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Episode 135: Distilling Wisdom (ft. Dr. Jim Rice) · Minnesota Masonic Histories and Mysteries

• 0:00
  So you're a senior advisor in governance and leadership.
• 0:04
  You've worked in over 35 countries and remain intrigued with exploring how best to strengthen the performance of individuals and institutions in the healthcare systems of more regions around the globe.
• 0:16
  Jim Rice, it's an honor to have you with us on the podcast today.
• 0:20
  Reid, it's great to be with you.
• 0:21
  Thank you for inviting me.
• 0:23
  you're working with boards and executive teams in leading nonprofit credit union health and social welfare sectors.
• 0:31
  You're a founding board member of Crescent Cove, which is very near and dear to us as Masons in our Masonic charity support of Crescent Cove.
• 0:38
  Alzheimer's research, healthcare policy, nonprofit board governance.
• 0:43
  You've been all over helping international nonprofits from women's co-ops.
• 0:48
  Where to begin?
• 0:49
  Maybe tell us more about some of your travels of late.
• 0:52
  Well, this year has been relatively slow.
• 0:55
  I've, uh, I'm on faculty of a business school in Nairobi, Kenya, so I get in and out of Kenya a couple times a year.
• 1:03
  I've just been guiding the board of a biomedical research group in one of the northern states of Nigeria, and we took that group to meet with two other boards in Dakar, Senegal, and so that was a recent one.
• 1:18
  And I'm on the board, which we may have a chance to talk about later, of a large consortium doing biomedical research based in Prague, so I've been in and out of Prague.
• 1:28
  Um, met with, uh, people in France, and then I had a, a fun gathering.
• 1:33
  My sister lives in Madrid.
• 1:34
  So those are teasers, uh, so far this year.
• 1:39
  I've got some more travel coming up, but it's always a good part, and I recently got my 10 million miles on Delta report.
• 1:47
  Wow.
• 1:48
  Wow.
• 1:48
  Is that the half of the 1%?
• 1:50
  10 million.
• 1:52
  Yes.
• 1:53
  Well, I was a little bit smug, and I was in one of the Delta clubs.
• 1:56
  I asked, you know, where it fit, and he's,"Well, we love you as a customer, but you're not near the top." Uh- No kidding I guess it's probably the 1 or 2%, but if you do a lot of international, it adds up quickly.
• 2:08
  And I'm only there because I started when I was in my 20s working in Latin America.
• 2:14
  And you just described your schedule as of late being somewhat slow in all the locations you just mentioned.
• 2:20
  What, what is busy season, what...
• 2:22
  busy time for you like then?
• 2:24
  Well, it's a mix of domestic travel.
• 2:26
  I'm on some boards, and I'm involved with some client work and a lot of pro bono work as well.
• 2:33
  So it, uh, it's good.
• 2:34
  It keeps me active.
• 2:36
  Uh, my wife thinks I'm crazy, but it, uh, I'm trying to hold off the vestiges of, uh, Alzheimer's by being mentally engaged and busy, and, uh, I'm excited about some of those kinds of activities.
• 2:51
  Well, and speaking of Alzheimer's, you're involved with the Brainwatch Coalition, convening health systems, researchers, technology developers, and policymakers, accelerating the development of real-world care infrastructure for aging and chronic disease Can you unpack that for us a bit more?
• 3:11
  Well, uh, BrainWatch Coalition is a non-profit tax-exempt group that catalyzes research here in the US.
• 3:19
  I'm not actively engaged with BrainWatch, but I am partnering with them because I chair the board of a large consortium of, uh, research groups out of Europe.
• 3:30
  Uh, some very favorable funding from Europe.
• 3:33
  And so our partnership with BrainWatch is to bring some of the European research activities in long-term brain health into the US, and we have some discussions going with a local health system in the Twin Cities.
• 3:49
  It's called Health Partners.
• 3:51
  But I have become-- My whole career has been involved in healthcare.
