forever. And I thought, God, that's

wonderful. How do you do that? So when I left the carnival that day, I stood by the carousel and I watched the horses running around and around to the music of beautiful Ohio. And I cried Tears streamed down my cheeks because I knew something important had happened to me that day because of mister electrical. I felt changed. And so I went home and within days I started to write and I've never stopped. Bradbury cited, Vern's Jules, Vern, and.

My agent G Wells as his primary science fiction influences. He identified with Vern saying, quote, he believes the human being is in a strange situation in a very strange world. And he believes that we can triumph by behaving morally. It's very important, by the way, to remember about Bradbury's writing more so than Asimov who was sort of neutral on morality in his writing or even Heinlein or Philip K. Dek who was more bitter and cynical and sarcastic. Bradbury was a mid

century moralist. He still believed in Christian morality. He still believed that you could actually find good in people and that we had a responsibility to dig that out. In regard to his education, however, Bradbury said, and this relates directly to Fahrenheit, 4 51 quote, libraries raised me. I don't believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don't have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the depression and we

had no money. I couldn't go to college. So I went to the library 3 days a week for 10 years. So I graduated from the library when I was 28 years old. I, you know, when I read about guys like Ray Bradbury and when I read about how impactful things like the depression and world war 2, and Philip K. Dick was very impressed by the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So was Heinlein, quite frankly,

as was Isaac Asimov. Most of the folks who wound up being science fiction writers at the end or the mid parts of the end of 20th century, they were seeking a way to, I think, merge science and morality together while also recognizing that the human condition is fraught with danger. And Bradbury, I think, got closest to touching on the positive aspects of that. And even in Fahrenheit 451, a book that is about not positive things, he it's not a

happy ending, but the ending is definitely hopeful. Let's just say that. So, again, you know, I'd like to welcome John to the podcast. I've rambled long enough as I usually do. So I'm gonna open up the floor to him. And by the way, I'm in my new podcast studio, so in case you're watching this on video. No. I did not just graduate into a black room, such as a red shirted man in

a black room. I actually have a new podcast studio, on location in, in the town in which I live, and we'll have a little more details about that. It's subsequent to podcast, but this is the this is the beginning. This is the grand opening. This is the gala event such as it were, for our, for our recording today. So we're gonna work out some technical things, and we invited John along to, to help us out with that as well as talk about the book. But, let me open up the question here for

John. I know that you were very, very excited to read this book. So talk about Ray Bradbury, talk about Fahrenheit 451 and its impact, specifically on your worldview, as a I consider you to be a sales leader, but think about yourself in in the role in which you're in. Talk about the impact of this book. So, man, I love that you're talking about Heinlein

Asimov, Philip k Dick. Right? Because I was in I think I was in 8th grade whenever a woman, a girl at the time that I was in school with, her name is Laura Franek. She works for, I think, like, Industrial Light and Magic is who she works for now. Right? So she's done some some very cool things. But she comes to me, and she goes, hey. You need to read this book. And I and I had a crush on her, and I was like, oh, okay. Cool. I'll read the book, but we're also

friends. You know? So I read this book, and, I'd already read Heinlein. Right? A lot of Heinlein. You know? Strange in a strange land, Job, you know, number of the beast. You know? I'd read lots of Geralt. Right? And I like what you're talking about here because I didn't really appreciate it until I was rereading it this this next time. He's actually trying to keep it very artful. Mhmm. Yeah. Not just like a story filled with a bunch of, like, numbers and a theoretical way of thinking about a

scientific thing that they're excited to show off. It's not it's not really the place for, like, nerds to go get lost and, and to do this thing. It is very much a bridge between, you know, very science fiction, very much in the future, but it's still prose. It's still very much a piece of writing. And hitting this now, I, you know, I was probably 13 or 14 when I read this. I think I probably read it again at some point in high school, and then I I don't think I've read it since then. You know?

And reading it now as an adult, I've been having this weird season of really appreciating how much being a self motivated reader has led me to the place that I'm at right now. Mhmm. You know? Like, I don't really think about how much I read and how much I ingest and how that shows up in my in my coaching and my working with clients and stuff like that, but, like, we both live

in small towns in Texas, man. Like, I'm like, I live I live in a suburb called white settlement, which is, like, what a name. Right? Can you imagine going back 25 years ago when there is no Internet and the only source of news that you have is what the local paper creator wants to put in front of you or the news and everything?

Like, that seems such a foreign concept now. Even though we're getting a new version through, you know, AI prompts and and search results and, you know, you know, reinforcing our own biases, but that's a whole other conversation. That's a whole that's a whole wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. We may get to some of that today, but that's a

whole other thing. But this idea of, you know, like, I've been thinking about this for a couple of weeks. How different would I be had I not read Heinlein at 9 years old and David Garrold, who like, I remember my brother coming to me with a stack of 5 books, and number of the beast was one of them. Job was one of them. And then David Gerold, which was you know, he's a gay man writing about alien invasion on the planet of Earth. Mhmm. And and he goes, don't

tell mom you're reading these books. That was the only thing he saw that's the only thing he told me. Right? So now I'm reading these books that are way too old for me, and I'm getting introduced to these ideas, like, probably way before most other people are. You know? How does that impact me? Right? And then my thing now is anything that where I think I'm deficient and I need to go improvement, 1st place, I'm gonna go buy some books.

We're doing a customer service project for one of our clients and first thing is like, I have a lot of opinions about service, but let me go see what pros are talking about so that way I don't have to recreate the wheel or start all the way over. Mhmm. And now it's this first step. It's this first pivot. I'm gonna go look I'm gonna go see the other books that other people

are talking about. I'm gonna go dive into those books, not to completely learn the whole thing because I do have some positions and perspectives on it because I've been doing this for a while, but why would I try to start all the way at 0? You know? And I think for I think when we're young and we're, like, new in leadership and entrepreneurship, however you wanna package that, it's very easy to be like, well, my stuff is not like

anybody else's. Right? And we create this island for us to hang out on that doesn't really serve us. Right? Because, you know, while it's not the same, variations on a theme start to apply. You know? So I've been I've been reading this book and on some level kind of frustrated because I do read so much for just business and for Mhmm. And for improvement. Like, come on. Can we get through, like, the fancy art prose stuff and, like, let's just get to the

meat of it and everything? And so I had this kinda weirdoality of, like, I needed to kinda, like, find the right gear to actually, like, you know, work through the book. So that took me a couple of days. But the whole time, I'm just, like, appreciating it of, like, kinda, I would be fundamentally a different person if it not for all the reading that I do. And I wouldn't be able to charge the rates that I charge if I didn't feel like I could find

my way to the answer, but it's always through books and literature. It's interesting that you say that because that's part of the reason why we do this podcast. Right? Mhmm. Exactly. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Business books were great. I'm not knocking business books. That's fine. But there's a whole 400 and I mean, so book technology, and we can talk a little about this too. Book technology in and of itself is a 500 year old approaching 600 year old

technology. Business books, books exclusively focused on sales, marketing, finance, operations, my area, psychology. Well, this is in those quote unquote business specific areas that only really started to ramp up within the last 100, 100 and 50 to a 100 years of, of book technology. The vast majority, 4 5ths of book technology, 80%, well over 80%, 90% of books. Before that, we're focused

on everything else other than business. And that's one of the points of this podcast is if you're just reading business books, you're missing out on, like, 90% of everything else in the world. And I don't I I I mean, I've said it before. You can learn more about emotional intelligence from reading a Jane Austen novel. Just discipline yourself to read pride and prejudice. Don't go read another Daniel Goleman book. And I

don't have a problem with Goldman by the way. I've read emotional intelligence. I've read it many times. It's dog eared. I've got it. But Goldman can only tell you the mechanical, and this is where the science fiction piece comes in. He He can only tell you the mechanical stuff of how it clicks together and why, but he can't tell you the what of the wisdom of the meaning underneath that. So you need both of those together. That's why we do

this podcast. But then the other thing I love that you said, I talked about how you started off with, like, you know, Heinlein and Garwalt and all these guys, right, early. Right? Weirdly enough, I started off with Isaac Asimov. That's where I I mean, I read we're gonna do I, Robot, later on a little bit this month. I started out with that book and going back and rereading that has been kind of a little bit trippy. Yeah. Because I started off with that's the place I

started off with. And so Asimov is definitely less of a moralist and more and less focused on the poetry and more focused on the the reportage of science fiction. And I didn't get to Heinlein until I was in high school, and I was already sort of, I don't know, warped in my cynicism about humanity. I mean, I already seen Blade Runner, so it already affected me. But I also had a good bit of, like, Star

Trek the next generation underneath me. Absolutely. And so I came to Heinlein with this mid century moralism, and Heinlein sort of was like Yeah. Not yeah. You can take all that gonna help us. To vote out. We're talking about everything outside of that container, if you will. Right? Space travel and time travel and, you know, some crazy stuff.

Right? Like Right. Okay. Well, then you got Philip k. Dick asking, asking a great question, which again, we're gonna read Dick's short stories here on the podcast to this podcast. You know, do androids dream of electric sheep? Like the first time I heard that title, and this is just after I, yeah, just after I seen Blade Runner. So I saw the movie first, and then I went back and read the book. And I was like, what who comes up with that? Who

even thinks like that? That's not Ray Bradbury. Right? Ray Bradbury would have looked at that and been like, yeah. He's got talent, but I have no idea what's going on over there. Yeah. It's, like, it's it's I think Bradbury is is sci fi for people who don't who have not made the decision that they love sci fi

yet. Right? Yep. I know. Especially towards the end when he's going again talking about the Beatles and and, like, like, I'm, like, like, in the, you know, I'm in the wrap up phase phase phase of the book. Right? And I'm not gonna give away any spoilers, but, you know, he's talking about the Beatles and, you know, the hound and all of this stuff. And I was like, god. Like, can we stop being so artsy? Can we just call it what

it is and everything? And then I'm like, wait a minute. Like, shut up, idiot. Like, this is art. Like, you wouldn't want someone else coming over your art and doing all this stuff. So just shut up and enjoy it, you know? And it was I demand work. Book, if you will, you know? Don't cook. Right? As kids say these days. It it was because, like, I had the same kind of situation a little bit with TrueGrid of, like, god, like, this part wait a minute. It's a story, dude. You know? Like, I'm

so captain literal that sometimes I'm like, this would never really have. Oh, wait. We're kind of living through a version of this potentially right now. That's very odd and interesting. And, my wife who works on my team, she worked at Half Price Books for 15 years before she started to work with me. Okay. Price is known for, like, pushing back against banned books and everything. Mhmm. This has been a topic we've talked about, and we talk about a lot of just, like, you know, we're not gonna

limit the flow of information and everything. I'm curious. Are your kids readers? Oh, yeah. Yeah? Oh, yeah. How much do you police what they read? So I always get asked this question, and I think it's a parent's job to know what a child is reading. And I also think it's a parent's job to just like they would with a television show or movie to understand that individual child's emotional temperament and how that book is going to

impact that emotional temperament. And so my mom was very much free range because she was, she's a baby boomer. She was very much free range. She wasn't really, I'm not going to say she wasn't paying too close attention, but she believed in the freedom of availability to information and how, what could, how could a book harm you? It was just a set of ideas. Right? Yeah. I come at it from a different perspective because I'm on the bottom end of

gen X. Right. And so I come at it from the perspective of, yeah, there's ideas in these books, but if your emotional temperament doesn't match your ability to sort of deal with these things, then I'm giving you a loaded bomb. Like I would never read, let me pick something. I would not give Fahrenheit 451 to my he's he's 7 now. So when he turns 9, I probably wouldn't give it to my 9 year old just because I know his temperament. Right? Mhmm. It would it would

deeply upset him. Like, something with seismic would move inside of him that quite frankly I'm not ready for it to move inside of him. You know, and then that's and I get it. That's that's my comfort zone. I absolutely am acknowledging that. But with that being said, my 14 year old and my 19 year old have both read Fahrenheit 451 and we've talked about it. And they read it when they were I mean, my 14 year old read when she was 12. My 19 year old read it

when she was, like, 16. And they both had different opinions about the book. My 16 year old was She was kind of okay with it. She was like, okay, well, whatever. Because she's, you know, they're they're Gen Z or so like, okay. Yeah. I don't read books anyway. I'm just Okay. What are we doing here? Why do I need a book when I have this? They're like, they're not even seeing that that this is easier to limit and show what the books are. Well,

and we and we limit and I love it. We're gonna talk about the screens and everything. We limit the screens. So we're we're biblio files. Like one of the challenges in our home that we now moved into. And one of the challenges I see in a lot of homes is there's no bookshelves. We've got so many books. We have more books than we have furniture. We did this the other day. You know, multiple genres. Oh my oh, gosh. All kinds of things. Right? And it's like, where do where do I put

all this? Like, what are we what are we doing here? And my wife is even like, you gotta give away some of these books. Like, I gotta read it. My we moved into this house a year ago and we have a rather large book collection. And even within that family book collection, there's different book collections. There's the books that Melissa displays on the now we have a wall of shelves, which is really, really nice. Very like, maybe the coolest thing I've ever done. And now, like, I'm just used to it.

