Latest / Aired Out / DOC RETURNS with the questions that drive us

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DOC RETURNS with the questions that drive us · Aired Out

• 0:46
  Speaker 1: It looks good today. I see that old Jack had
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: a visit last night to the North Country. And of course, no, no,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I'm not talking about Jack Daniels. I'm talking about Jack Frost. Now,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: did I, and I know I talked a little bit
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: about this yesterday, did I get out and cover the
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: tomato plants? Of course I did. Again. And did the
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: wind blow the bed sheets off of the tomato plants?
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Of course they did. Are they all ruined? Well, they're black.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know if that constitutes being ruined or not.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: But it's more like a dark brownish-bluish. Sherilyn says I
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: need to just come to terms with the reality and
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: move on. But a little El Nino-ish. Sticker shock, I
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: guess we could say, this morning. Deb Phillips not going
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: to be with us this morning. She is actually on
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: a much-deserved vacation. But with me in the, well, digitally, virtually,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: from somewhere in Pennsylvania is the Doc. He's back in
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the house. Good morning, my friend. How are you? I'm
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: glad to see you tell us exactly where you are in, uh,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Pennsylvania because it's, uh, that's a big state.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, but it's just a small
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: town next to Williamsport. Williamsport's the little league hall of fame.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Dr. McKeon. I am happy to have you back. I'm
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: more than happy to have you back on. Um, Man,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: I got to tell you, the last time you were
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: in here, you got me scratching my head so much
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: it almost bled afterwards. I was just, you know, thinking
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: and then rethinking everything that you had to say, which
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: was really profound. I want to get to it. I
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: want to talk about some of the things here this morning.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: I'll say this. The last thing that you have been
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: doing since I had you on the air last is
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: sitting around, binge-watching TV, and taking long afternoon naps. Man,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: have you been busy. You have been up to so much.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Introduce yourself, who you are, and your affiliation, and... connection,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: which is very intense, with Sweethearts and Heroes.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: So, Dr. Brian McKeon, but I really don't like the title,
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: so I just have people call me B or Brian.
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: Or Doc. Or Doc.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. So, I was a college
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: professor full-time for 26 years. I'm still teaching some part-time stuff.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: And I also took classes during that time, raised, well,
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: I was involved in raising the family. I think my
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: wife did the hard part. And so my oldest two
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: sons work with Sweethearts and Heroes as well. So Tom
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: hired me in June. And then my oldest son, Brian,
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: of course, you've had on the air several times. And
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: I think you had Joe a couple of weeks ago.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: And so both of them work with Sweethearts and Heroes
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: as well. So when I came on, Tom said, that
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: I should sort of figure out, you know, where I fit.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: And so I just labeled myself the resident philosopher, and
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: he let me stay that way. So I see myself.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're going to talk about philosophy this morning. We're
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: going to get to a bunch of things. And, of course,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: I want to get to your substacks, which are impressive.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: You have been doing so much, man. I'm not sure
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: how you're squeezing it all in in a day. but
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: you're pounding out some serious content.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: I'm trying. Wow.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: This, this new and improved smart circle format. Tell us
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: about that.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: So it's basically what I did was I simply applied
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: some background references to what Tom has been doing for
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: quite a while. So basically, I thought it was important
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: that we distinguish ourselves from everyone else because when you
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: say circle, there's all kinds of talking circles out there.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: Everyone's got their own ideas on how it should be done.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: But really what we do aligns with this acronym SMART.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: The S stands for science. Everything we do is based
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: on the science that we find, the latest research in biology, psychology,
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: and sociology. And if it's not evidence-based, we don't include it.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: And really, the science part is for how we design
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: the circle. We're interested in a constraints-led approach, right, where
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: we sort of navigate the topics. It's not just sitting
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: around and talking about whatever we randomly feel like. There's
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: some guidance there. The M stands for modeling, and we
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: believe it's extremely important to model the behavior that we
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: expect or the behavior we hope to generate. I've never
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: been a fan of do as I say, not as
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: I do. Kids and adults typically emulate what they see,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: and it's a lot less common to emulate just what
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: you hear if you see something else. The A is
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: the affective domain. It's really important that we involve the
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: affective domain. It can't just be cognitive. You have to
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: feel it. It has to be part of you. The
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: R stands for repetition. We don't practice because practice implies
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: that you try to get better. You analyze yourself. For us,
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: it's repetition. It's ultimately about building a habit, making it
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: part of your life. And then the T is trust building.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: And really, that's the goal is that we are building
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: trust amongst each other in the community. And ultimately, our
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: smart circles are doing the opposite of what traditional talking
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: circles usually do. Usually, if you look at our ancestors,
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: they would sit around the fire at night talking about
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: their day. But the the relationships were built during the day.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: They would go out and hunt together. They would forage together.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: They'd come back and work in the camp together. And
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: so relationships were built throughout the day. And then they'd
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: sit around the circle at night and, of course, tell
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: stories and things like that. But they'd also have time
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: for gossip. We think that gossip, you know, today it
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: has a bad rap, but gossip is, if you're in
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: a group of 50 people, really important. Because if I
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: loan Tom my hunting knife and he never gives it back,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: that's bad. That means I can't trust Tom. And if
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: you can't trust one of your 50, that's not good.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: So you'd sit around the fire and I'd say something like,
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: you know, went hunting today, never got my knife back, Tom.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: And of course he'd feel social shame and he'd give
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: it back. And if he didn't give it back, everyone
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: else in the circle would start to hassle him. And
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: then if none of those things worked, eventually they'd just
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: be shunning. So the circle for them was refining the relationships.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: They built them during the day. We don't have that
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: opportunity in the modern world We are way too busy.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: We have our hands in too many things. We're at
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: work during the day, running home, taking care of the
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: kids in the evening, maybe sitting down for a few
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: minutes to relax. And so for us, the smart circle
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: does the opposite. The smart circle is where we are
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: able to start building trust, start building relationship. And then
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: the ideal is those relationships carry over into everyday life.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: So We see the circle in daily life as doing
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: the same thing as they always have, but just in
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: reverse in terms of what they do and when they
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: do it.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Dr. McKeon is my guest this morning from Sweethearts and Heroes.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: This is his second time on the air. So honored
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: to have you. Man, what perspective. I'm sitting here listening
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: to you, and I'm thinking of a bunch of hairy cavemen.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: and women sitting around the fire at night and shoot
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: the shit like, like they did. Who knows what language
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: they were speaking back then.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: Wasn't English.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: Wasn't English, but how they were communicating with each other
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: and how they were expressing their gratitude, how they were
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: expressing joy, frustration. You know, you talk about, you know,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Tom didn't return your hunting knife. They didn't have names
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: back then, presumably. But, man, it's like everybody was held
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: accountable for their actions. whether it was great stuff. Hey, man,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Bob got a deer today. Let's give him a round
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: of applause. Tom didn't return his hunting knife to Doc.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Tom!
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: WTF. But but seriously, but now we have, you know,
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: social media and the Internet and email and all texting
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: our cell phones that we get buried in. We're not
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: sitting around looking at each other saying, whoa, hang on
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: a second, man. I'm calling bullshit here. We're not doing that.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: We're digesting what we see, what we read in text form,
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: often on social media. And we take it too often
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: as face value. And maybe with assumptions, which are very dangerous,
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: as the truth. Destructive?