• 3:56
  The last few years, I've been particularly interested in how aging services and healthy aging occur, and so I've, I've gotten involved in that.
• 4:06
  And in a moment, we can go in a little bit more detail about the work based out of Prague in the Czech Republic.
• 4:14
  But I have a philosophy that, uh, human beings need nurturing at all ages, and one of the things that's always been impressive to me with the, the Masonic movement is the attention they've sp- focused on healthy aging and, uh, not just research, but applied activities.
• 4:36
  And so that's another motivation for me to be so flattered and excited to be with this discussion today.
• 4:44
  Well, and your work parallels the Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain You're seeking things like an early warning system for oncoming dementia.
• 4:55
  Yes.
• 4:56
  Where do you even start?
• 4:58
  Well, I've had to learn a great deal about this, Reed.
• 5:01
  Um, colleagues of mine invited me to serve on the board of the International Neurodegenerative Disorder Research Center.
• 5:11
  I had a large, a couple of weeks practice to be able to even say that and spell that.
• 5:16
  But they've been, fortunate to have funding at the intersection of AI, healthy aging, neurosciences, and quantum computing.
• 5:26
  And when you ask how do you unpack that, I had to ask a lot of questions because I didn't understand the science or the research, and a lot of the research there that's supported in the European Union is at the cell level or the DNA.
• 5:42
  So they're trying to find cures, and in order to find cures, you have to look at being more accurate and more efficient on early detection of what are factors in their lifestyle or their DNA that suggest they may be predisposed for dementia or Alzheimer's.
• 6:03
  And so I unpack it by looking at three big blocks.
• 6:08
  What can we do to get earlier diagnosis of people that are likely to deal with dementia or, uh, frustrations on cognitive decline?
• 6:20
  The second is to look at advancing, uh, knowledge about understanding interventions, uh, biomedical, lifestyle, pharmaceutical, to treat that.
• 6:34
  And then the third is the quality of life.
• 6:37
  You don't wanna just extend the life if it's not going to have high quality.
• 6:41
  And I know the Masonic, initiatives over the last several decades recognize it's quality of life, not just length of life.
• 6:50
  So the first level of unpacking, I think, is looking at earlier detection, then look at better treatment, and then look at the quality of life.
• 6:58
  Because for dementia and Alzheimer's, um, as you may be aware, and I know some of the brothers are, the Quality of life is also interacting with lifestyle of people taking care of them.
• 7:14
  We still don't have enough caregivers, and so it relies on, uh, family members, often women family members, and so it's kind of an unfair burden.
• 7:24
  That's another element of unpacking is how to deal with the caregivers, not just the scientists, not just the researchers.
• 7:32
  And our partnership with Brain Watch Coalition is going to try and advance some of that activity So in that pursuit of accuracy, adoption, and that access of clinical decision intelligence applications for better brain health, like you mentioned, you have a, a research project currently.
• 7:54
  Is it spread across Europe?
• 7:56
  Was it something like eight universities are all doing different work, but working together in pursuit of that?
• 8:01
  Uh, yes.
• 8:02
  There's five universities.
• 8:04
  It's a consortium, uh, made up of a German biomedical research group, a French, and then three in the Czech Republic.
• 8:13
  And some of the original scientists that were getting together and looking at what they could do better, um, many of them came from an AI orientation, mathematical and programming.
• 8:25
  Some came at this from quantum computing, that is a means to doing the modeling for, uh, research at the protein level.
• 8:34
  And then there's, uh, a group of neuroscientists, people that deal with Alzheimer's and dementia.
• 8:40
  They came together and said,"There's gotta be a better way for us to explore cures and look at clinical testing." And to bring that about, they needed substantial funding, and they were encouraged to apply to the European Union.
• 8:56
  There's a large Horizon fund there.
• 8:59
  And the European Union, uh, was very gracious, and we've been able to take advantage of a grant last year of 40 million euros.
• 9:08
  And then more recently, we've added another 40 million euros to do a large supercomputer.
• 9:15
  And we may have time to get into that.
