Latest / The Christian Reeve Podcast / Dr. Joseph Meyer | The Christian Reeve Podcast | #110 |

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Dr. Joseph Meyer | The Christian Reeve Podcast | #110 | · The Christian Reeve Podcast

• 0:03
  Hello and welcome to another episode of the Christian we've
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  podcast. Today's guest is a podcaster and
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  lecturer at the University of Albany in New York.
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  His name is dr. Joseph mayor.
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  Welcome to the show. I'll wait my last name is Maya
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  Maya. That's okay.
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  My students just got that wrong yesterday and I've had seen him
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  for six weeks, left off to a great start here dr.
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  Joseph Maya. Okay no worries and You very
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  much for allowing me to be on the show.
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  I really appreciate it. Christian no it's my pleasure.
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  I got very excited when I did this Research into everything
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  about you and what you study and and you know what you teach and
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  everything and yeah, I always get excited in that kind of Part
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  of the podcasting, Jenny. I mean, it's never gonna be
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  honest. It's never that exciting to
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  actually do the research itself, but once I actually start
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  getting into it, like, my ideas just fly everywhere.
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  I'm like, oh, that's gonna be fun with about this, but that,
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  but you never actually know where the conversations are
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  going to go and particularly, with, with what you teach.
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  So you actually teach a course in writing and critical theory.
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  So tell us about more about this course and how its structured.
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  And and what exactly you are too.
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  Your students. Yeah, so a few years ago, I
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  would guess nothing more than a few.
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  Now, back in 2012-2013 my program director, he store of
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  sort of started seeing Trends in young, college freshman coming
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  in that, he thought needed to be addressed and probably the most
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  important one was this idea that we need to set up College
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  freshman to be able to think more critically about Out
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  things, whatever problems that they may want to dive into in
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  their careers, or just in their personal lives.
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  Just, let's try to focus more on this idea of thinking,
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  critically and how we can use writing as a as a means of
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  thinking. Which oftentimes, we don't think
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  of it that way, right? We think of writing as a way of
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  conveying ideas and thoughts, but and this is segues into
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  something that I teach my students, as well in actuality
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  writing can be kind of highest form of thinking because think
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  of it this way if I If I'm speaking to you, now I can use,
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  I can pause. I can collect my thoughts,
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  right? I can even use my hands to kind
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  of indicate that I'm thinking about something, but you can't
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  really gesture. Those in writing in actuality,
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  you have to be incredibly clear and precise.
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  And every word has to connect and every sentence and
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  paragraph. And what happens is this?
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  If you're struggling with something and I mean, the big
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  things in Really, there's a reason why for like thousands of
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  years, people have been writing in journals and Diaries and
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  things like that. It's because, as you start
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  writing, even if it doesn't make any sense.
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  In the beginning, you'll find that your thoughts will start to
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  clarify, the more you write, because of that necessity of
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  clarity of language. So, one of the things we teach
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  is, right, your way to think. Cooking.
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  Who you were. I get exactly what you mean,
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  actually. Because occasionally once in a
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  blue moon, I do journal and the frustrating part of it, for me,
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  like, for instance, I posted a Blog on my website today, which
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  I don't often do but very slowly trying to get into the habit of
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  doing that again and it was the same thing.
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  It's like, right now, I can quickly, convey a bunch of stuff
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  to you in the space of a minute and really make it very succinct
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  and just quick or even if it does take longer, it doesn't
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  matter because it's a conversation but I find it
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  personally very frustrating. Every time I have to as you say
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  kind of like compound that all into like small text and get
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  straight to the point. Like you as you say you can't
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  stop, you can't have these. I mean there are some writers
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  that try to do that. I know like it's more of a
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  modern approach to speak in a very Informal way, but I find
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  generally that doesn't go down very much better unless you're
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  doing like a fun kind of Novel where like the whole point is
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  that it's younger person or something.
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  But yeah, generally, particularly in this day and age
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  where everyone has a very short attention span and you know,
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  it's like if you don't get to the point in the first, 30
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  seconds people just got to you. Yeah, this is huge gap there,
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  right? And that's something also that's
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  a bit of a problem. May be in communication today,
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  right? I either either there's a major
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  inability to communicate for the person, for whatever reason, in
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  that moment to write it out clearly or you need to be, you
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  know, like Shakespeare for people to take you seriously.
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  And it's like, no, no, there's a huge gap in there.
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  That is still incredibly meaningful writing.
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  Matter of fact, I just had just a couple of days ago I had a
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  student and they always do this, they'll say, well I don't
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  consider myself to be a good writer and I'll go look.
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  Here's a secret for you. I have a PhD in English.
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  I don't consider myself to be a great writer honestly, so
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  there's something that's just, I think it has to do with that
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  precision and there's a kind of almost nakedness that comes with
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  it. Like, when I write this down,
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  people are going to identify it with me and somehow it's going
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  to live forever as well. But in reality again, that's why
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  I, you know, I'll have my students write at the beginning
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  of class. And I always remind them, you're
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  not producing the text here with this.
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  This riding you're doing is actually just to write your way
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  to thinking and when they buy into that, they actually start
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  to understand why I do it that way, we get better
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  conversations. And again, clearer thinking.
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  Remember what do I go into? My first year of University?
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  One of the biggest frustrations I Todd was the all academic
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  journals are written in that way.
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  Very pretentiously using very kind of over-the-top complex
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  ways. Now, don't get me wrong,
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  sometimes it is useful to use complex terms because it sums up
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  certain things that would otherwise take you several
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  paragraphs to explain. And if you just know the term,
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  then it just saves everyone time.
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  But a lot of the time that wasn't the case, a lot of the
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  time it was just whatever academics waffling on.
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  No offense here. I'm just saying.
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  I know this doesn't apply to well.
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  It's true. It's and here's the thing.
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  Like, in the very beginning I had to learn to like decipher
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  all these texts it was like studying Shakespeare at GCSE.
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  It was just kind of like, first of all, you'd spend an hour just
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  figuring out what the hell they're saying.
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  And then when you realize your oh, oh, so they went, they spent
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  the better part of 15 pages saying this, when they could
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  have just said it this way. And it would have been a lot
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  quicker forever. Involved.
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  And then I realized it's kind of part of the academic world to do
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  that. It's like, you're not really
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  doing it for yourself. You're doing it for the benefit
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  of every other academic, but then it's like, I don't
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  understand why all academics. Don't just make it quicker and
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  easier for each other. I don't understand.
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  Yeah. Well, there is a few parts to
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  that answer. Some one that's you touched
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  upon, which is sometimes you have to draw it out because it's
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  part of the field. They expect you to draw it out
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  and be you know, not economic with your words but actually the
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  opposite. They want you to sort of be like
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  very slow and methodical in saying how did you get here?
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  Okay, that's one part. But the other part too, is that
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  there's always a kind of anxiety attached to it that comes from
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  thinking at any moment, someone's going to realize I'm a
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  fraud, don't know what I'm doing.
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  I don't know what I'm talking about.
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  That is very much built into Academia, this kind of anxiety.
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  And so, sometimes you'll overwrite because the that
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  anxiety, that's just a fact and you'll see this.
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  Even when you do conferences, sometimes you'll deliver your
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  papers and and you'll have people who I tend to deliver a
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  paper that's somewhere between eight to ten pages.
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  I stay within my time limit, which is usually 10 to 15
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  minutes, but then invariably you always have someone who brings a
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  30-page paper up is On minute 32, and it's just pure anxiety.
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  There's no other way around it. It's listen, it's okay.
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  You can you can deliver a 10-minute thing here and we'll
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  get the idea and we'll support you.
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  But the level it's almost. It's almost they radiate the
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  anxiety. So much that you don't know what
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  to say. You must feel like it's nuclear.
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  Like, I don't want to go near it because I feel like if I say the
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  wrong thing, I might Like they might blow up like, in just in
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  front of me. Disintegrates and so, there is
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  there is this, you know, people don't talk about it but there's
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  this immense level of anxiety, involved in that.
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  And I think it's unnecessary. I mean, yeah, I agree,
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  especially, especially what you know, it's one thing in the
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  academic world doing that, for the benefit of everyone else.
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  But it's another thing, when you're at you, you're just a
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  bachelor's level and you're just trying to get through the
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  degree. And I mean, I don't know.
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  This is just some advice for University.
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  Students starting now, don't focus on trying to make it sound
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  fancy or whatever, focus on trying to get to the Point and
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  do that as succinctly as you can.
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  Because remember that the person that Mark is marking your, your
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  paper is still a human being and they have to go through like, 50
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  of these, maybe more. So, if you can get to the point
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  quicker, probably going to get back, great for that advice from
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  one of my, when I was doing my Master's, I got that exact
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  advice from one of my professors who said you're basically said
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  Joe, you've got great ideas, but you're trying to Hard here.
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  He said, go for clarity Above All Else and that is the exact
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  same piece of advice that I give my students who were
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  overproducing and again, maybe there's a little anxiety even
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  there. There was for me, I thought, oh,
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  I've got a sound into academic e, intelligent here, and that's
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  anxiety. Yeah, no, I totally agree.
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  And yeah, I'm not looking to say like I didn't do that because I
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  mean obviously we have a different bit of a different
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  type of Tatian system here in the UK, to America.
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  The crucial different, I know, you know this, but for those who
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  don't know, basically instead of high school finishing at 18 and
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  you finish and you go to college, we've done this weird
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  thing in the UK where you finish school at 16 and then for the
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  remaining two years of what would still be part of your
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  education. You don't necessarily have to
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  continue your education. You can get You have to
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  illegally, at least do a one-year qualification in
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  something. So for example, training to be
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  an electrician training to be a plumber, something vocational,
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  but you still have to do that for at least a year, but many
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  people choose to continue the education for those remaining
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  two years, which is why we that's what we refer to as
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  College, which is where that confusion comes from college.
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  In the UK just means a continuation of of high school
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  for two years, for a s level and a level.
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  Instead of just hit me, it would make more sense if we would just
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  do it like America and like the rest of the world, because I
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  know in Europe, they have the international Baccalaureate,
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  which is essentially the same as the high school diploma.
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  I swear, we're like the only nation that does this and I
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  don't understand why, but whatever.
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  Anyway, the point of trying to get to because this is just
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  going through the weeds there, is this massive leap. from high
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  school to University in terms of, Everything not just not just
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  how you write but also how you think and this kind of goes back
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  to critical theory and critical inquiry.
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  I learned how to do critical thinking at school but I was
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  lucky because what I realized is that not a lot of schools teach
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  that that's kind of one of those things that some school.
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  If it's a good school, they'll encourage that kind of thinking
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  but many schools just want you to just learn, do what you need
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  to do and pass the exams. And obviously once you get to
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  See is totally different ball game.
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  You've got to be instead of being given the information, the
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  tools. And you essentially, I do want
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  to say spoon-fed but you kind of are high school level and when
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  you get to University, you understand why?
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  Because when you're at Uni, you're not given anything,
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  you're given pointers, but essentially the whole time, it's
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  independent study, which is good, that's what you want.
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  But it's, it's like not to hundred.
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  It's like there's no in-between stage and I feel that that's
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  something that's lacking in all education systems there.
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  There should be more independent study encouraged at like high
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  school level which would then prepare you.
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  So it's not so much of a culture shock once you get to University
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  level and particularly with the academic writing thing like I
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  essentially had to relearn how to study when sought when I got
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  a university because everything I learned at a level and GCSE
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  level was kind of Wrong. Like just like, for example,
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  here's a really good example like the way you would find
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  sources and do referencing and stuff.
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  Like I had no idea what a Harvard referencing or am a
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  referencing was, I was just like, why is this it made sense
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  once, it was explained to me, first glance, I was like, oh, it
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  don't you? Just put the sources on a sheet
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  afterwards and then that's it. And it's like, oh, you have to
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  like really Source it. In a proper way.
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  And, you know, it has to be really clear and you can't, for,
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  instance, use Wikipedia because that's not a proper Source.
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  It's, you know, it can be flawed, people can write
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  anything there and it's like why not just learned that a high
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  school? You know, I don't understand.
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  Yeah, it's, I mean, for a lot of people the answer to that
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  question, at least here is has to do with Funding, you know
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  States. You know trying to set certain
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  certain numbers that they want to hit that kind of a thing,
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  right? And so teachers are under a
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  tremendous amount of pressure to make those numbers.
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  And therefore, there's not a lot of space to explore with the
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  students and say, okay, let's all of you.
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  Now, let's kind of create your own kind of individualized,
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  educational plan. Let's say, three for yourself.
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  There's just not a lot of space there and that's why in some
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  ways, the answer kind of alluded to a little bit here.
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  Too, is the importance of of curiosity and inquiry itself
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  that almost you have to get that child to understand.
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  You have to be curious throughout your entire life.
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  I mean, there can't be a phase in your life from birth to death
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  where I think you stop being curious.
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  Because something that I learned, even in college, not so
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  much in high school. I didn't get that so much in
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  grade school and what not either.
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  But in college, especially when you have to take certain courses
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  and, you know, invariably you take courses that you, you kind
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  of go in going. I'm not that interested in this,
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  but what I found, Found was wonderful.
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  Is I made it my goal. Be curious about something in
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  every lecture. Well, like find it.
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  So I would listen to a lecture with the entire goal of finding
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  at least one thing that I could sit there, write it down and go.
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  I'm going to think about this. And enter, and that made School
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  enjoyable for me, in a way that it never was before.
