Latest / Love Conquers Fear / #39: Driving Change: High-Stakes Leadership Across Combat, Tech, and Politics – Joseph Kopser

Transcript

#39: Driving Change: High-Stakes Leadership Across Combat, Tech, and Politics – Joseph Kopser · Love Conquers Fear

0:00
How do you prevent yourself from being programmed?
0:02
I tell audiences all the time, you are the average of the five
0:07
people you spend the most time with.
0:09
So just look around. If you're angry at the world and
0:11
you think that the other side is terrible and you think that the
0:14
world is coming apart and that person's bad, or this politics
0:18
is horrible, look to your left and right.
0:20
And if the people around you are agreeing with you, well, they're
0:23
just further causing you to be agitated and angry.
0:26
But maybe share some of your life with somebody who sees the
0:29
world differently. Welcome back everybody, to Love
0:35
Conquers Fear. I'm very, very excited about
0:38
today's episode. But first I want to get into the
0:42
fact that I continue to work my way through one of the top three
0:46
books that I read last year out of 55, The Seed of the Soul by
0:50
Gary Zhukov. It's the book that Oprah Winfrey
0:54
said transformed her life the most.
0:56
She wrote the 25th anniversary Ford.
0:59
She was the one that really brought him out of recluse in
1:03
the mountains. He didn't even have an Internet
1:05
connection at the time and, you know, really brought him into
1:10
light on her show and to spread his message to 10s of millions
1:14
of people. And the chapter I'm currently
1:17
working through is on light. And it reminds me, you know,
1:22
because these books really mixed together, you know, reading 55
1:25
books in a year embeds him pretty deeply in your
1:28
subconscious. But his chapter on light reminds
1:31
me a lot of how he brings together quantum physics and
1:35
spirituality, which is part of the project for this podcast.
1:39
You know, I don't, I don't know any other podcasts like this one
1:43
where we're bringing together AI, consciousness, spirituality
1:47
into 1 medium. Usually people stay in a swim
1:50
lane and don't dare cross the streams like Ghostbusters.
1:54
But I think it's really, really important because the nature of
1:58
what makes us most human has never been more important when
2:03
people are already talking about is AI conscious or not.
2:07
In episode 12 with an eel, you may remember that he said that 9
2:12
nonprofits are already set up to give AI the same rights as human
2:16
beings. And when I attended Ted AI, you
2:19
may Remember Me talking about that after I came back from San
2:23
Francisco after episode 21, which are my owing, I talked
2:27
about how it was sad to me, disturbing.
2:31
I don't know the right word for it, that the panel that they had
2:34
on the philosophy of AI, everybody on that panel just
2:38
naturally assumed that either AI is already conscious or assume
2:41
going to be conscious. And I said to David Judson, who
2:46
is one of my best friends, my intellectual thought partner on
2:48
many, many things, including the book that we're concluding now,
2:53
Love Conquers fear, humanity, AI and age abundance for all, which
2:57
will come out later on this year.
2:59
We're in the tedious editing process.
3:01
But I leaned over to to David and I said, where's the
3:04
humanitarian on this panel? Where's the consciousness
3:07
researcher on this panel? Where's a single person that is
3:12
talking about spirituality on this panel?
3:15
And we'll get into that today, actually with my guest.
3:19
He's a very spiritual person, but big shout out to Dive into
3:24
the Seat of the Soul if you haven't already.
3:27
It is a really profound piece of work and it's one that I'm very
3:32
happy to revisit. Just to recap, you know, for
3:35
2026, the books that I've revisited are LSD in the Mind of
3:40
the Universe, Diamonds from Heaven.
3:43
That's by Chris Baish who was on just a couple of episodes ago.
3:46
And that was amazing episode and we had an amazing dinner
3:49
afterwards. Of course, you know, The Seed of
3:52
the Soul and then Awareness by Anthony D'mello, which is a must
3:57
do on Audible, just like Chris's book, because Anthony D'mello is
4:02
kind of like the George Carlin of spiritual teachers.
4:04
And it coincided perfectly with the silent meditation retreat
4:10
that I did at the beginning of this year, the first I've ever
4:12
done, which was both liberating and challenging at the same
4:18
time. You know, to to really practice
4:20
meditation that intently and be in silence with people, tunes up
4:25
your senses like you wouldn't believe.
4:27
You become hyper aware of so many things with sound, with
4:31
sight, with the field of consciousness.
4:34
And that amount of meditation is is quite amazing, the
4:40
challenging. And as the teacher for it, John
4:46
Cabot Zen said, it is a radical act of sanity.
4:50
And it is your response ability to respond to the noisiness of
4:56
the mind and to take your seat and really quiet down.
5:00
I am very happy today to welcome Joseph Copser.
5:04
Yeah. Good to see you.
5:05
Thanks for having me. This was destined to happen.
5:08
Well, I'm a big fan of the show and big fan of your work, so.
5:10
Well, thank you and. In fact, if you recall, in the
5:13
beginning of COVID, I started a 72 episode series with you.
5:18
Yeah, because we. Was I episode 1?
5:20
You were, if you were not episode 1, you were the, you
5:24
know, the original seed corn for it because we had just left the
5:27
capital factory. Mayor Adler had come and said, I
5:31
think the world is about to shut down.
5:32
We were all there to discuss what would happen if COVID hit.
5:36
It did. I called you on the phone a few
5:38
days later. I thought, Brett, what's going
5:39
to happen? And you just gave this great
5:42
5-10 minute kind of foreshadow of what might happen.
5:46
And it was so good. I called you back two hours
5:48
later and said, let's have this conversation and this time I'll
5:50
tape it. And that was the Catalyst talks,
5:53
which I did like 72 episodes during Covad when we had nothing
5:56
else going on. Yeah.
5:57
So now here I'm at your. Yeah, I.
5:58
Really enjoyed that and you've been a long time friend and it's
6:01
a real, real honor to have you on and you're running again for.
6:06
Yeah, I'm back in public service again to represent basically W
6:10
Austin, Travis County, that's all the neighborhoods from Shady
6:14
Hollow, Circle C all the way up there.
6:15
Rolling or not rolling load just on the hedge.
6:17
Bee Cave. Yeah, Oak Hill, Lakeway, all of
6:21
Steiner Ranch, Great Hills. It it's it's a really cool spot
6:24
in in Austin, TX. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
6:26
I'm so glad you're doing that. I mean, you know, we supported
6:29
you last time you ran for Congress, you know, alongside,
6:33
you know, Josh, Josh and Amy Baer and many others here in
6:36
town. Yeah, right here at your house,
6:37
as a matter of fact. So thank you for that.