• 9:17
  I, I don't pretend to understand all the computing power that you need to do modeling at the protein and the cellula-cellular level.
• 9:27
  I'm trying to bring that kind of research rigor into the US and North America by looking at, um, AI as an application to do research on whole person and whole system, not just at the cellular level.
• 9:42
  So we don't wanna get too deep in the weeds, Reid, but that is an exciting element of the journey that a lot of scientists across the globe are working on.
• 9:54
  Is there a collaboration happening between all of these said scientists?
• 9:58
  And would you say that these efforts in Europe are advanced more than what we're seeing in North America, or is this a shared system of information in pursuit of that better brain health early detection system?
• 10:11
  I think the scientists are remarkable on their openness to share and collaborate and coordinate.
• 10:17
  Um, I've been exposed to that even though I'm a resident here in Minnesota.
• 10:22
  I go into Prague frequently for board meetings and the opportunity to meet with the scientists.
• 10:28
  So there's definitely a collaborative approach between these universities, and it's not just clinical universities, it's mathematicians and AI experts and quantum computing experts.
• 10:40
  And that collaboration happens in the US.
• 10:43
  The Alzheimer's Association nationally is very much of a catalyst and a supporter of that here in North America.
• 10:50
  We'd like to see more of that.
• 10:51
  I don't think there's enough yet of collaboration reaching across the Atlantic, um, and for that matter, internationally.
• 10:59
  The INDRC, that's the International Neurodegenerative Disorder Research Center, we recently signed a collaborative agreement with the Indo-Pacific Initiative, which is India and Vietnam.
• 11:13
  We wanna do some similar things for fellowships, research, collaborative, uh, activities here in the US, and the Brain Watch Coalition is working already with a number of, uh, research universities.
• 11:26
  Uh, I have the good fortune of chairing a board, but we also have a scientific advisory, uh, board, uh, which is made up of about 30 people.
• 11:35
  We have someone from, six or so universities in the US.
• 11:40
  And so that collaboration, that, uh, coordination is really important for any kind of science, but particularly this neurodegeneration challenge, the cognitive declines.
• 11:52
  And within all of the research, where does AI fit into processing all of the, the tests, the former models, the new ones?
• 12:03
  Is that the forerunner of this to run everything through datasets like that?
• 12:08
  I don't even know how to ask the question.
• 12:10
  This is an overwhelming amount of fascinating research in this pipeline of information that could truly transform brain health and, and how we look at that, how we treat this moving forward.
• 12:21
  It's a very wise question, a challenging landscape for sure.
• 12:25
  It-- There's some controversy, as we all know, with AI.
• 12:29
  Will it replace the human contact?
• 12:32
  Um, I don't think it will.
• 12:34
  But at the heart of AI, it is doing huge data mining and deep dives into large amounts of data in order to extract and distill wisdom that can then be applied to either do better diagnosis of care, enhance, uh, collaboration between caregivers, because when you deal with neurosciences and cognitive decline, it's not a specialty, it's many that have to get involved.
• 13:02
  And so that's a, a strength of AI.
• 13:05
  It's not just data mining, but it distills and, uh, pulls together wisdom from all kinds of specialties, all kinds of researchers, all kinds of caregivers, not just the clinical and the scientific wizards, but common people, because, uh, there's an opportunity to do modeling of better behavior and interventions.
• 13:29
  AI is at the heart of that.
• 13:33
  Uh, we can go a whole session on AI, but, um, augmented inter- uh, intelligence or artificial intelligence, there's even debate about it, but I'm fascinated with how it is, uh, a means for enabling and empowering and encouraging this kinda coordination and collaboration There's a bit of a trade-off, though, between AI's accuracy and the interpretability.
• 14:04
  How would you explain an AI diagnosis to a doctor who might not be a computer scientist?
• 14:10
  Is there a bit of a, a gap in that?
• 14:13
  There can be, yes, and the interpretation is a key.
• 14:17
  Uh, AI can be a remarkable tool.