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  And I'm not sure that we do a good job just as a, as a species
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  these days saying, look, you've got your schoolwork.
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  But guess what? There's also you and you need to
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  find your inquiry, your curiosity about things, and then
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  find that Curiosity in the work, you have to do.
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  So I was always fascinated. I mean I loved reading as a kid
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  I did what I never thought I would be where I am today.
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  I never thought I would make a living out of that but I was
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  able to, I can read a book. And what I do is, I'll look for
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  things that I'm curious about in the book and then, even a book
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  that I overall maybe didn't like as much.
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  I'll never say that I hated it really because I'm always
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  finding something because I'm looking for it.
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  So I would just, I would encourage people young people.
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  Uh honestly establish what you're curious about and then
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  just find it in everything. Yeah, well, I just want to say
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  thank you that thing. That's fantastic advice.
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  I think especially at high school level the issue and as
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  you say, you covered it in your answer earlier with regards to
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  let, you know, there are lakhs of funding, you have to hit
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  these tights or is all about numbers.
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  That's, that's the biggest thing is, yeah, it's this is exactly
• 18:06
  the same in the UK. It's how many people can we get
• 18:09
  in the highest GCSE brackets. How many people can get the
• 18:12
  highest a level brackets? How many We got into University
• 18:15
  after the fact that that's what they care about.
• 18:17
  That's why when it comes to exam season and they're really
• 18:20
  pushing you and then making it sound like it's the most
• 18:23
  important thing in the world and it's going to affect the whole
• 18:25
  the rest of your life. In reality, it doesn't, I mean,
• 18:30
  it depends on what you're studying, you know, if you want
• 18:32
  to become like a doctor or a lawyer or something like that,
• 18:35
  then every grade counts and yeah is really important but There
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  are exceptions to that rule to I think ultimately it comes down
• 18:43
  to your hard work and perseverance.
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  That's really what gets you to the very top.
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  But with that being said, you know, this did, I mean, I
• 18:51
  remember when I was school, like, could I have had a better
• 18:54
  attitude? Yes.
• 18:56
  Could I have been a better student?
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  Yes, but there were a lot of teachers that kind of failed me
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  in a way that I understand now was not my fault back, then, you
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  know, it, everything's put on your well, you're, you're being
• 19:07
  Troublesome, you're being this, you're being that.
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  There were certain teachers that I had that inspired me the
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  realized that I wasn't a bad kid.
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  I was just, you know, had stuff going on the light.
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  Well as you said, they they they kind of find a way to get you
• 19:25
  thinking about stuff that can inspire you.
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  So I found things like English and business to be really
• 19:30
  inspiring because they really pushed you to think outside the
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  box, which I loved, I love that. I love this idea that the answer
• 19:38
  didn't just have to be a or b it Could be L, said it could be
• 19:42
  anything, it could be what you want it to be.
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  It's that really got me excited about learning and also just an
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  aside note, as well for lecturers that teachers try to
• 19:53
  be as passionate as you can be about what study because yeah.
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  Like I remember sitting in many lectures at University and in
• 20:01
  the end I'm not saying you should do this.
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  I'm just saying how it was for me.
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  I stopped going to lectures after a while.
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  I went to every single seminar because Seminars are essential.
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  But with lectures, there are only certain lectures.
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  I would go to because there were only certain lecturers that were
• 20:19
  truly passionate, a lot of them were just reading from
• 20:22
  textbooks, trying to she'll their own textbooks, which is a
• 20:26
  whole other conversation, there's no passion there just
• 20:31
  just kind of going through the motions.
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  And, but there was one particular lecture that I had
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  and I've covered this on the podcast before, so I keep the
• 20:38
  succinct, but I didn't like his subject but I loved him.
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  I thought he was brilliant. He and he made me care about it
• 20:47
  in a way that I didn't even think was possible.
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  And even to this day, his lecture still stand out for me.
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  So it's, it's all about that. It's about trying to help kids
• 20:57
  find passionate what you're in what you're doing by being
• 20:59
  passionate about. If you sit there boring and
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  you're just like, oh yeah this is this thing.
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  And you know, if you don't pay attention, you just screwing
• 21:07
  yourself over it's like everyone knows that You know, we all know
• 21:11
  that. Like if you've chosen to go to
• 21:12
  university, you've already made a major commitment that you've
• 21:16
  already said. I'm going to do this.
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  I'm going to, I mean, obviously, I know there's a lot of kids
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  that get forced into doing it. I realized that but the vast
• 21:23
  majority of kids, you know, they've agreed, they're going
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  to, they're going to put however much time into doing this
• 21:30
  degree. They know what's on board.
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  They know that. So don't treat them my children,
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  you know, treat them like your peers, treat them like adults
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  and and try to inspire Them and keep trying to get their their
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  attention. Because at University level, you
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  got so much other stuff to contempt if I know with me my
• 21:47
  second and third year I was working 60 hours a week just to
• 21:52
  make rent and you know just trying to keep everything
• 21:55
  together and stuff. And so my time was even more
• 21:58
  valuable than. So like it was a question of if
• 22:01
  I was sitting in a lecture and I would always give everything a
• 22:03
  chance. You know, I didn't just go to
• 22:05
  one and go. No.
• 22:06
  I would go to like, five to ten lectures, and, but I, am I
• 22:09
  getting anything from Yes, yes know, if not, I can use that
• 22:12
  time elsewhere because that's the reality of independent study
• 22:15
  is like, they always say. And I think universities should
• 22:19
  always do this. I don't think you should be
• 22:21
  punished for not going to lectures or seminars.
• 22:23
  I think it should truly be up to you, what you choose to do,
• 22:29
  because it's your degree. It's you know, and everyone
• 22:32
  learns in different ways. Like I really benefited from
• 22:34
  seminars for example because it's a small room of people,
• 22:39
  it's less daunting. Ting.
• 22:40
  You know, you don't have to put your hand up in front of 300
• 22:42
  people. You put your hand up in front of
• 22:43
  20 people, and it's more intimate.
• 22:45
  And, you know, you get more from it.
• 22:47
  And plus, I mean, I don't know how it is for universities in
• 22:50
  America, but I know the university, I went to most of
• 22:53
  your seminar leaders would be PhD students.
• 22:58
  So many of whom want our teaching, or want to be teachers
• 23:03
  as well, so they're very passionate about it and they're
• 23:06
  still students as well. So they know what you're going
• 23:08
  through and I Just found those sessions invaluable.
• 23:12
  I think ya know, you're absolutely right and especially
• 23:15
  in this in the passion Department, right?
• 23:18
  I mean we the students are not stupid they know from the
• 23:24
  beginning, if you're just going through the motions on
• 23:27
  something, right? And so a conversation that
• 23:31
  because in my course, you know, we tend to have first year
• 23:35
  freshman, right? Especially in the fall of tends
• 23:37
  to be, this is their first semester in college.
• 23:40
  And one of the conversations that we have is actually now
• 23:44
  that I think about it. I know if I've had it yet this
• 23:46
  semester. But we'll talk about how by
• 23:48
  week, three, and four, when they're in the large lecture
• 23:52
  Halls, they'll start to look to the left and they'll say, hey,
• 23:55
  that kid that I used to sit next to is not here anymore.
• 23:59
  And then the next week, they'll look to their right.
• 24:01
  And they'll go, hey, that kids not even more either and then in
• 24:04
  front and behind and when invariably happens is by about
• 24:06
  the fifth or sixth week, I mean that It seats that was filled is
• 24:12
  now down to about, you know, 100, maybe you're, you know,
• 24:15
  something like that and you can't help but just as a human
• 24:18
  being start to think, to yourself.
• 24:21
  Well, what am I missing that? They know that I don't know,
• 24:25
  like, do I not have to be here? And that's a big problem, right?
• 24:30
  Because then you start to feel a little bit alone in your choice,
• 24:33
  to go to the lectures. And part of the reason for that,
• 24:37
  of course, is you have to offer. The students something to be
• 24:41
  excited about. And at the very least, you have
• 24:44
  to show that passion that excitement yourself.
• 24:48
  Because even if all you're doing is in that moment is modeling
• 24:51
  academic excitement that can sometimes be enough to get the
• 24:56
  students to say, well, if he's excited about this, there must
• 24:59
  be a good reason. Let me look into this and see
• 25:02
  what I can find. So that's absolutely important.
• 25:06
  You have to have passion and excitement for what you're
• 25:09
  teaching. Okay, well, here's a question
• 25:12
  for you because I know my University, sore trial this on
• 25:15
  and off, but they never really committed to it.
• 25:17
  Do you think that lectures should be available VOD?
• 25:22
  So on video on demand, because here's the reality.
• 25:27
  We would get lectured in the lectures about not coming to it.
• 25:31
  You know, not coming to lectures and the reality is, you know,
• 25:37
  there's a lot of people with my situation who especially in
• 25:40
  Package, he's like people working.
• 25:42
  I remember when I was there very briefly in 2014, I went to some
• 25:46
  Starbucks somewhere, I don't know is middle of nowhere,
• 25:51
  talking to some girl, she's working full time 40 50 hours a
• 25:55
  week at Starbucks and studying and saving for college and doing
• 25:58
  all of that. And she just said, like, this is
• 26:01
  what you have to do, you know? And sometimes you get subsidies,
• 26:03
  sometimes you get benefits from doing that.
• 26:07
  But that's just the reality of what you have to do.
• 26:09
  So like if you take Scenario. She's only got a certain amount
• 26:13
  of time to actually be physically on present on
• 26:16
  college. So should she be punished for
• 26:18
  that? Or should she be?
• 26:20
  Should it be that you're able to catch up on these lectures after
• 26:25
  the fact? You know, I mean like the for
• 26:26
  me, it would have been an invaluable, if all those
• 26:28
  lectures were made available, and I could just browse them at
• 26:31
  my own time and convenience and make my study notes there, you
• 26:35
  know what I mean? And then there's, yeah, there's
• 26:36
  the issue of like, you can't pause the lecture, you know, I
• 26:40
  mean, if you're there, you can. The what I had to do is everyone
• 26:44
  starts the same. So this is a bit of advice for
• 26:46
  uni students. Now college students starting,
• 26:48
  don't bother trying to sit there, writing notes, okay?
• 26:51
  Pay attention, you know, bring a Dictaphone.
• 26:54
  If you're allowed to do that, bring something to record it.
• 26:56
  If you know, you need to go back on things which inevitably will,
• 27:00
  but don't sit there, writing notes.
• 27:02
  Unless unless you've got a brain where you can pay full attention
• 27:06
  and write notes and somehow make that work but the Eight years.
• 27:10
  I think you're never fully paying attention if you're
• 27:12
  writing notes because you're trying to copy what they're
• 27:15
  saying. Rather than thinking, what
• 27:17
  they're saying Which is far more important and plus I don't know
• 27:21
  if this is the same for lecturers in America but at the
• 27:25
  end of our lecturers inevitably, you'd always be able to go and
• 27:29
  speak to the lecturer afterwards.
• 27:31
  Yeah. And sometimes you get lucky and
• 27:32
  you get to talk to him, sometimes it's like 50 people,
• 27:34
  crowding them and it's probably not going to hate but you know
• 27:38
  my point is that You're good and you're going to have a lot of
• 27:42
  questions afterwards. A lot of things you're going to
• 27:44
  be thinking about, so it would be very useful as a tool to have
• 27:47
  that kind of video, undermine afterwards that you can go back
• 27:50
  to. And then you know, for example,
• 27:52
  you might have the email address of your lecturer.
• 27:54
  I know I did and you could directly send those questions
• 27:58
  that you have. But like, hey, this particular
• 28:00
  lecture I was there and also, you know, I've watched it and
• 28:03
  stuff and here's some questions. I'd like to clear up and
• 28:08
  whatever like That's the question.
• 28:10
  Like, do you think that's worth having or do you think that
• 28:14
  somehow problematic? Well, what's your thoughts on
• 28:16
  that? I think because I was fortunate
• 28:20
  in that before, I even entered the, the PHD field I had
• 28:24
  received my my academic credentials to teach secondary
• 28:29
  education. So from like seventh grade
• 28:32
  through 12th grade as well. So I have an educational
• 28:35
  background before I even went in to do the PHD, which helped out
• 28:38
  tremendously And one of the things that we had to learn
• 28:41
  about, excuse me was the different modalities of
• 28:45
  teaching, right? So how students learn best in
• 28:47
  different ways. So, the short answer to your
• 28:50
  question is, absolutely because even this semester, what I did
• 28:54
  differently was, so I had had a reading for the students, and
• 28:59
  I'm fortunate, I only have about 20 students per class, which is
• 29:02
  phenomenal. So, this is not the same as e,
• 29:05
  and not the same as a 300 lecture hall, but What I did was
• 29:10
  I recorded myself reading the reading so they could have it in
• 29:15
  multiple ways. They could read the PDF if they
• 29:20
  wanted to go on their own or they could listen to me read the
• 29:25
  PDF or and this is what I found to be truly fascinating was
• 29:30
  actually about half the class. What they would do is they would
• 29:33
  read while listening to me so they would look at it and they
• 29:37
  said that that was actually quite helpful.
• 29:39
  But my rationale for that was was this today, we consume
• 29:43
  content so much, and it's so many different times, right?
• 29:46
  If you're on the train or bus sitting at home, doing work,
• 29:49
  whatever it is right. Maybe you're making lunch for
• 29:52
  four siblings or something, right?