6:38
You know, I want to make the point because you know, this
6:41
podcast is 1 where I've really been focused on AI,
6:45
consciousness, spirituality. You know, how is humanity going
6:47
to make it? But just for the audience, just
6:50
so that they know, you know, I'm an independent voter and I've
6:54
been an independent voter for a long, long time.
6:56
I've supported a lot of Republicans and Democrats.
7:00
But what I look for the most is I look for rationality and I
7:04
look for people that have high integrity.
7:09
And of course, I care about policy too.
7:11
But leadership is, you know, as an entrepreneur, I know how much
7:15
of those qualities really matter.
7:18
And, you know, politics is, is no different.
7:20
And, you know, I go to the APAC conference every year.
7:23
I'll be going I'll be going in a few weeks here in DC and that is
7:29
a really good place to see people coming together.
7:32
Part of my mantra in life throughout ever since I was a
7:36
kid is bringing people together that we have a lot more in
7:39
common than we have is differences.
7:42
And I'm a big fan of the Dow of Willie, which is a book by Turk
7:48
Pipkin, because I've really seen since since growing up here in
7:52
Austin, his his, you know, mantra play out where he's he's
7:58
like, doesn't matter if you're Republican or Democrat.
7:59
We just get together and, you know, have some beers, talk
8:01
about all the things we have in common.
8:04
And and it's a very political, politically charged time.
8:08
And part of that is just the algorithms constantly pushing us
8:11
into that fear based state. But part of it's, you know, very
8:15
real. I mean, there's some really big
8:16
stuff going on, right? Now, yeah, I mean, Speaking of
8:18
Willie, it's one of the things I learned when I moved here the
8:21
over about 15 years ago, which is Willie Nelson said what makes
8:25
Austin great, at least how I interpret what he said, is it's
8:28
where the Cowboys and the hippies can get along and it's
8:32
played out in so many different ways.
8:34
I think that's why Amy and I love being here.
8:36
We love we moved our girls for eleven different times when
8:39
we're in the Army over 20 years. But when we got to Austin, it
8:43
just felt right. It just kind of was this is it
8:47
all those places we live, which were great places.
8:49
Austin is our place and that's why I just love being here.
8:52
Well, you know, part part of the how you got to the be who you
8:57
are, you know, was through the fires of entrepreneurship.
9:00
Yeah. So maybe we just let's go back
9:02
to West Point and talk about talk about that as a training
9:05
ground for you eventually being an entrepreneur alongside Craig
9:09
Cummings and you guys Co found the right scout, which had a
9:12
great exit to it was Mercedes-Benz Benz.
9:15
Yeah. Well, yeah.
9:16
So if you go back to those early days at West Point, those early
9:19
years very similar to yours in the sense that if I recall your
9:22
story once from I read or but didn't your mom buy you your
9:26
first computer or something? At age 7, yeah.
9:28
Yeah. So my dad and mom saved up a
9:30
bunch of money and got me an IBM PC Junior.
9:33
So there I was in the mid 80s, just banging.
9:36
I say banging code, but I didn't even have a hard drive, you know
9:39
what I mean? Like it was really funny.
9:40
I mean either with my first computer was an Atari and yeah I
9:43
remember my dad tripping over the cord one time and I lost
9:46
like a two week program I had been working on.
9:49
Did you even? You didn't have a tape drive or
9:50
anything? Not when that happened.
9:52
Yeah, I did get the tape drive later on.
9:55
I just love that. So it was that idea that I could
9:58
literally create and build. In fact, you might find this
10:02
funny or not funny, but the very first practical tool I ever made
10:07
for myself was effectively ACRMI created a whole series of fields
10:12
that would store the first name, last name, phone number, and and
10:15
address of all of my friends in in junior high school and high
10:18
school because I wanted to stay in touch with him.
10:21
And ironically, the thing I love most about where I am in life
10:25
right now comes the fact that I've always kept phone numbers
10:28
and rosters that go all way back to childhood.
10:30
But when I got to West Point. You're like, you're like LBJ in
10:33
that. Way.
10:33
Well, you know, when I later read about him and how he kept
10:36
lists and names, I was like, well, that kind of makes a lot
10:39
of sense to be able to keep in touch with friends.
10:41
But. But in those early days at West
10:43
Point, I was faced with this dilemma.
10:44
Do I major in political science and government, which I love,
10:49
clearly, as I'm now dabbling back into it, Or do I go on the
10:52
more hard science engineering side, which I also love?
10:55
I'm a nerd at heart. So I decided, well, look, West
10:58
Point's gonna be hard, it's gonna suck, so might as well
11:00
just make it suck more and be an aerospace engineer, right?
11:03
So I was an aerospace engineer and just had a lot of fun.
11:06
Definitely one of the most difficult majors.
11:08
It was no walk in the park for sure.
11:10
And you know, we don't even get to drink on post at West Point.
11:13
It's not a normal campus. But your senior year, your first
11:17
year, you actually do start to get privileges, but that's only
11:20
if you have the time. I remember being in the
11:21
engineering laboratory, the windows would be open, no air
11:24
conditioning in most of the buildings.
11:26
And I was, you know, typing on the keyboard and I would see my
11:28
friends walking down to the club and I was just like, oh man, I'm
11:32
going to get there one day, right?
11:34
But but anyway, So what was neat about the West Point experiences
11:37
is it taught you that if you don't depend on others and work
11:41
as a team, you're never going to be successful.
11:43
Fact that our mantra is one of our mantras is cooperate and
11:47
graduate. And so that was just infused And
11:50
you brought up Craig Cummings. I mean people that don't know
11:53
Craig and me well or may know Craig or may know me well, they
11:56
don't realize this. Craig and I have been in
11:59
business one way, shape or form or another since 1989.
12:03
Our senior year in 1993 at West Point, we both worked on the
12:07
Cadet Public Relations Council, which is nothing more than like
12:10
admissions outreach, but we were selling West Point.
12:13
That was our product then. So it's been a fun journey with
12:16
Craig. But that launched me West Point
12:18
into the Army. And ironically, even though I
12:20
was an aerospace engineer, I was actually drawn to more of the
12:24
ground combat leadership. You know, MacArthur and
12:27
Eisenhower and Patton, they're all graduates of West Point, and
12:30
they were all heroes of mine. And so I ended up going into the
12:33
cavalry. So no more aviation or aerospace
12:36
for me. It was a cavalry.