• 14:21
  Uh, many of the people listening to this podcast are aware of Claude and ChatGPT, which is, uh, in the simplest, in my simple terms, a way to rapidly look at the literature, mine information, mine reports, read many books simultaneously because of the algorithms that are there.
• 14:43
  But you have to be careful because the algorithms are shaped by human beings, and they can misinterpret or there can be errors.
• 14:50
  So that's why AI as a tool must be married with the, uh, human interpretation of that and the-- that's where real intelligence can come forward.
• 15:03
  So AI can be a, a very valuable tool, um, but you're gonna have to do that kind of balancing I saw an article you shared recently that discussed AI systems are not neutral tools.
• 15:19
  They're designed by humans.
• 15:20
  They reflect the values, assumption, and biases of their creators.
• 15:25
  And as this memo explained, AI systems increasingly act as gatekeepers of speech and access, which means they play a powerful role in determining which perspectives are seen, shared, or suppressed.
• 15:40
  How do you get behind that algorithm in there?
• 15:42
  When you're putting all of this extensive information in, do you worry about a, a bias or maybe missing a piece?
• 15:51
  You can, and I actually haven't thought that much about this analogy until just now.
• 15:57
  But I work, as you mentioned, in a number of countries and cultures, and what I've learned over the last 40 years stumbling around in health sectors and different parts of the world is your effectiveness can be make, made or broken apart by the kind of simultaneous translator you might have.
• 16:22
  So I speak a little Russian, a little Spanish, but the real quality of understanding the inquiry and the quality of the response to the inquiry is that interpreter.
• 16:34
  And if that man or woman, old or young, uh, either has a bias or is trying to trip you up or they're just not as wise and knowledgeable as you want in that particular discipline, that can be a disastrous kind of, uh, situation.
• 16:52
  AI can be helpful in all kinds of areas, but if the simultaneous translation, uh, gets in the way of understanding, that can be diplomatically poor, uh, personally poor, professionally poor.
• 17:05
  So it's a good question, and we all have to pay attention to that.
• 17:11
  Can you describe a time that you had to explain a complex AI concept to a doctor, nurse, researcher?
• 17:19
  Well, I don't pretend to be an expert on this, but we recently had discussions in Prague.
• 17:25
  Uh, there's a-- The name of the, uh, research grant that we're benefiting from, European Union support, is called Clara, C-L-A-R-A, and you can later look at the website for that.
• 17:40
  But we're sitting around having a conversation with some of these neuroscientists, and there was a mathematician there, and the, important focus is on how proteins come together.
• 17:54
  And so there are different ways to map how they connect with each other, and if the artificial intelligence has been programmed to be thinking differently about the complexity of how those proteins come together and whether they get entangled, um, can really create, uh, challenges on cognitive decline.
• 18:17
  And, uh, this is in a depth that I don't pretend to understand, but we-- and we don't wanna get into in this podcast, but, uh, they have things like tau tangles and how they create plaques in the brain that can disrupt the way that, uh, signals happen in the brain, which can contribute to cognitive decline.
• 18:42
  And so an AI error can come up with a mistake on predicting how the proteins would come together, a mistake on which pharmaceuticals might be able to help erode, e-erode or e-erase some of the tangles.
• 19:02
  And so we've gotta be very careful on how it is used.
• 19:06
  And the other element that is essential is you need huge bits of data, pools of data.
• 19:14
  we are collaborating with some European, uh, data sets, and when I say data sets, it is- And what's that look like?
• 19:21
  It looks like biomarkers.
• 19:23
  It's demographic profiles.
• 19:25
  It's lifestyle.
• 19:27
  It is, uh, chemical, um, blood dimensions.
• 19:32
  So if you think of any one of those can have, uh, several hundred markers or dimensions or features, and when you start modeling how they can interact, um, you get to very complicated calculations.
• 19:46
  That's why we need the quantum computing because there's millions of calculations that have to happen.
• 19:51
  And I've-- You know, for a, a guy whose father was a Texaco service station manager, I, I love that kind of intrigue.