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Yes. Well, yeah, I'm not a fan of social media.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: I really don't have accounts anymore. When they first started,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: I did as a way to maybe connect with students,
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: but I quickly got rid of that. So social media
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: is interesting because it scratches a couple itches. One, it
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: scratches the itch of wanting to feel connected to people.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: But it's very much like eating ice cream for dinner.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Your body actually can tell the difference. Like you, you
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: could fill your stomach up with dirt and you would
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: feel full, but the body would say, well, that wasn't
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: very nutritious. So you'd actually still have hunger. You can
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: drink just protein shakes all day long and you'll have
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: the nutrients you need, but your body will still feel
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: hunger because your stomach didn't stay full enough long enough.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: But ultimately then when you eat ice cream for dinner
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: and you never eat anything substantive, then you end up
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: still being hungry and you don't feel quite right. Right.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: You feel a bit off. And I think that's what
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: social media is like. We, we feel like we're scratching
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: that itch of connection. That was always the big promise,
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: but you can't trust what you see. Everyone wants to
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: put their best foot forward. We want the dopamine hits
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: of getting the likes.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: And so ultimately I think that it's, it's actually pretty
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: sad to me because we, social media was supposed to
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: be where we kept connections tight and close in this
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: modern world. And I think it's just done the opposite.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: You know, we see stuff on marketplace. We're interested in,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: in buying something, whatever we, we want to, you know,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: ask questions. We want to meet up, do the, the exchange, the,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: the transaction, get it loaded up into the car, whatever
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: it may be. But man, it's like, Can we just
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: share each other's phone numbers and I'll call you tonight
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: at 5 o'clock and I'll ask you all the questions
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: and we'll just talk about it. It's like everything is
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: done through text now, Doc. Oh, yeah.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true, especially for the younger generations. That's really
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: become the norm.
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: So you're bringing in the science, the modeling, the effective domain,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the Repetition, the trust building, you're bringing these concepts into
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: your circle groups where you're you're sitting down with in
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: a circle where at schools, businesses.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Yep. So so this is basically the same circle that
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: Tom's always done. Small tweaks in recent years, but they
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: still go into schools and they're still working with trades
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: like the high power linemen. We were recently at, I
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: think it was Camp Pendleton, but with working with the Marines,
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: we have some work that we do with the sheriff's office.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: And so we are doing that, but ultimately now our
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: goal is what we would like to do. We've started
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: developing a plan where, especially for schools, we don't want
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: to always be the ones going in and doing the circles.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Right. I have a real ethical problem with, Hey, you
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: need this monthly subscription in order to stay healthy. You
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: need me to constantly come in and check on you.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: You know, doctors don't do that. They say, this is
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: what's wrong. Here's the medicine. Don't call me again, unless,
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: you know, something else goes wrong, but doctors aren't expecting
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: you to come back and check in every week. And
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: so for me, I, like for schools, but we would
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: do this for other organizations as well, going in and
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: training the faculty and the staff in the circle practice,
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: doing circle with them, training them, showing them how they
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: can build their own circles and how they can run them.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: That would be the first year, say, for a school.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: The second year was when we would want to introduce
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: the circle to the students, ideally, because then the faculty
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: are already trained in doing it. Once the students get
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: excited about doing circle, the faculty are there to do
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: it with them. And then during that second year, if
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: the school's interested, our plan is to introduce our BRAVE program,
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: the curriculum that Brian's been working on for the last
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: several years, and designing it so that, in my opinion,
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: no curriculum should be, here you go, follow the curriculum,
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: do it as it is. I think it should be flexible.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: So to me, I see our BRAVE curriculum as being
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: the foundation. And then I'm assigned now to working with
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: the champion teachers in the BRAVE program. So my goal
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: is to work with them during that second year to say,
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: how can we customize it so that it fits your life,
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: your school, your students. And so in fact, I'm doing
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: that now with some, some faculty. So I really think
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: it should be customizable even down to the name. Look,
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: if you don't like the name brave program, then come
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: up with your own own name. That doesn't bother me.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: But the goal is that we, you know, we teach
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: students how to make circle part of their lives because
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: it's hugely important. But also we, how to be really
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: a sweetheart and a hero. The whole concept of sweethearts
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: and heroes, and I'm sure Thomas said it to you
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: multiple times, and you've heard it from others in the group,
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: it's about hope and action. We want to remind everyone
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: that they have hope inside to give, and we want
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: people to actually, A, get into action and give that
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: hope to others, but to go into action in other scenarios, too,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: when people need us, whether it's a bullying scenario or
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: a a lost family member or friend or a real
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: difficult time at work. We want people to be there
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: for each other. Humans are really interesting. We have very
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: strong needs for dignity and autonomy, but we can't live
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: on our own and thrive. So if I wanted to
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: live by myself, I can do that. And our ancestors
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: have done that and people have done that. But you're
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: not going to thrive the way we do as a group.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: And so building those relationships is important because it's part
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: of our thriving instead of just surviving.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: I want to ask you about hope a little bit more.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: And we talk about, you know, kids and we're going
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: to talk about kids and their questions in just a
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: little bit here. But hope is a real powerful word.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: I have referred to it in the past as something
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: that I don't know. I don't know if I want
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: to go down that road. I think it's a, it's
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: a fragile word. We're 27 days, man, 27 days away
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: from a really pivotal moment in our country. And I
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: don't want to talk about politics too much. And we're
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: not going to. My point is that the level of
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: contention among us, I mean, just yesterday, on the air
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: was really fired up. And I admittedly got caught up
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: in it. How do we find hope when we feel hopeless?
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: How do we discover hope when we feel like it
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: ain't going to make a shit bit of difference? whether
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: or not I go to the polls or not. I've
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: given up. I've given up. I don't believe in the system.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: I don't believe in the process. And I don't believe
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: that anything is going to change. We're screwed. What do
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: you say about that? 27 days, man. I mean, the
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: tide is high right now, doc. It is.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So there's a lot there to talk about. For
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: one thing, if you don't get involved, you definitely won't
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: make a difference. And that's just a self-fulfilling prophecy. So
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: if you actually want to make a difference, you have
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: to take a step forward. Secondly, while it is common
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: for us to worry about the big picture in terms
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: of politics, the country, the economy, the way things are going, really,
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: I think still our number one focus needs to be
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: on the PR the people in our personal circle. Um,
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: so that you're, you're taking care of family and friends
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: to the best of your ability. Uh, and in general,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: in that order, uh, and taking care of yourself as well.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: Um, with, uh, dialectical behavioral therapy or DBT, we recognize
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: that the feelings that we have, um, changed mostly by
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: the actions we take. So I can't sit here and say, man,
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: I feel hopeless.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: I'm going to talk myself into it. We can't do that.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: Just like we can't talk ourselves into being happy necessarily,
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: but we can act our way into it. So if
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: I choose to go play a game and I allow
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: myself to fully embody the event, I'll start laughing and
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: having fun. The action changes my emotion.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, there's a little bit of dispenser. I smell it.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: So what happens is that if you go to the
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: pole and you may not like the result, but you
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: still at least did some action, you did your part.