And then as other people come over, they're like, oh, like, it's it's super nice. And then I have my library. And my library is the non public facing books. Right? So it's all the kung fu books and the philosophy and the all this stuff. Like, if you know me really well, I feel like you can look at my library, my my personal library, and be like, oh, well, that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Me. But, we were moving in here, and my wife was like, I don't think we

need to hire movers. And I was like, oh, you don't think we need to hire movers? And she's like, yeah. No. No. I think we can do it. I was like, cool. Let's pack the books first, and then we'll make that decision. Right? So let her go with it for a while. And then we've it's 26 boxes of books. Right? Yep. And I'm like, how do you feel now? She's like, oh, yeah. Movers. Oh, yeah. You were

hiring people. Yeah. And it was so funny because, like, just over the weekend, my daughter who's really getting into writing and her own book collection, like, she's buying copies of books that that Melissa and I own because she wants her own copy for her own. And she goes, you know, like, I I have a I have a pretty small book collection, but she has, like, 200 books, which is, like, not a small

book collection. Book collection. Because, like, I think it's I think you're I think you're a 1 percenter if you have more than, like, 50 books. We right. Weird. Yo. Well, yeah. I'll tell you about about the finish finish your your circle because I'm gonna tell you something that, like, frustrates me. Go ahead. Like, it it's it's crazy to me just, like, like, the curse of knowledge. Right? Right. How can we get to be our agent only have, like, 25 or 50 books that you

wanna have an ongoing relationship with. You know you know what I'm saying? Like like, my grandmother used to say this thing, and she's the one who really unlocked reading with with me and and everybody in my family is that these were her friends. You know what I'm saying? And I can't like, there there are so many impactful books on my shelves that have fundamentally, like, changed and given me perspective and everything. And, like, only having 25 like, that seems

crazy. There was an article I read in or even might have been the headline. I don't remember specifically. And I think it was in the Atlantic. It had to be one of those like mid tier, and yes, I'm going to slam the Atlantic here, mid tier, midwit journals. It is. It's a journal for people who think they're smart, but they're really not. Because there's not really good ideas in

there. But anyway, whatever. Point is, I read the headline or it might have been an article, something about how, like, and this was back maybe in 2020 or 2021, about how if you were reading to your child, that was a sign of white privilege. And I just thought libraries literally are almost on every street corner Bookstores. You talk about your wife. We're getting half price books. You can walk into bookstores and they will not kick you out for reading a book.

They will not. They will not. They're there. They're just happy. You're there. You have Amazon say what you want about Jeff Bezos may have started with books Mhmm. Because they were the one piece of technology. And by the way, this is the apocryphal story. He packed up everything in his car with his wife and drove across the country and they had to figure out what they were going to put on this online thing because he saw this internet thing happening and the book is the thing to

be picked because it's not fruit and it's not pets. It's not weird shapes, everybody knows what it is, it's easy to, okay. Books, fundamentally books. Even in the poorest neighborhoods in America, you can literally go 2 streets over and there's a library. I know I've lived in some of the poorest areas of the country. Books are not closed to anyone in our society and culture unless you wanna close that door. So to tie it into number 1, I'm offended because as an African American person,

books are agnostic from my perspective anyway. Certain books are agnostic. Other books are not. I'll I'll grant you that. Yep. But for the most part, authors just wanna tell a story. They're not really they just want to tell a story. They want to tell the best story they possibly can to the widest number of people they possibly can with a 500 year

old technology that everybody understands. That's number 1. Number 2, when I told this to a young couple who was in my church, oh gosh, years ago when they were having their first kids and they were like, how do you, how did you raise your kids to be like, how to speak so clearly and to be articulate and that. And I'm like, because we read to them, Like I even read to my 7 year old, we're reading the Chronicles of Narnia right now. My 7 year old is loving that. Now, you know, it's me

and his older sister and his mom reading it. Like we're in sort of this weird rotation because just how the schedule work and all that in our house. And so depending on who he can get, you know, he'll have them read There's times I have no idea what's going on in the voyage of the Dawn Treader. Like, I don't know where I'm at. I'm just like, dude, I'm just reading this. I have no clue what's happening, dude. And he's like, don't worry, daddy.

Just read it. Exactly. No. No. It's literally This is not you. Exactly. He pats my cheek. Just just just read the book, daddy. It's like, okay. That's fine. I will read the words. I have no idea what's happening in the story, and you know. Mhmm. And he is blown away by this. Yeah. It's opening up again, opening up doors in his head. Now say what you want about CS Lewis, by the way, I would not read the screw tape letters or mere Christianity to him.

Or the abolition of man. That's not appropriate for a 7 year old. Sorry. But hold on. Like, and my my amazing wife would have this, like, fit all the time about, yeah, it's a science fiction, but not young adult. Right? And, like, how do you cut the onion and how do you group things? Like like, it's very interesting because, you know, I think, you know, we're gonna punish authors for trying to cover more more more content as opposed to staying in one line so that way it's easy

to shelve in the bookstore. That's a little absurd. Right? Speaking as someone who's, you know, written a business book and is now currently trying to write a narrative, like, screw you, buddy. I'm gonna I'm gonna write what I wanna write. You know? Yeah. Like, I I would love to have seen Cinderella brought to you by James Baldwin. I'd have read that, but I don't know that I had my 9 year old would have been interested in that. My 9 year old would have looked at that and been like, I think I'll

pass. You know? So there's this line that I used to hate. Right? And it's if the if the book is bad and you can't read it, it's the author's fault. And I was like, I kinda hate that. You know? But, you know, the longer I live, you know, as an author, the more I'm like right? Well well ownership. It's my fault if you didn't finish it. You ain't? Well, but I think so I'm a person who has written 3 books, and I'm working on a 4th one. I'm grinding out a 4th one. Right? It'll

You sound very excited about it. It did. I'm grinding out a 4th one. It's turned into a whole slot thing. And This is not what you wanted to talk about today. Not what I wanted to talk about. Digging into it. You're welcome. It's fine. We're digging in. We're digging in. We're going in. We're going in the mine. We're gonna get some gold out of here. But I write on purpose difficult books.

That's what I'm doing here. I'm choosing to make it difficult. Right. Because I'm a complicated guy and I'm in an era where I am fighting uphill. And I've said this before on the podcast. I think I've said it with you on interviews that we've done, conversations we've had. I'm fighting uphill against short attention spans. You know, the 62nd, 32nd, hummingbird, TikTok generation mindset, whatever. Mhmm. I'm also fighting

uphill against a flood of quote, unquote content. And by the way, I agree with Martin Scorsese. Movies are not content. Movies are movies. Books are not content. Books are books. Like but but again, everything's been dumped to that content bucket and swirled around. That way we can bring it to its lowest common denominator. So I'm fighting against this. The opposite. And the opposite is you.

To me, and sorry to like but I don't think that this is an I like I had to stop thinking about books as books and movies as movies and songs as songs. Right? And really just like shove them all together and understand that it's about the story was the thing that I that I ended up kinda going with. Right? A great song has got a story inside of it. Right? Well, and where I come from is the medium can be part of the message. So

Oh, 100%. Right? When I look at when I look at when I look at for Fahrenheit 4 51, and then I look at the the movie that, like, Michael b Jordan was in a couple years ago on HBO Max. I did not watch that. I thought about it, and then I was like, like, maybe after the interview, because I don't wanna you know, I'm I'm just so used to the movie being a letdown. But it's content, John. It's fine.

It's it's just content. Hey. Right? And you're while you are correct, the greatness that makes this so good, I think, comes from the format that it was in originally. And I think that this is where people, like, screw up. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, the book did good, but if we wanna reach more people, let's turn it into a movie. Like, I get this I get this stuff from people all the time. Well, John, your stuff

is too deep. You need to make it easier for people to consume it. And I'm like, God, if we just chase that far enough, it's going to be single word dogma. Like, that's going to work out great for us. Right? Just sell. One one word haikus. Exactly. Right. You know? Like, in like, if anything, that's what I'm trying to push back from of of stupid, outdated, dogmatic beliefs around sales that no longer serves us and probably never served us at at all. But in order to do that effectively, I don't

think you can water down ideas. And that's really what I put fundamentally at the end of the day. That's what I push up, I push up against. I don't want to, if I'm in a world where the long tail is the thing, and I am in a world where the long tail is a thing now, the long tail wasn't a thing in the mid-twentieth century. Like, it was mass and okay, fine. You had to appeal to the largest number of people and the greatest common

denominator. Cool. Now I don't have to. I need to sell 2 books a month to 2 people that want to hear my voice and everybody else, not to a too fine a point on it, but can go to hell. Like if the idea is too complicated for you, or if the argument's too long, or the sentences are too rambling, or the paragraphs don't link together in the way that you want, or you, you can't hear my voice in your head. And so you're reading the words on the page. You don't.

I'm not for you and that's okay. Go away. I'll go find the 2 people that are for me and I'll sell 2 books a month and I'll make 4 bucks in royalties and I'll move on with the rest of my life. Now, most people will push back on that and they'll go, well, you know, you spent $5,000 to make $4. Yeah. So Well, I think that that comes down to what to what the intention behind the

book is. Right? Correct. Right. It was so funny because whenever we decided that we were gonna launch the book, Melissa was already working on my team with me. And, she was like, okay. Can I tell you the the concern? And and I'm like, yeah. What's up? And she's like, I have seen these people. Right? They they wrote a business book. It was gonna be the game changer. And then they show up to half price books with, like, 7 boxes of the same book because

it didn't work. And I was like, okay. You know, interesting. And I had a very John moment. Why are you telling me that? She goes she goes, well, I'm concerned that, you know, you might do something similar. Okay. Heard. Like, okay. You know? This is why our wives exist to provide goal posts and and 100 times along the way. But I was like, okay. I appreciate you bringing this

up. Let's acknowledge that I am who I am, and that I've already told myself that this book changes absolutely nothing the next day and that I still have to work to put it out. Like my job is to put the book in the hands of the people who need it through through my actions and activities. I'm not expecting for anyone to find it because that's absurd entitled thinking,

in my in my opinion. Right? There's just too many marketplaces. There's too much messaging going on to really think you're gonna, like, stand out unless you already have an audience, and I and I don't. And so, like, the whole time I was writing and and getting it published and doing the whole thing, it was like, you still gotta sell, buddy. You still gotta sell. This changes nothing. If anything, it might make your lift a little bit easier, and that's why I approached it. And that's

that's where it it was super helpful. But I had a coach whispering all that stuff in my ear to kind of keep me grounded with my own expectations. And I think that some people just don't have appropriate expectations when it comes to, like, writing a book or putting it out or different things like that. We're lucky the fact that the book feeds our business, so I don't need to make money on the book. The fact that that we have books

gets us into some of the conversations that we're looking to be in. Right. Right. And for me, the book so the reason the 4th book right now is a slog is because it's in a totally different genre and I'm doing a totally different thing than I normally would have done. And it's requiring a little bit more transparency on my part, than I maybe previously have been comfortable with. To drive the content. I guess I'd say the word. To drive the content in. I don't wanna call

it that. I don't wanna call it that. No. Because you know what? At a certain point, and and and I and I and this is where Scorsese and I might disagree. We have to figure out where quality exists in books and songs and movies. And what is the difference between Dreck that's garbage? And by the way, during the mid 20th century, there were a lot of science fiction writers who published in a lot of science fiction note, what do you call it? Journals that were all over the place, that

were absolute direct. We've never heard of those guys. Yep. And it's only the big four, Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, and and Dick. Those 4 are the ones that are on the Mount Rushmore science fiction and everybody else washed away. Would agree. Now did everybody else wash away because there were, because there was a mass of people that selected and curated. And I'm not talking

about publishers and agents. That's part of the process, but I'm talking about, there was a mass of people that selected that this was good versus now where everyone can say everything is good because it's subjective. And there's a long enough tale to where if my mom buys a book, I can say it's, it's good. Right. And is that, and that's the word we're actually having is a war of quality.

We're not having a war of art. We're having a war of quality and it's really tough to have a war of quality, particularly in a world that is well kind of inside of the kind of world that Bray Bradbury was decided, was describing in Fahrenheit 4 51, which we should get back to the book. Yeah, for sure. So we're gonna skip forward a bunch of different spots and, Yeah, you're gonna, you're gonna like this book. You're gonna wanna pick it up.

And we're going to go to, well, Montag gets sick and, he, he has a conversation with the the second main character, the villain, I guess, such as it were in this book, captain Beatty and captain Beatty lays out basically the entire game here in the chapter, the hearth and the salamander back to Fahrenheit 4 51 by Ray Bradbury. Montag made sure the book was well hidden behind the pillow, climbed slowly back into bed, arranged the covers over his knees and across his chest half sitting.

And after a while, Mildred moved and went out of the room and captain Beatty strolled in his hands and his pockets, Shut the relatives up, said Beatty, looking around everything except Montauk and his wife. This time Mildred ran the yammering voices, stopped yelling in the parlor. Captain Beatty sat down in the most comfortable chair with a peaceful look on his ruddy face. He took time to repair and light his brass pipe and puff out a great smoke cloud. Just thought I'd come by and see how the

sick man is. How'd you guess? Baby smiled his smile, which showed the candy pinkness of his gums and the tiny candy whiteness of his teeth. I've seen it all. You were going to call for a night off. Montauk sat in bed. Well, said, baby, take the night off. He examined his eternal matchbox, the lid of which said guaranteed 1,000,000 lates in this igniter and began to strike the chemical match abstractedly, blowout,

strike, blowout, strike, speak a few words, blowout. He looked at the flame. He blew, he looked at the smoke. When will you be well tomorrow? The next day, maybe 1st of the week, baby puffed his pipe. Every fireman sooner or later hits this. They only need understanding to know how the wheels run. He's know the history of our profession. They don't feed it to the rookies. Like they used to damn shame only fire chiefs. Remember it now. I'll let you win on

it. Mildred fidgeted, but he took a full minute to settle himself in and think back for what he wanted to say. When did it all start? You asked this job of ours. How did it all come about? Where and when I'd say it really got started around about a thing called the civil war. Even though our rule book claims was founded earlier. The fact is we didn't get along well until photography came

into its own. Then motion pictures in the early 20th century, radio, television, things begin to have mass Montauk sat in the bed, not moving. And because they had mass, they became simpler said Beatty. Once books appeal to a few people here, there, everywhere, they could afford

to be different. The room world was roomy, but then the world got full of eyes and elbows and elbows and mouths, double, triple, quadruple population films, radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm. Do you follow me? I think so. Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put on in the air. Picture it. 19th century man and his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then in the 20th century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condizations, digest, tabloids,

everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. Snap ending? Mildred nodded. Classics cut to fit 15 minute radio shows and cut again to fill a 2 minute book column winding up at last as a 10 or 12 line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were for reference, but many were those who

sold knowledge of Hamlet. You know, the title, certainly Montag, it is probably only a fake rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag, whose sole knowledge, as I say of Hamlet was a 1 page digest in a book that claimed now, alas, you can read all the classics. Keep up with your neighbors. Do you see

out of the nursery, into the college and back to the nursery? There's your intellectual pattern for the past 5 centuries or more Mildura rose and get to move around the room, picking up things and putting them down. Beatty ignored her and continued speed the film up, Montag. Quick, click, click, look, I flick now here, there, swift pace up, down, in, out. Why, how, who, what, where, bang smack, walloping, bang bong, boom.