• 19:59
  It's wonderful.
• 20:03
  So if you're able to navigate that potential algorithmic bias and use all of these data sets, what would your vision be?
• 20:14
  If you could wave that wand, what does this look like in 10 years Well, to keep it manageable for this amount of time, let's ignore research for the cure.
• 20:25
  Let's just talk about AI and the interactions that it can contribute to the caregiving.
• 20:33
  So we have an older woman, she may be about 80.
• 20:37
  She's dealing with dementia.
• 20:40
  Uh, usually that means there is a daughter that's involved.
• 20:45
  It's, uh, a gender bias, unfortunately, in most societies.
• 20:50
  And then there's a care team of clinicians.
• 20:53
  They have to be communicating with each other.
• 20:56
  They have to understand, uh, what can be done to make the quality of life and the comfort and to delay the cognitive decline of this 80-year-old woman for as much as possible.
• 21:10
  So that means knowledge about issues and options need to be available for the informal caregiver, the daughter.
• 21:19
  Knowledge and options about pharmaceutical, lifestyle changes from the clinical care team need to be aware of those things.
• 21:28
  They need to be knowledgeable of that.
• 21:30
  So AI can generate information, uh, quickly for these people to have more useful and effective conversations, and it can feed on each other so that they continually get more knowledgeable.
• 21:44
  And because of the internet, the wisdom that is happening in Prague or France or the UK or the Twin Cities of Minnesota or California can almost instantaneously be shared.
• 21:59
  So that's another v- uh, value and power of AI linking the internet.
• 22:05
  But you still have to be cautious because you can still have errors in California that might influence what is done in Minnesota.
• 22:12
  But I think that's really the part of the excitement over this next decade.
• 22:16
  Uh, AI learns faster and faster and faster, and sharing of that knowledge and adding to the database and the wisdom that is there from the patients themselves, the caregivers that are informal, the caregivers that are clinically astute.
• 22:33
  And we also need to involve the purchasers of care, the payers of care.
• 22:37
  That's another dimension that we'll have to come to grips with over this next decade.
• 22:45
  Last weekend, Wall Street Journal columnist Jim Vanderhei contended that we risk blowing the AI race, and he shared seven ideas to get back on track.
• 22:56
  Now I'm gonna go with the too long, didn't read option.
• 23:00
  Frame it as a national project, not a technological one.
• 23:04
  Build the coordinating infrastructure.
• 23:07
  Anticipate the displacement problem before it becomes a crisis.
• 23:11
  Create a real-time, user-friendly app for jobs.
• 23:15
  Prepare business, college, and families.
• 23:18
  Take the future danger seriously, and use American leverage to build a global coalition.
• 23:27
  On that last point, that sounds like something you're already doing.
• 23:31
  Well, we're trying to do that.
• 23:33
  We have the good fortune of having these five universities that are collaborating and coordinating, sharing things quickly on what works, what seems to have potential to work in the future, but also being candid and honest enough to share what isn't working, to guard against going down those rabbit holes or that pathway that's not going to be productive.
• 23:57
  So the- How do you avoid that?
• 23:59
  How do you avoid the rabbit hole or the...
• 24:01
  There's gotta be so many distractions on potential that-- right in front of you.
• 24:05
  How do you navigate that?
• 24:08
  I think it's a difficult challenge.
• 24:09
  One of the things that I think is going to be essential is an openness.
• 24:14
  Um, there has to be trust and transparency in what we're doing, why we're doing it, how it's working, what isn't working.
• 24:24
  Uh, this is a little bit, uh, geopolitical, but one of the challenges right now I see across the globe is the erosion of trust that's happening between nation states, between the political leaders of nation states, and when you have that hesitation or that erosion of trust, collaboration, both for political and military and science purposes, can erode, and that's unhealthy for, uh, the human race, if you will.
• 24:57
  We don't wanna wax too, uh, poetic or politically on this thing, but one of the challenges with AI, it can be a very positive tool to rapidly exchange and distill and interpret knowledge between cultures and between countries and between politicians.