12:37
And then the 20 years just was a combination of muddy leadership,
12:42
muddy boots, environment out in the dirt, in the sand like you
12:44
see on TV with the kind of the behind the scenes of the Army,
12:48
the policy, the innovation, the experimental that Austin now
12:52
sees a lot of. But a lot of other places don't
12:55
realize that part of the Army exists too.
12:57
So it was a great start to my career.
12:58
Yeah, that's cool. And then later on, you know,
13:01
coming here and deciding to start Ride Scout to try to solve
13:05
this pretty critical transportation problem.
13:09
How did that manifest? So again, I know this sounds
13:13
like a dead horse, like I'm beating a dead horse, but I
13:15
gotta say Craig Cummings again, Yeah.
13:17
So Craig Cummings was already out of the army now at this
13:20
point. So you got to back the clock up
13:21
to like 09/10 time frame. He's already out as an
13:25
entrepreneur, hooking and jabbing, living in the
13:28
Washington, DC area. I'm in the Washington, DC area
13:31
working at the Pentagon. So I'm working for the four-star
13:33
general that's the top of the Army.
13:35
Like his desk is the desk that George C Marshall sat at through
13:40
World War 2. I mean, it's like that famous.
13:43
So there I am working for that guy.
13:44
That's cool. Yeah.
13:45
And Craig had this new technology that his company was
13:48
developing and he thought that there would be some defense
13:51
innovation. So he came to me, showed me what
13:53
he had. I figured it out.
13:56
They were basically trying to do cellular technology and data
13:59
transfer and voice on a battlefield.
14:02
And the stuff we had before was terrible.
14:04
And I was like, oh you got to meet General James Terry.
14:07
So I was already at that point the connector.
14:09
So Craig's got this idea I'm the connector and then connected 1
14:14
great team to another great team.
14:15
I didn't add any value other than just match up two great
14:18
people. And Craig's business took off
14:21
the same time. Traffic in Washington DC is, was
14:26
and always was terrible. Still is in many ways, and I
14:29
thought, there's got to be a better way to get around.
14:31
So nights and weekends I go back to my nerd self and I start
14:36
researching transportation. That's when I discover the
14:40
earliest stages of Google's autonomous vehicle program.
14:44
That's when I discover the power of GPSI think Mike Maples was
14:48
talking about it. Mike Maples.
14:49
Was talking about this with Lyft about that being part of the
14:52
yeah pattern. Pattern breaking moment for Lyft
14:55
because and now you got GPS on phones.
14:57
So this is, I like to remind folks, this is before Lyft.
15:00
This is two or three years before Lyft even Uber hadn't
15:03
even existed yet. And what I was seeing was, OK,
15:07
so if cars could drive themselves in the future and if
15:11
phones could with GPS let you know where you are.
15:15
And we already have all this existing infrastructure like
15:18
buses, taxis, bikes, car share, rental cars, like all that
15:24
existed. Ride Scouts take technique was
15:27
slightly different, which is we're just going to aggregate
15:30
using these two new technologies into one platform.
15:33
But it didn't really go anywhere.
15:34
I was still in the Army at the time and working in the
15:37
Pentagon, but I got here to Austin, TX and met the Austin
15:43
entrepreneurial ecosystem, heard of the names of guys like Brett
15:47
Hurt and Josh Baer, and I had the lucky break early on to meet
15:51
Bob Metcalf, like one of my very first days I was there.
15:55
He had, yeah, he's amazing. He had just shown up from MIT,
15:58
just shown up at University of Texas.
16:00
Com Yeah, yeah and and many other companies for the three.
16:04
Comments. Metcalf's law.
16:05
If you don't know Bob Metcalf, you need to Google Bob Metcalf.
16:08
So I get to meet this guy in the first week.
16:10
I'm in Austin, TX, and he's at the time still in uniform, still
16:14
in the Army. He's like, Colonel, tell me what
16:16
you do. And so I told him about all my
16:17
Army responsibilities to lead the program in ROMEROTC.
16:21
And then I said, but before I leave, I just want to let you
16:23
know I have this idea for what could be a company and what I'm
16:27
trying to do. And I know you're an
16:28
entrepreneur. And I described it to him.
16:30
He's like, well, it could have some promise.
16:32
So simultaneously, I'm doing my job in the Army, I'm meeting all
16:36
of these entrepreneurs. I'm describing what I'm trying
16:38
to build. And that's when Craig circles
16:41
back and goes, that has legs, let's build that.
16:44
So Craig gave me the the very first check, if you will,
16:48
deposited $5000 into my bank account.
16:52
I nearly flipped over backwards when I saw the statement the
16:55
first time. That amount of money to an Army
16:58
family, family of five, one paycheck.
17:01
I was probably that time about 50 or $60,000 in credit card
17:05
debt. So to have $5000 to build out
17:08
this dream was like just absolutely over the moon.
17:12
And I just went one beer at a time.
17:16
The best way I found to get people out for either coffee or
17:19
beer, and I don't drink coffee so I offered to take them out
17:21
for beer was to beat them, have them teach me entrepreneurship.
17:25
The entrepreneur essentials didn't exist back then.
17:28
Didn't have that to lean on my. First my first book.
17:31
Exactly. Didn't have that back then.
17:33
And so I just learned from all the smart people around me
17:37
enough to know the next steps and the next question to ask.
17:42
And before we knew it, we had a team, we had a company, we had
17:45
investors, and we were aggregating all the mobility and
17:48
transportation for a city. Then Bob Metcalf takes us out to
17:53
Silicon Valley for a road show as part of UT Entrepreneurs and
17:57
UT Startups. And I get to meet Maples for the
17:59
first time. And I showed him Rice Scout.
18:02
And that's like a week or two after he had invested in Lyft.
18:06
He's like, oh, I get it. But I think the future is, you
18:09
know, like single mode or single whatever.
18:12
Because I was multimodal, I was going to say, let's connect them
18:15
all together, which is kind of neat how your different shows
18:18
connect together. And then before we knew it,
18:21
Uber, Lyft got big and all the car companies just freaked out
18:24
and said we need technology. Ford was poking around, Mercedes
18:28
was poking around, Hertz rental car was poking around.