Digest, digest, digest, digest politics. 1 column, 2 sentences, a headline, then in mid air all vanishes. World man's mind around so fast and into the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters at the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary time wasting thought. Mildred smooth the bed closed. Montag felt his heart jump and jump again as she

patted his pillow. Right now, she was pulling at his shoulder, trying to get him to move so she could take the pillow out and fix it nicely and put it back and perhaps cry out and stare or simply reach down her hand and say, what's this? And hold up the hidden book with touching innocence. School is short and disciplined relaxed. Philosophies, histories, languages dropped. English and spelling gradually, gradually neglected. Finally, almost completely ignored. Life is immediate.

The job counts. Pleasure lies and all lies all about after work. Why learn anything safe pressing buttons, pulling switches, fixing nuts and bolts? Let me fix your pillows, said Mildred. No, whispered Montauk. The zipper displaces the button, and man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour and thus a melancholy hour. Mildred said here. Get away, said Montag. Life's become life becomes one big pratfall. Montag, everything. Bang,

boff, and wow. God's sakes, let me be, cried Montag passionately. Beatty opened his eyes wide. Mildred's hands had frozen behind the pillow. Her fingers were tracing the book's outline, and as the shape became familiar, her face looked surprised. And then stunned, her mouth opened to ask a question. Empty the theater, safe for clowns and furnished the rooms, with glass walls and pretty colors running up and down the walls like confetti or blood or sherry or sartereen.

You like baseball, don't you, Montag? Baseball is a fine game. Now Betty was almost invisible, a voice somewhere behind a screen of smoke. What's this? That's Mildred with almost with delight. Montauk heaved back against her arms. What's this here? Sit down, Montauk shouted. She jumped away, her hands empty. We're talking. Beatty went on as if nothing had happened. You like bowling, don't you, Montauk? Bowling, gas, and

golf? Golf's a fine game. Base basketball? A fine game. Billiards pool, football? Fine games, all of them. More sports for everyone. Group spirit fun, and you don't have to think. Organize and organize and super organize, super, super sports. More cartoons in books, more pictures. The mind drinks less and less impatience. Highways full of crowds going somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, nowhere. The gasoline refugee. Towns turned into motels. People in nomadic

surges from place to place following the moon tide. Living tonight in the room where you slept this noon and I the night before. Mildred went out of the room and slammed the door. The parlor aunts began to laugh at the parlor uncles. Now let's take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we?

Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, 2nd generation Chinese, Swedes, Baptists, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere.

The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy. Remember that? All the minor minor minorities with all their navels to be kept clean. Authors full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca books, so the damned, stoppage critics said were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spending happily let the

comic books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship to start with. No technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick. Thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time. You are allowed to read comics, the good old confession, or trade journals. Yes. What about the firemen then? Asked Montag. Ah,

Bailey leaned forward in famous to smoke from his pipe. What more easily explained than natural? With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, flyers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word intellectual, of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread

the unfamiliar. Surely, you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally, quote, unquote, bright, did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many Latin idols hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course, it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but

everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other, then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower to judge themselves against. So a book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take a shot from the weapon. Breach man's minds. Who knows what might be the target of a

well read man? Me? I won't stomach them for a minute. And so when houses were finally fireproofed completely all over the world, you were correcting your assumption the other night, there was no longer the need of firemen for the old purposes. They were given a new job as custodians of our peace of mind, the focus of our understandable and rightful dread of being inferior, official censors, judges, and executors. That's you Montag, and that's me.

That's a long bit there that I read. I read it on purpose because you can't really break up captain baby speech into the little tiny parts, particularly that bit, which hit me right in the gut about the minorities and censorship coming, not from the top down, the totalitarianism from the bottom up. Captain Beatty is the classic bureaucratic leader trapped in a system. He understands almost totally and completely because it works for him.

Montag, of course, stands in as the person who has woken up to manipulation of the matrix, but he doesn't know what to do about it quite just yet at this point in the book. He doesn't have a plan. He's just still in shock. Captain Beatty and guys like captain Beatty, and this is a warning for our time, they don't mind if you've been awakened or awoken or whatever the term is you would like. He just doesn't want you to take any action to disrupt the

system. Newspapers, music, radio, television, cable news, and now, and Bradbury died in 2012, right on the cusp of this all hitting now, social media and the internet are blamed for the tendency of people to give up control of their minds to those who appear to be in control of events. By the way, the unnamed country in Fahrenheit 4 51 is in a state of perpetual war, just as a side note, with every other country, just as Oceania was in 1984 by George Orwell, which we'll read in Q3 of next year.

If we're all still around to read it in Q3 of next year, by the way, when I read this book and I read about the firefighters, I thought of the band Rage Against the Machine, and the great line that they have in that song, Bulls on Parade, They don't got to burn the books. They just remove them. John, there are many different flavors and types in our world today of getting red pill to quote unquote or waking up or becoming woke. And yet I sense

behind all of them. A lot of captain Beatty, but maybe that's just my conspiratorial thinking. How can we be more like Montag and less like captain Beatty? So this is unique perspective on captain Beatty because and I and I think we're gonna talk about this part a little later. There's a there's an add on from another character that, like, blew my mind about Beatty. Right? Now, I don't know if I talked about this on the show, but I'm prior service. I joined the military in, May of 2001.

And, obviously, in September of 2001, you know, we it was no longer just a theoretical exercise. Right. And there's so much of this awakening that he goes through. Right? And part of me, as I'm reading this, oh my god. The pacing of this is just so fast. It doesn't happen this quick. It takes longer to wake up. It takes longer to kinda fall out of the fold. It takes longer. But, man, when I think about, you know, September 11th, and this is no longer an exercise This is not a

drill. It's not a drill. You know? Instantly pushed me to the place of, like, I don't know that this is the place I need to be. Mhmm. Right? Because, like, I was feeling that before, but then we were having this conversation. Right? And military is filled with stuff like this. Right? You know, boot camp is an indoctrination process. Right? It's meant to break you down to nothing and then designed to be that way. Person it needs to be. You know?

Yeah. And it's it's for the reasons that it's for. Right? But, like, as I'm going through this and I'm and and I'm like, no. No. No. It's not that quick. It's it can be that quick. And if you go through the right experiences, have the right mentors around you, have the right environment for it to show up, it can be a a blazingly quick process. Mhmm. But, like, I just keep going back to that. You know, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. You know? And we

were sitting we were sitting in a room called the day room. Right? Anyone who's been in the army understands what the day room is. It's like a it's like a communal room in there, and there's a TV in there. Right? Mhmm. And so we're in there, and I'm this kid from Texas, 20 I I my birthday is actually on 9:11, so I turned 21 the day that that happened. I have a great story about telling a drill sergeant that I was gonna get to go off post that weekend, and he told me, no. You're

not. And I I worry. You're not. We're in the day room, and I'm having this very disconnected experience of, like, what have I signed up for? What am I really going through? And I'm in Georgia at the time. Right? And I'm there with guys from Philly and New York and DC and people who are who are having a profoundly different experience than what I'm going through as a as a kid from Texas. And, man, there were I think there's about 30 people in my in my cohort from my

class. Right? And we had the night class, and so we're talking about it either that day or the next day. And everyone else is like, man, we just gotta go turn it into a parking lot. Just go nuke it, turn it into a parking lot. We don't have to deal with this anymore. And I'm like, don't that make us the same? Don't that make us, like, not any better than than the people that did this? Mhmm. And the heat that, like, that kind of commentary was getting in that space. You know?

Mhmm. So, like, reading this now as as a 44 year old guy who's gone through that experience, has had to deload himself, right, had therapy and, you know, working through it and everything, it can happen that quick. Mhmm. You know? But you also just have to be aware of, for lack of better term, spend. Right? Because And that's what captain Beatty delivers, by the way. That that that that's what that's exactly what Beatty delivers, by

the way. And it's so easy to get caught up in spin. Right? And he's he's on one level, like, demonizing spin. Mhmm. Right? We're not gonna have short, multipurpose content, you know, that is just watered down to the lowest forms. That way, you can be there. But the answer is not to just take it all away, though. Right? You know, it's very much, well, this was the problem, so this was our solution. And look how better we are. And, like, if you're drinking the Kool Aid, I bet it tastes amazing

in that moment. Right? Like, backing up in my military story, we first get to boot camp, and we have a captain who's in charge of our of our, company. And the drill sergeants were being really mean, like, really mean, yelling at us, making us do lots of push ups, and making us, like, do all this crazy stuff. And in the back of my head, I was like, you know what? That captain, he wouldn't let them do that to us if he knew what was really happening.

Right? And then a couple of days after that, I, you know, see the captain being the person who's reinforcing the drill sergeants. And I just, like, had this moment of, like, like, a shattered world view of, like, of, like, oh, he's not gonna save us. And then, like, duh, idiot. I'm the only one not on this page. You know? And, I mean, we Well, it's a it's a hell of a thing to be robbed of your preconceived notions. Fair. Right? Or to be in a situation to where

like, this feels very military esque. Right? Like, these are the deep brotherhood. They're they're they're they they spend a lot of time together. He just shows up at his house because he knows he's gonna call in sick after this environment. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's it's so very much military. And in those situations, when you're talking with someone, they're they're essentially telling you this is how we think about it, and it's meant to be

push the other stuff away and continue with this way forward. You know? And so it's weird to like, I've been in those in those conversations. I remember having a conversation with drill sergeants about hand grenades and why I shouldn't be nervous about throwing them. Why would I not be nervous? You know? See, this is this is it's interesting. So, you know, you you said your birthday is on September 11th. Mhmm. And, I turned 21, 13 days after September 11th.

And, both of our lives I would assert, and this is one of the solutions I made on this podcast this year, which is why I'm sort of approaching it in a different kind of way, particularly towards the end of our, session today where I try to, or end of our episode today where I try every episode now to talk

about what are solutions to problems. Because I'm just, I'm done pulling apart problems 99% of the time, because all we've done from my perspective for the last 20 years is since that, since that day in Midtown Manhattan, all we've done is, is chew over problems and I'm done with it personally, professionally, ecumenically, whatever you're the way you can possibly think of that ends with why I'm done. I, we know what the problems are. Number 1, we know how deep the problems are. Number 2, we can

identify what the cause of the problems is. Number 3, but no one has a courage to talk about solutions to the problem. Like here's a big one. Like you talk about captain Beatty and spin. The solution to the captain babies of the world. And is the destruction of bureaucratic systems. That's that that's that's that's the solution, like, right. And everybody makes that sound right there. Everybody makes that sound right there because what you're laughing at is not

the solution I'm proposing. What you're laughing at is the inevitable consequence that you can go forward with for when that that bureaucratic system is destroyed. And by the way, I'm not talking about destroying people's lives, physical lives. What I'm talking about is taking you out of the system. So here's very simple one. Let's take the list of all the captain batings that are in the Pentagon. Let's line them up

alphabetically and let's just fire every other one of them alphabetical order. And then we cut the Pentagon's budget by 15%. And now we're done. And don't tell me that you can't find people who wouldn't be willing to do this. Rand, Paul, Ron, Paul, there's plenty of people floating around who'd be willing to do this. Jim Jordan, you may not agree with them politically, but we'll put that aside for just

a second. There are plenty of people who would be willing to do this. That's that is the solution, but we'd laugh because of the consequence on the other side of that is when you go in alphabetical order and you cut all those people out of the system, now you've got them running around in general population, making trouble on the internet. And with their past connections and past networks and past ability to raise money and. And we don't want to actually face

that consequence. We don't want the person who spent the last 15 years in the Pentagon fighting endless wars, working at Safeway, bagging groceries, although quite frankly, they would probably do a much better job at Safeway. I would rather have them wrecking Safeway then, you know, I don't know, selling more weapons to Ukraine or coming up with more unique ways to, I don't know, drop more bombs on people that don't need to have bombs dropped on because

I don't have a personal problem with them. But we're at Safeway or go work at HEB or go work at the gas station. Go, go wreck a gas station, go wreck Exxon Mobile's job, go wreck Exxon Mobile's outfit over there. You'll do less damage, but we don't actually want to do that because why do we wanna do that? We don't actually wanna do that because the the the consequence of that now taken from the 5,000 bureaucrats 400 miles away, now real close enough to us, we don't wanna deal with.