• 25:19
  Um, that's the potential for it.
• 25:21
  But if, again, going back to that, comment I made about you having an interpreter that is of poor will or not good enough knowledge, the communication that you need for that collaboration, that international coordination, is weakened.
• 25:40
  So we've gotta guard against that.
• 25:42
  There's no easy answer But the more we can have the, the fraternal interest that goes back even to the Masonic generation, uh, it may have gotten together in old lodges just to have good fun, but now it's over the decades and generations, it really talks about building trust for open lines of communication, transparent understanding of what's working and doesn't work, and encouraging that kind of, uh, intercultural, uh, collaboration going forward Couple fascinating things about you are all the places that you've been that most, most people either haven't been or haven't spent a lot of time in.
• 26:30
  What have you learned from other cultures?
• 26:35
  I find that, um, in any nation-state, any community, any culture, any faith-based community, they have some common needs and desires.
• 26:47
  Uh, that's the encouraging thing I see over my 40 years of travel.
• 26:53
  Um, I've got friends and colleagues that, uh, have similar interests and frustrations, and if we can have a chance to talk about those, we, we laugh and cry at the same kinds of things, which is a good thing.
• 27:07
  I've also seen, uh, because my career now is very much involved in governance and governing, setting up boards, getting more women into leadership, getting, uh, clinicians into, uh, governing body roles in the health sectors that I've been working in.
• 27:25
  And one of the things that when I started doing a deeper dive into how corporations and groups make decisions, how they govern themselves, I had to look at how societies govern themselves.
• 27:36
  And then I had to look at, well, what influences a society or a community's perspective of what works t- for people to get along?
• 27:47
  And that invariably moves you into looking at different faith communities, different religious groups.
• 27:53
  And so one of the things that I think we need to find ways to embrace more over the next decades is, uh, interfaith collaboration, uh, between, uh, Jewish populations, Christian populations, Muslim populations, Hindu, some of the philosophical ones.
• 28:13
  And so I, in my waning years, am trying to spend a lot more time on how cultures and faith communities look at coordination and collaboration.
• 28:23
  It'll be interesting to see how AI contributes to the sharing of wisdom and insights from these different faith communities as well.
• 28:32
  So that's another, um, landscape I'm intending to journey into.
• 28:39
  You're also an artist, which is a very different avenue than healthcare consulting.
• 28:45
  Why art?
• 28:47
  Well, I, I think that's a bit of a stretch to say I'm an artist.
• 28:51
  I do enjoy trying to express, good things in life around you in different forms.
• 28:58
  I've, uh, had a cousin who is, um, a very talented ironworker, and we produced a steel sculpture that's kind of modernistic.
• 29:09
  My wife didn't want me to bring it into the house, but it's a full-size woman.
• 29:13
  It's called I Am Woman, and so that's one form.
• 29:17
  I've an architect firm friend who had, uh, sandstone, so I was able to carve some sandstone mostly into, uh, birds.
• 29:27
  One is, uh, a sandpiper that's, uh, running in a pond for my sister who lives in Madrid.
• 29:34
  And I haven't done the actual painting.
• 29:37
  I've done more of the physical ones.
• 29:39
  Uh, I enjoy artistic expression in the tangible, uh, that you can pick up and feel more than the, um, photography or painting.
• 29:49
  But it's, uh, it's a pastime.
• 29:51
  It's a little bit of relaxation.
• 29:53
  Uh, occasionally it's, uh, cocktail fodder for conversation, so that I, I don't look completely boring on all my work in the other areas.
• 30:04
  How difficult was that to learn how to do some of those, the sculpting and whatnot?
• 30:08
  Well, I've never taken courses.
• 30:10
  I like to talk with people about what they do, why they do it, how they do it.
• 30:15
  Uh, try and learn in that way.
• 30:17
  And, uh, one, I brought back a piece of sandstone that I was going to carve for my 50th wedding anniversary.