18:31
And Craig was kind of steady in the ship and decided that the
18:34
best way for us to go was Mercedes-Benz.
18:36
And then we went in and made the deal and sold the company and
18:39
had a great time. Yeah.
18:41
Yeah, I'm a huge fan of Craig. As you know, we're we're
18:44
investors and in his funds at Moon Shot Capital, Moon Shots
18:49
Capital and he's just a amazing, amazing human being.
18:54
How do you how do you look at the leadership lessons from West
18:58
Point tying in with entrepreneurship?
19:01
I imagine that there was an enormous amount of overlap.
19:04
I like to tell people and I do a lot of, as you know, a lot of
19:06
public speaking, big stages for companies and boards and off
19:09
sites and conferences now. And one of the things I try to
19:12
remind them is that leadership is universal because leadership
19:17
is literally how you treat people and how you inspire them
19:22
to do something that they wouldn't normally do on their
19:25
own. And the reason why leadership in
19:27
the military takes on a, you know, stereotypical cliche,
19:30
Let's take the hill. The best way to provide the
19:33
leadership to take the hill for you, the leader is to be front,
19:38
out front, running up the hill. Then others will follow.
19:42
If you're sitting back cushy in the safe bunker saying go take
19:45
that hill, they're going to look back at you like, OK, we're
19:49
going to take that hill and you're going to sit in this
19:51
bunker. That's not leadership.
19:53
Same thing with a start up. You know, I remember hearing you
19:56
tell different stories. We've all got our early stories
19:58
before we had money and access and opportunity.
20:01
We just worked all the time, morning, noon, night, putting in
20:07
the effort and then when your teammates.
20:10
And in the early, in any early company, especially when you
20:13
don't have money to pay them, it's just how you conduct
20:15
yourself and how you lead by example and how if you're going
20:19
to be out there selling ride Scout and try to get people to
20:21
download it. And it's South by Southwest 20,
20:24
I guess it would have been 13. Yeah, 2013.
20:27
I mean, you're out in South by trying to get people to download
20:33
and it's sweaty and it's hot and it's, it's humiliating at times
20:37
when people look at your app and say that's the dumbest you've
20:39
ever seen. And then they walk on.
20:40
But you have to kind of recoup and move on.
20:43
And when teammates, when working together, they see that those
20:47
qualities of persistence and leadership by example in
20:50
business translate very nicely to military, translate very
20:55
nicely to nonprofits, translate nicely to academia, and
20:59
translates now for me running for the Texas House of
21:01
Representatives into politics as well.
21:04
So that's why I say universal leadership is universal.
21:07
Yeah, I've always, I mean, I wrote this in in the
21:10
entrepreneurs Essentials. Thank you for the for the shout.
21:12
Nice little shout out of the plug on the show.
21:15
You know which people can get for free at the
21:17
entrepreneursessentials.com as well.
21:19
I think it was the first book you could chat with with AI.
21:22
Oh, really? Oh yeah, you told me you dropped
21:24
it in. Right, right at the very
21:25
beginning of that, I think the first day that capability came
21:29
out. But the way I've always looked
21:32
at the CEO role is that, you know, chapter 14 of that book
21:36
is, is, is my personal favorite on the seven lessons learned on
21:39
the journey from founder to CEO is that the CEO really has three
21:45
main jobs. You know 1 is to be the chief
21:48
strategy officer, and you're good at that job if you're
21:52
spending a lot of time with customers or spend a lot of time
21:54
with partners. Yeah, you get the pleasure.
21:56
Yeah, you're forming the strategy the the 2nd and and
22:01
these aren't in any order of importance.
22:03
They're all equally important is to be the Chief Resource
22:05
officer. So that's raising the money the
22:07
company needs that's helping you know, land the customers and the
22:13
partners and advise your board members and all the people that
22:17
are going to help, you know bring them to bear.
22:20
Make sure, make sure the company really is, it is in a good, good
22:24
spot there. And then the third is to be the
22:27
chief culture officer because culture is really the operating
22:30
system for, you know, for a company.
22:33
And so curious, curious if you agree with those three or if I'm
22:37
missing 1. And then, and I'm really curious
22:40
because, you know, for political office, like how those three
22:44
would translate into political office.
22:47
Yeah, well, so first of all, I like them.
22:49
I want to double down on the Chief Culture Officer in a
22:53
second, but you're exactly right in your question about how it
22:58
applies to politics. And I think that's where we fall
23:01
short in our politics too often because we're expecting a lot of
23:04
our elected representatives. And yet the way the system is
23:07
designed, it is not optimized to produce all three of those.
23:12
So you may have someone who is chief strategy, they have a
23:16
vision. Now, unfortunately in politics,
23:19
well, sometimes their vision is destructive or divisive and
23:23
people are drawn to that, or it's the politics of revenge, or
23:26
it's the politics of of just easiest way I can describe it,
23:31
it's just negative energy. And that negative energy
23:34
sometimes unchecked becomes the problems we have today in terms
23:39
of being the chief revenue, I think you called it chief sales,
23:42
chief revenue. Yeah, Chief Resource Officer.
23:44
Yeah. I remember that really as the
23:47
person that's also doing a lot of that connecting, the person
23:50
who is connecting clients and customers and oh, this customer
23:53
has a problem, let me connect them with this person.
23:55
They can solve that problem. And in politics, that's
23:58
constituent services. What, you know, for me, it's a
24:01
lot of fun. Even though I grew up a
24:03
Republican, I'm now running as a Democrat.
24:06
And people are saying, well, if you win your seat in the Texas
24:09
Capitol, it's Republican held and you'll be a Democrat in the
24:12
minority. And I said, and like, well, you
24:15
won't be able to get anything done.
24:16
And I said, well, time out. People forget one of the most
24:19
important roles of any member of the legislative body is to
24:23
represent their constituency. And their constituency might
24:26
have issues with state government and with filling out
24:30
forms or with taxes or whatever the reason might be.
24:34
Your job is to serve them. And so I think that's another
24:37
nice parallel with your point. But let's double down on chief
24:40
culture officer. At the end of the day, I believe
24:44
the most effective teams are the ones, like you say, where the
24:48
boss models the behavior that everyone wants to be like.
24:52
I want to be like her. I want to treat people right.
24:55
I want to ask questions. I want to lead by example.