We don't wanna deal with that guy that is a general manager at HEB because we know that guy would be a nightmare. But that's the way we that's the way we fundamentally fix the system. That's one of the ways we can fund it. And so I would like to have the proposal of solutions. A guy like captain Beatty isn't proposing solutions to your point. He's proposing just go they're there. They're

there. You're Make it through. You're not smart enough to understand this than I am, so you'll make it through if I just shepherd you through. And that and that's pay and, of course, that's patronizing. And, you know, Bradbury is writing this out of the perspective of the military industrial complex. There's opposition to the military industrial complex and his opposition to police power.

One of the interesting back stories behind this book is that one of the pieces of the genesis that went into this book is that or into the story is that he was pulled over by the cops or he was walking with the cops because he never like actually learned how to drive. And he was like walking around or whatever in the park and the cop was like hassling him about walking in the park or something and gave him a ticket or whatever. Yeah. And he was

all rebellious, just like most creative types. He's rebellious in his head, but then in reality, he just took a ticket and just like went away. And he couldn't figure out how to make those two things, you know, sort of click together in his reality. And so he came with his captain baby character to sort of work through cathartically all these feelings of being oppressed by the

man, which is a very sixties sort of idea. Yeah. But the problem is we live in 2024, and the people who used to protest against the man and now are the man, and they've been the man for a while. Yeah. You brought up Rage Against the Machine a few a few moments ago, and, I remember when that album came out. Right? Like like, I'm sure you do as well. I think I was probably in 7 and, again, Laura Frohnick, same person

who recommended this book to me, was the person who came back. She'd taken a trip to Italy and came back and was like, man, have you heard Bulls on Parade? I was like, no. I didn't know what that is. And game changer of a song. And now it's funny because, like, I'll see people who I knew listen to this in, like, late teens, early twenties. Now they know really what what it's about, and now they're against it. Like, what do you think they were talking about this whole

time? You know? And, and when we get to that level, that's kinda like, these people don't even know what they're championing, right, in in some levels, which is very, very interesting. But Well and I wonder I wonder if the if the consistent uphill battle is between not because it's an uphill battle. Maybe I shouldn't frame it this way. I wonder if that no. I'll I'll go a 3rd way. I'm having a thought in a middle of a thought middle of a thought. I'm gonna go

a 3rd way. So the, the, the title of this section of the podcast is, the day after the totalitarians win the war for control of your mind. Right? No one ever, ever asked this question. What happens after the totalitarians win? What happens after, like, the cap and betties win? Because they're let's the the good guys don't always win. Sometimes the bad guys win. The bad guys definitely get a vote, as would say. And sometimes their vote is good enough to win the day, and then they rule.

And 1984 is sort of the classic novel of the classic, the totalitarians win, and we're all being repressed. Right? And of course, George Orwell was writing this in the face of Soviet oppression where from his perspective, and I think from the perspective of most thinking people in the 20th century, the totalitarians won. I mean, hell, you know, London said he was a totalitarian.

He wasn't had nothing. And so they won the day and they got to implement their rule and they got to implement their solutions to their problems or to the problems that they saw in, market capitalism. And they got to run that experiment for 80 years in a country just to kind of see if it was gonna work. Mhmm. So we know what happens the day after totalitarian. One of my gigantic concerns in the early part of the 20th century is, and I'm seeing this particularly.

And we talked a lot about books and libraries in the first part of this When people don't read the books, because the books are where the stories are about the toe, what happens after the totalitarians win. They don't respect the history that came before them. And thus we wind up in the same ditch that we wound up in before. Agreed.

Just with a different flavor of people with different names, maybe even in some cases, let me be egalitarian, different colors and different genders, but they all have the same mindset. Like, during during the pandemic, I was reading like, that's where I found stoicism and really started to kinda it was a thing that I was I was interested in, but during the pandemic is when I really needed to, like, apply it because I was struggling, you know, and, you know, lockdown.

And, one of the things, Ryan Holiday is you know, he writes a lot about philosophy and cynicism and everything. Mhmm. And he was just kinda talking about this idea that, like, this isn't the first time we've had a major lockdown. You know? Like like, let's go back and let's look at the I think it's, like, the 19 12 Spanish influenza thing. Right? Like, there's a big thing there. And because we were so stupid, oh, this can't happen to us. There's no we're so much smarter.

And all these things, we end up creating something markedly similar. Oh, yeah. You know? And it's funny because I talk about this with, like, some of the owners and founders that I talked to of, you know, hey. Were you were you around in, like, o eight? Were you in business? Were you doing anything? Were you in sales? Because let me tell you, it was rough. I was in sales.

Right? And, you know, it was rough for a while after that. You had to earn the trust back, and some people still don't trust finance people and mortgages and things like that. And then we had the same thing happen around COVID. Right? And so, like, you can see it for the recurring patterns of what it is, or you can try to, like, oh, these two things are not similar, but I feel like those people always have an have an agenda. Oh, yeah. Really serve everyone else

when they should be looking for the for the overlap, the commonality. Well, they're the bosses of the captain babies. Yes. Exactly. Right. They're the people that are giving the captain babies of the world, the marching It's the status quo push. Right? Like, you know, and yeah. I mean, I such a such an interesting reread. You know? Like, I I spent time kinda wondering what would it be like to read this for the very first time at my age with my experience that would be kinda kinda unique. Mhmm.

Because the thing I the thing that even having read this before, right, it had been so many years, I was I wasn't ready for how much, like, content there was in the space. Right? That people could turn on these, like, TVs, and they're being programmed from the TVs. Right? And they were but that's okay. But books are you know? So, like, in my head, I'd built it out to be be this very sparse, almost like a Star Trek thing. We don't have Yeah. You know, and everything

else like that. And not really seeing it for, like, hey. We're taking away the opportunity for other people to inject their ideas, and we're just creating an opportunity for you to be bottle fed the ideas. Right? Because then Yep. You don't even you don't even realize that you're missing anything.

Correct. That's right. So That's right. You know? This other unique perspective I got a couple of years ago was, like, talking about they they were talking about Dante, actually, like like like like Dante's Inferno, and they were talking about this idea that you don't have to convince everyone that the that that the government is wrong. You just gotta, like, convince them that the books aren't worth reading or something like

that. But the way that it was and I and, god, man, I I I wish I could say it because it went through everything, like, every bias that I possibly could have put in front of it and just, like, hit me square in the head of, like, oh, yeah. That's very much a thing. Very, very much a thing. The so this is my problem with, the idea of malinformation, disinformation. I have a problem with all of those terms coming from any government apparatchic.

Period. Full stop. That's that's the period. That's the end of the sentence. There's no qualifier afterward. There's no, but there's no, and I have a problem with those words coming from the mouth of anybody who's getting a check based in any kind of way on any of my tax dollars. Period. Full stop. Just period. That's the end of the sentence. I don't I don't wanna hear you

even say it. You can think whatever you want, but the human brain is the last truly private area until Elon Musk gets that neural link thing really wrapped up, and then we're all boned after that. But it's like, you can think whatever you want, but don't let it drop out your mouth. And I'm not naive enough. And this is probably why I, even though I have a warrior spirit, I didn't join the military. I'm not. That is not

naive. I'm not hopeful enough that in the past there was some housing on time when some government apparatchik didn't believe this, please. I've read too much history. They've believed this throughout history under any system, but they had the good grace to not open their mouth and say it. And what troubles me greatly is we've lost the the government apparatchiks seem to have lost the captain base of the world, seem to have lost the ability to keep their mouth shut and just run the

game. They want to now, in my opinion, and this is my opinion, They want to now be, be, be applauded for the cleverness with which they are running the game and, and maybe, and they gussied up by saying, oh, well, we're informing you.

But the thing is, even when we only had 5 channels and 4 newspapers in a town that all reported the same thing and, like, three copies of Time Magazine and Reader's Digest that was on everybody's table, and you talk about living in a place, where, you know, maybe there weren't many minorities in the neighborhood, you know, back in the

day. Mhmm. Even when we had that system, we were still for that system in that time educated enough as a populist to recognize B. S. And so what has well, but what has happened over the course of time is not that the public has become less educated to recognize BS. And I'm using public as an, a mass term. Okay. I'm not gonna talk about specific individuals. The public has, has gotten more information and more facts.

Right. Which by the way, we can access facts, not on screens on our walls, like in Fahrenheit 4 51, we now access facts. I mean, Bradbury couldn't have come up with this idea of a computer in your pocket. He would that, that Asimov would have come up with that idea. That was an Asimov. Yeah. And then, and then Heinlein would have taken it to his logical conclusion. That's what that would have happened. Here's a vehicle that does it for you. Exactly.

Exactly. But we are mainlining facts and information, but with very few insights. That's what we were looking for. We're looking for insights. We're looking for the meaning behind the facts and the information. And so when you, as a government apparatchik, were getting your regular check, tell me what the meaning should be, I say, no. No. No. I don't wanna hear from you. I I I really don't. I reject that because to me that there's a thin line there that you're about to cross into

the burning of the books. That's a thin line there between just tell me, I'm just gonna tell you which information is is, is disinformation and, and which information is mal information. I started hearing about that more and which information is, is, is, is well, that guy said it was fake, but we're telling you the real thing. Yeah. No. You're both saying the fake thing. Yeah. You're you you making news that someone else is lying to you is not the same thing as, like,

giving me the truth. That's the thing. Right? Like and, like, I mean, it the this is slightly tangential, but, like, I worked my tail off to build a pretty high wall between, like, myself and regular news, political news, because a, I can't change anything. Right. And like stoic idea, if you can't, if you can't put your hands on it and change it, it's outside of your locus of control and your time is better spent

focusing on what is in your control. Right. So it became very easy, but it, but it was on the backside of frustration because. What I think that people are doing is that they don't want to go through the process of like having to figure it out for themselves. So it's easier to cling to an identity of some way, shape or form. And you know, that can be Christian. It can be military. It can be, you know, the atheists that are out there swinging for the fences for, for their message and everything.

Like, and then when it's close enough, people just go, let it wash over me almost. Right? And it's like, you know, it's it's almost like you're getting baptized by this part because you've just realized we we agree on enough. I can just take your word for the rest of it. And that's problematic thinking. Right? Yes. Yes. Yes. And I and maybe this is a fundamental and and I I I will say, this is a fundamental difference between me and maybe someone who might be a

little more progressive than me. This is maybe revealing a little bit more of my conservative bonafides, but I tend to mistrust that more when it's coming from a public agency with police force behind it. Then I, then I worry about maybe like, I don't know, amazon.com, you know, sending me fake and from, you know, whatever. And by the way, yes, I understand Jeff Bezos owns the Washington post. I'm not ignorant or naive. Right. Like, but I don't have to buy the Washington post. I

always make this point. Amazon isn't sending out like, you know, police officers to make me buy stuff from them. I think they're not. But if I don't pay my taxes, I'm just going to show up in my house. Like that police force thing

is really, really the defining line. Because if, if, if, and we saw this with you mentioned COVID, we saw this with COVID in certain places, the place that I came out of, we saw this, you know, in places like, Well, in other places around the world, I mean, the government apparatchiks in China were like welding people into their houses. Like, you know, so that's police power. That's the power of life and death at the end of it. Yeah. No

corporation, none. Even the ones with the most repair rapacious lawyers on the planet. I love your vocabulary, man. It makes me so happy every time we get to talk because, like, I know that I'm gonna get, like, 2 or 3 new words that I'm like Rapacious. You like the word rapacious? I've never heard that word before. I'm gonna have to go spend some time with it. And I'm and I'm so

excited because it doesn't happen that often. So thank you. It's it's it's think of like, think of like a, a honey Badger cross with like a Wolverine just tearing through something that's rapacious. Yeah. I'm with you. Right? Like, yeah. BlackRock may have private military contractors, but they can be stopped. Yes. No one's gonna stop the ATF if they wanna knock down my

door with a no knock warrant. Oh, I I have a version of this conversation with, some friends of mine because, I am more liberal than most people in our locale. Right? Like, you know, lumping in North Texas. Yeah. I'm pretty I'm pretty pretty progressive just by comparison. You know? Sure. But I think zoomed out, you know, I'm left

of center, but, like, I'm not far left or anything. You know? Yeah. But when I talk to some of my friends who were, you know, very, I would say, probably a little too enthusiastic about, you know, weapons and everything. And they it always comes back down to this idea of, like, well, you know, what what's that Benjamin Franklin quote? You know, they they take away the guns and

and everything. And I'm like, you know, this is always where they go. And I'm like, you know, you would never even know if they decided to take you out. Like Well Like you would think that, but I I would the only pushback I would give on that is current events within the last summer have proven that the folks who should know how to take it out people out. I I believe we're in a crisis of incompetency at all levels. Let's just say that.

Well We can't And that and that brings up a good spin. You know? But, like, I have I I have I have friends who have, you know, a smattering of pistols. Sure. Right? And to them, they think that that's gonna be the game changer. Oh, well, yeah. Those people are foolish. Yeah. Like like I'm sorry. Right? If if that is really your perspective, you're actually going out and training. You're not just hoarding and collecting something you

feel tough in public. Right. You're actually going to ranges. You're you're you're doing the thing. You're not that far, so this is kinda, like, not real perspective. You're just looking for a reason to hold on to your idea. Because, like, if they if, you know, if they made that decision, they would make that decision, and people would have problems with it. Right?

But and I'm not even saying that that is the solution. So before anybody at me or comes after me or anything else like this, I'm not even against gun ownership. I think it should be harder to get a gun than it currently is, but I also think that if you decide to go through that that idea and you think that just owning the gun is enough, you're so fundamentally not on the level that that that you should probably not qualify for having that kind of weapon.