• 30:26
  I was gonna call it the Love Dove.
• 30:28
  I was gonna give it to my wife, but I was like a elementary school kid doing a project, and I rushed home before it was much shaped.
• 30:35
  I'd done some rough shaping and cutting, uh, with tools that my architect friend had.
• 30:41
  I brought it home and said,"This is gonna be your surprise gift for our 50th wedding anniversary." And she says,"A squirrel?""No, it's a dove, for crying out loud." Mentoring is such a crucial part of our life journey.
• 31:01
  What's your philosophy or approach to mentoring?
• 31:06
  I've been fortunate to have a number of mentors over the years.
• 31:10
  Uh, I just was in a meeting with, the Rotary, and they are talking about a mentoring program in some high schools here in Minnesota that I think is really exciting.
• 31:22
  I think mentoring is essential, and especially if it is sincere about practical things.
• 31:29
  Sometimes the best mentors aren't preaching or saying,"This is a good idea.
• 31:34
  You should think of it this way." They're much more effective, I've learned over the years, if they're good listeners.
• 31:42
  Wise listeners are more likely to be good mentors because a large part of mentoring, I think, is the empathy and the support that you give for people to encourage to do something that they think is important, that they would like to do, but they haven't had encouragement to do that.
• 31:59
  So, uh, and the, the word mentoring in different languages c- can come and be expressed in different ways that talks about listening and providing the empathy, not just forcing wisdom into that.
• 32:13
  Not, not just pontificating.
• 32:14
  That's it.
• 32:14
  Exactly right, Reid.
• 32:18
  We see that with a lot of young men interested in learning more about Freemasonry.
• 32:23
  They're looking for a mentor.
• 32:25
  They're looking for purpose, but they could really use that connection with someone that just, to your point, has the life experience, isn't gonna come in and say,"Okay, I'm gonna give you the handbook and do this, do this, do this." But it's a lot of cautionary tales.
• 32:39
  I find that as I get older, I'm meeting some younger men and saying,"You know what?
• 32:43
  When I was your age, when I was 29, I really wish someone had shared" It's more like,"Don't do this." It's a, a good dimension for our conversation.
• 32:55
  I think that the, the wise and effective mentors are those that tell a little bit of their life story, what they did, what they tried, what didn't work, not in a preachy or a pontificating way, using your word, but they're, they're having a conversation with that younger person, and I think that leads to a much healthier conversation, uh, and it's a mutual learning process, and the more the mentee sees that they had a good idea that that person listened to, it's even sometimes good if they see that mentor writing something down that they said.
• 33:40
  Uh, that's a very powerful motivator, that I am a person of worth.
• 33:44
  I have ideas that can be useful.
• 33:47
  I have a life.
• 33:48
  I have a career that can be, positive and productive.
• 33:52
  That kind of encouragement doesn't just come from, saying,"Here's my life story," but the smaller, warmer insights and conversations that can come.
• 34:02
  It doesn't have to be one-dimensional.
• 34:03
  It's not just the older person in that relationship sharing it all.
• 34:09
  It, it goes both ways, and there...
• 34:10
  We, we all have something we can learn from each other.
• 34:14
  We just may not know what it is yet.
• 34:16
  That's exactly true, and some of us older people can remember the Art Linkletter Show, where the learning and the lessons and the insights came from children.
• 34:27
  Uh, Art Linkletter would interview kids, and of course, there, s- weird things can happen.
• 34:33
  You know?
• 34:34
  It can be under the expression of kids say the darndest things, or wisdom comes from youth, and I think we're all wiser if we pay attention to that multidimensional, uh, learning that can happen that you just referenced.
• 34:50
  You mentioned Art Linkletter, and that made me think of Paul Harvey.
• 34:54
  And at the risk of aging myself, wasn't he the best in those stor- the storytelling?
• 34:59
  Yes, storytelling is terrific.
• 35:01
  One of the things here in the United States with, uh, public radio is, uh, story time or where they have, family members or friends that have a short conversation.