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: And what else can you do? You can't carry the
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: weight of the world. I think it's vitally important. And
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: this is something we don't often talk about, but it's
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: vitally important that we recognize what we're in control of
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: and what we're not. So the Stoics spent a lot
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: of time on this. Sometimes the Buddhists, Adler, Adlerian psychology
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: from the early 1900s. He was a, contemporary of Freud.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: He talks about this, but ultimately we feel like we're
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: in control of a lot of things, but we're not actually.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: In fact, even right now, you might think, well, I'm
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: in control of my body. Well, what if you don't
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: realize it, but there's some police officers coming and they
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: may want to take me downtown to talk. I'm not
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: in control of my body even then. So what I'm
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: in control of is my mind and what I choose
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: to focus on. And so we're going to have random
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: thoughts pop into our heads. Everyone does. You can choose
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: to focus on the negative thoughts and that will continue
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: to create a negative or sorry, a positive feedback loop
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: where you start to spiral, right? You keep focusing on
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: those negative thoughts or you can choose not to. You
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: are in control of what you choose to meditate on,
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: what you put in front of you. You've heard the
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: expression garbage in, garbage out. So if you're constantly watching news,
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: that is negative, that's about politics, that's about the fighting
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: and the disagreement or things you dislike. If you're doing
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: that throughout the day repeatedly, you're probably going to be
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: less happy because you're taking in negative information or at
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: least emotionally negative information. On the other hand, if you're
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: focused on incorporating other things into your life that actually
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: bring you joy, then you're going to spend more time happy.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Wow. So I think a lot of it has to
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: do with our chosen mindset, what we focus on.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but we got algorithms that are working against us
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: or in our favor. We do indeed. We do indeed.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: What is it? Misery loves company.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: That's the expression. That's one of the idioms, yeah.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And Crystal just posted here, easier said than done. Oh,
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: But it's about developing a habit. And we have plenty
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: of science on habits and habit formation. The common book
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: you would have heard of is probably Atomic Habits, but
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: there is a habit researcher. Maybe her name is Woods.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: I can't remember. But I think her book is called
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: Good Habits, Bad Habits. But it's really simple in terms
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: of the concept and what you need to do. It's
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: about tying new habits that you want to have to
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: old habits that you already have. So I don't like
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: having to worry about running out the door and then
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: forgetting my phone and my wallet. So, you know, first
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: thing in the morning, my wallet goes in the same
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: place every time. When I go to bed at night,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: it goes in the same place every time. And that
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: little habit is just routine for me. And so I've
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: always done those kinds of things. But a couple of
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: years ago, I wanted to see if I could change
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: the way I talk. And so, you know, I was
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: raised to say, God bless you when someone sneezes and
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: all that. But in the pluralistic society we live in,
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: and when I was teaching at college, I wanted to,
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: I don't like using the word inclusive in a tagline sense,
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: but I did want to make people feel comfortable and
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: not make them uncomfortable, really. And so I thought about it.
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: And the other common expression we use for when someone
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: sneezes is gazooned height, which is for good health. Yeah.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: And so I decided I was going to do that.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: And what I found is people don't sneeze all that
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: often around me. But when they would sneeze in class,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: I caught myself the first time I'd say, God bless you.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: And I said, I mean, Gesundheit. I literally corrected myself
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: in front of them. And then the next few times
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: someone would sneeze, I'd say, God bless. I mean, I mean, Gesundheit.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: And then I'd say, Gesundheit. And then it took about
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: a year because people don't see that often around me.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: But I developed this routine that I corrected myself. And
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: now my knee jerk reaction is to say Gesundheit every time.
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: And so if you tie your behavior to behaviors you
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: already have. So get up in the morning, you drink coffee,
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: you're on your phone, you're scrolling.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Whether it's a social media or something else. You've got
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: that itch now. You develop that habit. Why can't you?
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: There are a variety of AI bots out there. I've
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: asked my AI bot. It knows something about me. And
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: I said, hey, look, I don't want to scroll in
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: the morning through Google News articles. I look at headlines
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: and I don't read hardly any of them because it's
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: all stuff I'm not interested in. I said, why don't
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: you curate for me? five to 10 articles every morning
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: that shows up when I'm waiting for the kids to
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: get on the bus. And that's what I do now
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: is I read those articles, which inspires me immediately in
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: the morning and say, oh, this happened the other day.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: The last couple of Substack posts were because the AI
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: bot gave me an article that I hadn't seen before
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: in an area that interests me. And I went ahead
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: and started reading that. I'm like, oh, this sparks some
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: great ideas. Let me write about it. So You can.
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: I took action. I asked the computer to give me
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: specific categories of research. I wasn't doing the research in
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: the morning. I'm not doing that. I want to scroll
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: a little bit. That's because of the addiction. So now
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: I'm scrolling articles that I actually have interest in. So
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: you can change. It's a matter of being creative and
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: thinking about it.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: You think it's harder to break a bad habit or
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: harder to form a new one?
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: Excellent. I think you need to do both at the
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: same time. If you're simply trying to quit something, you're
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: not replacing it with something else. That's really difficult, especially
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: with dopamine. Dopamine has been mislabeled as a reward chemical.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: It's not. Dopamine, well, it does a lot of things.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: But one of the things it does in your brain
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: is it actually provides the impetus for you to do something.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: So it's a motivation hormone really is what it is.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: And so I haven't had a lot of Red Bull today.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: This is my first one, unfortunately, and I like to
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: have more. So the longer the time between my last
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Red Bull and now, I'm going to have more and
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: more dopamine release. And it's like an itch in the brain.
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: And then what happens? I crack the Red Bull. Once
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: you crack the Red Bull, the dopamine goes off because
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: your brain's like, oh, good, here we go. And so
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: I don't even have to drink it right away. I
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: can just crack it open and I immediately, the itch
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: goes away. I've scratched it.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Wow. Interesting. I forgot about you and Red Bull.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Red Bull Mountain Dew.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: I forgot about that relationship, Mitt. And you know. You're
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: a smart, smart, smart guy. You know.
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: Oh, come on, man.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: You know how bad that stuff is for you.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Well, it's only bad for normal mortals. Every wife I've
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: ever had has sent me to the doctor because they
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: thought something was wrong with me with my bad diet.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: But my my organs are all about 10 years younger
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: than I actually am. And I'm actually not joking about that.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: That's routinely what I hear.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: So you eat well and exercise.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: No, I've never exercised. I can't stand exercise. Neil Armstrong said,
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: I have a limited number of heartbeats. Why would I
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: want to waste them on exercise? Which I think is
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: ironic for an astronaut. But he did say it. Uh, so, uh, I,
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: you know, my exercise when the kids were young was
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: playing with the kids, but, uh, yeah, I, I really
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: don't exercise and, and ultimately, I mean, I want to
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: be healthy enough to live to one 20. That's my goal. Um,
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: but my mind is the thing that I've poured all
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: of my effort and energy into. The mental itches really
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: drive me crazy, so I pursue them so that they
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: don't itch quite as much.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: We're hanging out on the R here of your smart format,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: R being repetition, being stuff that you're doing in your
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: life that's habitual. I want to ask you, what's your
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: routine at night, 5 o'clock, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12?
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Are you going to bed at the same time every
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: night and sleeping? Is there a, I should first ask you,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: is there a, a lot of us don't have routines
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: at night because we're putting out fires. Oh my God,
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: we're dealing with this. We're dealing with that. This popped
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: up unexpectedly. The notion of up, up, it's eight o'clock.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: It's time for the TV to go off. I'm going
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: to now sit down and force myself to read for
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: one hour before I go to bed. And I'm brewing
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: my chamomile tea. This is my routine. That's not reality
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: for me. a lot of us, doc. What's yours? What's your,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: what's your routine? Do you have one?