• 29:54
  You could listen to my reading and to me that counts it doesn't
• 29:59
  necessarily you don't have to bring up the PDF and read.
• 30:03
  So that was a conscious decision on my part to try it out and see
• 30:07
  what would happen and And I have a grand total of I think 5857
• 30:14
  students, right? But my, cuz I would just put it
• 30:17
  up on a YouTube channel for them.
• 30:19
  I ended up with about sixty eight views, and this is
• 30:23
  unlisted, you know. So it's not really on the public
• 30:26
  anyway. So that tells me that students
• 30:29
  were even going back to listen again, in some ways and that's
• 30:33
  really meaningful to me. And I was telling some of my
• 30:35
  colleagues, this how that, how meaningful that is now?
• 30:40
  When you're talking about lectures, the way I do it is my
• 30:43
  lectures tend to be fairly fairly short in a sense, like
• 30:48
  I'll do maybe a 15 20 minute thing.
• 30:51
  But always in sections, that require me to stop with a
• 30:56
  question that I asked engage them on.
• 30:59
  So, I'll work my way toward a point, and then I'll kind of
• 31:02
  give the, a very specific question.
• 31:05
  Not even an open one and I was just ask like, okay, Billy, so
• 31:09
  What do you think about this part?
• 31:10
  And this idea. And so that way they know, like
• 31:14
  you said you can't you can't really take notes with my
• 31:18
  lectures. You kind of can't because you
• 31:21
  you have to listen and you have to know that.
• 31:24
  I might say, Okay Jenny, what do you think about this?
• 31:28
  So if you're just taking notes, you're going to miss it.
• 31:30
  And that's because my lectures aren't about gaining book
• 31:35
  knowledge, there about taking what you read, or listen to You.
• 31:40
  And now let's make meaning out of it.
• 31:43
  How do we use this stuff? So you read Plato's allegory of
• 31:46
  the cave. Fantastic.
• 31:48
  What do we do with it though? And so my lectures are kind of
• 31:52
  like broken up points with discussions and questions and
• 31:55
  that's just how I've always done.
• 31:57
  My lectures is that way, even if I did a class that was longer
• 32:00
  lectures, it had to be broken up with smaller segments, with
• 32:06
  specific questions for them because they have to be in
• 32:09
  Engaged or we all tune out to a degree, my goodness, again, you
• 32:14
  go to conferences, right? And sometimes you're there for
• 32:17
  eight hours and hours conferences.
• 32:21
  Are you a Christian? This is what I'm giving away
• 32:26
  Secrets here, but the truth is you go to these conferences,
• 32:30
  right? Especially when you're younger
• 32:32
  academic and just starting out or grad student and you will go
• 32:36
  to like four sessions in the Hours.
• 32:41
  And at the end of it, it's wonderful because it feels good.
• 32:46
  But I'm not sure how much you're really getting by the end
• 32:49
  because you're just so exhausted.
• 32:51
  So you learn as an academic to instead like do your networking
• 32:56
  and go to a couple of sessions that can really, you know, you
• 33:00
  really want to interact with and add to because that's how you
• 33:03
  create meaning. The rest of it just becomes you
• 33:06
  listening for the sake of listening again, anxiety.
• 33:10
  Really, I want to be at this session because I know Stowe and
• 33:14
  so is there. At some point, you have to get
• 33:17
  beyond that social anxiety, of needing to be seen and instead
• 33:22
  find meaningful engagement, meaningful information.
• 33:27
  I mean, there's a lot of things to dissect here.
• 33:29
  I mean, I think I'll just go back to what I learned at Uni
• 33:32
  regards to what you said. Like I think with note-taking
• 33:36
  for example, well, I'm not saying you can't take any notes,
• 33:41
  all in your lectures but like a lot of people and I was deal
• 33:44
  with this in the beginning. You know, you if they've got
• 33:47
  PowerPoint, you try and copy. All the words on the PowerPoint
• 33:50
  or what they say word-for-word, don't do that.
• 33:53
  If you're going to write down notes, what a notes notes on the
• 33:57
  bass, bullet points. Basic things just right, the
• 34:00
  gist of what they've said like, you know, the shortest way
• 34:03
  possible so that when you look at that later you go, huh?
• 34:07
  Okay. And then you expand upon it
• 34:09
  later or whatever. Like if you're looking for your
• 34:12
  textbook or journals, or whatever your The word for word,
• 34:18
  write things out. Are you going to want right in a
• 34:20
  way that makes sense for you. That's the easiest thing to
• 34:23
  remember, you know, and then when you go and do your exams
• 34:28
  later on, your obviously, write it in a more fancy way of stuff,
• 34:30
  but you just, I mean, you're still bright it pretty
• 34:32
  succinctly because you're it's against the clock, but also, you
• 34:35
  can write it more fancy and long-winded when you do your
• 34:39
  essays, that's one aspect. Secondly, with regards to what
• 34:43
  you were saying about, you know, making these court record.
• 34:45
  Dan's available. I think, by the way, I think
• 34:47
  that's fantastic that you did that, that really going above
• 34:51
  and beyond. I think it's also good for
• 34:54
  revision season in particular because you could just end this
• 34:58
  the listen to those as a podcast.
• 35:00
  Like I would have really benefit from having that on in the
• 35:02
  background just to kind of absorb.
• 35:06
  And and just like, for example, you take the notes situation,
• 35:11
  let's say you have your recording on in the background,
• 35:13
  you listening to that. And you just writing and you
• 35:16
  stop it. You know, if you need to, you
• 35:19
  know, make notice you stop make the note continue.
• 35:23
  That's perfect. You can't really do that in the
• 35:25
  lecture. You need to, as you say, sit and
• 35:27
  listen and with what you were saying about, how you segment
• 35:30
  your lectures, that's perfect. Because obviously, the average
• 35:33
  attention span is about 20 minutes, anyway, you just, you
• 35:36
  can't focus that long, it's perfect to kind of split their
• 35:40
  lecture up that way. Keep people interested engaged,
• 35:42
  obviously participation as The moment there, you've kind of
• 35:46
  explored of the interactivity and getting people involved.
• 35:49
  It's just these little things, a little, if you expect your
• 35:53
  students to sit there for 15 minutes and pay attention to
• 35:55
  every single word and especially when you're covering loads of
• 35:58
  stuff, like I studied management and marketing but that in the
• 36:02
  beginning there was a lot of really.
• 36:04
  I mean the whole thing was it was a research-based Unis,
• 36:07
  everything was academic. So sometimes you be sitting
• 36:10
  there learning about I don't know, like bouncy nationalism or
• 36:16
  Global Community or international business and it
• 36:20
  would just be heavy heavy stuff. And you just, you just click
• 36:25
  like. And I really tried in the very
• 36:27
  beginning, I really tried to just sit there and absorb all of
• 36:29
  that and I just couldn't, I don't think anyone can, you can
• 36:32
  absorb a certain degree of it, but you're just inevitably not
• 36:35
  going to be able to and I don't know, maybe you can look at the
• 36:37
  lecture notes. Also the PowerPoint afterwards,
• 36:40
  but I don't know. I mean, the, the journals help I
• 36:43
  think to some degree, especially hit what here's a bit of advice.
• 36:50
  I've said this on the show before, but so again, reading
• 36:53
  lists you're not supposed to read the entire reading list.
• 36:57
  The point is that you're supposed to pick out certain
• 37:00
  things and then because the reason that it's a strategic
• 37:03
  thing, you let your hair has chosen those readings as a way
• 37:07
  of saying, hey here's some ideas for when you do your essays.
• 37:11
  You can go in different directions but they don't say
• 37:13
  that because you're supposed to learn it yourself.
• 37:16
  It is supposed to figure that out yourself, independent study
• 37:20
  and like inevitably everyone tries to read the whole reading
• 37:22
  list in the beginning and then you realize you can't and then
• 37:24
  you have to make sacrifices but then you don't make sacrifices
• 37:28
  because you realize like I realized this as well.
• 37:30
  Like I often would go and find my own journals and then they
• 37:37
  would often talk about stuff that was already in the reading
• 37:39
  list or related to it or whatever.
• 37:41
  And the the lecturers know this, you know, they that's what I
• 37:45
  haven't put. Everything there, they just put
• 37:47
  a choice selection there. And it's I guess the overarching
• 37:52
  point is that, you know, you need to work out how to divide
• 37:55
  your time up in the most efficient way that works for you
• 37:59
  personally and just because everyone else is doing it.
• 38:01
  Like going back to the point before we said, the people drop
• 38:04
  off like flies like just because people are doing that, doesn't
• 38:07
  mean that you should or shouldn't you need to salute
• 38:09
  Lee. Yep, what For you like does it
• 38:12
  work for you going to these lectures?
• 38:14
  Yes. Or no, but more from the
• 38:16
  perspective of the way that you learn, you know?
• 38:20
  And that's why I asked you that question about having the video
• 38:23
  IDs because I think that there are a lot of students out there
• 38:26
  that, you know, maybe they don't get a lot from a lecturer but
• 38:30
  they would get a lot from having that recording available after
• 38:33
  the fact like I know I take forever learning things like
• 38:37
  After learn it several times and I would be one of those guys
• 38:40
  that sitting listening to the recording again, and again, and
• 38:43
  that's how I learned. And I know for some people
• 38:45
  that's frustrating but it's just different ways of learning.
• 38:49
  Oh yeah, I love a good lecture and I would be that student who
• 38:52
  would stay in the lecture halls and go there.
• 38:55
  And yeah, I would take my notes. Very, you know, I would take my
• 39:00
  notes for me. Remember, these notes are for
• 39:03
  you. That's the thing that I think
• 39:04
  students, sometimes lose is they think I To take the notes for
• 39:08
  the professor? No no, no.
• 39:10
  These notes are for you. Which means let's talk for a
• 39:14
  second about the height of critical thinking here, right?
• 39:17
  Because this is there is a process to critical thinking and
• 39:21
  the way it works when it's at its best is okay, you learn a
• 39:24
  piece of information that you find intriguing, what you then
• 39:28
  need to do really is you need to put it in your mind and give it
• 39:32
  your own language. So that you can maximize meaning
• 39:37
  what that does then is you've created a space from which you
• 39:41
  can then send that message out to others.
• 39:45
  Because that's the other important step is you want to
• 39:49
  hold it in your mind, bring it out into the world, see how it
• 39:53
  works or manifest itself and then even if it's in a room by
• 39:57
  yourself, You have to try to say it out loud.
• 40:03
  You'll see people sometimes when they are working on something.
• 40:07
  They'll talk to themselves in a room.
• 40:09
  The reason why we always do that is because there is a very big
• 40:14
  difference in when you hear it in the mind in the inner
• 40:17
  monologue Voice versus when, I'm with someone or with myself,
• 40:22
  saying it out loud often times. I mean, as someone who has to
• 40:25
  write this stuff up and then go in front of a class.
• 40:28
  I will write something out here. To my mind, bring it to the
• 40:32
  class. And it will just go to the the
• 40:35
  students and they will look at me like what are you talking
• 40:39
  about? I hear it myself actually.
• 40:43
  I'll hear it myself. And I'll go there, right?
• 40:46
  That made no sense in my mind, it made sense, but when I said
• 40:49
  it out loud, it went nowhere. So the next step is bring it
• 40:53
  outside of yourself and if you're fortunate to have someone
• 40:57
  to hear you, listen to what they have to say, how did they hear
• 41:01
  it? And then the last step is bring
• 41:04
  it back inside your mind and then start to see how you choose
• 41:09
  to make that manifest in the world.
• 41:11
  Because the what I'll tell my students is we talked about the
• 41:16
  how knowledge is transformative and that can be a good and a bad
• 41:21
  thing. If you find that knowledge that
• 41:24
  you've taken in Has transformed you in a way that is not your
• 41:28
  best self. You need to be able to let that
• 41:32
  go. That's something that we often
• 41:35
  times. Don't talk about especially in a
• 41:37
  college setting and so I encourage students to do that
• 41:41
  entire process and at the end make a decision about how you
• 41:46
  are transformed by that knowledge is it in a good way or
• 41:49
  a bad way? Or is it even something that you
• 41:51
  have to come back to write how much we know as we are getting
• 41:54
  older? We'll come back to an idea and
• 41:57
  then all of a sudden see the value in it or we'll come back
• 42:00
  to an idea and say, you know what, I don't see the value in
• 42:03
  that anymore. So you have to be willing to
• 42:06
  allow to be. You have to allow yourself an
• 42:09
  openness to knowledge, but you have to work with it.
• 42:13
  Don't just believe it or just disbelieve it.
• 42:16
  Work with it in the green Bowl, you touched on a little bit
• 42:21
  about some of the things that you done in this past year.
• 42:25
  Goes to helping your students. I just want to focus a little
• 42:28
  bit on kind of online, remote learning, because obviously
• 42:31
  that's been a big kind of theme in this past year and I know
• 42:34
  America. And the UK is back to normal and
• 42:36
  that front, but there are still these big conversations, not
• 42:39
  only in the academic world, but also in just general workplaces
• 42:43
  now of, like, just should this be part of a part of life.
• 42:47
  Now, I mean, I think I was saying this, you know, as much
• 42:50
  as long as five years ago that I think working remotely, studying
• 42:54
  remotely, It should just be an option.
• 42:58
  It just makes people's lives. A lot easier.