• 35:13
  It could be a 40 to 60-second insight, and those verbal stories are captured and stored in, uh, public radio.
• 35:24
  And those story time, that kind of, dimension of sharing and learning, I think, is powerful, and sometimes we don't, uh, pay enough attention to those interpersonal, intercultural, intercommunity kinds of conversations.
• 35:39
  And reflecting back on my comment a little bit earlier, uh, my curiosity to journey more into how different faith communities and different cultures look at common day things, uh, for people to get along, I think that is, uh, essential for more of us to do.
• 35:57
  And if we look at all the, uh, fraternal groups that have evolved over the last couple hundred years, uh, that's a important part of their philosophy and their strength is to provide that kind of nurturing and catalytic exchange.
• 36:12
  And that's why I feel like our fraternity, specifically the Freemasons, are, are timeless because to what you described is what we have always been about.
• 36:22
  non-sectarian.
• 36:24
  We're apolitical.
• 36:25
  You have to believe in deity.
• 36:27
  We have members of all religious faiths, but the bigger focus is on how do we disagree agreeably, and what are we doing to give back to the greater good, to those in need, to be serviceable?
• 36:43
  You're a big supporter and a board member of Crescent Cove.
• 36:45
  That's one of our mission grants at Masonic Charities.
• 36:48
  And thank you for that.
• 36:49
  I wonder how would you describe that?
• 36:50
  Well, it is a, a gap in the health and wellbeing of children, and their, the strain that kids that have life-limiting illnesses have to deal with, it ripples throughout the family.
• 37:03
  and I'll never forget, uh, I was a founding board chair for Crescent Cove, and, um, I'm only marginally involved in a little bit of their philanthropy work.
• 37:14
  But we had one conversation where the child...
• 37:18
  You almost have turned the, uh, bedroom into an intensive care unit in the home, and it's, can be disruptive for that.
• 37:26
  And one of the, the brothers, uh, said,"Well, what am I, chopped liver?
• 37:31
  You know, we also are important." So when we, uh, deal with the really heart-wrenching kind of health issues, we have to keep a broad mind of what it means for the family and siblings and others.
• 37:46
  And that was one thing I've learned, uh, in that particular service-oriented, uh, charity.
• 37:53
  It is people helping people thrive, or not just survive, but thrive, and that involves informal as well as formal collaborators.
• 38:06
  why is charity and giving back important to you?
• 38:11
  And why should it be important to someone else?
• 38:15
  I suspect, uh, if I'm open about this, when I first did it, I thought it was a nice thing to do.
• 38:22
  It would feed my ego to show that I was helping out somebody with a bigger disadvantage than I had.
• 38:31
  Over the years, however, I've marginally matured where I think giving back to people is nurturing to yourself, but it's nurturing to the community.
• 38:44
  And the strong and stable societies I've seen over the millennia are those that give attention to and support and disciplined infrastructure that enables and empowers and encourages collaboration and help to other people.
• 39:01
  Now, you can make that a religious, uh, or a spiritual motivation, but it doesn't have to be, because what I-- what's driving me and my interest in charity is the stability that comes in communities and families and societies by having that kind of charitable ethic woven into the behavior of how they do it.
• 39:25
  And when they have rule of law that enable and empower and encourage that, it's even better.
• 39:30
  And in the US, we're unique.
• 39:32
  of the 195 countries in the world, we are the unique society that uses tax codes as an encouragement of that charitable mindset and that charitable giving.
• 39:44
  and so that's another thing that could be a topic for future discussions.
• 39:52
  Jim Rice, your story and your endeavors in life are fascinating, and we're so grateful to have you here and sharing some of these with us.
• 40:01
  Thank you, Reed.
• 40:02
  It's been a pleasure and an honor.
• 40:04
  I'm, I'm flattered to have a chance to visit with you.
• 40:07
  I've-- I'm not actively involved in Freemasonry, but I respect very much the origin and the, the verve and energy that it's come about.
• 40:17
  I've seen that across the globe