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: Uh, well, I would say it really has always depended
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: on where I was in my life at the time.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: So what I do now is not what I was
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: doing six months ago or decades ago, but, um, the,
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: the routine now is interesting. Um, my wife Angie is, uh,
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: A nurse, she works at Geisinger, which is one of
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: the major hospitals here in Pennsylvania. And she works 312s.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: But in nursing, you can't just, you know, when your
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: shift is over, leave. She doesn't like leaving the next
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: nurse with, you know, a messy patient or meds that
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: haven't been passed or some emergency. So she's usually gone
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: on those days, like she's working today. She's usually gone
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: 14 to 16 hours. So the way I work at
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Sweethearts and Heroes now is I get a lot of
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: my work done when she's working. So we're up at
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: five and then she leaves at six. I get the
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: kids on the bus so that by six thirty seven
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: o'clock I'm working. And when the kids get home, I'll
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: take care of feeding them and all that. And and
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: then I'll just keep working. So usually when she's gone,
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: I'm getting a good 12 to 14 hours done in
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: work on those three days a week. but it rotates.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: She has to work every other weekend. So the days
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: are constantly rotating, uh, on the days that she's home. Uh,
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: typically I'll work, um, till about noon. Um, so I
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: generally work about seven days a week, but work's not
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: really the right word because what I do is just fun. I, uh,
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: I know what work is. I've done real work before
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: and this is just fun. So I, it's easy to
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: get lost and I'm a bit, uh, I'm usually all
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: or nothing when it comes to everything in life. So
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: I could easily, and I have in the past, I
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: could easily do 10, 12, 14-hour days, seven days a
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: week for quite a while. It's just the way I'm built.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: What about nighttime? What time do you go to bed?
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: How do you wind down?
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so she'll get home at different times. She's usually
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: home somewhere between 8 and 10. It depends on the night.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: And so when she gets home, we'll talk about our days.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: And we typically at bed, we'll lay down and she
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: likes having her head on my chest and I'll play
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: with her hair while we have something stupid on for
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: a little bit, like a family guy or I like
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: looking Morty and, and just something to wind down and
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: she'll fall asleep that way. And I'll, I'll fall asleep.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: Usually I'm falling asleep by 11. So it depends. Uh, yeah, I,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: I have a hard time sleeping, so I'm glad I
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: actually fall asleep at 11 and I never used to,
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: I even used to sleep three hours a night. Um,
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: so I'm happy to get up to something like six
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: or seven.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: How many kids and how old are they that are
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: getting on the bus?
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: Ah, so my step sons, my oldest is 17 and
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: my second step son is going to be 14 shortly.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: And the third one's 11. And so the 11-year-old goes
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: to a different area in town for his particular school,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: so he rides the bus, and I'm getting him on
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: the bus by 630. The oldest will take the middle one.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: Their schools are right next to each other, so he's
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: now driving, so he drives them in, which is nice.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: That's been helpful.
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: So you've got a routine in the morning. You have
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: somewhat of a routine at night. Some of us have
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: more set routines in the mornings. that we do on
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: the backside of the day, which is interesting, but, um, what, what,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: what are some of the questions that kids, maybe yours,
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: maybe some that you're seeing in the schools are asking
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: you that is making you scratch your head. And I
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: see you really don't have any hair left. So you've
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: done some scratching.
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I, yeah. So that I don't have a
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: choice in that one. Uh, Yeah, so kids really do
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: ask great questions. And so you're going to get questions
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: that adults initially routinely think, oh, you're naive. You know,
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: how do you not know this? But they're in the
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: questioning phase of life. This is really interesting. If I
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: could take a quick side show for a second. You know,
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: when you're two, three, four, and well, now you're playing
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: with someone's cell phone. but it used to be you'd
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: be playing with mom or dad's flashlight, right? So you'd
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: play with the flashlight, turn it on, turn it off,
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: turn it on, turn it off. And what do you know?
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: You do that for a while and you're having a
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: great time and then it stops working. What's the very
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: first thing, just one word that you ask mom or
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: dad when it stops working? WTF.
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: WTF.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: You might say that, right? But at two, then maybe
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: we need to talk about modeling with your parents.
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: It's why.
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: Why? It's why. Why? That is the top question. Why?
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: It's trying to understand the world around us. You and I,
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: if we were to use a flashlight and it died,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: we wouldn't do that. We would go straight to, oh,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: the battery's probably dead.
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: That's... We got a little... Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: I was just going to say that, you know, as
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: we get older, we have the same basic experiences. And
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: so we skip all the questioning. But when you're young,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: you start with why. It's very interesting. We actually do
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: the scientific method as children. We observe an event. That's
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: the first step. We ask a question, usually why. We
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: come up with a hypothesis. We don't think about this
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: outright anymore. But I know you come up with a
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: hypothesis and a prediction because if you had a flashlight
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: where the batteries died, you wouldn't ask why anymore. You
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: would just jump to the hypothesis and you wouldn't frame
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: it quite that way. But your hypothesis would be, Oh,
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: if I change the batteries, it'll work again. Right? Your
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: hypothesis is the setting up the experiment.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: If I do this, then. Correct.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: It's an if-then statement. Yep. That's correct. And then what
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: you do is you put the batteries in and you
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: try turning it on. And if it doesn't work, then
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: you think, okay, that experiment rules that problem out, so
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: it must be something else. Maybe it's the wiring, maybe
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: the bulb's dead, something else, right? And so today's human
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: in our society is going to have that same experience
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: with a cell phone, right? Your cell phone dies. All right,
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: I got to plug it in. You plug it in,
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: it doesn't work. Well, now you start to panic a
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: little bit, right? Because our lives are on there. But
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: As adults, we don't go through the questioning phase anymore
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: because we did it for something like that. We'll do
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: it for something we don't know about, but for stuff
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: we know about, we did already. What we're doing in
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: the science, we're actually doing the scientific method. That's just
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: naming the steps as we go, but that's how we
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: run our research. But what we're doing is we're actually
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: training our predictive abilities. So this is really important for
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: our survival. We still have this. It's left over from
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: our ancestors living on the plains. Our biology is the same, essentially.
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: We're not really physically set up for today's modern world.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: So what will happen on the plains as you're growing,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: you need to develop good predictive abilities. Right. And I
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: may have mentioned this last time, but if we're down
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: at the Creek and I see rustling grass, I have
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: a couple options. I could predict, Oh, it's just the wind.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: No big deal. Or I might say, Oh my God,
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: that's a tiger or a lion. I'm getting out of here.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: The, the, Goal for us really is to get better
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: at predicting because we don't have direct access to the
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: real world. We only have the experiences of the real world.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: So truth exists, but our ability to actually know it
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: as finite creatures is not possible to know it as
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: it is. Right. There is no objectiveness. You're still being
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: subjective in your experience.
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: We act on a lot of assumptions as well.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: But we have to.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: I assume that that's either a crocodile or a snake,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: and I'm moving. I'll wait for the answer later. But
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: in the meanwhile, it's fight or flight. I'm out of here.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Right. And so we have to base our decisions. Our
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: brain processes things very quickly. But it's also really good
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: at saying, well, this is information I don't need, and
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: this is information I do. And you are quickly making decisions.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: So if you're walking down the street downtown... And there's
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: some sort of misfire in a car and you hear
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: a loud bang. Your survival instinct is perhaps to duck. Yeah.
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: Unless you're a scientist who likes to play games with
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: himself and train yourself out of that, which I did. But,
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: you know, the reason is it doesn't cost you anything
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: to duck and protect yourself. But if you don't do that,
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: you may have saved a tiny bit of energy. But
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: if you die, it doesn't matter. So we are prediction
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: machines and the entire purpose is to keep us alive.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: We're guessing on very little information. It's very interesting. And
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: then it gets complicated. Other animals do the same, but
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: where it gets complicated with us is because we have
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: complex language. Language does our thinking for us. And now
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: when I say something in my mind, it becomes real
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: to me. So if I'm watching a student while I'm
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: teaching and they've got a frown or a scowl, this
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: routinely used to happen. I'd be like, oh man, they
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: must hate me. They hate the class. Something's going on,
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: you know, and I have to try to move past that.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: And it felt real to me just because I interpreted
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: the face that way. And in every case, at some
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: point later in the semester, they'd be talking to me
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: and smiling and laughing and all this is my favorite.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: class ever. And, and I would routinely say, oh man,
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: when you're in lecture, I didn't think you liked it
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: at all. Oh no, I, no, I just, you know,
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: that's the way I am. Or, you know, I've got
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: something going on at home or whatever. So, but it
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: felt real to me that they didn't like what I
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: was doing in class because I quickly added words to
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: an interpret, to interpret what I was seeing. Yeah, we
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: do this. So humans make things way more complicated because understatement.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: I want to talk about this execution gap that you
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: that you have created. And so far, you've penned more
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: than what, 40?