24:59
I want to wake early. I want to stay like, whatever
25:01
the culture is you're creating, if you're doing it in a way
25:04
that's inspiring and not heavy-handed forced, like we've
25:08
been in organizations. I'm sure you have had bosses who
25:11
create a culture that is so dictatorial and so demanding,
25:15
not necessarily enough high standards way, but just like
25:19
more of a micromanaged way. And that culture is not anything
25:22
people want to be a part of. And so one of my favorite, you
25:27
know, blessings, like if a bus hit me tomorrow, I tell my girls
25:30
all the time who are in there now in 20s and 30 years old.
25:34
I tell them all at my funeral, there will be no sadness, I
25:39
hope, only funny stories because I've been so lucky to have been
25:43
part of so many teams in my life of people that made coming to
25:47
work fun. And I'm talking about in places
25:50
like combat, like, still to this day, star Major James D Pippen,
25:56
who is one of the grumpy. Like if you could take the the
25:59
Sesame Street character, the Grouch, and you could somehow
26:02
put him in the United States Army and make him a command star
26:06
Major, that's James D Pippen. But I love the guy and I'll do
26:10
anything for him. And he's really actually a big
26:11
giant teddy bear. The whole grouch thing is just
26:13
him trying to put on it. Put on the show.
26:16
Same with Oscar the Grouch turned out to be a little bit
26:19
of. It's so much so, Craig and I
26:22
named the endowment we created at McCombs with our ride.
26:26
Scout proceeds in his honor, James D Pippen.
26:29
But it's that point of creating culture and being a part of
26:32
teams. Like I'm super blessed, like I
26:35
mentioned about getting hit by a bus tomorrow if it happens.
26:37
I'm super blessed that I still talk on a regular basis on the
26:41
phone to people in almost every age and stage in my life,
26:47
whether it be teams, companies, units in the military, Graduate
26:52
School, undergrad. I'm even still in regular
26:55
contact with elementary school friends.
26:57
And I haven't lived in my hometown since 1989.
27:00
Wow. Yeah.
27:01
So culture to your point. That also makes you think very
27:04
unique. Well, first thing I ever
27:06
invented was a CRM tool, so I guess this is a little unique.
27:09
Yeah, with CRM just for the non-technical output.
27:11
Thank you. Is customer relationship
27:13
management. Yeah, or contact resource
27:15
management. Yeah, yeah.
27:16
So. So, So what do you in, in terms
27:20
of, you know, running for office this time?
27:23
What are do you have your platform at this point?
27:26
OK, what are what are some of the what?
27:28
Are the first thing is. The things you want to
27:30
accomplish here. Yeah, the first thing is we just
27:31
have to do things differently. We just have to do different.
27:35
See, part of the problem of the structure of politics is it's
27:38
controlled often at the top. And whether you're running for
27:42
even a city office, local office, so much of the politics
27:45
is controlled by the narrative at the very top and would just
27:48
go to the president in the White House and the federal government
27:51
that they then control levers of power, access to capital.
27:55
And for those that aren't political wonks, the political
27:58
industrial complex is no different than like other
28:03
complexes. The military industrial complex,
28:05
the movie making industrial complex, the oil and gas
28:09
industrial company, they've all got their industries.
28:12
And if you want to move up through the industries, you have
28:15
to sometimes play the game. Sometimes you have to take jobs
28:18
you may not want. Whatever it is, politics is like
28:21
that too. And where we've ended up today
28:24
with things like gerrymandering, where the districts are drawn so
28:28
funky, you don't even know if you're in that district or that
28:30
district. And that's done to make all of
28:32
it. All of it is done to make it
28:34
harder for outsiders like me to break into the system.
28:38
And so we have primaries where it's just the most diehard
28:43
members of their team come out for that primary and.
28:47
Primaries are so important. Like something people should
28:50
know is please, please vote in the primaries, because that
28:53
really almost completely determines the.
28:56
Yeah, we've got friends that are working on an amazing project
28:59
called March Matters. Yeah, Here in Texas, our primary
29:02
is March 3rd. Laferre, right?
29:04
Yep. Yeah.
29:04
And Marjorie's working on that as well.
29:06
Too good, Marjorie. Clifton And so to have more
29:09
awareness that March is the real election because 97 percent, 97%
29:17
of all the races that will show up again in November, the
29:21
winners decided in March because the district is tilted.
29:24
So this district right here, House District 47 is a 20 point
29:29
Democratic district. So if you live in BK, Westlake,
29:32
Lakeway, Steiner, Circle C, wherever you live, your
29:37
representative is going to be chosen on March 3rd between the
29:40
two Democrats running me and the person I'm running against.
29:43
And so with that kind of a tilt, March matters because you could
29:47
be a Republican and say, well, I'm going to wait to vote in the
29:51
general election, but by then it's too late.
29:54
You have almost no chance that you're a Republican will have
29:56
any shot because it's a 20 point lead, right?
29:59
But anyway, I got off on a tangent, but you were just
30:02
talking about. I took you on that tangent,
30:03
yeah. But I just wanted to give the
30:05
PSA because because a lot of people don't know that how
30:08
important it is to vote in the primary.
30:10
I didn't realize the status 97%. I knew it.
30:12
Yeah, so in fact all the facts, I just recently put in a
30:16
newsletter called Us Tomorrow, which I've been writing now for
30:19
about 7 years, really enjoyed the publication and what?
30:23
And you can find it on Sub Stack.
30:25
And So what US tomorrow does? I'll put a link to it.
30:28
Thank you. It tries to take the issues of
30:30
the day, strip out the politics as much as it can, look at the
30:34
real issue, and then build up a series of points to think about,
30:38
to say, oh, if we strip the politics out, how can we do this
30:42
issue differently? And I featured March Matters a
30:45
couple of weeks ago because I wanted more people to pay
30:48
attention to how important it is.
30:49
Yeah, yeah. So what are some aspects of your
30:52
platform? Right, So, okay, so first thing
30:55
we have to do is do things differently.
30:57
And I think that means we have to really focus when we fight
31:01
back, whatever that means in any of your terms.
31:04
We have to fight a little smarter.
31:06
We have to push back, but more importantly, we need to instead
31:11
of fight back, literally, we need to fight forward, which
31:13
means whatever solutions we come up with, whether it be
31:17
healthcare, whether it be affordability, whether it be
31:19
immigration, let's just make sure that the solution moves us
31:23
all forward as people because these are difficult issues.
31:26
So in if you want to talk individual issues, you know,
31:29
Healthcare is one of my favorite to talk about.