• 43:01
  You don't need to do everything like in the office or especially
• 43:06
  with a degree. I mean, I remember when
• 43:08
  everything started closing down in the UK remember thinking for
• 43:11
  the vast majority of degrees like not that problematic.
• 43:15
  It's a bit frustrating and in some senses but it's you can
• 43:19
  still do the degree, you know, they mean because a great
• 43:22
  proportion of it is just Studying by yourself, you know,
• 43:28
  obviously it sucks the people that get the experience of being
• 43:30
  in the lecture room and being around the lecturers and stuff
• 43:33
  like that. I do understand and that
• 43:34
  experience is important, but just get to get to the point.
• 43:39
  Like, do you think that online remote learning might eventually
• 43:44
  replace the traditional form, or do you think we're always going
• 43:47
  to have a hybrid or maybe? I don't know.
• 43:50
  Maybe maybe we might have an alternative offered so you might
• 43:53
  have courses. That that are, you know, a
• 43:55
  hybrid or you know, that our only remote So my because I have
• 44:03
  thought about this a little bit and I go back and forth on this
• 44:09
  quite a bit because my my concern with going like a full
• 44:15
  online everything. Is that in some ways that that
• 44:21
  will be used against people. Here's what I mean, we tend to
• 44:27
  be a pretty terrible species in terms of finding ways to
• 44:32
  separate ourselves from each other, right?
• 44:34
  Maybe it's built in as part of a, an evolutionary thing, this
• 44:38
  idea of competition and whatnot, my concern is that The
• 44:44
  separation would give us a way to look down on one type of
• 44:50
  person who's doing it this way and try to look up to you
• 44:54
  another like that's it just a human concern that I have.
• 44:58
  It has no bearing on the actual education, you get whether it's
• 45:02
  online or in person, right? Because we all know that there
• 45:05
  are terrible instruction instructors in person and great
• 45:08
  instructors and terrible instructors online and great
• 45:11
  instructors, right? This is more of a sociological
• 45:13
  Logical problem that I potentially see my mice, best
• 45:19
  solution that I can think of is. I kind of think it's still very
• 45:24
  good to have in-person learning for a number of reasons.
• 45:28
  Just being in the room is different.
• 45:30
  Yeah. Right in general but we talked a
• 45:33
  lot about college costs and bringing down College costs.
• 45:39
  I think something like A hybrid type education, not so much, a
• 45:44
  hybrid class, but a hybrid type education, where you can do.
• 45:49
  Let's say you're some certain courses, maybe it's certain gen
• 45:52
  Ed courses or something like that.
• 45:55
  If you could cut, let's say 35 percent off the bill by doing
• 46:00
  that. I think that that might be one
• 46:03
  way to so that it's built into everyone's system to a degree,
• 46:09
  right? That to me, would at least
• 46:11
  eliminate that kind of potential for saying oh you didn't go in
• 46:15
  person, then it's in that which to me is garbage anyway.
• 46:20
  So that's sort of where I landed on.
• 46:21
  This is kind of that would be my concern.
• 46:25
  No, I think that's a very sensible concern to have.
• 46:27
  I've never even considered that but it's the that that would
• 46:31
  totally happen. That's exactly what we're like,
• 46:34
  you know, I would inevitably, it would be a simple as that as
• 46:37
  well. I would just be like, you didn't
• 46:39
  go in post The upstarts. Yeah, it's and again it's
• 46:41
  nonsense. It is nonsense, right?
• 46:43
  Because ultimately it's education comes down to you.
• 46:47
  Yeah really I can give you information, I can all day but
• 46:53
  if you don't interact with that information and use it in some
• 46:57
  way or it, then there's no point.
• 47:00
  So you can get information via online and you can get
• 47:03
  information via in person. Right.
• 47:05
  It's just a matter of again how I think we love to To separate
• 47:10
  ourselves from each other. And so that, if we instead build
• 47:14
  it into just every University or college or whatever, has this
• 47:19
  option for bringing down the cost, which we need to do then
• 47:24
  then no one is going to use that.
• 47:26
  As the separating point, at least totally agree, we touched
• 47:33
  on academics a little bit, but I'd love to know your
• 47:36
  experiences of the academic world and what you kind of think
• 47:39
  of Good and bad aspects of being an academic and general.
• 47:44
  Well the good part is is you for the most part, people get into
• 47:49
  it because you're driven to do it, right?
• 47:52
  Like I was not a great student. I was not a great student, I
• 47:55
  just wasn't and it wasn't that I was you know, necessarily You
• 48:00
  know, troubling in terms of my behavior or troubling because
• 48:04
  of, I couldn't necessarily do the work, although I did
• 48:07
  struggle with math quite a bit. I did, I'd have really slogged
• 48:11
  through my math, but it was more like I hadn't found that kind of
• 48:18
  drive and passion. Until you know, I was
• 48:23
  originally, I was a music Major and then I said, yeah, was I
• 48:27
  played alto sax? I was an alto sax player who
• 48:29
  didn't necessarily didn't love jazz, which is why a certain
• 48:33
  point, it became what are you doing, man?
• 48:37
  Like, you know, I respected. It just me was like phenomenal
• 48:41
  in terms of the approach, but I didn't love it and so it became
• 48:45
  a problem. Then I fell back on something
• 48:47
  that I was always enjoyed and was Natural with, which was
• 48:51
  actually computer science and I did an associate degree in
• 48:54
  computer science and was offered on a nice job right out, right
• 48:59
  out the gate and which was usually the norm back, then this
• 49:02
  was like 2001, you didn't necessarily need a bachelor's
• 49:05
  degree, just had to be good at what you didn't and that's still
• 49:08
  True to this day to a degree, but I turned it down.
• 49:14
  And the reason why is because I taken a short story course.
• 49:18
  And in that course, we read a story called Bartleby, the
• 49:22
  scrivener by Herman Melville and Herman.
• 49:25
  Melville is mostly known for writing Moby Dick.
• 49:28
  But this is also a fairly well-known 12, a short story and
• 49:31
  there's this character named Bartleby and he's basically a
• 49:34
  copyist in a law firm kind of thing and when he first gets,
• 49:38
  there he is the greatest employee ever.
• 49:42
  He can come P. Everything perfectly right?
• 49:44
  They're just copying log arguments.
• 49:47
  And then out of nowhere, the lawyer asks him to come into the
• 49:51
  office to go over copies and he just says I would prefer not to
• 49:58
  And it's such a beautifully awkward phrase, right?
• 50:04
  Because what it's not is, it's not know and it's certainly not.
• 50:09
  Yes, think about the language there.
• 50:12
  If you would tell someone that, who asked you to do something?
• 50:15
  I would prefer nothing onus on the other person to like make a
• 50:22
  decision. Right?
• 50:23
  So the lawyer originally is kind of just struck with this.
• 50:26
  You know, he's dumbfounded like Okay?
• 50:29
  Like, I don't know what to do with that.
• 50:30
  Okay? But then it persists and
• 50:34
  Bartleby becomes kind of sick, and he just at one point, he
• 50:38
  stopped doing his work completely and he won't leave
• 50:41
  the office. Now you might be tempted.
• 50:45
  If you're the lawyer, of course this is your business.
• 50:47
  You kind of want him out, you're going to fire him, right?
• 50:51
  But the lawyer has a problem. He actually does want to be a
• 50:55
  good human being to a degree. So he, he tries to help Bartleby
• 51:01
  and and at one point he even says Bartleby, will you come
• 51:04
  home with me and stay with me? I would prefer not to.
• 51:11
  And now the lawyer is at his wits end, and now it's become a
• 51:15
  haunting moment. And ultimately what the lawyer
• 51:18
  does, is he actually leaves his own Law Firm, like he leaves the
• 51:22
  building because Bartleby won't leave, and then it's found out
• 51:28
  later on that Bartleby is taken away and he goes to a prison and
• 51:33
  the lawyer visits him in the prison yard, because the lawyer
• 51:37
  can't What is going on with Bartleby?
• 51:39
  What's happening here he goes there.
• 51:41
  And Bartleby is dead. And you just left with this
• 51:47
  immense sense of what did I just read?
• 51:52
  Yeah. Like what do I do with this
• 51:54
  character? And that began?
• 51:57
  That was 2000. I think 2000 when I took that
• 51:59
  class that began an absolute love and a drive to find out
• 52:07
  what is eating Bartleby, what was the deal.
• 52:10
  And I knew then that I was Going to pursue a PhD in early
• 52:17
  American literature with a focus on Herman Melville specifically
• 52:21
  and about 10 years later there I was defending my dissertation on
• 52:28
  Herman Melville. It's and it was just this
• 52:31
  wonderful moment like more like oftentimes when people get into
• 52:35
  PHD programs a lot of times, they don't actually know what
• 52:38
  they're going to do. It was different for me, I knew
• 52:41
  right away. I'm writing on Herman Melville.
• 52:43
  Well and people would tell me Joe look, if you want to be
• 52:47
  employable, no one's writing single author.
• 52:50
  Dissertations these days, you have to write about a certain
• 52:53
  critical theory or broad things, and I said, thank you so much.
• 52:57
  That's wonderful advice. I'm not going to take it but
• 52:59
  it's wonderful advice, I guess I'm I needed.
• 53:03
  This was in me. I had to write this dissertation
• 53:06
  and so, To get back to Circle. Back to your question.
• 53:11
  The beautiful part when it's working well is it just drives
• 53:16
  you from the inside to know I've got to know what this stuff is
• 53:21
  about and it's it's so beautiful to have that purpose, right?
• 53:27
  Because if we don't have purpose we struggle so much in life.
• 53:32
  We need purpose, so that's the good.
• 53:36
  The - the potentially negative side, maybe it's not all that
• 53:40
  different from other areas in some ways, right?
• 53:43
  But you have a lot of you can have things like jealousy.
• 53:47
  You can have things like Eating, you know, the person next to you
• 53:52
  so that maybe you can get one step ahead, which I've never
• 53:56
  been particularly good at that anyway, to be honest with you.
• 54:00
  So for me it was always look, I love this stuff, I love what I'm
• 54:05
  doing, you know, and my students know this like, I love it.
• 54:08
  So I couldn't be. I wasn't Cut Throat.
• 54:12
  I never it was never really in me to be that way.
• 54:15
  I'm the type of person who would be too busy saying, hey, that's
• 54:18
  great. I'm glad you.
• 54:19
  Did you know you did? Great.
• 54:20
  That's awesome. You know, like I'm very positive
• 54:22
  in that way. So, but it is there and I have
• 54:26
  been a victim of it in some cases where I've seen, you know,
• 54:31
  people have said things behind my back and I just kind of go.
• 54:34
  Yeah, okay, whatever. I know what that is, that's on
• 54:37
  you. That's not on me, that's fine.
• 54:39
  But yeah, I mean it I love it. I couldn't again since 2000 I
• 54:46
  couldn't see myself doing anything else.
• 54:50
  You mentioned the kind of a 10-year journey to get from that
• 54:54
  initial point where you knew you were going to do two PhD to
• 54:56
  defending your thesis and it obviously getting it inevitably
• 55:01
  10 years, long time. You're going to face a lot of
• 55:03
  challenges. A lot of points where you might
• 55:06
  consider giving up or you might wonder is this right for me
• 55:10
  excetera? I'm going through something
• 55:12
  similar my story's a little bit different.
• 55:15
  It's more. Like I gave up on my dreams.
• 55:18
  When and started doing marketing and all that, and had a bit of a
• 55:23
  disillusion moment was like, what am I doing with my life?
• 55:26
  And about two years ago, I basically found myself Doing
• 55:33
  creative stuff again, you know, acting music podcasting, all of
• 55:38
  this stuff. And for the past two years, I've
• 55:39
  just been working as hard as probably, the hardest I've ever
• 55:43
  worked in my entire life. And I, you know, I don't want to
• 55:47
  talk about mom, like, how I keep persevering.
• 55:49
  I think most of the I just keep persevering because I want it so
• 55:52
  much and because I'm stubborn, but I would love to know how you
• 55:57
  kept going through those ten years and, and persevered and
• 56:01
  got to that point where you got that.
• 56:02
  That PhD. yeah, I mean I would say how did I do that?
• 56:08
  The The simple answer is that I think similar to what you just
• 56:14
  said to a degree. Is that I almost felt like I
• 56:18
  need this, I needed it, you know, it was it was inside of me
• 56:23
  early on and not only that, but I knew because of my passion for
• 56:29
  it and because of my willingness to give up, time to do the
• 56:32
  research and the reading and all this stuff.
• 56:35
  I knew that I had something that I believed, I could offer that
• 56:39
  space on. On that author Herman Melville
• 56:43
  and you have to matter what it is, if you have a passion, you
• 56:48
  have to believe that what you have to offer can only come from
• 56:53
  you. and if you believe that, then a lot of times, don't let
• 56:59
  anger and frustration feed you because it can instead let that
• 57:06
  idea that what you have to offer is important let that feed you
• 57:10
  and believe it and be motivating you to say It's for this reason
• 57:16
  that I need to take my next step, right?
• 57:19
  And then step after that. Right?
• 57:20
  Because there are there were times when I would question, you
• 57:25
  know, because people would say in my ear, like what are you
• 57:27
  doing? You know, with this author.
• 57:29
  It's done so much and you know, you never going to get employed
• 57:33
  and this and that right people with phds don't have jobs that,
• 57:36
  you know, we got that, I got that in my ear all the time, but
• 57:40
  the alternative of giving up, which was never really in my I
• 57:44
  head to give up the alternative to me, just seemed like Well,
• 57:52
  what the heck are some? Am I going to do?