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: 40 different schools and i think three or four industry
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: ones for high power alignment.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: This is the gap that you say lives between goals
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: and performance um what we what we want to be
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: what we want to do what we want to achieve
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: uh that's our our goal uh but the performance is
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: um another story often. Um, and it could be that
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: we are really making some great strides and we've got
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: some momentum going on and we're making progress, whatever it
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: is that we've gone 60 days without a cigarette that
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: we've lost 20 pounds. We're hoping for 50, we're shooting
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: for 50 or we kind of sucked at our job,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: but we're making progress. We're, we're honing our skills. We're
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: doing better. we got a long way to go or wow,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: look at this. We're really getting there.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So the execution gap, that's a big deal in business.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: Tom is a great businessman. I've learned a lot from
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: him even just in the last couple of months. But
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: he's routinely been worried about the execution gap. And what
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: we figured out, this is the interesting thing about working
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: with someone you're, you are fairly close to and know
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: really well. I honestly can't say who came up with what.
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: We interact and talk back and forth and ideas come
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: out of that. And they're ours. They're not mine. None
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: of this is mine. It's all ours because we're constantly
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: working together. Same for Brian and I, Joe and I,
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: the rest of the team. We're always collaborating in that sense.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: So I don't want to take credit for this. It's
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: not mine. But the execution gap is a big deal
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: for companies. And what we came to realize was, we
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: could go ahead and generate a series of circles that
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: would be targeted at closing the execution gap. And so
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: typically what happens, a company, schools included, they have a mission,
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: a vision, maybe some goals. Go ahead and ask the
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: average employee what the mission and vision is of their company,
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: and they don't know it. It's something decided up here
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: that doesn't translate down here. And if the school district
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: has mission and vision and goals and the faculty don't
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: know it, how do you know the faculty are transmitting
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: that information or developing those goals in their students? You
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: just don't know. So what we did is I created
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: an infographic where, so I do research. I go ahead
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: and I find the mission and vision for a school.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: And then I extract the human skills. I pull out,
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: as I read their mission and vision statement, I pull
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: out Um, you know, they're interested in trust building. They're
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: interested in integrity. They're interested in inclusivity, things like that.
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: So I pull out these human skills. Um, I put
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: their mission and vision statement on the left-hand side. Um,
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: and then on the, on the right-hand side, I put
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: the four to five circles that come from that. So
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: I'll take those human skills and then identify, um, uh,
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: we use those human skills as a one word focus.
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: And then I identify concept focus from that. You know,
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: I expand that into a sentence or two, and then
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: I look for idioms that match that. Idioms are really nice.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: This is our, our easy way of teaching people how
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: to do circle. If you organize your circle, your smart
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: circle around an idiom, it's an experience we've all had.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: That's why it's there. That's why it transcends time across generations.
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: It's very cultural. So, um, One of the circles I
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: built is probably my favorite one based on the idiom
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: butterflies in your stomach. Every single human from the biggest
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: to the smallest has had butterflies in their stomach and
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: their perspective on that is going to vary from what
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: I have. And so when we talk about butterflies in
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: our stomach, as we go around the circle, I'm learning
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: how other people relate to that idiom. That's huge learning
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: about people like that. Yeah. So, We build our fortified
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: circles on idioms, and then I'll actually build out the circles.
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: I'll either identify or come up with an activator. I'll
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: build out the baby bear, mama bear, and papa bear questions,
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: which I think we've talked about in the past. Baby
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: bear really is just a light, fun, playful, not a
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: lot of skin in the game, right? It's something you
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: can look back and laugh on. Malin Bear is, you know,
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: more recent and it's, you know, sort of the hardcore.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: What do you you know, what did you go through
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: recently and how did you get through it? And we
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: like going over that because it reminds people we call
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: them their strengths.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 44:54
  Speaker 2: If you survive a divorce or a death in the
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: family or a job loss and you came out on
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: the other side, you're stronger for it. And so we
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: call those your strengths. Now that you may not have
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: enjoyed the experience, but you can use that to help
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: yourself and help others in the future. And then the
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: papa bear question is, all right, well, what are you
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: struggling with now? And the thinking here is, one, with
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: the activator being physical vulnerability and the baby bear being light,
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: people are easing their way into sharing more and more
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: of themselves. They're not just straight to tell me about
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: your deepest, darkest secrets. We don't do that. It's not
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: how we're wired. So this is the science, right? We're
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: playing on the psychology and we're building this the way
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: we're wired. But the goal, of course, when you get
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: to Papa Bear, if it's a really good question and
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: you haven't run a lot of circles with this group,
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: you may only get three or four answers out of 15.
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: That's a good Papa Bear question. That means it really
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: hit home deep and it's a little too personal to
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: share for a lot of people. If you have a
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: group that's been together a while, then you'll get more
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Papa Bear responses. But the goal of the Papa Bear
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: is to bring up something you're working on right now.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: because now you're letting other people know, you know, sort
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: of what's going on in your life. But we also
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: have it framed this way because we want to encourage
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: you to look back and say, wait a minute, I
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: just survived mama bear. Why can't I survive this too?
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: The event I talked about in the mama bear thing,
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: I can do this. I've done this before.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: So we're actually building strength and hope into the circle,
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: into the psychology of the circle. We build it in
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: there so that by the time that people leave the circle, they,
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: They actually feel stronger. They feel better and they want
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: to do it again. So that's pretty cool. So the
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: question building is really what's interesting with kids, because when
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: we let kids ask questions, they're still in the question
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: stage of why you and I are up here. Oh,
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: I know the answer to that. And we stop asking questions.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: In fact, school trains that out of us, right? School's
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: all about, give me the answer. Let's ask a new question.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: I was just fortunate enough to be a scientist and
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: philosopher and I just spent all my time in questions, but.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: But kids will ask great questions because they don't have
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: the background. They always ask these foundational questions. They're trying
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: to figure out with their predictive abilities, you know, what
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: the world looks like in reality. And so we get questions. Yeah,
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: you'll get questions like, who's your favorite superhero? But you
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: may get, well, who's your favorite superhero in real life?
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: Or we'll get questions like, Let's imagine your house is
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: on fire. Now everyone's safe. No one's going to get hurt.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: All your animals are out. All your people are out.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: Everyone's safe. What's the one thing that you would run
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: back into the house for that means nothing to anybody else,
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: but it means the world to you? Yeah. And why?
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: That's a kid question.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: If you had a time machine, where would you go
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: and what would you do? You can only travel once.
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: That's a kid question. Uh, they just ask amazing questions and, um,
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: it's because they're in the questioning stage. Actually, I think
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: this is why mixed age groups within a circle is
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: really cool because when adults and young people are in
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: circles together, the adults, if they allow them to allow
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: themselves to, they'll actually learn a lot from the kids
• 48:16
  Speaker 2: because the kids are at that, that beginning stage. Um, and,
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: and this isn't really a new idea. Um, I can't
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: remember the Zen Buddhist monk's name. It might have been Suzuki,
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: but he had a book. Sorry, my brain just froze.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: Not enough Red Bull.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just going to say, you need to
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: know some of that stuff.