Personal opinion. Well no. No. And I I, you know, I don't as a person who is slightly to the right of center, I don't, I don't just based on my life experiences and things that I've seen, I don't disagree with that. And I would say that we need to be checking the captain babies and the bureaucrats of the world using all the available tools we have before we go to those tools. Agree.

I am also deeply troubled by the lack of faith by people of all across all political spectrums, whether you are the anarcho libertarian on the, on the right, or you're the socialist Marxist progressive on the left. I am, I am deeply concerned by the lack of faith in our elect or of the, the, the, not only like Torah process, but also the, the, what do you call it solidity of our electoral process? Because I think of

that. If the belief in that system by regular people, I'm not talking about the weirdos who hang out and yell on the internet at each other. Those people are ridiculous. I'm talking about like one of my neighbors is this cause, he owns a construction company in California. Right. He's He's a regular dude. He didn't get past high school. Like he's a regular dude. And when he says to me, does my vote even matter? That's a problem. That's

that's a problem is my vote being counted. That's a problem. Like that guy has to have faith in the system because that guy gets up every day with the system just sort of running in the background. And what COVID did was it disrupted so much of that for people in general. I would agree with that.

Had that disrupted for them before, and they didn't the things that they thought were solid, and he's in his he's in his sixties now, but the things that they thought were solid for their the majority of their adult life proved to be paper tigers. Oh, well, I mean, welcome to the party, guys. It was not right. I thought it was. Right. But if I'm a construction worker who didn't get past high school and I've done kind of okay for myself. Right. But I never really had to think about it.

Cause I pay, man, I pay my taxes and I pay my employees. What do you want me to do? Like, and you've run across business owners like this. Well, they got to really, I got to think about this thing now, like, really, you know? And those are the vast majority of people. And so the captain babies of the world, I think had a better understanding probably about 2 or 3 generations ago. And I think there has been an erosion. This is where I talk about the crisis of incompetency, but there has been an

erosion over the course of time of the captain babies of the world. Understanding that their job is to make sure that the system stays up without everybody ever noticing they were. Exactly. And, and I think that's what we've lost in the pursuit of everybody wanting to be famous on, like, you know, Twitter. Okay. I have a question potentially. X, whatever the hell it is. Yeah.

Whatever that is. It feels like on one mobile, you're saying that captain Badia shouldn't be there, but then it also feels like like you're now describing that there's a gap because because we don't have people willing to be that. Let's just keep everything moving. Right. No. I I don't think captain Baty should be there. Okay. But if captain Baty is going to be there We need more of them? Yeah. Well, no. No. No. No. I would rather there not be

I'd say what I at a deeper level of detail about the words. I I I object to the arrogance and the hubris. That's what I I would rather if we're gonna have captain Beatty's all over the place, which to a certain degree, I guess, we will. Fine. The the the the number of them will vary, you know, 10 or a100. I think they're all probably equal. From me and my perspective, they're all equally bad. Get rid of all of them. But okay.

If we're not, I'd rather have 10 than a 100. You know? Sure. Okay. Fine. So 10 captain betties that are that are humble, I will take over a 100 captain betties that are arrogant. Oh, man. Yeah. I talk, I talk about this idea of being expectant, which is entitled or being enabling. Right? Because like, I think the good leadership is enabling leadership. And it's so funny because I talk about, just kind of like knowing what you need in the leadership for you to, for

you to flourish. Right. And I cannot work under like a middle manager, like Beatty. Like, I like, I just can't. Because inside of that conversation, and this has just happened to me so many times now that I can see it for what it is, I'm gonna I'm gonna ask 3 to 4 questions, like, looking for connection to other things. And these people don't have those kind of

answers. Right? And this was such a problem whenever I was a salesperson in bigger corporate structures where where, like, my sales manager who came up on an ops path and has never been in a sales role ever is just like, well, you should just keep following up because you're the difference. Okay. Explain to me how that works. John, I don't have time to answer all your questions. I just need you to go out and hit the goal because

this should work. It's working. And and I already know you're full of shit. Sorry. Am I allowed to curse on here? Yeah. You're fine. You're fine. And so, you know, in in that moment, once you show yourself to me that you don't either know why this is connected or why we're doing it, I can't even I can't even go with you. And I don't know if this is me being a c. I I don't know if this is me being private service military and just having kinda, like, maybe ridiculously high

standards for the people who who wanna be, like, my leader. But, like, as soon as I see that gap, I'm I can't I can't go with you. Right? Mhmm. And then this is part of the reason why I work for myself is because, like, I know that I'm gonna run into that somewhere. Mhmm. And then it just I turn, and then I start becoming, well, let me go find all the other cracks, all the other answers and everything else. Right? And it's not good. You know?

Let me start let me start pulling that thread. Oh, yeah. Don't pull the threads. Don't pull the threads. Right? Like and and, honestly, if you're a curious person, curious person here. Right? Mhmm. Go figure out how to ask questions in a way so that you can be heard the right way. Because half the time when I'm looking for these connection points, they take it as, like, I'm looking for answers. Right. Right? And, really,

that's just how I communicate. So I think it kinda goes back down to, like, a lack of leadership in the form of Beatty is just thinking, like, I'm just gonna say this, and it's gonna work, and then I'm gonna leave, and everything is just gonna go back to normal. Mhmm. Right? Imagine how many other times he's given that same speech with how it's, like, talked about. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He's like, oh, well, and that's why and I love it how Bradbury puts this. You know, he has him, like, or

how he frames it. He has him lighting the, the lighter and then blowing it out in lighting. And the smoke just starts billowing up in the room. And it sort of put me in mind, weirdly enough, of The Wizard of Oz. Interesting. Okay. You know, the the wizard in the, you know, the 19 thirties movie where, you know, Oz is the great and terrible, and it's the smoke effects.

Yep. And so it's and, of course, you know, if you know anything about the Wizard of Oz, you know that, that the the wizard was a flimflam man. The wizard was a scammer. He was selling a game. Yep. And I think Bradbury is subtly for those who are paying attention is subtly sort of intimating that this government apparatchik is pulling a game. Mhmm. And he's doing it behind a smokescreen. You know?

And that's a very powerful kind of idea there, which of course ties into the book burning and all the other all the other kind of elements. But it it is operating at that secondary or maybe even tertiary psychological level in the book. And I don't know if that was intentional or if that was just something that he put in there. It's like, oh, this is gonna be a good descriptor. This is how I'm framing it in my head. And he just and sometimes you do

that as a writer. You just write the framing that's in your head because the narrative drives you to a certain place. Yep. Stephen King talks about about a lot about this in odd writing, you know, where you start out thinking you're driving the car, and then it turns out that you and the characters are switching. And now you're on the back, and you're just you're along for the ride. I did some reading about his writing process because the way that he writes is very much he has an

idea. He'll kinda flush it out. He'll flush it out, but he kinda holds himself apart from it. And then it's like, okay, baby, it's typewriter time. So like, I, I think, I think I read and I'm happy to be wrong that he, that he wrote this in 9 days. Yes. Right. He rented a typewriter for 10¢ an hour or something like that. 10¢ an hour. Isn't that crazy? And and, like, that idea of I know that I gotta move quickly through this or else it's gonna change Mhmm.

I think then creates that flow state of him being able to get, like, as deep into the books as he is. Right? So, like, I I think that they're tied together. But that thing blew me away as a guy who's been working on a second book for a lot longer than 9 days. And I'm still, like, trying to figure out exactly what this thing is gonna be at the final end of it. You know? But just that idea of, like, I've got this idea. I'm gonna hit it hard because he wants the character to take

over the driving. Right? He wants to invest himself so fully in this character that, like, he can't even see it for himself whenever he's trying to put his finger on it and stuff like that. And, like, that to me is such such an interesting way to approach the entire process because, like, as a control freak, that's everything I don't wanna do. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Well yes. Well and and and that's the difference, interestingly enough. Well, we're gonna talk about this a little bit

because we're gonna talk about Faber. Let's talk about Faber. Yes. Please talk about Faber. Let's talk about Faber. Faber is the sort of the counter captain Beatty. He he he is in when you send over your notes for the show Mhmm. And you talked about Faber Mhmm. Immediate unique perspective, because I was not seeing him the same way that you are talking about him, at least in the notes that you sent me. So I'm gonna shut up and let you drive. Sorry.

Okay. Alright. No. No. It's alright. So back to the book, back to Fahrenheit 451. Let's meet Faber, a man who's going to help out mister Montag. Favor sniff to the book. Do you know that books smell like nutmeg or some spice from a foreign land? I love to smell them when I was a boy. Lord, there were a lot of lovely books once before we let them go. Favorite turn the pages, Mr. Montag, you were looking at a coward. I

saw the way things were going a long time back. I said nothing. I wanted the innocence who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the guilty, but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself. And finally they set the structure to burn books using the fireman. I grunted a few times as subsided, but there were no others grunting or yelling with me by then. Now it's too late. They were closed the Bible. So what would you tell me why you

came here? Nobody listens anymore. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me. I can't talk to my wife. She listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read. Favor examined Montauk's thin, blue jowled face. How did you get shaken up? What knocked the torch out of your hands? I don't know. We have

everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I burned in 10 or 12 years, so I thought books might help. Your hopeless romantic said Faber. It would be funny if it were not serious. It's not the books you need. It's some of the things that were once in books. The same things could be in the parlor families

today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and television, but are not. No. No. No. No. It's not books at all you're looking for. Take it where you can find it in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends. Look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books are only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of

things we were afraid we might forget. There's nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only what books say, how they stitch the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course, you couldn't know this. Of course, you still can't understand what I mean when I say all this. You are intuitively right. That's what counts. Three things are missing. Number 1, do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have a

quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me, it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past an infinite perfusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more literary you are. That's my definition anyway. Telling detail, fresh detail. The good writers touch life

often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones, rape her and leave her for the flies. So how now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people only want wax moon faces, poreless, hairless expressionless. We We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers instead of growing a good rain, black loam, even

fireworks for all their prettiness come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, beating on flowers and fireworks without completing the cycle back to reality. Do you know the legend of Hercules and NTS? The giant wrestler whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth, but when he was held rootless in midair by Hercules, he perished easily. If there isn't something in that legend for us today, in this

city, in our time that I am completely insane. Oh, there we have the first thing I said we needed quality texture of information and the second leisure. Oh, well, we've got plenty of off hours off hours. Yes. But time to think if you're not driving a 100 miles an hour at a clip, when you can't think of anything else with the danger, then you're playing some game or sitting in some room where you can't argue with the 4 wall televisor. Why televisor is real. It

is immediate. It has dimension. It tells you what's to think and blast city and it must be right. Seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions. Your mind has a time to protest. What? Only the family is people. I beg pardon. My wife says books. Aren't real. Thank God for

that. You can shut them. Say, hold on a moment. You play God to it, but who has ever torn himself from the claw that encloses you when you drop a seed in a TV par or grows you any shape of wishes, it is an environment as real as the world it becomes and is the truth. Books can be beaten down with reason, but with all my knowledge and skepticism, I have never been able to argue with a 100 piece symphony orchestra, full color, 3 dimensions, and being in and part of those incredible

parlors. As you see, my parlor is nothing but 4 plaster walls in here. He held out 2 small rubber plugs for my years and I ride the subway jets. That hems dentiferous. They toil not neither do they spins in Montagai shut. Where do we go from here? Would books help us? Only of the third necessary thing could be given to us. Number 1, as I said, is quality of information. Number 2, leisure to digest it. Number 3, the right to carry out the actions based on what we

learned from the interaction of the first two. And I hardly think a very old man and a fireman turned sour could do much this late in the game. Here at the end of the 4th turning in the United States of America, the hour is indeed late, or at least from my perspective, it's late. John's mileage may vary. Your mileage may vary. Faber, and this is the leap that I made in my brain that captivated John that I put in the notes. Faber is Montag's Morpheus, but he isn't a

cool black dude. He's not a cool black savior character. And he's flawed as a hero because books make us complicated, which is what the systems that captain Beatty represented understood. They didn't want complication. They wanted flat wax. And by the way, wax is manipulable when you heat it Structures. The builders that were holding together civilization's memory along the train tracks outside the city also understood this. And eventually, Montauk will run into them as well on the

escape from the rapacious. There's that word again, hordes in the city. Faber at the end doesn't have a happy ending. Matter of fact, Faber has no ending, weirdly enough. Bradbury just sort of abandons him in the middle of the well, not the middle, sort of the back end of the 3rd act of the book. And it's kind of odd. I've never seen a writer do that. It's sort of like the inverse of Anton Chekhov's gun. This idea that you, like, just leave

something there. I had completely forgotten about how the book wraps up. Yeah. You know? So, like, I knew the premise. Right? You're not allowed to have books. Right? And, someone wakes up, but the ending was very interesting. Right. Because, like all of a sudden I realized that I don't remember how this book ends. Right. You know, the story. And I'm like, we're so close to the end. Like,

is this just the wake up? Is there any lasting change? You know? And then I was like, oh, now I'm very excited because I'd forgotten how to do it. And you're right. Like, there is like, there's a lot of hope. Mhmm. Right? That, you know, they're gonna meet up in the future, but, like, you know, there's there's also a lot of reason to assume that hope is not valid. Right. You know? There's there's no denouement. There's no there's no conclusion. There's no catharsis at the end. It

feels it like as I was reading it, I was like, god. This just feels kinda rushed at the end of it. And then, you know, thinking about it is like we you know, this is about change. This is about this is about the wake up. This is about all of these things. Right? And if you're going through it, you have no idea what it what the what the ultimate conclusion is gonna be like. You know what I'm saying? So the and, initially, I was like, this feels rushed. I don't like this. I don't

like this. I want more details. I wanna know how everyone wraps up, and I just wanna have clarity at the end of it. And then I kinda had to slow down and, like, pause and realize, like, hey. It doesn't have to go it doesn't have to end the way that I want it to end for it to be a good story, which was, you know, a very interesting part as I'm reading this book and wanting it to, like, wrap up my way, and then it doesn't wrap up my way, and I'm a little bit frustrated for

a couple of minutes. You know? Well, I think there's one possibility. I think Bradbury probably would have accepted this. The possibility exists that Faber was evaporated in the bombs No. I know. The city. But, like like, that whole thing. And I don't really feel like they do a good job of really talking about how, like, this country's on the constant verge of war until, like, until he's meeting with favor until, like, we're, like, at that midpoint. Right? Well, no. No.