• 57:55
  Like I I realized that a certain point like this is the thing
• 58:01
  that I'm going to do and I'm going to find a way to do it and
• 58:06
  the way that I did that was I had to make sacrifices of time.
• 58:11
  I mean staying in. Oh look, everybody's going out
• 58:14
  and partying. I'm going to stay in and read
• 58:17
  the next 638 page book by Herman, Melville that nobody
• 58:21
  else has ever read. And I would read it and make
• 58:25
  Notes and all this stuff and for me I mean, thank God.
• 58:30
  I loved it. I did enjoy it, had that passion
• 58:34
  but there was also this sense of this day where i'm reading,
• 58:38
  might be the day that I find something that I need.
• 58:43
  Hmm. And that one thing that I need
• 58:45
  might lead me to find the next thing so that I can reach that
• 58:49
  certain point of of, I'll say success but that's such a loaded
• 58:56
  word, because it implies almost like That you're done and that
• 59:01
  you've accomplished. So it wasn't so much success as
• 59:04
  it was to keep growing myself and growing the faith in myself
• 59:09
  as well. I just got to take a second to
• 59:14
  say like I love doing this podcast and every time it's
• 59:18
  completely different experience. Every once in a while you get an
• 59:21
  episode like this, where I don't know what I was expecting.
• 59:25
  I knew that they have is the conversation would be very Eric
• 59:29
  and also stuff was not expecting to be this inspired and
• 59:32
  motivated but damn thank you so much for the just great advice
• 59:37
  and into just life lessons I guess this is brilliant stuff.
• 59:45
  What else what else is there? It's so easy for us to be -
• 59:50
  right? I'll even bring I'll bring it
• 59:52
  back to my classroom again, right?
• 59:54
  Like I asked my students, I said, okay, part of this
• 59:58
  exercise, I want you to identify, I think what it was is
• 1:00:01
  I was having them, think about the importance of building
• 1:00:04
  criteria for solving major problems, right?
• 1:00:07
  So I said, okay, here's the scenario, the the, the species,
• 1:00:11
  you know, we got a meteor and the world basically just reset.
• 1:00:15
  The question I have for you is based on just the skills that we
• 1:00:19
  have in this room. What kind of civilization can we
• 1:00:23
  rebuild with just the skills in this room?
• 1:00:27
  And so that required them to communicate with each other and
• 1:00:29
  to try to learn about, okay, so what can you do?
• 1:00:31
  What can you do? Do we have a means of getting
• 1:00:34
  water to have a means of food and all these different things.
• 1:00:36
  What do we need to preserve? And I do that partially because
• 1:00:40
  it helps them critically think but also because I want them to
• 1:00:44
  acknowledge you have worth, you have worth here and you have
• 1:00:50
  something that you can offer and I always get the occasional
• 1:00:54
  student who sits there. And we'll say, Well, I am not
• 1:00:59
  good at anything. I don't have anything to offer,
• 1:01:01
  the see this new civilization and I'll say you know what?
• 1:01:05
  If I asked you to write down 10, things that you hate about
• 1:01:07
  yourself, could you do it? And they're always like, yeah,
• 1:01:09
  of course. Absolutely.
• 1:01:11
  I'm like, you don't find it problematic one, good thing and
• 1:01:17
  you can't name one good thing and then I'll speak with them
• 1:01:22
  and they'll say something like well, you know, I speak I speak
• 1:01:27
  French and I'm like you don't you don't find that to be a
• 1:01:30
  skill that that in and now Alex top and I'll say, Okay, anybody
• 1:01:35
  else in the room? Does anyone else here?
• 1:01:37
  Speak French and they'll be like no and I'll be like
• 1:01:40
  congratulations you've just preserved an entire language
• 1:01:44
  yourself like that matters. It's important that we
• 1:01:48
  continually motivate each other that way because the more we
• 1:01:52
  motivate each other about self-worth and not just
• 1:01:56
  Southworth, right? Because sometimes we tend to
• 1:01:58
  only focus on self worth. I try to say think of yourself
• 1:02:03
  worth as it relates to The Human Experience.
• 1:02:06
  We have to we have to gain strength from each other because
• 1:02:12
  we are the end of the day of social species.
• 1:02:15
  So it is important how we interact with each other.
• 1:02:18
  Climb the green wool. I just want to cover this quick
• 1:02:23
  Point, talk us through the process of like, defending a
• 1:02:27
  thesis, and how you achieve that.
• 1:02:30
  And also, just maybe some advice you could give to current PhD
• 1:02:33
  students who are in that particular situation right now.
• 1:02:36
  Sure. All right.
• 1:02:37
  So it different, it's different a little bit or it's sometimes a
• 1:02:41
  lot of guess by in various universities, but often times
• 1:02:45
  what you'll have is, you'll like declare what you want to write
• 1:02:49
  about, you know this is this is going to be like your book And
• 1:02:52
  study, whatever it is you'll declare, you'll you'll set up a
• 1:02:55
  committee usually with one single main advisor in your
• 1:03:00
  field or close to it. Who can help you with it.
• 1:03:03
  And then you'll begin the process of like the reading and
• 1:03:07
  the writing of the thinking, in general.
• 1:03:11
  And at some point, you'll usually have to do kind of
• 1:03:15
  what's called a comprehensive exam where you'll have like a
• 1:03:19
  for me. I had 36 hours, I think to write
• 1:03:24
  like, It was like three or no to 15 page papers or something in
• 1:03:32
  your area, so you're just building.
• 1:03:35
  Yeah, it varies quite a bit like you, the point is to stress you
• 1:03:40
  a little bit is actually and it almost becomes a kind of rite of
• 1:03:43
  passage, which I am the type of person that I like Rites of
• 1:03:47
  Passage. Because again, it connects us to
• 1:03:49
  a degree in challenges us in a meaningful way.
• 1:03:52
  So you build up. Through your reading and
• 1:03:56
  hopefully you're taking notes. My first advice to you.
• 1:03:59
  If you're doing a doctorate in any way, is you need to create
• 1:04:04
  some kind of method for organizing your thoughts and
• 1:04:07
  your notes in a meaningful way. So for some of my colleagues
• 1:04:12
  that that like, to 15-page scenario was a nightmare,
• 1:04:18
  because you're usually only asked like three questions and
• 1:04:21
  you have to answer to And for me though, I mean I'm not going to
• 1:04:26
  say it was easy but it was. Now I'm going to sound like a
• 1:04:31
  jerk. It was dare.
• 1:04:31
  I say enjoyable actually because I had notes ready to go so I
• 1:04:37
  could pull my quotations from Emerson po Dickinson and you
• 1:04:41
  know all these different people I could just pull because I had
• 1:04:43
  written them down meticulously. So I would say organization is
• 1:04:47
  key. You do your comprehensive exams
• 1:04:49
  and if you pass then you kind of move into to just the Guess ABD
• 1:04:54
  field, field all but dissertation kind of area.
• 1:04:57
  You've already done your credits.
• 1:04:58
  Let's say you proposed, you'll write a proposal up for your
• 1:05:03
  dissertation. Give it to your committee.
• 1:05:06
  This is where your outline basically, everything.
• 1:05:08
  It's usually like a 30-something page document 30 to 40.
• 1:05:13
  It depends on who you are. And then you get into it and
• 1:05:17
  depending on your committee. They'll either have, you know,
• 1:05:21
  meetings with you or they won't. They'll say, look just let me
• 1:05:24
  know when you're done that kind of thing and and hand it in so
• 1:05:29
  that really varies quite a bit. I love my director Chuck Adams,
• 1:05:34
  he was fantastic at University of Arkansas, he was great at the
• 1:05:36
  time because he gave me a lot, a wide berth to do my thinking and
• 1:05:41
  my work. And yet if I ever had a
• 1:05:43
  question, I could always ask him and he would be About it was
• 1:05:46
  wonderful. So you do the dissertation, you
• 1:05:50
  write it up and then you give it to the committee and its final
• 1:05:54
  form and then you kind of weight, you give them time to
• 1:05:56
  read it and then you do your defense which is this you know
• 1:06:01
  another rite of passage kind of thing that varies quite a bit
• 1:06:03
  some people. For some people it's really
• 1:06:08
  difficult and you can fail right there.
• 1:06:11
  Yep. All that work and they say we do
• 1:06:14
  not accept this and I believe in some places you only get one
• 1:06:20
  defense. Really?
• 1:06:22
  Yes. Wow.
• 1:06:25
  Institutions you get one defense chance.
• 1:06:29
  I know in a lot of Institutions you only get two So you have to
• 1:06:36
  be in constant communication. Well, I shouldn't say that, let
• 1:06:39
  me give him, let me retract that don't be in constant
• 1:06:42
  communication with your director because you might get on their
• 1:06:44
  nerves, right? And you have stuff to get a
• 1:06:46
  letter of recommendation from them.
• 1:06:48
  What you want to do is you want to have meaningful questions and
• 1:06:53
  meaningful interactions with your committee.
• 1:06:55
  So that if you are on a bad path, they can tell you right,
• 1:07:01
  like a good director. Actor and student relationship
• 1:07:05
  is when they say, I don't think this is going to pass, so let's
• 1:07:09
  not go up just yet. That's good.
• 1:07:12
  Actually, that's up front. And being honest, I'm okay with
• 1:07:15
  that. It's sometimes, if you let that
• 1:07:18
  go, right? You don't tell the student,
• 1:07:20
  that's a problem. From e-i for me, at least I
• 1:07:24
  always think don't set them up to fail.
• 1:07:26
  Let them know before the defense weed, I don't think this is
• 1:07:29
  going to pass, so yes it can be a very stressful thing.
• 1:07:33
  Mine was not so bad, mine. They had a couple of questions
• 1:07:37
  about a couple of things that I had written and I was prepared
• 1:07:42
  and ready to go. Because again, I had been
• 1:07:44
  reading this stuff since 2000 so I was like, yeah, let's let's
• 1:07:48
  get it on. Let's do this.
• 1:07:49
  I'm ready. But sometimes They're
• 1:07:52
  nightmarish, they can be. Yeah, I kind of feel like the
• 1:07:55
  whole concept is a little bit unfair.
• 1:07:57
  Like, I met a guy when I was living in Europe, who was?
• 1:08:01
  Yeah, I mean, he had to defend the thesis for just Bachelor
• 1:08:04
  level or Masters, which I was surprised when I didn't even
• 1:08:07
  realize they made you do that, but sometimes they do.
• 1:08:09
  Yeah. And he told me that like, One of
• 1:08:12
  the people on the committee didn't like it and as I what you
• 1:08:15
  mean, is that it? Well, they know me from this.
• 1:08:17
  And there's this personal wish it was related to Academia but
• 1:08:20
  it was just problematic for him and he was probably gonna fail
• 1:08:23
  this and just going back to what you said about you and me
• 1:08:25
  getting One Shot Two Shots. I mean obviously the chances of
• 1:08:30
  you not being liked is very low you know because it's not
• 1:08:33
  professional. But what if like they Because
• 1:08:38
  it's just opinion, you know what I mean?
• 1:08:40
  It's their opinion and it's like them accepting you into their
• 1:08:43
  ranks, kind of thing in a sense and it's like what if they're
• 1:08:48
  just really wrong and you're right.
• 1:08:52
  But no one on that committee can see that you're right.
• 1:08:55
  Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, I do.
• 1:08:57
  I would say I'll say this. There is, of course, a
• 1:09:01
  difference between like an opinion and an informed opinion.
• 1:09:05
  You would hope that they You would be, of course, challenging
• 1:09:09
  you under the merits of an informed opinion, right?
• 1:09:11
  Like if there's a legitimate concern, Like II.
• 1:09:16
  You know, a lot of times people will help each other out as grad
• 1:09:20
  students, right? And I did my fair share of
• 1:09:22
  helping my colleagues and editing and, and stuff like
• 1:09:25
  that, and I would, I would ask them questions about their
• 1:09:28
  dissertation. Like, what do you mean here?
• 1:09:30
  This seems problematic, in some sense, right?
• 1:09:34
  Walter try to help them out of course and I had people who
• 1:09:36
  helped me as well. You you try to do everything
• 1:09:40
  that you can to avoid that moment including making sure.
• 1:09:45
  Or that you establish a committee of people that at the
• 1:09:50
  very least will give you a fair understanding of fair, kind of,
• 1:09:54
  you know, take on the dissertation.
• 1:09:56
  So that's step one is you gotta be choosy as much as you can
• 1:10:02
  about the committee if if for whatever reason they just flat
• 1:10:08
  out don't like you or flat-out like disagree with you in a way
• 1:10:12
  that is kind of like puzzling, right?
• 1:10:14
  Because You have all the research and stuff like that.
• 1:10:18
  There is a space. Of course in the defense to do
• 1:10:21
  that to sit there and say, you know, well with with all due
• 1:10:25
  respect I'm glad. Well no because let me tell you
• 1:10:29
  something Christian, the language matters no I know
• 1:10:32
  Pritchett that dice like the academic equivalent of saying.
• 1:10:36
  Excuse me mother. Now you listen I had one
• 1:10:43
  challenge. I did have one.
• 1:10:44
  I'm trying to Amber. What it was exactly about.
• 1:10:46
  I had one challenge where one question it wasn't from my
• 1:10:50
  director but I remember thinking for brief second.
• 1:10:55
  I thought that's kind of a ridiculous question.