31:31
We've, we've got the most wealthy, richest country in the
31:36
world and we still have so many Americans still to this day,
31:39
Texans included, that have to choose between prescriptions and
31:44
the cost of their care and rent or food.
31:48
And that's just inexcusable in my opinion.
31:50
And I like to make the business case, especially for a lot of
31:53
your viewers who I know probably come from business community.
31:56
They ought to be upset as I am as well, I would hope, because
32:00
too many people have to stay in jobs working for a company that
32:05
provides medical coverage. But if they didn't have to stay,
32:10
they can go out and create the next great bizarre voice.
32:12
They can go out and create the next big commerce.
32:15
They can go out and create the next great company, but they
32:17
can't because they got to stay with that company.
32:20
So we need to detach employers from the responsibility of
32:24
healthcare. That's a big thing that we can
32:26
do. The other thing on affordability
32:29
of of of course everyone wants to make sure that prices aren't
32:34
high. I don't know anybody has ever
32:36
said by gosh that price is too low, make it higher.
32:39
But on the question of affordability, I like to
32:41
introduce a new way of looking at it, which is to say, while we
32:45
wait for government to catch up, what if we put more emphasis on
32:49
workforce education, on the ability to get the job skills
32:52
and training you need so that you as an individual can
32:56
actually earn more money so that the high cost of eggs Until we
33:00
figure out better farm policy and better agricultural policy.
33:05
In the meantime, at least you have a better paying job and can
33:07
afford those. And it really goes back to your
33:11
theory of abundance, what you're talking a lot about on the show.
33:14
Like we're soon going to have to think about what do we do when
33:18
we can create and build more and unleash the creative power of
33:22
Americans or really people all over the world.
33:24
And so I like to take affordability from the idea of
33:27
let's build more, create abundance as opposed to a
33:29
scarcity mindset. Thirdly, but I try to tell
33:33
audiences and groups that'll have me wherever they'll have me
33:35
into their homes or their businesses or their stages, is
33:38
we got to broaden the coalition. In this case, I'm talking to
33:41
Democratic voters. Like if they just keep talking
33:44
and preaching to the choir and saying how everybody else is
33:46
terrible and they don't talk enough to business, they don't
33:49
talk enough to independence, they don't talk enough about to
33:51
all the new Texans moving into this state, there's a lot of
33:55
them. There's a whole lot of them.
33:57
They're going to be missing out on opportunity.
33:59
And I want to broaden that circle.
34:01
And then lastly, what I tell everybody it's hard to do is
34:06
just try to avoid the distractions.
34:09
You talked about it earlier with the algorithms, the machinery is
34:13
made for clicks and they know that if you've, if it bleeds, it
34:18
leads. We've always known that even
34:19
before the Internet, if it bleeds, it leads.
34:22
And so people have got to just step back and and try to realize
34:26
when they're being angered, it's stimulated, provoked, whatever
34:31
word you want. Take a deep breath and if, if at
34:34
all possible, close the laptop, put the phone away.
34:37
Because I find so many times I'll be down at voter related
34:41
issues or even before running for the office, people be mad
34:45
about this. And my president did this and
34:47
the White House did that. And I'm like, how does that
34:49
affect affordability and teacher pay in Texas?
34:53
How does that affect oversized, you know, overcrowded classrooms
34:58
in our schools? Like Greenland right now is
35:01
while everyone's watching this, this show will be, you know,
35:03
Evergreen. But Greenland is the topic du
35:05
jour right now. That'll probably probably be a
35:07
resolved issue. By the time and I and I
35:10
certainly hope so without any bloodshed at all.
35:13
And Greenland has almost zero to do with 99% of all Americans,
35:19
right? Now for sure.
35:20
But everybody's talking about it because the news right now and
35:24
certain politicians love to provoke and churn because if
35:28
we're provoking, if we're, if you're provoked and churned
35:30
about an issue that doesn't matter to you, you're not paying
35:34
attention to the real issues that do matter to you, like
35:36
jobs, education and our kids future.
35:38
And that's, that's my platform. Those four points basically
35:42
healthcare affordability, broaden the circle and then
35:45
let's eliminate the distractions as much as we can.
35:47
Yeah, yeah. You know, a, a big reason I've
35:51
covered spirituality so much on this podcast is that it it
35:56
there, there's several, there's several things going on there.
35:58
So 1 is like, I think us realizing where we actually come
36:02
from, where our souls live, you know, in this Kingdom of light
36:06
and love, and that that's the actual reality, but we're
36:10
distracted from it in the world of form.
36:12
You know, we've got to learn from lifetime to lifetime how to
36:15
become a better human again, how to manifest love, how to how to,
36:20
how to help others, you know, conquer their own fear is that
36:24
we've got this constant kind of world of form.
36:28
Algorithmic distraction is, is, as you said, and the, the, you
36:35
know, the spiritual path, I think is, is the only one that
36:40
is long lasting in terms of being able to protect yourself
36:43
against that, like being being someone that can act with a lot
36:47
of agency, actually realize what's happening in terms of the
36:52
way that you're being programmed.
36:53
You know, Anthony D'mello and awareness talks a lot about the
36:57
programs that we both inherit when we're born that are that
37:01
are baked into just just society, the programs that our
37:06
parents put in US at school, puts in US, etcetera.
37:09
And in the episode with Tarot, I think that was episode 13, you
37:14
know, with the founder of four Sigmatic, you know, he talked
37:16
about when he had his spiritual awakening, the amount of
37:19
deprogramming he had to do to then reprogram, you know, as a
37:24
better, better human being. And his his company has done
37:26
exceptionally well. He's amazing leader and so I,
37:30
I'm I'm curious like what your advice is to people that are
37:34
that are being whipsawed by the algorithms and.
37:38
Well. How do you deprogram?
37:40
Well, so that's a great point. How do I deprogram?
37:44
It partly comes in the fact that my narrative or the narrative
37:49
that I've been taught all these over these all these years was
37:53
often challenged. I'll never forget I had a good
37:56
friend of mine, Matt Childers again with elementary school
37:59
buddies together. His late mother is her name was
38:01
Jenny. So this was going to say middle
38:06
early 80s time frame. We were kids.
38:08
Can't remember the exact age and at the time we were talking
38:13
about my 6th grade teacher misses Audrey Grievous, who
38:17
loved the woman to death. I still write about, in fact, on
38:19
MLK Day four days ago, three days ago, I wrote about her in
38:23
honor of the day. And we were talking about race
38:26
and prejudice. And I'll never forget she said
38:31
you you referring to us because we went to an inner city school.