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm actually artificially intelligent. Without the sugar, my brain
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: just shut down. It's actually a true story. But in
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: any case, Zen Mind, Beginner Mind, I think is the
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: title of the book. And he says that in the
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: beginner's mind, the questions are many. And in the expert's mind,
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: they are few. And so this is a big deal
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: because when something happens that's outside of what I think
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: is supposed to happen, as an expert, I'll say, well,
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: this has always worked in the past. And I'll start
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: asking questions within a very, I've already ruled out everything
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: else because I'm an expert. But the beginner says, hmm,
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: I don't understand any of this. Are you sure it's
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: plugged in? Like they, they start at foundational questions and
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: move up. So the, the key to being a good
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: question asker is to try not to see yourself as
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: an expert, but to go back to as physicists and
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: scientists say, the first principles. Let's question everything. Let's go
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: back to the beginning and question everything. I don't care
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: that we've done it this way all the time. I
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: really hope that Sweethearts and Heroes isn't doing the same
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: thing that we were six months ago, and I hope
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: that we're not doing the same thing six months from now.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: I hope we're revising everything we do to really focus
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: and fine-tune it.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: Troubleshooting is... come into mind here about, you know, we're
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: trying to figure this out. And we often, if we're
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: not getting the right answer from asking a friend or
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: texting somebody, then we go right to our, our muse robot.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, when, so what answers do is they kill questions,
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: they kill curiosity. And so having the world's information in
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: your pocket, is the worst thing you can do for
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: keeping your spirit in that questioning state, if you will. Um,
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: so it was very interesting. You're familiar with the Guinness
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: book of world records. Um, um, I don't know if
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: you know the history of that, but, um, uh, this,
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: it's actually Guinness, the beer, which is of course the,
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: the only beer I really enjoy. Um, But the in
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: the early 1900s, it was, of course, common. You'd go
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: to the bar, you'd sit around and you argue and
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: you'd argue, oh, no, this is when that happened or no, no,
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: this person did this or this person did that or no,
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: this is, you know, what's going on. And we would
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: argue back and forth over your beer. That's what you do.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Didn't know this.
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: And so it might have been the owner at the
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: time of Guinness. I can't remember. But he decided to
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: collect novel information. all these records because he saw his
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: book as something that would sit on the bar. And
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: while you're drinking your Guinness, someone would say, well, I
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: wonder what the, the record is for the long jump
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: in the Olympics. Well, you could go look it up.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: That's where that came from, but it was still a
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: finite amount of information. And so he designed it to
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: do that. Well, now with the internet, we can look
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: anything up and that just kills everything. Did you ever
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: watch Seinfeld?
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: I wasn't a big Seinfeld fan, admittedly, but yeah, I have,
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: I have seen Seinfeld.
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: The reason Seinfeld worked for so many people is in
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: large part because they didn't have smartphones in the internet.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: You know, routinely episodes were built around Kramer making some comment.
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: Oh no, this is the way the world works. And
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: everyone's like, oh, okay. And by the end of the episode,
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: you know, all the other people around them are like,
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: what are you doing? Oh no, this is how it works. No,
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: that's not how it works. No one ever does it
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: that way.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking of the office, man. I'm thinking of the office.
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: Same with the office.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: I do like that show. Yeah.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The office, same thing. When you have the internet,
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: everyone's fact checking. No, that's not how that works. And
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: now you're bored. Cause you did right. But the fun
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: in Seinfeld and the office was that they played with
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: that misinformation. They didn't have the right answer, but that
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: led to creativity. That led to new ways of thinking,
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: which is not often highlighted in those shows, but that's
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: what's going on. So when you have answers, you know,
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: if someone asks a question and they just are given
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: an answer, well, then they like, oh, this is solved.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: It's boring to me. I'm not going to pursue it
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: any further. Far better to continue to ask questions in response.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: And if you do come up with answers, what we
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: do in science, of course, is ask 10 more questions
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: and try to pick which ones we want to pursue.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: I wish that I could be among the 100 plus
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: education pros that are going to be at Potsdam University
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: on Friday. You and Josiah are going to be there.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: I wish I could be sitting among the crowd. What
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: are you going to do there on Friday?
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: So this Friday, we're actually going to OESJ, which is
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: one of the schools that Joe works at. And I'm
• 53:33
  Speaker 2: going to do a training essentials. Basically, I'm going to
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: show the teachers how to to build their circles around
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: idioms and then how to run them. Circle, you know,
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: our ancestors weren't trained in it, but they also aren't
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: doing the reverse process like we do with smart circles.
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: POTS stands actually towards the end of October, I think
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: the 20th or something like that. And there we're talking
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: to 120 education students, people who want to become teachers.
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: And so that'll be, I don't know if Joe's going
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: to that one. He might, but that'll be Tom and I.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: And for that one, that's too many people to run
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: circles with. So we're, we're doing sort of a hybrid presentation,
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: which we haven't written yet, which will be introducing them
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: to the circle, the circle practice to sweethearts and heroes
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: in general, but encouraging them, showing them that they could
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: in fact take the smart circle practice and make it
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: part of their classroom as they go out once they graduate.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: So we're trying to, move into colleges a bit more. Um,
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: you know, the younger you get people, the, the more
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: it gets built into their life. So we're, we're trying
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: to work on that.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: What do you write your journal about right now?
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, um, I, I don't, uh, keep a journal very well.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: I've tried repeatedly. Um, but I, I've started getting more
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: into voice memos, voice notes. Uh, I'm really interested in, uh,
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: a variety of philosophical topics. Um, The latest one, I
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: just actually just wrote a paper on points of view.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: My dissertation 20 years ago was on paradoxes, actually, and
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: whether or not they were true or if we could
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: explain them away. And I got most of it the
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: way I wanted it. But I think I had the
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: conclusion wrong 20 years ago. So I've just been recently
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: working on jotting ideas down that I want to write about.
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: One of them is this paper that I just finished
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: on Saturday and I submitted it. And it's about, you know,
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: points of view and, and ultimately really perspectivism. This, this
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: idea that all I really have is my experience of
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: the world around me. Yeah. So I spend time on that.
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: I spend time.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: I love that, man. But I want to read it though.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: It's like, how do we, how do we, how do
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: we get our eyes on this?
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: Well, I'll email it to you. I submitted it for publication.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I can't say a whole lot about it
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: because it's supposed to be an anonymous review and all that,
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: but I'll certainly send it to you. It is written
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: in philosophical terms. I wrote a sub-stack post that I'm
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: going to put up that really summarizes a lot of
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: the key ideas, and I'm going to put that up today, actually.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: Please make sure I get that. Am I able to
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: share that on Aired Out?
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, of course. This will be on my personal
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: one because it's not necessarily Sweethearts and Heroes content, although
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: it's related But I have wanted for most of my
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: adult life to develop my own philosophy. I don't need
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: to be famous like Kant and Aristotle and all the
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: other famous ones you've heard of. But I have had
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: a problem with every single philosophy I've ever read. They've
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: had some points that work for me and then a
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: lot that didn't. And so I actually finally, it finally
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: all came together and I finished the paper on Saturday,
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: but I finally came up with my own philosophy that
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: on life that I call dignitarian perspectivism, which is, and
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: the name has a purpose, but ultimately all we have
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: is our perspective of reality. And so this is, the
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: short version is this. I use logic first. Most of
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: the time, as in every other time you can ever
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: think of, when groups get together, they want to come
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: to some sort of agreement first on something, some foundational principles.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: So maybe it's, hey, we should all agree that the
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is the only and
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: real God. Or maybe we should all agree that Kant's
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: moral philosophy is the way to run a country, or
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: utilitarianism is the way to do it. We need to
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: agree on this, and then we can go ahead and
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: look at the obligations that we have and all that.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: And I think that's the wrong way to go. And
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: I actually think that this explains why we are where
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: we are in terms of politics and divisions because we're
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: not going to agree.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: A lot of talk on socialism these days.