• 1:10:59
  You know. Like I don't know how to answer
• 1:11:01
  that like I hit like I actually was dumbfounded from minute
• 1:11:05
  because I thought I'm not sure there is an answer to that
• 1:11:08
  question or that I didn't answer it in.
• 1:11:12
  What you just read in my quotation from Um you know the
• 1:11:15
  book. So you do your best to humbly
• 1:11:19
  address the concern and that's part of the performance as well.
• 1:11:25
  It's the you know it's a bit of excuse me.
• 1:11:27
  It's a bit of performance art a little bit too in that sense
• 1:11:31
  dealing with, you know, with the people in general.
• 1:11:33
  So I would say at the worst case you could try to go to the chair
• 1:11:40
  at that point of the income of the department and say listen.
• 1:11:45
  And I have a problem here but usually have a committee of at
• 1:11:48
  least three at least three reader so you could go to the
• 1:11:51
  other two and say listen I just want your opinion is what the
• 1:11:56
  other person's saying is it like true or like do you think I need
• 1:12:00
  to address this or what's going on?
• 1:12:03
  You could do that, of course. But no, there are nightmare
• 1:12:06
  stories. There are.
• 1:12:07
  You could probably look them up online somewhere.
• 1:12:09
  People like going into defense thinking that everything is
• 1:12:13
  perfect and rainbows, and unicorns, and then they just
• 1:12:16
  get, well, look, we think this study is absolute trash.
• 1:12:21
  They would never say that you just couldn't.
• 1:12:23
  You couldn't say that. I mean, I do becomes Rings.
• 1:12:26
  Christian. Are we humans?
• 1:12:27
  Are we done? Is he's if you can see if you
• 1:12:30
  can see it in the human species, you can find it in any field in
• 1:12:33
  any area so you can absolutely People doing that.
• 1:12:37
  It's sad because you put your your heart and soul and you put
• 1:12:41
  thousands of hours into this thing to hear that just makes
• 1:12:45
  you go. You know.
• 1:12:46
  I almost I'm angry for them. Why would you do that?
• 1:12:50
  What a waste of everyone's time. I want to do something a little
• 1:12:55
  bit fun. So firstly, I couldn't believe
• 1:12:58
  that websites like this still exist.
• 1:13:00
  Like I remember growing up in the 2000s and you'd have like
• 1:13:03
  Rate My Teacher or whatever and it's the style.
• 1:13:05
  A little bit of fun. Right, but I actually found one
• 1:13:08
  online about yourself now me. Yeah, but don't worry about
• 1:13:12
  that. This is I just thought this
• 1:13:14
  would be a little bit of fun and also I do have a genuine
• 1:13:17
  question are sure after everything.
• 1:13:19
  But so there's this website Rate My Professor and you have a high
• 1:13:23
  score. You've got an overall score of
• 1:13:24
  four point four out of five based on 14 ratings given by
• 1:13:28
  previous students of different years, okay?
• 1:13:31
  So 86 percent of those students who voted said they would
• 1:13:35
  Instead of taking the course again.
• 1:13:37
  Oh wow. Great.
• 1:13:38
  And right. Before his writing and critical
• 1:13:40
  inquiry, that's pretty good. And the level of difficulty for
• 1:13:44
  your course was rated around 2.2, I believe out of four.
• 1:13:48
  Okay, there you go. I did find two negative reviews
• 1:13:53
  out of, oh I think there was 10 to 15 which were all really
• 1:13:58
  good. And I found these two ones which
• 1:14:00
  I contemplated whether or not to say to you but you know what,
• 1:14:03
  it's it's interesting and There's one thing I can tell
• 1:14:07
  straight away is you're a very good lecturer and you do care
• 1:14:10
  and that is communicated in this.
• 1:14:14
  But I did that, I think this is funny.
• 1:14:16
  I'd like to get your response to.
• 1:14:17
  This isn't there's only two. So if you if you're willing,
• 1:14:20
  I'll read them. So the first one said I went
• 1:14:23
  into the class and fought very highly of this professor.
• 1:14:26
  He seemed very kind and caring after the initial few weeks
• 1:14:30
  though, I have somewhat lost my respect for them.
• 1:14:33
  They are prone to anger and arrogance.
• 1:14:36
  It is unfortunate as they seemed to genuinely care for their
• 1:14:39
  students. So, this one this person is
• 1:14:40
  trying to kind of play it. Safe not be too harsh, but kind
• 1:14:45
  of give a little bit. Like what do you think of that?
• 1:14:47
  What do you make about one first one?
• 1:14:50
  I think I could probably see where that would come from every
• 1:14:53
  so often I'll have because I I believe so much in what I teach
• 1:15:02
  and what I'm doing in the value of it.
• 1:15:04
  So what'll happen is every so often if I find that the class
• 1:15:09
  as a whole is either not taking it seriously enough and I don't
• 1:15:14
  mean I mean it's hard to say because even that's going to
• 1:15:19
  make me sound arrogant. But all I really mean is if if
• 1:15:24
  they're phoning it in. Yeah that's not good enough for
• 1:15:27
  me. Mmm.
• 1:15:29
  I'm sorry it's just not. So I have been known in the past
• 1:15:33
  and this was probably one of those classes I have been known
• 1:15:36
  to say, you know what? You're not working to the level
• 1:15:39
  that you can get out. Now, just kick the entire class
• 1:15:44
  out, get out. This is not good enough for me
• 1:15:48
  and it's not good enough for you.
• 1:15:49
  I know you can do better and so that would absolutely come
• 1:15:52
  across as I suppose anger and And frustration and maybe
• 1:15:57
  arrogance in the sense that I would say, like, you know, this
• 1:16:00
  is important enough that I'm willing to tell you I'm not
• 1:16:04
  accepting what you're doing, get out.
• 1:16:07
  So then personally, yeah, that's, that's, that's this goes
• 1:16:10
  back to what I said earlier about.
• 1:16:11
  You know, passion of its you want that kind of teacher, who
• 1:16:16
  scolds you, when you need to be schooled in praise you and you
• 1:16:19
  need to be praised, you know. It's and as you can I say, yeah,
• 1:16:23
  when I say something positive, I won't want them to know.
• 1:16:26
  I mean it because I'll tell them.
• 1:16:29
  Look, you did great today. You did great work and if they
• 1:16:32
  don't I'll tell them you didn't. You could have done better and I
• 1:16:37
  want you to own that. Yeah.
• 1:16:40
  And I think this is what the first review kind of suggests
• 1:16:44
  that this person They probably figured that out later on, I
• 1:16:49
  reckon. But this next one, I reckon this
• 1:16:51
  is someone who I'm interested. Get to get your response because
• 1:16:55
  even reading this, I'm a little bit, like, I've met people like
• 1:16:58
  this that you need before and it's like, hmm.
• 1:17:02
  So he says or she or they he acts very full of himself and
• 1:17:07
  demands that he be respected, he threw Tantrums when two people
• 1:17:10
  were talking about him, poorly and canceled class because of
• 1:17:13
  it. The class itself is really easy.
• 1:17:16
  Basically just show up and pass. It's basically just copying word
• 1:17:21
  for word from the board into your notebook and writing
• 1:17:24
  occasionally, I can't believe this when I read this I was like
• 1:17:27
  this is can't be talking about the same class but I mean I
• 1:17:33
  guess they're copying word for word.
• 1:17:34
  I have I'll usually not so much now that must be a little bit
• 1:17:39
  older but I mean, I'll have some notes where I'll say, let's
• 1:17:42
  identify specific Concepts, right?
• 1:17:44
  So, for example, like I'll give will Have things like working
• 1:17:47
  definition so we're all on the same page so I'll say like Okay
• 1:17:50
  so let's define you know critical analysis or let's
• 1:17:54
  define exploratory analysis and so yeah, that you copy word for
• 1:17:58
  word but it's not usually like a whole bunch of stuff these days.
• 1:18:02
  Usually, my notes tend to be online on blackboard, I just put
• 1:18:06
  them up there and say, take a look at them as you want, but
• 1:18:09
  I'll have the occasional in class when I say, let's make
• 1:18:12
  sure we write this down, so we get it.
• 1:18:14
  We understand that. So yeah, that part probably is
• 1:18:16
  Through the probably they probably did do that.
• 1:18:19
  Actually I guess write it down word for word the the anger over
• 1:18:24
  people speaking badly. I don't I think that that one.
• 1:18:30
  I mean at the same time I do they know from day one?
• 1:18:35
  Hmm. I'm a very scary Professor on
• 1:18:37
  day one and then I become a lot less scary throughout the entire
• 1:18:41
  semester and the reason why is because I'll tell them on day
• 1:18:45
  one. You should have demands of me,
• 1:18:50
  mmm as an instructor, and it's perfectly right?
• 1:18:53
  For you to demand that, I come in prepared that I come in with
• 1:18:58
  something that I can offer you to walk out of the classroom
• 1:19:01
  with information or something and that I am respectful to you
• 1:19:07
  and all of that stuff. And because I know that I can
• 1:19:12
  hit upon all three of those, I get to make demands of you.
• 1:19:15
  Hmm. And what I did, And of you is
• 1:19:18
  when you're here, be here. Yeah, your phone.
• 1:19:23
  Yes. And and be with us because I
• 1:19:27
  move very quickly in my class from this to that to the other
• 1:19:30
  thing. And so I need students to be,
• 1:19:33
  you know, ready to go. Ready to move with me because if
• 1:19:36
  they're working together on something as well.
• 1:19:38
  Now you're involving your other students if you're not prepared.
• 1:19:41
  So I just got set aside knows well yeah, get off your phone's
• 1:19:44
  man. That is just rude.
• 1:19:47
  I-i'll itch, I have photographic evidence, right?
• 1:19:51
  I kid you not. This is genuine.
• 1:19:52
  I was sitting in the first year or second year lecture and
• 1:19:56
  someone was watching a movie. You're watching a movie
• 1:20:02
  villager. I mean luckily for me this the
• 1:20:05
  new generation Generation Z. There are a lot better with that
• 1:20:09
  than the previous generation was there.
• 1:20:11
  They're pretty good honestly about their phones but but yeah
• 1:20:14
  II tell them on day one. I have demands of you and they
• 1:20:19
  bristle at that. Like what who are you to have
• 1:20:21
  demands? I said well because of what I'm
• 1:20:23
  offering you that's why I get to make that and I tell them if you
• 1:20:28
  are not okay Okay, with those demands, I'm okay with you.
• 1:20:31
  If you need to transfer out I understand I do I really, and I
• 1:20:36
  mean what I say, I'm going to offer you something every day.
• 1:20:39
  So that's probably like the arrogance coming through I guess
• 1:20:43
  and and you know did I like it? Does it say I kicked them out?
• 1:20:48
  What does it say again that I did?
• 1:20:49
  What says he fruit unchanged? When two people were talking
• 1:20:54
  about him Paulie and canceled class because of it at From the
• 1:21:00
  I don't even know if that happened or not, but if it did
• 1:21:02
  my guess is it was probably a moment where I thought I'm not
• 1:21:07
  going to stand up here and be disrespected is just a human
• 1:21:10
  being. Yeah, I know I think I think
• 1:21:13
  anyone in the same situation if you've got class full and
• 1:21:16
  they're not taking this seriously.
• 1:21:17
  That why would you waste your time?
• 1:21:18
  Uh but that come back when you want to learn.
• 1:21:21
  During the time of the time, my students are absolutely
• 1:21:26
  phenomenal. I love this.
• 1:21:28
  I've I'm doing it now for a long time, I love teaching and I love
• 1:21:31
  the students are phenomenal. I love my students.
• 1:21:34
  This semester, they're all fantastic.
• 1:21:36
  And I love my University. They did a phenomenal job with
• 1:21:39
  covid and everything. And, you know, you get the
• 1:21:42
  occasional everybody does. He always will be, who's like,
• 1:21:45
  I'm, I don't like it and maybe they even have good reasons.
• 1:21:48
  Uh, I'm okay with that. That that's a human problem.
• 1:21:51
  If I'm involved in a human problem, I'm okay with that.
• 1:21:55
  The main reason I wanted to bring up this segment was to get
• 1:21:58
  to this. Student.
• 1:21:59
  Because when I was at University, I do remember, I
• 1:22:04
  believe at the end of every single term we had to give
• 1:22:09
  feedback, like written feedback, about both the lecture lectures,
• 1:22:15
  and the lecturers. And then also the seminars and
• 1:22:19
  the seminar leaders and I kind of felt like it had positive and
• 1:22:24
  negative feelings about this. I kind of felt like on one hand
• 1:22:30
  What it's kind of annoying that they made us, do it in written
• 1:22:31
  form but that's another source, just whatever.
• 1:22:34
  That's besides the point. I think it's good that they
• 1:22:37
  would, they were offering this because it shows that they cared
• 1:22:39
  about the fact that, you know, they want to keep improving.
• 1:22:42
  They want to get the students feedback.
• 1:22:44
  It's important and they would actually make, they would make
• 1:22:47
  changes sometimes like you'd you come back the next year and they
• 1:22:49
  would have made changes based on the feedback from the previous
• 1:22:52
  year. So it did kind of put get put
• 1:22:53
  into effect, but I want to get your thoughts as a lecturer in
• 1:22:58
  an academic. I do you think?
• 1:23:00
  These rating systems are worthwhile.