38:34
We had just as many kids of color as there were white kids.
38:37
And there were more kids on free lunch than kids not on free
38:40
lunch. And I'll never forget what she
38:42
said when she said you think you're not racist now because
38:47
you're too young. And what I loved about the
38:50
impact of that statement was what she was saying is that
38:54
racism is learned. So luckily, we were little
38:57
enough and had the influences of Great American people like
39:01
Audrey Grievous N AA CPI, you know, civil rights icon to be
39:05
our role models. But what she was getting at is
39:07
as you go older in life, the forces, society, television,
39:11
friends, peers are going to pull you in different directions.
39:15
Luckily, I had heard Jenny Childers as just kind of a
39:19
beacon early on to say, hey, things are going to come with
39:22
you and they're going to try that, like teach you in a
39:23
certain way. Just be aware of it.
39:26
Also, lucky for me, at the same time in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan
39:30
was a big time impact in a lot of people's lives.
39:33
And as a little kid, as a fifth grader, he he was larger than
39:36
life. And for me, that was kind of
39:39
where I thought my politics were honor.
39:41
About the same time, a year or two later, my friend Jeremy
39:44
Joseph introduced me to The Beatles.
39:46
And, you know, this is 1012 years after they broke up and he
39:51
introduced me to The Beatles. And I'm listening to their
39:53
music. And you know, it's about peace
39:56
and love and harmony, especially after their early days of the
39:59
black and white Beatles. From them, many times Love Is
40:01
All you need. Exactly.
40:03
You know I am you. I don't know.
40:05
I'll say I am you as you are me, and we are all together.
40:09
I mean, that couldn't be more spiritual.
40:11
It is. Or evidence of a psychedelic
40:14
trip that they took or both. And isn't that the beauty of
40:18
really what we're getting at in this conversation, which is we
40:21
don't really know all the answers?
40:23
Luckily. Going back to your original
40:25
question, how do you prevent yourself from being programmed?
40:29
I I tell audiences all the time, you are the average of the five
40:34
people you spend the most time with.
40:37
So just look around. If you're angry at the world and
40:40
you think that the other side is terrible and you think that the
40:43
world is coming apart and that person's bad, or this politics
40:47
is horrible, look to your left and right.
40:49
And if the people around you are agreeing with you, well, they're
40:53
just further causing you to be agitated and angry.
40:56
But maybe share some of your life with somebody who sees the
40:59
world differently, who sees it in a different way.
41:01
That's why I consider myself absolutely blessed that when Amy
41:05
and I started our family, we had one daughter and then two
41:09
daughters and then three daughters, to the point where
41:12
now my whole world for the last 30 years has been around really
41:17
talented women. And I see the world in a way I
41:20
might have seen it differently had I had three boys.
41:23
And that's not better or worse, just differently than if I'd had
41:27
three boys. So it you really just have to
41:29
deprogram yourself by taking yourself out of the environment
41:32
that's got you all angst and angry.
41:35
And if you can't save yourself, hopefully you've got someone
41:38
that cares for you that will do their best to try to pull you
41:40
out of that pit. So, so sticking with the topic
41:43
of spirituality, yeah, for a moment, how do you, how do you
41:46
view yourself from a spirituality perspective?
41:50
Telling the ARC of this journey, it might be informative as well.
41:53
So grew up in a very Catholic family.
41:56
Catholic on both sides. So many aunts and uncles and
41:59
cousins. I think there were 17 on one
42:00
side or 17 or 18 on the other side.
42:03
But there were a couple of formidable moment, formidable
42:06
moments that made me go what? And one of them I remember very
42:09
distinctly was when my parents were getting divorced in the
42:13
late 80s when I was in high school and the Catholic Church
42:17
told my dad, well, if you're getting divorced, you're going
42:20
to have to come in and get our permission, have it an old or
42:22
whatever it was. And dad was like, she's the she,
42:26
she's the one that wants out. I, I want to be married.
42:28
Why do I have to come get your permission to do it?
42:30
It was this whole ugly blow up about all the different rules
42:33
and what's allowed. And so that kind of left like a,
42:37
but your whole life continued on.
42:39
We kept going to church and then about maybe my 11th grade or so,
42:45
I remember one time I must have been before I was driving.
42:47
So the year or two before that, Dad's driving us up to church,
42:51
pull into the front, and he just says, go in and get the little
42:54
missilette, the little the little program, if you will, for
42:57
the church that day. I was like, what's that all
42:59
about? So I ran inside, walked inside,
43:01
everybody's going into church. And I grabbed it and turned
43:04
around and went against the flow of people to leave out.
43:07
And then I handed to dad. He's like, well, great, shuts
43:09
the door, drives home, walk in Sunday morning back at the
43:12
house, boop. He just drops the missilette on
43:14
the coffee room table, living room coffee table.
43:17
And I thought that was the weirdest thing.
43:20
Well, what I didn't realize at the time, but I now realized in
43:23
retrospect, is that he did that only because he knew that his
43:26
father, my grandparents, would be coming over after church and
43:31
if they saw the missilette, would think that Dad went to
43:33
church. And so it it made it.
43:36
Yeah. It seemed very fake.
43:38
Yeah, it's very fake. And I was just like, what in the
43:41
world is going on? And so.
43:43
Speaking of programming. Yeah.
43:45
And, and at that very same time were the Falwells and Jimmy and
43:50
Tammy Faye Baker and all the evangelical ministers that were
43:54
found to be embezzling and cheating.
43:56
And it's just, all of that was going on in the 80s and it
44:00
really just caused me to just kind of be like, no, I don't get
44:03
this whole God and religion thing.
44:05
I mean, sure, I'd like to think there's a God, but religion,
44:08
Like, what in the world is that? Then I get to West Point, then I
44:12
get to West Point and I'm away from my family.
44:14
It's hard, It's miserable. But on Wednesday nights during
44:19
our first summer of basic training, the local Catholic
44:22
Church would put out peanut butter and Jelly sandwiches at
44:25
the break after dinner. And first of all, you're super
44:28
hungry, but thirdly, the comfort food of a peanut butter and
44:31
Jelly sandwich. And I'm sitting there and I'm
44:32
eating it. And then while I was there, they
44:36
were just saying, you know, we do, you know, Wednesday night
44:38
services, you're welcome to come.