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but we're not going to agree. And so we've
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: got it backwards. Instead, we need to recognize reality and
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: acknowledge that reality. The reality is that I cannot understand
• 58:14
  Speaker 2: your point of view fully unless I have completely lived
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: your life. You are who you are based on your
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: experiences and you interpret the world around you based on
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: your experiences. And that's constantly evolving. Same for me. You'll
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: never know exactly what I'm thinking or how I feel
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: about things. And so in order for you. So this
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: is the way I see it. I can't know your
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: perspective fully on life. As a result, I don't think
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: I have authority to tell you what is right for
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: you or what's best for you. How could I possibly
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: know what's best for you? You're the only one who's
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: lived your life. And so I can't tell you what
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: to do. I can't tell you what's right or wrong.
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: Because I don't know what's best for you. I don't
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: have that standing or that authority to do that. And
• 58:58
  Speaker 2: that's the perspectivism. And the same is true for you.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: You can't logically tell me what's best for me. There's
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: no way for you to know. So what do we
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: learn from that? Well, what we learn is, okay. then
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: I only I'm the one who has to figure out
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: what's best for me because I'm the only one who
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: has lived my life. Well, I would like the ability
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: to do that. And so I would like autonomy. Right.
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: I would like to have the freedom to figure out
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: what's best for me. Furthermore, I'm human and there's dignity
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: involved in that. We generally agree that, no, no, if
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: you're human, you have basic rights just by being human.
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: You have basic value just by being human. And so
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: my philosophy, this dignitarian perspectivism actually logically derives the only,
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: this is the only philosophy that logically drives this, but
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: the only ethical principle that you can get out of
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: this is at a bare minimum, We owe each other
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: dignity and autonomy. Well, now I've got that foundational floor.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: What does that mean for making decisions in society? Well,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: it's actually fairly straightforward. I don't tell you what to do.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: You don't tell me what to do. No big deal.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: I have autonomy. You have autonomy. Until when? Until the
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: autonomy between us clashes. If you and I are sharing
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: a dorm room at college and we want to have
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: fun and party, but we also need to study. we
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: need to figure out, well, are we partying in the
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: dorm room or are we studying in the dorm room?
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: We might compromise. Now, compromise doesn't mean you get your
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: way and I don't. It means we both get something
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: and we both give something up autonomously. And what happens
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: in that compromise, we might say, well, look, the dorm
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: room is for fun. It's for sleeping and for fun.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: If you got to study, go to the library. That's
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: the place for it. Boom, problem solved. Is it your
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: favorite solution? Probably not. You probably want to do your
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: play and your study in the dorm room, but we
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: have to compromise autonomously. because of the autonomy that we're respecting.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: This is the first and only philosophy that has logically
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: shown that the basic minimum ethic that we owe each
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: other is dignity and autonomy. And you can build from that, right?
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: You may say, okay, why do we have dignity? God
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: gave it to us, right? Or same for autonomy. Or
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: you could, and you could do any version of God.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter which religion. My philosophy is a great
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: foundation for any other moral philosophy. And that doesn't matter.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: It could be divine command. It could be anything else.
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: And if you now think about it in terms of
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: politics or other things like that, then it's much more about, hey,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: let's agree to dignity on autonomy. Well, dignity means we
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: treat each other properly when we're trying to figure out
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: our compromises. We don't just cut each other off when
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: we're talking. We're not just rude to each other or
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: it's not about showmanship when you're on TV. It's about, oh, no,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: we all have dignity and autonomy. Let's compromise. Let's work
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: this out. We're not all going to get what we
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: want all the time. And the reason is we can't
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: agree on anything. We can't agree because we all have
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: different perspectives. The logical answer is, well, we do want
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: our own autonomy. And we do want to be treated
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: with dignity. And since I don't know what's best for
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: anyone else, then logically, they all probably want the same thing.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: And so that's now my foundation. So that's really what
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: I've been working on recently. But I'll send you the paper.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: I can't wait to read that. And man, the readers
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: will be on tonight. This is fascinating to hear this.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: I want to ask you, well, before we close out here,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: what's hitting the... dopamine receptors for the doc what's what's
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: making you feel high what do you love to do
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: are you just like gotta do it outside of cracking
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: the the the the red bull is there something that
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: that you you just got to get that fix man
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: is it a daily run is it a monthly skydive
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: Is it whitewater rafting? Is it roller coasters? What is
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: something that you just got to do?
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: I'm addicted to knowledge and closing the gaps in mine.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: So I think that's why I work the way I do,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: because I just constantly am reading and trying to not
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: gain knowledge for knowledge sake, but to refine myself. I
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: want to be the best version of me. And so
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: I'm constantly doing that. But if I'm not doing that,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: or if I'm stuck on a problem, my very favorite
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: thing to do is to hop on my motorcycle and
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: just ride. I could ride all day. When I was
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: a little bit younger, I'd ride 600 miles in a
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: day easy. And I just, I love riding out there.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: You have to focus on what you're doing, but, and
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: so I can do that and turn my brain off
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: if I want. But I also find that by focusing
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: on what I'm doing, the, penundrum or problem or something
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure out is, you know, working itself
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: out in the back of my brain. And then all
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: of a sudden, as I'm riding, boom, that idea hits me.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: I'm like, Oh, of course. Yeah. So yeah, for me,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: it's a two wheel, any two wheels, actually, I like
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: mountain biking too, but, um.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: Same experience for me, man. Uh, I first sailing and I,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: I did a lot of sailing. It's, it's, um, just the,
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: the awareness always, you know, it's a thinking man's, uh,
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: sport i guess for lack of a better term but
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: i mean it's like you you just you have to
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: be engaged you have to be constantly thinking about where
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: you're going uh what what the weather is what is
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: the wind changing direction am i am i doing everything
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: the right way do i need to tighten this loosen
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: that um and i'd be out in the water and
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: the feeling of euphoria um i wouldn't feel um I
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: wouldn't care if it was raining. I wouldn't care if
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: it got cooler. I wouldn't care if my shirt was
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: on or off. I mean, I was just, like, just
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: numb to everything else that was going around and stuff
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: that was renting space in my head. Very similar to
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: being on the motorcycle, and I share that with you.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: Same deal with me. I get a high from riding
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: my bike, but all of that stuff would get compartmentalized
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: and get put on a shelf in the back of
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: the noggin and on hold forever. What a, for me,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: what a dopamine hit that is to have all of
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: this shit put on a shelf for a little while.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting, right? We evolved from people who had
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: to survive every day and try not to get killed
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 2: by even the slightest thing. We have it much easier today.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: I think that this is why speeding and reckless driving
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: is a thing. We are risk takers. We descended from
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 2: risk takers. but there's not a whole lot of risk
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: in our daily lives. There's emotional risk perhaps, but there's
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: not a lot of physical risk. Government certainly has done
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: a good job at trying to regulate risk out of
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: our lives. I think that's terrible. You need to have
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: risk in your life because that's what makes you feel alive.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: When you are focused on staying alive, climbing a tree,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: rock climbing, sailing, and not falling off the boat and
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: not capsizing the boat, not, you know, killing myself on
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: the cycle. Those risks, calculated risks scratch that dopamine itch.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: It's extremely important because we're wired for it. And when
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: you try to regulate that, I think that's also as
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: a side note, that's my, my personal thought is that
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: that's part of the issues with child behavior. When we
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: have child behavior that we don't like in school, we're
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: not wired for sitting down at school eight hours a day.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: That's just not how we're built. We're built to, To
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: go out and learn in motion with an environment that
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: is hostile.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 2: That's what we're wired for. So if you want to
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: see happy, happy people, those are the people that are
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: pushing the edge a little bit. I can't remember the
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: guy's name, but there was an author who said something
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: to the effect of he didn't want to have a nice,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: pristine body when he died and when he was buried. No, no,
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: we should take we should just suck the marrow out
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: of life. You know, we should just take every opportunity,
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: every risk, just push ourselves so that, you know, when
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: we we end up dying in the end, it's like
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: our bodies were just sort of sliding into home plate
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: into the grave. Our bodies are all beat up and
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: mangled because we live. You know, the book is torn
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: up and beat up because you read it. It's not
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: on the shelf pristine because you didn't use it. And
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: I think that's true for our lives. We need to
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: take those risks and those challenges. That's where living really is,
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: in my opinion.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: Final question this morning for you, Doc. Sure. Superintelligence or
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: artificial intelligence?