• 1:23:02
  Do you think they're really giving an accurate portrayal of
• 1:23:06
  student opinion? I mean, for example, we saw in
• 1:23:09
  those reviews it's very easy to just write a review and kind of
• 1:23:12
  put forward something and I can already tell by reading this
• 1:23:18
  because, you know, they'll always be that one or two people
• 1:23:20
  that take something in a very different way.
• 1:23:23
  And, you know, like when I when I say, I mean, this is just some
• 1:23:27
  rudimentary website, but when I saw like, it was over.
• 1:23:30
  Overly positive. And then, I saw what that, but
• 1:23:33
  the positive comments were saying as well.
• 1:23:37
  And obviously, from talking to yourself as well, I can kind of
• 1:23:39
  put together in my head, what these lectures look like and why
• 1:23:42
  people get annoyed. It's like, if you do get
• 1:23:45
  annoyed, it's probably the, you're getting frustrated with
• 1:23:51
  the way it's being delivered and like, you can't please, everyone
• 1:23:54
  that's just the reality of the situation, but There's ways of
• 1:24:00
  voicing that, I suppose, I guess is what I'm getting to, but
• 1:24:03
  yeah. Anyway, do you think that this
• 1:24:06
  kind of feedback systems is worthwhile dude?
• 1:24:09
  Like, what's your opinion on it? Yeah, that's a tough one.
• 1:24:14
  You know what, I'm not the type of person who, who would throw
• 1:24:18
  it away completely. There's been studies in those
• 1:24:21
  research out there that actually shows the flaws in the systems
• 1:24:24
  and for various real me in some some of it is intuitive, right?
• 1:24:27
  Like you, we can all even just see How some of these flaws
• 1:24:31
  might show up because of how you're feeling in that
• 1:24:33
  particular moment of writing the review, right?
• 1:24:37
  So whether it's like all of a sudden, you've had a terrible
• 1:24:39
  semester and then all of a sudden you love the professor in
• 1:24:42
  that week. You're going to give them the
• 1:24:44
  better review even though the majority of the time you hated
• 1:24:47
  it or the opposite, you have a great time.
• 1:24:50
  And then all of a sudden that Professor drops your grade and
• 1:24:53
  you don't like it that week a certain grade doesn't have to be
• 1:24:56
  the yeah, one, obviously, but now all of a sudden you're like
• 1:24:58
  this professor Was terrible. So it's almost as if you'd have
• 1:25:03
  to develop a system where they rate you, like, every week and
• 1:25:08
  then average it out in the main ways that might actually be kind
• 1:25:13
  of a bit fairer to be, to be honest, we could be fairer.
• 1:25:17
  Yeah. That would it be?
• 1:25:18
  Could you would it be logistical?
• 1:25:20
  Could you, could you do it? I don't know.
• 1:25:23
  I think if you had to also include Qualitative answers as
• 1:25:29
  well, then maybe because it's very easy to fake.
• 1:25:32
  A, why is easy to fake Gods as well?
• 1:25:34
  But like I think the vast majority of people would take it
• 1:25:37
  seriously. Like if they, you know, people
• 1:25:39
  always inclined to say negative things when they get the
• 1:25:42
  opportunity to do so. But then you could figure out if
• 1:25:45
  it's genuine or not, you know, and there's ways you can get
• 1:25:47
  around that. For example, let's say a
• 1:25:51
  particular class is, or lecturer is getting quite a lot of
• 1:25:54
  negative reviews. While an immediate way to deal
• 1:25:57
  with that was to get a different member of staff to come and sit
• 1:26:00
  in those lectures for a while. And just listen, just be there.
• 1:26:04
  Sure. And they'll be able to tell
• 1:26:06
  straight away. If you know, they are truthful
• 1:26:10
  or you know, where the problems like, if there are indeed any
• 1:26:13
  problems but there's ways of getting around this and yeah,
• 1:26:16
  and yeah, a lot of time when I would see, comments, made
• 1:26:20
  negative comments about lecturers, but I remember there
• 1:26:23
  was one lecturer who received a lot, crazy criticism on my
• 1:26:28
  course, and I thought it was unfounded, personally, I thought
• 1:26:33
  it was all just kind of low to be honest.
• 1:26:35
  It was, it was just people complaining about But similar
• 1:26:38
  things like strictness or something, which to be honest.
• 1:26:41
  I think that's just style. Yes, some people are more strict
• 1:26:44
  and old-fashioned other people a bit more.
• 1:26:47
  Like I do, I personally don't ever think there's any thing
• 1:26:50
  good about trying to be the students friend.
• 1:26:53
  I think they should always be that level of professionalism,
• 1:26:55
  maintained for various reasons. You know.
• 1:26:57
  I mean, yes, like I do volunteering for instance, and
• 1:27:00
  they tell us about the same stuff, they're like, you know,
• 1:27:03
  you could, you can be nice to the clients and you can, you
• 1:27:06
  know, but you have to maintain. Level of professionalism because
• 1:27:09
  when you need to turn that on and get people's attention, you
• 1:27:13
  can't. If they your there buddy, you
• 1:27:15
  know I mean there needs to be that level of no, I am the
• 1:27:18
  leader here. You need to listen to me and do
• 1:27:20
  this. You know?
• 1:27:21
  Sometimes you just need to invoke that but Yeah, they're
• 1:27:26
  always, I mean some, there's a personality to plays a big role
• 1:27:30
  here, right? I have colleagues who are, who
• 1:27:33
  can pull off the friend kind of thing and do it incredibly well.
• 1:27:38
  And and out of that friendship comes a level of respect as well
• 1:27:43
  that they get for me. I've always been the kind of
• 1:27:47
  who's been has likes the space a little bit needs that space.
• 1:27:52
  Yeah, a little bit like you said in order to Be able to engage
• 1:27:56
  them in a different way at times, you know, to say okay you
• 1:28:00
  did a fantastic job here. But here's where we need to
• 1:28:05
  improve. I feel like in order for me to
• 1:28:06
  get that improving part in, I've got to have a little bit of that
• 1:28:10
  space to maneuver, to be able to say, no, no, no, you need to
• 1:28:14
  improve here. This is where we need to get you
• 1:28:17
  to, at a certain point by the end of the semester.
• 1:28:19
  Let's say that kind of a thing. So it's so what I would say is
• 1:28:24
  you have to eat, you do. You have to be true to yourself
• 1:28:26
  a bit, you do? Because if you try to go one
• 1:28:30
  particular way because you think it's best and you can't pull it
• 1:28:33
  off again, it comes back to the beginning where we talked about
• 1:28:35
  students aren't stupid, they know it's not you they know. you
• 1:28:43
  are the host of the neutral ground podcast, testifies
• 1:28:47
  podcast and who it's intended for Honestly I started it
• 1:28:53
  because I just wanted a space to have meaningful discussions
• 1:28:58
  without the worry of extreme takes and extreme noise.
• 1:29:02
  I just want to be able to talk about meaningful things that
• 1:29:04
  connect to The Human Experience and so my whole idea, my whole
• 1:29:09
  goal was to really just have conversations and talk about
• 1:29:15
  these things that transcend just their own personal problems
• 1:29:18
  today and that connect us too. Wealth of Human Experience
• 1:29:22
  that's been around for thousands of years.
• 1:29:25
  But at the same time I find it's just we get very easily pulled
• 1:29:30
  into these extreme spaces whether you know Left, Right?
• 1:29:34
  Liberal Republican, all these different areas.
• 1:29:37
  There's there is a kind of historical poll that happens
• 1:29:40
  here today. That makes us feel almost like
• 1:29:43
  that. Those extreme spaces are like
• 1:29:44
  blankets. Now we can wrap ourselves around
• 1:29:48
  and I want to resist that because if you stay in the
• 1:29:52
  middle area, if you stay on neutral ground, you have the the
• 1:29:56
  ability to pull from every which direction we have a good idea,
• 1:30:02
  right? Like if I see something in a on
• 1:30:04
  a left-leaning side that I think is good, it's important, it's
• 1:30:07
  interesting. I can pull from that if I see
• 1:30:09
  something on a more of a right-leaning side and I think
• 1:30:12
  that's a good idea for us as a as a species.
• 1:30:14
  I can pull from that and I have no guilt because I'm not
• 1:30:18
  defending anyone side or Looking for any one side and I just find
• 1:30:23
  that there is we seem to have, we seem to think that there's a
• 1:30:28
  kind of power and freedom in being a part of an extreme.
• 1:30:33
  When in reality, you got to stay in that middle area.
• 1:30:37
  So that you can see the world from a little bit of a distance.
• 1:30:41
  You're too close to the problems I think, if you're in extreme
• 1:30:45
  side. So similar to you, I like seeing
• 1:30:48
  in the middle and doing the same thing because I Let's keep it,
• 1:30:51
  open mind that I personally feel that like there are good and bad
• 1:30:55
  points on both sides. And that's why I've always been
• 1:30:58
  in the middle. But I've had a lot of people
• 1:31:00
  called me like a fence sitter and I why don't you pick a side?
• 1:31:04
  What's wrong with you? Lala and it's interesting to me,
• 1:31:08
  but the main reason is as you explained, it's like well,
• 1:31:10
  because there'll always be something on either side that I
• 1:31:13
  just disagree with completely and I'm like, well that does I
• 1:31:17
  don't want to embrace that. Like I don't like this idea
• 1:31:19
  that, you know, Okay, well, I like 80% of these ideas but this
• 1:31:24
  20% fundamentally go against what I believe in.
• 1:31:27
  But I'm going to embrace it because overall I'm this, it's
• 1:31:30
  like, why why not just be free and just believing what you
• 1:31:34
  believe in and take of that from wherever, you know, what why do
• 1:31:39
  you have to like maybe I think assistant identity thing.
• 1:31:42
  I think it's like you said a blanket people need something
• 1:31:45
  they can cling to and because it is very cult-like sometime.
• 1:31:50
  As you know, if you take the pandemic is a perfect example.
• 1:31:53
  It's managed to become a political thing as far as, like
• 1:31:57
  people wearing masks and people not wearing masks and it's
• 1:32:00
  ridiculous because it's like, this has nothing to do with
• 1:32:02
  politics. It's about life and death.
• 1:32:04
  It's about survival. It's, it's not about politics,
• 1:32:07
  but inevitably it gets made into politics and you get punished if
• 1:32:12
  you Do something that goes against one particular side, and
• 1:32:16
  I think that's unfair, it's like, you know, something you're
• 1:32:19
  not hurting anyone, what you're doing, what you should be able
• 1:32:21
  to do what you want freely and not have to like defend yourself
• 1:32:25
  from a political standpoint. Yeah, I had this.
• 1:32:29
  I had this weird moment about maybe a couple weeks ago where I
• 1:32:34
  was reading a book by Chantal move who she wrote a book about
• 1:32:41
  the Paradox of the ma cracy. And in this book, she talks
• 1:32:46
  about how, you know, oftentimes we want a pluralistic society
• 1:32:50
  with multiple visions of governance and all of that
• 1:32:53
  stuff. And she was saying, how most
• 1:32:57
  people say we don't want the antagonism of these sides, but
• 1:33:00
  she thinks that it's actually important for democracy that you
• 1:33:04
  have that antagonism. So when she was saying that, it
• 1:33:08
  made a lot of sense to me, I thought okay yeah I can see that
• 1:33:11
  the thesis there, the importance of It but then I had a question
• 1:33:16
  which was okay. So then why is it that and not
• 1:33:19
  just in America but in other places, too.
• 1:33:21
  Why is it that people seem to feel like there is no plurality
• 1:33:27
  like it's almost like no matter who you're voting for in some
• 1:33:31
  sense. It's a similar machine that
• 1:33:34
  you're voting for and that got me thinking about kind of like
• 1:33:38
  in Google Maps. When you go really close really
• 1:33:42
  close right? You Can see the distinct
• 1:33:44
  differences because you're right there in the town, let's say.
• 1:33:47
  But then at the more you pull out the more you start to see
• 1:33:51
  that a lot of these things end up kind of blending together and
• 1:33:53
  looking very similar. And I thought, you know what
• 1:33:57
  that to me this is something I've been struggling with just
• 1:34:01
  grappling with as an idea that to me seems to be the problem,
• 1:34:04
  right? If you're a part of and you
• 1:34:06
  really feel like I am firmly entrenched in this particular
• 1:34:11
  side, excuse me. Regular side everything local to
• 1:34:16
  you. Every problem looks like it's
• 1:34:18
  very distinct, right? And it's very clear that the
• 1:34:21
  other side is wrong and here's why and you can explain it and
• 1:34:25
  all that stuff. but if you are fortunate enough to have a kind
• 1:34:30
  of a moment of, I don't want to see just Clarity that almost
• 1:34:33
  seems kind of dismissive because they believe what they believe,
• 1:34:38
  but you might get this moment where if you pull back enough,
• 1:34:43
  you end up seeing that both sides of these extreme tend to
• 1:34:48
  use the same mechanisms. Yeah to continue to hold on to
• 1:34:53
  their people their constituency and I think that's why at the
• 1:34:58
  end of the day we feel like there is no true plurality.
• 1:35:01
  There is no true difference at the end of the day between the
• 1:35:05
  sides because we start to become consciously aware of the
• 1:35:09
  mechanisms behind it more than even the disagreements.
• 1:35:14
  Yeah, and I've said this on the podcast before, like if you take
• 1:35:16
  UK politics, it's the same thing.