No. The women no. No. No. No. The scene with the women in the parlor when Montag goes nuts, and he starts yelling at them about their lives and about their kids. Mhmm. And the one woman, she's on her, what, like, 3rd marriage or whatever. And she's, like, joking about how, you know, he's going off to war because there's a perpetual war, and they're not gonna get married or not they're not gonna exchange names because he's just

gonna get vaporized or something like that, basically. Oh, I it it was so funny because during that exchange, I was just so focused on the idea of, like, kids Mhmm. And, like, and, like, the kid Oh, yeah. Inside of there of, like, why would you ever have kids? Well, it's just a cesarean. You know? Like, that to me was, like, shocking and kind of, like, removed enough that that's where all my

focus went. I didn't even see that for the initial kind of, like, ground laying of the war that then ties into the 3rd act stuff. Mhmm. That's very interesting, to me. But this idea that Well, and the girl at the beginning, Claire, who doesn't make it. Right. Yeah. Mhmm. And there's also an intimation Maybe she did. Maybe she did. There's an intimation there that warfare is going on. Yeah. That's fair. But but it's it's one of those things because Montag isn't awake

yet. So he's still walking through sort of this, oh, I just put out the fires and then I go home and there's the walls and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Yeah. And it's all and it's and, you know, it's interesting how Bradbury steps him down into the into the being awake piece, ironically enough, or maybe interestingly enough, with his wife getting her stomach pumped from the sleeping pills that she OD'd on. Yeah. And the and the people who show up to to to pump her stomach.

And I and, you know, you talk about the cesarean. I was I was sort of taken out a little bit. And I'm it's very hard to take me aback. It it really is. But I was sort of taken aback by the casualness with which Same. Bradbury described them showing up and just sort of, oh, they're just gonna have a cigarette. It's just another Well, I'm You know? Like They ending in why. We'll go to the next one. It's fine. And that casual that casualness with human life Yeah.

I think it does such I think it does the opposite, honestly. Like like, a, it shocked me how, like, early it wasn't just how stark it was. Right? He just walks home and finds this thing out. But to me, them coming along and then being so nonchalant about it, to me, that really sets the stage for, like, the environment that, like, this is so common. They're oh, yeah. Here's another one. You know what I'm saying? Like Right. And,

you know, we go through versions of that. And, like like, not to that extreme, but, you know, like Well, there are there are people who would assert that in our even in our own time. I mean, Bradbury wrote this book in the in the fifties sixties. Right? Mhmm. But in our own time, there are people who would assert that we are too casual with life. By the way, cradle the grave. It didn't matter what context or in this matter where we're talking about the death penalty or,

you know, the 3rd rail issue of abortion or whatever. Any anything involving life, we're way too casual about. Anything involving the, the transmutation of life into something else. Right? There are people who would assert. And I do think they have a valid point that we are not and and it's really they they use the term too casual. I think what they're looking for is we lack seriousness. We it lacks our conversations lack. There's a Hebrew word Fidelity?

There's a Hebrew word, in the in the Bible called the in the Old Testament, called kabod. Right? It's used to describe, the patriarch Abraham. Right? He had kabod. And what that what we translate that into in English is gravitas. He had weight. Right? And when a person like that speaks, it doesn't matter how much you know, you shut up and listen. Agreed. Yeah. And we've all run into people like

that. And we, the, there are people who would make the assertion that in the kinds of conversations we are having around life and that we've had with increasing intensity around life, those people with that type of gravitas are not involved in the conversation. And so we are having unserious casual conversations, which cheapens life. And I think that I think there is a point there.

And so I can see where, and even, even with me seeing that intellectually, it still hit me like, oh, there's no, this is the emotion of it. Yeah. This is the emotion of these guys just being like, oh, this woman may die. She may not. I don't know. I gotta go down the street. Let's pack our car and go down the street. It was so, like, cold. Yeah. And it was so early, but I was like, this is the world. This is the world that that they were in. And for me,

it was like a it was like a very interesting pacesetter. You know? Yes. You know, that also starts to him to kinda think and, you know, outside the box and everything. Okay. And comparing him to Morpheus and the black savior piece, which I know that kinda struck you a little bit. Why did that why did that you're like, I'm like, I thought of that that way. The question you said is, like, is Faber a good leader?

Yeah. Is he a favor? Is he a good leader? Yeah. And it's so funny because, like, as I was reading it, he's so apologetic. Right? I'm the I'm the I'm the coward. Right? I'm sending you to go do these things, and I'm not doing them myself. On on one hand and I didn't realize this until this conversation, so thank you for this perspective. It's like I was like, god. Like, this guy is just a doormat. Okay? But what if he's just manipulating him from the

other side? Because, you know, you have you have Faber on one side, you have, you know, BD in the other, and he's just there in the middle. Like, what if he is just, like, that good of an of a manipulator and not really that much of a coward? And I wasn't thinking about that until until I saw that and and we're having this conversation because, like, I just thought he was just, like, this, like, kinda this is gonna sound bad, but, like, a guy who's too

nerdy, and he's missed the opportunity to, like, to, like, speak up. And so now he needs someone who's got some brute strength amongst him or around him to, like Oh, yeah. To, like, cause change. But he's so always with the but, like, hey. You're the real hero here on you know what I'm saying? And it and, like, like, there is a realm to where, like, if you're good at, you know, motivational manipulation Mhmm. It's all there. Right? The nagging and the and the, oh,

well, you know, blah blah blah. But then he's also the thing that I really loved is when they're talking about Beatty, and he's like, maybe he's one of us, and we just don't know it yet. And that blew my mind, man. I was like, oh Right. Right. There was a there was a scene, and I read about it, I think, in my research on the book. But, Bradbury was going to put it in a scene where Beatty had like books in his living room or something, but they were all like burned up books

on bookshelves. Oh, interesting. That he'd like charred or whatever. And he decided not to put that in the, in the book. And maybe maybe it was in an interview. He talked about it or or maybe something. I I don't know. Anyway, because he's written several inter he wrote several introductions to several different introductions to Fahrenheit 4 51. And I would recommend if you're gonna read this book, go back and read, the edition that has at least a couple of his,

of his, introductions. Because, you know, it's interesting how he changed over the course of his life subsequent to the book and changed his perspective for where the book landed. Right? And I wanna revisit something that you said in the first part, which I didn't fully I don't think I fully addressed you. You said, yes, my opinion about ban banning books in libraries. Right? Well, I I think I think the question is I think it's very easy for people to be

like, oh, yeah. We shouldn't ban books, but, like, my kid's not reading this stuff. Sure. You know what I'm saying? Which in summation is kind of the same thing. Right? If you're a parental figure and you're holding your kids apart from it, you're, you know, you you don't have a police state to come in there and, like, force it and everything, but in all all intents and purposes, you might as well be. Well, I think we

so I think there's a bunch of different dynamics happening underneath there. First off, you've got parents who are not for whatever multifaceted multimotive reasons are not actually paying attention to what's going on in their kids' heads, much less their kids' lives. They're just, they're just not, they're not dialed in. I think something like less than half, and it might be even higher than that now, of all families don't have at least one meal together

at night. Over what? Like, a week or a month? Over, like, a week? Just just don't have it. They just don't because they're they're and by the way, there are seasons in my life, I'll be perfectly transparent on this, like, I'm currently in a season where we are struggling to have a meal together every night because, like, just schedules and all this other kind of stuff. Right? Because we added one more thing in and then everything went to help. You know, the whole entire schedule went off

went off the table. But it's okay because it's only for 8 weeks. It's only the one thing for 8 weeks and it's done. Right? And then we'll be back to sort of some sense of, for us, normalcy. But I try to have meals with my kids, like, every night of the week. Like, how else am I gonna find out what's going on with my kids? Right?

Now, are there other ways can I have other conversations? Sure. Okay. But that idea of the traditional communal table that everybody gathers around and we exchange ideas about our day without by the way, you'll don't get to bring a cell phone to the table. We're not bringing distractions. You're actually gonna look at another human being over a meal and, like, have a conversation with

them. The the vast majority of people are not doing that. So if a parent is not doing that with it, I would assert that a parent is not doing that with their child. On a regular or semi regular basis, you actually probably don't have a good clue of what's going on in your kid's head. That's number 1. And then 2, the second dynamic and this was actually not a point made by me. It's been a point made by others. I'm just repeating it.

You complain about the cell phones, but you're the one is the parent that paid for the plan. You're the one that put the iPhone 4 in that kid's hand. That 14 year old doesn't have a job. That 12 year old ain't going out and paying the $200 a month, cell phone bill. You are the one that put the crack cocaine in the kid's hand. Stop putting the crack cocaine in the kid's hand. Oh, well, but. Oh, well, but. There's all these oh, well, buts. I don't wanna hear about

your oh, well, buts. I came from when my mama had to pick me up this is directly out of my experience. My mama had to pick me up from an extracurricular activity. If I had to be sitting by behind on the sidewalk waiting for my mama to come pick me up, guess what? Because my mama forgot, and there were times my mama forgot. Same. Yeah. Like and I didn't die. By the way by the way, did I inconvenience other adults? Sure. Did they all look at her like she was inconveniencing

them? Absolutely. Did my mama care? Hell no. She didn't care. She's like, I'm making money. What are you making? Like, you eat my food. What? But be quiet. Get in the car. You're saying this? So so Absolutely. That's the very that's the very specific perspective that I think so I just I gotta be very clear on that. Right? I get it. Other people had other experiences, yada yada yada. Okay. Yeah. We have 2 generations of hand on parenting, and now we're doing this thing

called gentle parenting. I don't know what the hell that is. My point is that if you're not engaged with the kid and then you're giving the kid technology, that's basically according to Jonathan height and he's not incorrect. Again, mainlining dopamine into your kid's system from a very early age when they can't even handle it. I mean, Snapchat is marketed to 8 year olds. Okay? And I've been on that Remember you remember when it was like a porn platform?

It was just for, like, something like like and and it's so funny because it's not that anymore, but because I was an adult when it came out. Like, I like, there for a while when it was, like, becoming, like, a social media platform and brands were on there and everything. And I was like, what is, like, what is it? Like, I was so stuck in the old conjecture that, like, I wasn't able to kinda see that that they were trying to ship that and do

something different with it. You know? Right. Yeah. But, Yeah. But when you have that, though, and that's and but and then and then you're going to outsource your kids to and I don't think you and I have ever talked about this on the podcast, but, you know, I me and my wife, we try to homeschool our kids. Not track. We homeschool our kids. And we've been doing that for many, many years if work was cool. Like, we've got systems

in place, all that. Right? This is part of the reason why we have tons of books in our house. We have biblio files. Right? But the point is you're outsourcing your kid for 8 hours a day to somebody else who's putting ideas in their heads. Yep. And you only have 2 to 4 hours a day. And by the way, if you're not eating a meal with them, you have less time than that to counteract those ideas or to just offer an alternative perspective. Forget counteract, just offer an alternative perspective.

And by the way, you're going to do that for 12 years. Those 3 ingredients just by themselves in the pot are enough. And this is where the banned books comes in now, are enough for me to question you yelling and screaming about books in the library. Work on those three things first, and then you can worry about books in the library. Well Books in library are are the the they're the lab place. No. I agree with you. Right? Like What are we doing? But but the perspective is,

well, I'm, you know, I'm paying money for these schools. It's therefore they they should And and but but no one shows up to school board meetings to talk about the curriculum. Yeah. Please. No. You know what I'm saying? So it's it's very much this we all want what we want, but, you know, we're not very good at the follow through to actually make it, like, actually happen.

Right? And, you know, the thing you said about, like, the family dinner and everything, like, part of me is wants to push back and be like, it doesn't need to be a dinner. Right? It needs to be intentional time. Right? And I think I I think right? And and this is not to kinda, like, judge you or anything else like that. No. No. No. It's fine.