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: For the current artificial intelligence programs that we have? Yeah.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: Our president is trying to rename artificial intelligence to super
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: intelligence because the word artificial has some derogatory implications, I guess.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: I guess. Look, we're working. You and I grew up
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: in the era of Terminator, and so we should have
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: been a lot smarter than to adopt AI ever because
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: we know the results. But ultimately, that's not the case
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: with the current versions of AI. They're large language models.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: So this is actually in the paper. It's quite interesting.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: It's impossible for humans. Philosophers try to do this, but
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: it's impossible to have a view from nowhere, which would
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: be a purely objective viewpoint outside of all other subjective experience.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: We don't have that. But you know who does? These
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: large language learning models. And so what happens is these
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: large language models, uh they they're not alive they're not
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: conscious they don't have a perspective and all they do
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: is with no preconceived notions depending on how they're wired
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: uh in general no preconceived notions they collect all the
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: information and they go ahead and analyze.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: It very quickly yeah yeah and they do it lightning
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: fast Oh, yeah.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: Right. So I really see computers and artificial intelligence today
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: as like paralegals. I have a paralegal degree. I was
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: going to go to law school, changed my mind last minute. But,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: you know, the lawyers don't do all the writing of
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: their briefs and their case files and all that. They
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: hand it to the paralegal. Hey, get this written. But
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: they're the content experts. They look at it. Oh, you
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: screwed this up. Fix it. Then they go into court.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: They didn't write all the stuff they're reading from. They
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: know it because they've read it over. They're the content experts.
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: They know how to apply it. But they didn't do
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: all the physical writing. So I see computers and AI
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: a lot like that. They're great digital assistants. And that's
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: how I use it. I'm like, hey, this is really nice.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: When I was working on papers in the past, I
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: had to do the physical research. And I had to
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: make sure that I found every possible example that could
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: counter mine. Of course, you can't do that. You're human.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: This is the nice thing about AI today. I can say, hey,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: I'm writing this paper. This is what I've got. I
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: need you to look to see if anyone else has
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: said this before and they can scan the whole thing
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: in a matter of minutes and say, yes, they have,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: or no, they haven't. And it just tells me whether
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: or not I have to cite the person. So I
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: really see them as good research tools in that sense,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: because they can quickly come up with what's posted. Now,
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: the problem is they can't discriminate. So if they have
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: access to everything, they have access to, to hate speech and,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: to um you know misidentification of what people actually think
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: uh and and it has that too built in and
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: so as we get more and more slop in the
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: internet uh the large language models are going to have
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: a harder and harder time uh being intelligent but no
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: i don't think they have intelligence they're just computer programs
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: doing what we train them to do.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: Will it be our demise.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: Not in the Terminator sense. Here's how I think it'll
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: be our demise because they talk about universal basic income,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: our jobs being taken. We're wired for risk. What happened
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: when we sat around isolated during COVID? Mental health issues skyrocketed. Why?
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: We weren't allowed to take any risk. We were locked
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: up and we didn't have social interaction.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: We weren't connected.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: No. And it just drives, it is horrible for people.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: And you can't be connected online. You have to be
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: connected face-to-face. And it's just horrible for humans. We're not
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: wired for that. So if, let's say, they don't need
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: us anymore, none of us have jobs anymore because of AI,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: we're going to have to have some reason to live,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: some kind of challenge in our lives. Or just like
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: when people retire and have nothing to replace their jobs,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: they end up dying within a year because they've just
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: given up. They have nothing to live for. The risk
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: is what we live for. We don't usually admit that,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: but that's what we need. We need the challenge. It
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: has to be difficult to stay alive. Otherwise, what's the point?
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: It's boring. And so people don't like living in those
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: kinds of circumstances.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: Fascinating.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: So I think AI is a danger for us in
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: that sense.
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: Doc, um, when might you possibly make a trip North
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: here to Vermont? I really would love to have you
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: in the studio, man.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: That'd be my pleasure. Um, So let's do this. We'll
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: look at the schedule and we'll just plan a time
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: for me to come up because, you know, I can
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: just come up and do the show and I'll try
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: to schedule a training somewhere around that.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: Tom going to be footing the bill for the gas?
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: No, I'm not going to charge you.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: No, it's Tom.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's Tom?
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: If I ask him to. I don't know. I haven't
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: decided yet.
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on. So much, Doc. Really, really fascinating stuff.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: I could talk with you all day. I really, really
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: enjoy my conversation with you. Great, great stuff. And listen,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: when you shoot me an email, let me know in
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: that email what's shareable and what's not.
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: It'll all be shareable except for that paper, but I'll
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: highlight all that for you.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 1: I can't wait. Stay tuned, folks, and keep watch because
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: we're going to get it on the page real soon. Doc,
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: thanks so much for your time.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: Absolute pleasure. And I already look forward to the next
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: time that I'm going to be chatting with him. Just fascinating, man.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: Just great stuff. This is one to, yeah, go back
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: and give a re-listen to. I just, I love it.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: I love it. Great stuff. Do do that and do
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: share and let people know. that there's some really, really
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: profound conversations that are happening over here at Aired Out. Listen,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: 20 stores in 20 days. I myself decided that I
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: was going to visit 20 stores, country stores here in Vermont.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: Not New Hampshire, Vermont. And that I was going to
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: do it in 20 days. going to do it? When's
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: it going to launch? I think is the question at
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: this point. Thinking about Friday, realistically, it's probably going to
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: be more on the Monday side, early side of next week.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: I've got my list. I've checked it twice. A list
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: that you the aired out follower voted for saying, JD,
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: you got to go to this store. And I had
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: over 50 and I've narrowed it down to 20 and
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: it's going to be a fricking blast. I can't wait.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: We're going to highlight these stores. We're going to show
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: you who's working there, what they're selling, why they're unique,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: what makes them special. And I think most importantly, promoting
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: that we need to keep our country stores alive. We
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: need to keep them sustainable. They've been around many of
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: them since the 1800s and many of them still family
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: owned hard, hard, hard working people and they deserve an
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: awful lot. So, um, A lot to be said. And
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: there's some really amazing stories out there. I've got a
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: lot of people telling me, you got it. You have
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: to go to this once. I'm going to do the
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: best I can. All right, stay tuned. Tomorrow, we are
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: dedicating the airwaves to the 22nd year, which is staggering.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: of Wheels for Warmth, a concept, an idea that came
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: to reality 22 years ago. And other states are flabbergasted
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: by what we're doing here in Vermont with Wheels for Warmth,
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: what it is, how it started, what it's doing, what
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: it's done, and what it will continue to do, which
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: is just remarkable. of a multi-faceted win. Whole lot of
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: positivity on the airways tomorrow morning. Going to chat with
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: some folks from Capstone, maybe Casella. Looking forward to it
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: tomorrow morning right here where you are now, the Aired
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: Out Podcast.