• 1:35:20
  You have like Financial backers similar to like, how you would
• 1:35:23
  fill out the presidency campaign and inevitably, once you get
• 1:35:28
  into government, much of your first initial year or couple of
• 1:35:33
  years is spent paying back those backers through the moves that
• 1:35:36
  you make, whether it's not, you know, granting stuff that based
• 1:35:40
  on lobbyists one You know, raising taxes in certain areas
• 1:35:46
  but making tax breaks for certain groups, your stuff like
• 1:35:49
  that, like it's all that politics.
• 1:35:51
  It's all there that done on purpose and both sides, do it as
• 1:35:55
  well. So, it's just different parts of
• 1:35:59
  society. Prospering other parts of
• 1:36:01
  society don't prosper. And it's or suffer and it's, I
• 1:36:06
  don't know. I find it weird that people
• 1:36:07
  don't always see that, but I guess it depends how
• 1:36:10
  passionately and fiercely you're involved in. 16.
• 1:36:14
  You know, I'm not true that the I've never voted in.
• 1:36:17
  The only reason is that, I've just never found a party.
• 1:36:19
  That really represented My Views.
• 1:36:21
  There was a initially, a point where there was a political
• 1:36:25
  party here, what they still exist called the liberal
• 1:36:29
  Democrats, and they sort of sit in the middle.
• 1:36:32
  They leaned a bit more left but they Kind of sad in the middle
• 1:36:37
  and I was like, hmm, this seems interesting, maybe I'll vote for
• 1:36:40
  them. I was really considering I was
• 1:36:41
  very close. Then they we had a coalition
• 1:36:46
  situation in 2010 and weirdly they decided to partner with the
• 1:36:51
  right side, which most people thought they'd go to the left
• 1:36:55
  because it makes more sense with their just political leanings.
• 1:36:59
  To be honest and their Manifesto and everything but they went
• 1:37:03
  with the right. Form the government and within a
• 1:37:08
  couple of months, they broke one of their biggest Manifesto
• 1:37:11
  promises which was that they weren't going to raise tuition
• 1:37:15
  fees for students and they did and that's affected generation
• 1:37:20
  upon generation upon generation of students now and I don't
• 1:37:23
  think they've ever been able to recover from that to be honest
• 1:37:27
  because it's still there. I mean it happened what?
• 1:37:29
  11 years ago but did I mean, it's it affects everyone and not
• 1:37:33
  just not just Home students, but like International students.
• 1:37:37
  Jesus, you're paying upwards of like, I think it's 11,000 pounds
• 1:37:41
  or more per term and they keep raising it in small increments.
• 1:37:45
  They think you don't notice, but they raise it by 500 pounds
• 1:37:48
  every year or whatever and it's like this is insane.
• 1:37:52
  Yeah. It is what it is.
• 1:37:56
  Absolutely. So it's very, it's very similar
• 1:37:58
  than I see. In a lot of ways it is it's that
• 1:38:01
  once you become aware of the machine and and I I'll caution
• 1:38:05
  people to think that I'm saying because I've heard other people
• 1:38:08
  say that, there's there's no difference between the extremes,
• 1:38:11
  and that's not true. There are differences, actually,
• 1:38:14
  right? It's and so, what I'm proposing
• 1:38:17
  simply is to be in a space where you can pull good ideas from
• 1:38:22
  either direction, and use that to sort of live your life,
• 1:38:26
  whereas a code, for your life, in some ways to be free to do
• 1:38:30
  that and not feel guilty about it.
• 1:38:32
  Like you have to defend a particular, Other side.
• 1:38:35
  And like you said, some people will accuse you or me of sort of
• 1:38:39
  moral relativism, like, oh well, you're not going to stand on
• 1:38:42
  anything, actually, you know what?
• 1:38:44
  I push back on that and I'll say that we are trying to stand for
• 1:38:49
  what we believe in because we're trying to be free to choose.
• 1:38:54
  Yeah, what we need to do. I don't have to back a
• 1:38:57
  particular 80%, like you said of things that I don't agree with,
• 1:39:01
  I don't have to do that. I can take the 20 Sent that's
• 1:39:04
  good and I can stand firmly on that.
• 1:39:08
  Yeah, I mean, it's like people have said to me like, oh, if you
• 1:39:11
  don't vote, then it's the wasted vote.
• 1:39:13
  And it's like, well, no, I maximum sizing my political
• 1:39:15
  right to not vote, it's my choice to choose, not to vote
• 1:39:19
  because I feel that they do represent me, you know?
• 1:39:23
  And that's my right and that's a political choice in of itself.
• 1:39:28
  Yeah. Anyway, bring it back to your
• 1:39:31
  podcast in your pockets. You propose that we are in the
• 1:39:34
  midst of the Neo modernism movement.
• 1:39:37
  So could what can you tell us about this movement?
• 1:39:39
  The effects of it and the benefits and drawbacks sure.
• 1:39:43
  So just kind of really quickly because the these storable
• 1:39:47
  movements, these major ones, they're kind of after effects of
• 1:39:51
  what came before them. So just you know, for a lot of
• 1:39:56
  people when you try to Up something like, post-modernism,
• 1:39:59
  it can be just just kind of sound like gobbledygook.
• 1:40:01
  Mmm, essentially, I just break it down.
• 1:40:04
  Post-modernism is essentially about skepticism and it's about
• 1:40:08
  infusing skepticism in infrastructures of our
• 1:40:11
  existence. So, even things like writing, we
• 1:40:14
  can be skeptical of the meaning in writing, we can be skeptical
• 1:40:18
  of grand narratives, right? So things like religion, which
• 1:40:23
  tries to anything that tries to provide a definitive It of way,
• 1:40:27
  of being of looking at things like good evil, right?
• 1:40:30
  And wrong post-modernism says, we're going to be skeptical of
• 1:40:34
  that, okay? So the essential question that
• 1:40:37
  you always have to ask yourself by the end of historical
• 1:40:40
  movements and I would say, post-modernism starts to
• 1:40:43
  decline, probably in the mid to late 90s.
• 1:40:47
  It starts doesn't mean that we were aware of it at all but by
• 1:40:52
  the end of post-modernism, we've infused so much skepticism.
• 1:40:57
  Into every infrastructure and aspect of Our Lives.
• 1:41:01
  That in some ways, it had to die, it just felt like this has
• 1:41:04
  got to end, we have to have some sense of stability of narratives
• 1:41:10
  stability in beliefs in things and ideals of human of The Human
• 1:41:15
  Experience. And so you it ends up being like
• 1:41:19
  a rubber band and everyday that rubber band gets stretched
• 1:41:23
  further and further back of the movement until it snaps, and App
• 1:41:27
  sometimes, violently quite honestly, right?
• 1:41:29
  Because we've just reached the end of of our usefulness for
• 1:41:33
  that historical movement, and that's what happened with
• 1:41:35
  post-modernism. So, what happens the essential
• 1:41:39
  question is, how long can the human being be in a state of
• 1:41:45
  skepticism in everything in all aspects of our life?
• 1:41:50
  Well, post-modernism last, pretty long, if you if you have
• 1:41:54
  the starting point at around World War Two We're two ish and
• 1:41:58
  then into the 90s and of course we still have postmodern aspects
• 1:42:01
  today because you never leave. You never completely cut off a
• 1:42:04
  historical Movement, we have Enlightenment thinkers romantic
• 1:42:07
  Heroes, all those things, okay? So what I see then moving into
• 1:42:12
  Neo modernism in the early 2000s I see three essential traits
• 1:42:17
  that we are struggling with. Today one we're struggling to
• 1:42:22
  find narrative reassurance because post-modernism be
• 1:42:26
  stabilized. How we look at narratives,
• 1:42:28
  right? We're skeptical and
• 1:42:30
  post-modernism but in reality, the human species has always
• 1:42:34
  been a species. That moves forward through
• 1:42:36
  narrative. We create narratives for
• 1:42:38
  everything. It's how we keep our culture's
• 1:42:40
  going. How we keep our history going.
• 1:42:42
  So we're struggling today, with trying to reassure ourselves
• 1:42:46
  with stable narratives, that's 12.
• 1:42:50
  We're trying to find ways to transcend the body transcend.
• 1:42:54
  Just our mortal existence you might have noticed.
• 1:42:57
  You'll see you've seen a big uptick in things, like,
• 1:43:01
  meditation, prayer and psychedelics.
• 1:43:06
  Now, all three of those have been around for thousands of
• 1:43:11
  years. We've been doing that using
• 1:43:12
  those as a species, why is it that all of a sudden it's become
• 1:43:16
  such a big deal. Again, it has to do with that
• 1:43:19
  destabilizing force of post modernism, which because it
• 1:43:24
  mocked so much by the end it Mocked so many of our
• 1:43:28
  institutions that we hold to be sacred, we're trying to
• 1:43:32
  ReDiscover what is great about the human being Beyond simply
• 1:43:37
  our flesh. Existence mentality, that's it.
• 1:43:42
  The third trait is that I think we're learning and trying to
• 1:43:46
  find or create Sacred Space for ourselves again, this to me
• 1:43:51
  seems connected to many of our arguments today, in the sense
• 1:43:55
  that people are trying to recover something that they can
• 1:43:59
  hold dear to themselves. And say, I want to keep this in
• 1:44:04
  a place where I don't have to defend it all the time, where I
• 1:44:07
  don't have to feel like you're mocking it all the time I want.
• 1:44:11
  Something that is now sacred today.
• 1:44:14
  But the problem is, we can't hold everything to ourselves,
• 1:44:19
  right? We have to interact with others
• 1:44:21
  in the world. But the difference is this, if
• 1:44:25
  you mock me because I love, I don't hamburgers, right?
• 1:44:30
  And you don't, that's not sacred to me, I don't care.
• 1:44:34
  So I'll just kind of look at you and go.
• 1:44:35
  Oh, Christian, that's great. Okay, but if you're mocking
• 1:44:40
  something that I deem to be, Sacred that almost feels to us,
• 1:44:44
  like you're attacking like my very soul.
• 1:44:47
  My reason for existence and so what happens is, we defend much,
• 1:44:52
  you know, very differently that and I think we're having a lot
• 1:44:56
  of Sacred Space arguments mixed in with a struggle to create
• 1:45:02
  stable narratives. It's my favorite question to
• 1:45:08
  ask. What's the biggest life lesson
• 1:45:11
  that you've learned so far? You know, I would say the
• 1:45:18
  biggest life lesson that I've ever learned was to try to
• 1:45:23
  assume the best of someone especially if you know that
• 1:45:28
  person try to assume the best of that person until they give you.
• 1:45:35
  An actual reason or a, and even that is problematic until they
• 1:45:42
  give you like a declaration. For why you should stop thinking
• 1:45:48
  the best of them. And even then, if it seems out
• 1:45:52
  of ordinary be patient and do your best to help, bring that
• 1:45:57
  person back to the best version of themselves.
• 1:46:00
  I say that because you know, there are people sometimes who
• 1:46:04
  we dismiss as being let's say always negative or always angry
• 1:46:08
  or all this stuff and if you ever just think for a moment
• 1:46:14
  that maybe There's something within them that not only pushes
• 1:46:18
  them that way, but here's where it gets really bad.
• 1:46:23
  Is if you're ever consciously aware of the fact that maybe
• 1:46:26
  they know it. And could you imagine living in
• 1:46:32
  that own little slice of personal hell where you can't
• 1:46:36
  stop yourself from being that way?
• 1:46:40
  And at the same time, you're consciously aware of the fact
• 1:46:43
  that you don't want to be that way.
• 1:46:46
  That has always pushed me toward trying my best.
• 1:46:51
  To be patient understanding. And and to help others, as best
• 1:46:57
  as I can, to like, try to say like to try to move them toward
• 1:47:02
  the better version of themselves, and maybe not engage
• 1:47:05
  them in an unnecessary arguments or unnecessary, you know,
• 1:47:09
  moments where I try to make it, you know, all about them.
• 1:47:14
  It's all their problem. If that makes sense.
• 1:47:18
  So Sharon, as a final question for today, do you have any
• 1:47:22
  upcoming projects or maybe some final thoughts that you'd like
• 1:47:24
  to share? Oh, I'm still very much
• 1:47:28
  researching and doing like you know, every time I get a talk
• 1:47:31
  about these historical movement stuff that's sort of research
• 1:47:33
  for me to a degree, right? Because I get to again what I
• 1:47:37
  said earlier in the in the episode here, that idea of
• 1:47:40
  saying it out loud, right? Like I just said, stuff out
• 1:47:43
  loud. And now I have to process how
• 1:47:45
  that came across and so I'm I'm working on researching, you
• 1:47:50
  know, the these historical movements and how they play a
• 1:47:54
  role in the way we interact with each other.
• 1:47:56
  And I'm hoping to move that toward a book-length project at
• 1:48:01
  some point. But for right now it's just it's
• 1:48:03
  I'm just in that beginning stages of working through and
• 1:48:06
  testing. Excellent.
• 1:48:08
  Well best of luck with that and yeah look forward to seeing that
• 1:48:12
  and yeah just a massive thank you for agreeing to be on the
• 1:48:15
  show. It's been an absolute pleasure
• 1:48:17
  and thank you. It's wonderful.
• 1:48:19
  I you know the questions were phenomenal.
• 1:48:20
  Thank you so much. Yeah.
• 1:48:24
  Just a massive, thank you to the listeners of the Christian read
• 1:48:27
  podcast, as always be safe, be well, and I'll see you in the
• 1:48:31
  next one.