Go ahead. I think it's I think it's very easy to be like, okay. We're all coming together at dinner and blah blah blah, and then kids get busy, and then we're just mad about the sanctity of dinner not being what it once was as opposed to, like, trying to take the action of, like, going and having those conversations wherever you can have them because we prioritize them as

important. Mhmm. You know? So I am also one of those people who says, and I want to be intellectually and emotionally consistent on this. You have to do what fits in the context of your life. That's why we have a republic. Right? Okay. It's not my job to, cast aspersions, not judgment cast aspersions on whatever it is you may have to be doing. It's also not your job to feel guilt about whatever you may happen to be doing or not be doing. It's your job to kind of look

at the thing that you're doing and okay. And then the other dynamic is, and this is something that I think a lot of people who are parents struggle with, particularly younger parents, struggle with this. I'm not in a, I have not raised my children and I am not personally parenting in a war against other parents. I'm not in a competition, but frame it that way. I'm not in a competition because of the parents, whatever you want to do, you

do. However, the things that I do with my kids are going to be the things that I'm going to advocate for. They're sharing it as they're doing business. Right. And, and you know, when we talk about things like books, you know, or we talk about things like larger ideas you're talking about and you're talking about intentional time. Sure. If you're taking intentional time to talk about

stoicism with your kid. Cool. Let's take that additional time. Let's figure out where that, what that, you know, focus time is and really be intentional about doing that. I do think that we do have a long. Not, I think I know we have a long history in the west where we can trace certain no guests. We could trace the transmission of culture to certain traditional acts that occur first at a family level, and then are usually

scaled up to a nation state level. And by the way, Jewish people I'll use them as a perfect example, very strong traditions around Friday, Sabbath and Friday meals. Mhmm. And that's the thing that has transmuted that belief system, you know, across destructions of temples and damn near destructions of people for 5000

years. Traditions work. And I think one of the things we're struggling with right now in the west is with the atomization of life and the allowing of these other systems to come in and atomize us and break us down into our smallest bits, which are of course the individual and then even smaller than that. It also atomizes away the traditions. And it just kind of blows those up. And human beings don't do really well in general without traditions and children in particular don't do really well

without traditions. There has to be some sort of cultural transmission process here. Now books are weighted away. Knowledge. For sure. Right. And how are we gonna do that intentionally in in our family based on the context of whatever it is we're doing? So and that may sound like a giant justification for what I just said, but it's not. Well, no. I I I just think it's important to because I

could I could see fast forwarding. Right? And my daughter's a little bit older, and she's got extra extracurricular stuff and then being pissed that she's not prioritizing dinner because this is our time. You know? Whereas, like, I think the parents, you know, if you wanna be part of your kids' lives, you need to be intentional and insert yourself in the in the kids' lives as opposed to expecting them to, you know,

effortlessly include you in everything. Sure. And I think you also have to, understand that and, again, this is probably how I was raised. The the hierarchical structure, whatever because there was a structure. And where are you at in the hierarchy? Right? And so, you know, are you know, is the person that you're raising these kids with, are they on the same page that you are on? Oh, yeah. You That's a

whole other That's a whole other conversation. Right. You know, so, you know, it's, it's, it's about, it's about fighting the appropriate, not fighting. I shouldn't say that it's about negotiating. That's really what it is. You'll appreciate this as a salesperson. It's about negotiating in the appropriate way, in the appropriate manner with the appropriate person at the appropriate time and knowing where the negotiations go. Right. And getting alignment as much as possible.

There going to be times of misalignment? Are there gonna be seasons of disruption and of chaos for sure? But that can't be the whole life of the child. That can't be the whole life of the family. Oh, I agree. 100% agree. Like You know? God. Like, there's so many tangents I could take this conversation down from that from that just Just from that one. Basic idea. Right? Because Yeah. You know, people also

have a habit of rubbing off on each other, right, in close proximity. Right? Like, part of the reason that the that the military works is you're all in the same boat. Right? You've all made this this decision, and you all have to deal with with the outcome. You know? And you're you're learning how to become the machine that the government thinks that they might need to call on. You know? And like, that's always there, but no one's really talking about it and stuff.

But yeah, man. You know? And then, you know, you get married, you start spending time with someone and, you know, just like we were talking about before, well, this influencer, this person knows knows a, b, and c just like I do. So therefore, you know, d through z, we're probably as well. We're probably on the same page. Right? We're probably fine. Except the challenge is, like, d and c, you're not on the same page and probably looking at that influencer

for advice about how you should lift your Exactly. Exactly. Right? But a was solid. A was solid. Right? B's b's maybe 80% of line, but then we get to c and it's like it's like 25%. Well, Jordan Peterson says this thing, so I'm gonna go do it this way. And it's like it's like, you know, you've you've you've missed the opportunity to have your own critical conversations with yourself. Bingo. And and those critical thinking skills come from.

Exactly. And, man, like, I love getting to come and do these episodes with you because, like, I read these books and I always know that after the conversation, I'm still mostly gonna feel the way that I feel about it. But, like, because I I have deep trust for you and I know that you're a thoughtful person. I have some new perspective that I didn't have before. Right? And that's what I love so much about the second point we need

leisure. Right. If you're running from book to book, to book, to book, to book, to book, and you're never sitting and thinking like, what did I get from this? You're you're you're missing 9 tenths of the point. Right? And so it's funny when you see these online social media things of like, well, I read 52 books. How much are you synthesizing, bro? Right? And that's always the solution. Right? I read a lot. You know? I mean, I don't read as

much as Melissa does. Melissa reads about 50 books a year, but it's like, it's like, it's, it's her number one pastime is reading, you know, but I, I probably read 15 to 20, sometimes 30, depending upon the year. But I'm also I'm also, because of what I do, like, able to, like, let's go try this, and let's go try this, and let's go try this. Right? And it's funny because I met up with a friend of mine that I know digitally. He's an entrepreneur. We met an

entrepreneurial community. We've only been friends digitally. Right? But last year, he, like, he sells to, like, airports and everything, like, $1,000,000,000 deals. Right? Yeah. So he's in town. We meet up last year as I'm going through the process of buying the house and everything. And then he came back in town this year. He had to follow-up with a client and everything. And so

we met up again, and we were talking again. And it was so funny because he pauses, and he was like, dude, like, how long has it been since since we saw each other? And I was like, oh, I did the math, actually. You know, it's been this long, you know, because that's who I am. And he was like, you are miles away different than where you were a year ago. And I kinda had this moment of, like, duh. Like, why wouldn't I be? Right? I'm on this path. I'm on I'm pushing

myself. I'm I'm challenging my ideas. Like, I'm I'm, like, you know, helping people think about how they think. You know? Of course, that's gonna kinda wash over onto me. So but it was this, like, very weird moment of realizing most people don't change that much over a decade. Oh, yeah. No. You know? Yeah. So that that whole thing of, like, I'm looking for things to implement. I'm looking for things to change and to try and to dole out and

to see how it works and everything else like this. And because my job is what it is, I get the opportunity to be like, oh, well, that sounds like an interesting anecdote. Let me go tell someone about it in relation to this other thing and see how they deal with it, you know? And then when and then when they show up later and they're like, oh, that what? You know? I told people I was rereading this book. They're like, oh, what's that book about?

I've never read it before. And I'm like, it's it's a it's about a future with no books, and then I can just leave it. Yep. Right? And then and then they'll, like, okay. How's the book coming? You know? Like like, oh, man. Pretty good. Right? Mhmm. So I get this opportunity to, and this is this is back to the true grit thing. You can have the map, but that's not

the same thing as being in the territory. Right. Right? And, like, I'm in the territory all the time with people that are dealing with changes of their own perception around leadership and sales and marketing and positioning and spin. And are we spinning for the right reasons? Are we spinning negatively? Are we telling them just what what we think that

they wanna hear? Are these things actually connected to the things we wanna build? Like and there's there's so much in this as like, I'm I'm curious as to your perspective on this as someone who works with individuals and helps kind of Yep. Rack them open, if you will. Because, like, I think on some level, like, I'm trying to wake people up. I'm trying to get them to to stop thinking about, yeah, you can just walk in the room and push hard enough, and they're gonna say yes. Because, like,

even if you can, let's talk about what happens after that. They ghost you. Right. They stall. They churn. All these things that are bad, but, like, we're all just happy that we, like, got our way, and it's like, guys, like, think about the connective tissue here. You know? Mhmm. So it it's very interesting as I'm going through, like, I do get to take these ideas and and play with them and and try

to kinda get other people to think about them and stuff like that. Do you do you see that in your work, or did that not really show up for you as you were thinking about the book? Oh, yeah. I mean, so one of the things that's very interesting to me is I was having a conversation with somebody the other

day. And I won't obviously get into names or relationships, but it was having a conversation with, and I was having a conversation with someone the other day about how their, one of their intimate relationships is in the process of being redefined. Well, hopefully that's neutral enough and not redefined in a positive direction. Right. Okay. Yeah. And the conversation was very intimate. There were a lot of details in there that were dropped.

I was like, oh, I kinda didn't know that. I didn't know that before. I didn't know that before. I've known this person for a little while, but now we've reached a certain level of trust where he can kind of, he can kind of have this conversation with me. Okay, cool. And I wound up. He didn't really ask for my advice. He was just really just looking to kind of just, like, document dump and then move on.

But there were things that were in the conversation that we were having that I thought he was missing that were critical. And I literally said, hold on. Like I gotta, I gotta give you advice here, whether you want to hear it or not. Like I really do. Cause you're, you're, you're skipping like a rock over some of this stuff and you're missing the deeper thing here. And I went back to a couple of books that I've been reading, you know, over the course of, this year. Right.

And a couple of conversations where, not just with you, but with other hosts that I've had, where we distilled out some, some ideas that I thought would be helpful for him. And I kind of gave those ideas to him. And then I tied that into sort of my personal life experience around some of the areas that are similar, similar to, to him. Right. And in the book that I'm writing right now, the one I'm mashing around with, I can't get out of the book is being driven by these

conversations. So these kinds of conversations I'm having with you are driving the book, right? It's not a book based on the podcast, but it's a book based on the conversations that I've been able and the critical thinking I've been able to put behind. You know, coming up with these ideas and these ways into these books. Like, one of the things that I do with these books is I try to find a way in. Like, what's the way in

here? Right? And so the way into true grit was sort of thinking about what does a character look like who is claiming moral authority, and is just rigidly committed to that moral authority. And she's not gonna she ain't gonna move off her rock. You know? Yeah. Maddie Ross says at some point, and it might have been in the movie too, nothing's free by the grace of God. You have to pay for everything in this world. And she was fine with paying

her price. Where do you run into someone like that? Like ever in the world today now? Like, where do you run into somebody that's like that? Just that rigidly committed? Many people that I run into are loosey goosey. I run to a lot of loosey goosey people who are kinda flopping all over the place. Now, again, your mileage will probably vary. Yeah. I

okay. This is one of my favorite topics. Right? Because in in the Well and I wanna draw I wanna draw that in in comparison to a guy like captain Beatty, who I run into a lot of captain Beatty's. Oh, yeah. A lot of those folks. And those would drive me absolutely crazy, but go ahead. I I I can't deal with the captain Beatty's. Right? And so if I hear anything about, like, well, we're just gonna get rid of these people and get new people, and that's gonna fix the problem. I'm

like, no. No. No. No. No. No. No. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm forced I'm forced to turn see, the Maddie Rosses drive the captain babies crazy. 100%. For sure. That that's the that's the whole process of coin. That's the that's the Like like, that's the other greatness of the whole thing. Right? But in the kung fu school, one night, you know, I was, like, I was lamenting that, like, people

don't do kung fu. Right? But, really, I was wrapping it up in the idea that people don't have lives because they they just finish work, and they go home, and they sit on the couch, and they drink beer, and they watch TV. Right? And I'm over here, and I'm doing a thing. Right? And, like, I was drinking too much of the Kool Aid at the time. Right? You kinda have to in those environments or else, you know, you don't get the good stuff, if you

will. Mhmm. And one of my friends, still friends with him, he goes he goes, man, everyone has kung fu. But for most people, that kung fu is watching TV. Right? There you go. And I know people and you know people that watch UFC fights, and they can they can name off every one of those moves. They know exactly what's happening. Like, and you and I also both know that that being able to name those names is not going to help them against an

8 year old. You know what I'm saying? So I think I think what what has happened is we you do see those people. Right? You see black belts in jujitsu. That takes a level of, like, nah. Not going your way. Right. You know? Yeah. Business ownership. Right? You know, I can't tell you this is gonna sound so bad. I can't tell you how many people can't seem to figure out how to be productive for their own intrinsic needs and to do it consistently enough that they can have a business.

Right? So they're almost like, oh my god, I hope I can spin up this business before I get bored. And it's almost like they know about it, which is very just interesting to me because I do think it takes a little bit of, like, no. Screw you. Watch me go do this thing to do any of these things. Yes. And I think that that's I think that's Maddie Ross. It's just not as, what's the word? It's not as it's not as Concentrated, maybe?

It's not as is trying to build an archetype. That's the other thing 100%. For sure. These authors are trying to build archetypes. Right? So there's an archetype of Capturably. There's an archetype of Maddie Ross. Mhmm. There's an archetype of we read War and Peace, one of our more downloaded episodes this year. Mhmm. Just the first part of it, just like the first introduction. And it

is a masterclass in how to do business networking. It's a masterclass in how to go to market, but it's a Russian party. I need to go back and read that. Yeah. I go back and read like the first, like 5 chapters. It is a masterclass in how to network. It's a masterclass in how to run a networking event. Right. And the way that Tolstoy describes Anna Pavlovna going through and like making sure everybody's talked to and everybody's got engaged with you, but it's, but it's old school,

aristocratic 19th century politeness. Yeah. That we have just totally blown up and abandoned. We had a whole conversation about that on our podcast to kind of the similar to the one we had of about way of the samurai, but in a but in a Western, a more Western, a more Western context. But mean, I like And that's the archetypes that that that these these authors are building or archetypes. I'm sorry. So one of my big shifts around networking was around this idea. Like,

I I hated small talk. Right? And my coach was always like and and I was going to a sales coach. That way I could be a brass tacks type and not have the small talk. Right? Completely holding it with the wrong intention. Right? And, my coach was like, you know what? You don't have to learn all this stuff if you just play with people who were, like, good to play with. Right? And he's, like, even trying to put it in my vernacular as a poker

player so that way I can understand it. And I'm still like, what? You know? And he's like, don't try to sell people that don't want what you got, idiot. You know? But I wasn't clear enough to see any of that stuff at the time. But I network a lot now. Right? I'm on I'm on Lunch Club, which is an AI driven matchmaking service for networking. I've had 300 meetings alone on that platform. And the the trick, the trick, if you will, the my goal is I'm trying to find your kung

fu. Right? And so people come on the thing, and I'm not like, well, how's your week going? What's the most exciting tell me about a time when you struggled in your work. I'm like, what do you do on the weekends? What do you do when you're not working? Right? And then and I'm going somewhere with this because kung fu is a craft. Jujitsu is a

craft. Writing is a craft. Sales is also a craft. But if we don't have this conversation, there's no way they're gonna be able to see it as a craft unless they come from the territory kind of situation. Yeah. So what I have found is the craziest depths of, like, community and passion and

drive. Like, I talked to a guy who had 7 Cantina Racer motorcycles inside of his garage because, like, that is his kung fu, that is his jam, and he spent all of his all of his all of his improvement time, his development time, his meditative time, his kaizen time, if you will, on that. And I've met more and more people that have odd, odd hobbies. Right? And I'm saying this as someone who often gets looked at for having the weirdest hobbies on

the planet. Right? Like martial arts and poker and these sayings, I get it. But it's only weird because you don't do it. Right. Right? And so I think I think that people have these drives to where they can be that driven and that oriented and stuff. I just don't think that people see it for what it is. Right? People are scared to turn their hobby into their livelihood for all the reasons that make sense.

Right? There's lots of people like, I I had to have this conversation with someone else of, god, do you really wanna carry that much weight for someone else's thing? Because you might just be someone who's better off working on your own, so that way you can have the wider lane and stuff. And, you know, we all need

different things, but I think there's drive for everybody. You just have to kinda, like, look for where you're already driven and pull the elements away from, like, what makes you drive there and instill those in this other thing, and then it's easier to drive. Well, and I think And we gotta we gotta wrap up. We're we're way off on this. But, hey, surprise, guys. If you listen to the other ones, you knew this was gonna happen. Right? Congratulations. Everybody drink. Take your shot.

Well well, one of the this well, that actually it actually ties into where we're gonna gonna go towards at the end here. So one of the things that that kind of that I'm sort of starting to noodle with another idea of sort sort of starting to do with I'll do it through the science fiction books because we're gonna read dune here. Dune's coming up. I'm finally on the back end of Dune. Well, I found a person who's really passionate about Dune, like really passionate

about Dune. I wish it was me because, like, my wife is, like, a Dune fanatic. And I'm just like talk to her. You should have heard her. Like like, when I finally read it because I read it late. I didn't read it, kid. Right? And so then reading it late, I was like, oh, this is the same messiah story that I've just seen over and over and over. And she's like, no. It's the messiah story. And I'm like, no. It's not. No. But, like, that idea, right, talking about writing and

everything. And I I got kinda got stuck on my book, so I dug into, Brandon Sanderson's lectures on creative writing. Right? Mhmm. A little stuff. And the thing that he says in there that blew my mind is that it's always a cliche until you do it so well that people forget that it's a cliche. Right. Oh, that's like some Robert McKee level stuff right there. Man, it I was like,

oh, I'm so glad I'm watching these free YouTube videos. Like, well, you know, like, I could be watching cat memes, but this is inherently more specific. This is better. A bit. But I think I think when we the idea in science fiction is that tomorrow well, no. I've been playing with a couple ideas in my shorts episodes. First off that most science fiction, particularly dystopian science fiction, even utopian

science fiction, but let's talk about the dystopias because we always like those better. Oh yeah. Dystopian science fiction is a reflection of whoever the author is, their current anxieties or whatever moment they're writing it. A 100%. And a buddy of mine actually told me that years ago, and I was like, you're full of crap. No. It actually turns out he was correct. I was wrong. He was right. Okay. He'll be he'll be happy to hear this.

We have that kind of relationship. He'll be happy to hear this. But the layer that's on top of which is why, by the way, Star Trek can never really fully be replicated, and I'll just I I don't believe it fully can be. I think the Paramount will always continue to screw that property up for a very specific reason. And the specific reason is that Gene Roddenberry created something that went against the anxieties of his of his era, and he went into positive direction. And it's really hard to do a

positive. It's easier to do a negative. That's why you have so many dystopians or dystopias versus utopias. Anyway And, like, it's perfect except this one big, huge clearing hole. You know what I'm saying? Because it's Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We're all just jaded. All just jaded. Exactly. Yep. But when you look oh, I got that. What oh, I heard you. One of the things that's interesting to me, and I I think about it in

the context I mean, you have kids. I have kids. I think about it in the context of our children is what do we owe? What are the people living now? Oh, the people that are yet to be born. What do we owe? Because there will be people tomorrow. This is like, and maybe it's a thing where I'm starting to really comprehend my own mortality now,

in my mid forties. Mhmm. But there will be a time when Haysan Sorrells and John Hill and all of the other hosts that I have cohosts that I've had on my show, our voices will no longer be in the world. They just they just won't be there anymore. And yes, the internet, the riff off of Ronald Reagan a little bit, the internet might be like a government program. It might be the closest thing that we have to immortality, which, you know, I don't know that I want

my voice and I know the AI has come along. I don't know that I want my voice resurrected with my old. You know, podcast episodes so that people can hear. I don't know that I want that. I'm kinda I'm sort of struggling I'm sort of struggling with the idea of that right now. But the concept even deeper than that is, if I just put out Pablum, then Pablum is gonna influence the future. Yes. So there's not real wisdom there. Right? So if

I put out wisdom, then wisdom will influence the future. Right? So what do I owe people who I will not meet? Because at at best, if I live to be a 100 years old, which by the way, I consider middle age to be 50, middle age meaning the middle of between your porn and your die. So I like, I mean, I don't I don't plan on dying at, like, 90. I'm sure you're looking for happen. It's like they might yeah. I I have, like, 10th century. Now, of course,

especially plants with mice and men, I'm not in charge of that. Okay. I am I am I have a I have a death list of things that I must do, and that is set to complete by the time that I'm 75 because, you know, I'm not, I'm not pushing everything off to the right. And I think that that's where people start to get sideways with this stuff, but I have the bucket list that will be done by this time, but I am hoping to hit triple digits. Okay. So so it's a it's a it's a very interesting

kind of duality, I think. But the relationships that we have are the things that that go to the future. And even that they only go maybe 2, 3 generations down. And then our names sort of fall out of like, how often do you think about your great, great, your great grandfather or your great, great grandfather, right? Like not a lot, you know? And so, and eventually, at a certain point, the name of Hazon or the name of John is

just we're done. Like, we're out of the right? But the things that we leave behind, the things that are permanent, the things that are important are the things that we owe the future. And I don't think we can experience apathy in the face of that, but I also don't think that frenetic action is is is the way for it either. I agree. And so these books, these science fiction books create a template where unlike maybe a tragedy like king Lear, right. Or a epic tale, like, you know, war and peace

or a set of poems. Like, we covered the the Shakespeare sonnets love poems. We just did that. Right? Or Lolita. That was a tough book. Oh, yeah. Nabokov. That was hard. And by the way, I was not the one that suggested it. It was my female cohost. So I would not have I would not have touched it, but she suggested it. And we we we went through it. You're gonna go you're gonna wanna go listen to that episode. Yeah. That'd be great. Yeah. It was it was a hard read. But what do we owe the

future? Right? What do we owe people that we have not even met yet? And science fiction plays with that. Science fiction plays with the ideas of what happens in the far flung future, what happens with people 50, you know, a 100 years from now who we'll never meet. Isaac Asimov talks about this or really, this is the underpinning of I, Robot. This is also the underpinning of Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, weirdly enough. This is the underpinning of, do androids dream of, you know,

electric sheep. This is the underpinning of Heinlein's almost all of Heinlein's work. In a 100 years, what will we owe people because of the decisions we've made now? And that is something that I'm sitting with right now because I don't know what the answer to that is. I do know that the container, for me anyway, for my mileage, the container of the republic is the thing that I'd like to see last another 100 years, but I'm not in charge of

that completely. I can do my own little contribution to that. But, fundamentally, it's gonna take 300,000,000 people to, like, agree and walk in the same direction and Yeah. Look at that. Do that. Right. Oh, well, I think I think if you get more than 50%, we're gonna walk in a particular direction. Like, that's I think that's just sort of how it goes. And everybody else then just gets dragged along in the wake of it. But beyond that, I will be honest. I don't know. I don't have a

clue. And I don't have a clue because I'm not blown away by gee whiz technology anymore. I'm not blown away by the next technological revolution anymore. I've been through 4 technological revolutions. You have too. We've been through 4 technological revolutions. I mean, remember when blockchain was gonna change everything? Mhmm. Mhmm. Do you remember that? Yeah. Okay. Right. And now we're onto, like, AI that has run out of quality to to run out of quality

content to scrape off the top of the Internet. And now the AI researchers, the wizards are smart, wanna use AI content created by other AIs. What are we doing? Agreed. Right. So I've, I've already had, and maybe it's my Jada gen X idea, but I'm, I've been oversold the revolution and I've been through 4 of them already. Mhmm. Go ahead. Hit me up with the 5th one, maybe a 6th one. It's fine. There's things that are still gonna be permanent in that. Right? Yep. But, again, what do

we owe the future? What do I owe those people ahead of us? And I think Bradbury would say, we owe them books. I think he would say that we owe we owe them ideas. That's why favor speech is important. We owe them those three things. We owe them quality, leisure, time, and then we owe them the pores of the ideas that the books have. And then we just sort of admit that we have no control over them, and we just let them go make the decisions that they're gonna make, whatever those decisions are.

But and I don't know if that's the whole answer. I think maybe it might be a part of the answer. I think it's so funny because we were both talking about being stuck in our writing a little bit before we turned on the recording, you know, just kinda limiting. And, you know, I wanna do a really good job. Right? Like, I'm trying to write, like, a quality of dialogue and content that's supposed to reflect that mentor mentee relationship.

And, like, when you're in that kind of flow state of conversation and there's trust, but you're being pushed, you're you're having perspective shifts right there in front of another human being, I think that that is dope and rad. And I'm putting myself under immense pressure to do this and do a good job of it. And then I'm also also trying to hold, no one's gonna care at all, man. And, like, not even 25 years from now, like, no one might even

care, like, the day after I put it out. You know what I'm saying? And, like, then do I still wanna do it? Do I still think it's important if I if I if I pull that much zoom out in, like and I think that that's where it meets the road, like like like for what for what is the purpose. Right? And I liked what you said about, you know, you don't want to be reanimated later so that way everyone can, like, make fun of you

because the ideas will have shifted because that's that's, like, how we do. But I was reading an article and it had one of the Beastie Boys on there and he was talking about how, like, no one who's 14, 15, 16 should be listening to the Beastie Boys because, like, it's not for them. You know what I'm saying? That's true. He's he's probably right. Listening to brand new punk rock that's, like, let's that's causing awareness and getting political about the things that are important now.

And I just really appreciated his, like, I'm really glad that we've gotten to do this cool stuff, but, like, I'm also very aware that, like, we're, like, aging on the shelf. You know? So I think I think where people go wrong is the is the they want to make it too much about like their idea. Yeah. Right. And I I've seen this in books. I know you've seen this in books. I mean, you've seen this all over LinkedIn and everything. I was like, I'm

going to take this idea. I'm going to slap new labels on it. And then it's holistically mine. And, like, look how great I am. And, you know, it's, like, that game is not winnable, I don't think. Right? And you're just gonna get your ego crushed and, you know, find something else to do. But, like, I think if you're coming from, like and this is the hardest part because, like, we're not even aware of the biases

we hold. Right? Like, I love the idea a couple years ago that there was this big thing about what was it, is digital photography. And black black people didn't show up well on digital photography, and and it was like this big bias. And and, like, yeah, it it it it is a bias. It's something we need to work on, but, like, it wasn't intentional. You know? Like like like, no one was like, hey. Let's let's build a technology that, like, puts white people, like, in photos, but but not black

people. Like, it was, like, it was unintentional. It needs to be fixed. Right. But let's not go demonize the people that were, like, found something that forever changed everything else after them. Right? So, like, I think we get way too fixated on our impactful change, like like, at an individual level Mhmm. As opposed to, like, thinking to where, like, we could have a meaningful

change. Like, for me, for my sales stuff, I'm I'm under no delusion that a 100 years from now, people are talking about Sherpa and the way that I talk about it, the way that I talk about it, unless something changes and I start growing and and build an empire and all this other stuff. But I, like, I also can't think about I can't envision a world to where the ideas that I'm talking about won't benefit the individual. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And I think some people

and business books are this way as well. Here's the thing I did once, and because I did it, it was epic. Right? The whole Nassib, or Nassim Taleb stuff. Right? Like Oh, yeah. Mhmm. Like, just because you did it, doesn't mean you can do it again. You know? Right. It's not a non what is it? Something about non repeatable. I can't remember what you're talking about. Yeah. Right? And it's like, we we have those people. I did this once.

It's gonna work a 1000 times. Like, you should buy my course in my program. It's only 47.99, and here's a step up to, like, $9,000 and all this stuff that we're seeing all over the place. And it's, like, I think I think if you're too ego driven around the change that you wanna make, you bog yourself down to where, like, it's impossible to have any lasting impact if you're not suspicious pushing that rock up the

hill. But I think if your intentions are solid I'm not trying to tell I'm not trying to teach people how to sell at the expense of other people. I'm teaching people you need to listen, you need to ask better questions, you need to have some curiosity. I hope that continues to be, like, needed and and, you know, a best practice a 150 years into the future. Now my version of it probably doesn't need to continue the way that it is, but I'm hopeful that the foundation has some

value. I think that's a good place to stop. I'm thinking we'll let John have the last word today. And all I'm gonna say is, well, thank you, John, for coming on the podcast today. With that, we're out.