44:40
And just because I knew there were more peanut butter and
44:42
Jelly sandwiches, I went. But when I got back into the
44:45
church, literally and figuratively, I was like, oh,
44:48
wait a minute. There is a certain comfort here.
44:50
So as we continue my journey now I find the, you know, we're in
44:55
the army. I'm married, Amy and I, we have
44:58
our first born. Now, mind you, I hadn't really
45:00
been to church much, hadn't been real spiritual.
45:03
And then Amy happened to be out one Saturday afternoon.
45:05
Our brand new baby Keaton was at the house in her crib asleep.
45:09
We had one of the very early baby monitors by me in one room
45:13
and by her by the crib. And to this day, I had literally
45:17
the hair on the back of my neck almost stands up when I remember
45:19
it because she Keaton baby couldn't even talk, started to
45:26
Babble in such a way that it it hit me like a lightning bolt.
45:31
And I'm sitting there and I'm like, what?
45:35
Like she's talking to somebody. She's she is talking to
45:41
somebody. It is not legible.
45:45
I don't know who she's talking to, but she's talking to
45:47
somebody. And as I read the account, the
45:49
story, what little hair I have in my head is now standing up
45:51
again. And I went in there and she was
45:55
in her crib still and she was ooing and cooing.
45:57
But the tempo of the, of the, of the Babble and the paws and then
46:01
more. And then it was, it was nothing
46:04
intelligible, obviously, but it was a two way exchange.
46:08
So I spent the next four or five years trying to just as a hobby,
46:12
if you will, try to figure out what in the world is going on.
46:15
And then that's when I discovered this really weird
46:17
body and unusual unknown to be, I shouldn't say it's weird, this
46:21
unknown body of science to me that talks about extrasensory
46:24
perception and the power of the human mind.
46:27
And the best way I can describe how I interpreted what they
46:30
meant was, so there's these fish, for instance, in caves
46:34
that have gone so long without light of any kind that their
46:39
eyes have basically glazed over. And there are other species
46:43
around the planet that have learned to adapt to their
46:45
surroundings that just lose certain sensory perception for
46:49
whatever reason. They just don't need it anymore.
46:51
The thesis of this paper was that extrasensory perception,
46:56
the ability of your mind and my mind to be connected through
46:59
some other dimension or medium. We lost it in modern society
47:06
because once that little kid was done playing with toys and
47:10
started talking to their imaginary friend, they were told
47:13
by their parents that's not real, you're stop talking,
47:17
there's no imaginary friend. And over time they lost that
47:20
ability. Now, thankfully, some people
47:22
never lost that ability, and those are people who seem
47:24
prescient and seem aware of things that others don't.
47:28
I was also fascinated by the body of science that proved, not
47:31
proved, allegedly proved, that a mom could be in the kitchen
47:35
doing dishes and then 456 blocks away, way out of, you know,
47:41
sight or sound, their kid gets hurt and they immediately know
47:45
it. I've had plenty of experiences
47:47
where I felt something about wanting to call a person.
47:51
And then the last thing I'll say and I'll, we'll go back to
47:53
spirituality and then they call. But my father, the last time I
47:58
ever spoke to him on the phone, we happened to be on vacation
48:01
the night before. And it was just, it was
48:04
unsettling. He had been sick, but it was
48:06
just unsettling. It just didn't feel right.
48:09
And then when I hung up the phone a few moments later, I
48:12
said to Amy, I said, I think I have spoken to my father for the
48:17
last time ever, at least alive. And the whole rest of the
48:22
evening, I was just at a pit in my stomach.
48:25
It just didn't feel right. My instinct in my gut said that.
48:30
And then I got back to the room. You know, we were done for the
48:32
night and went to sleep. And it we were in a different
48:36
time zone. So I'll get the time zone math
48:38
wrong, but basically at 5:30 in the morning, I woke up in a
48:42
startle because in my dream out of nowhere, a Ford van with the
48:48
Ford decal, I can see it bigger than life was coming right at
48:51
me. And then I realized, wait,
48:53
that's not a Ford decal. It's not a van.
48:54
That's an ambulance came right at me and and that's what made
48:58
me wake up. And again, getting chills when I
49:01
think of this again. And then I wake up and I was
49:04
like, Oh my God, Oh my God. And I quick looked at my phone,
49:07
no messages. OK, my dad's OK.
49:09
And then, you know, my heart is beating and I'm kind of sweat
49:12
and flush. And then I said to Amy, I said,
49:15
I said that was terrible. I I literally thought I just got
49:18
hit by an ambulance that was carrying dad or something, like,
49:21
I don't know. It's really weird.
49:23
Couldn't even finish the sentence.
49:25
You get to go. The phone rang, phone rang and
49:30
the very first words, you know from my stepmother is that my
49:33
dad was gone. And, and I still believe in the
49:37
same way that I believe when my daughter was babbling with
49:40
someone who was clearly not there, that there is something
49:43
in the universe. There's something more than us
49:47
that communicated from my dad to me not only after the call is
49:52
over, that I think this might be my last night that when that
49:56
ambulance woke me up in my dream that he had just passed away
50:00
about 30 minutes before the phone call, which is about when
50:04
the the dream happened, that that further cemented this
50:08
belief. Now, when it comes to the
50:09
mechanics of spirituality, I'm a big believer in God and Jesus.
50:13
I, I totally believe that that is that what it is.
50:18
I still don't have the words for it.
50:20
I know it. I know what it's not.
50:23
It's not organized religion like we think it is today.
50:26
I mentioned the US tomorrow earlier, I wrote an entire
50:28
Substack piece about a year and a half ago about a guy wrote a
50:31
book called The Kingdom and the Power and the Glory.
50:34
And it's about how, in his opinion, the and he is the son
50:38
of an evangelical minister, How the evangelical church in
50:41
America has shifted its focus from Jesus to a focus on power.
50:47
And when you do that, when you misinterpret the power of Jesus
50:51
and you separate the Jesus from the power, then anybody that's
50:54
powerful could take that place. And that's why he feels like the
50:58
evangelical church has lost its way in its mission.
51:01
It's a fascinating piece. And I recommend the book or, or
51:03
what I wrote about to anybody. But yeah, I'm a big believer.
51:08
And there's something far more than we are.
51:10
As far as my own Christianity, I describe myself as a red letter
51:15
fan of Jesus, which for anybody who doesn't know that reference,
51:18
there's certain Bible types. I think it's King James, that in
51:21
the black ink of the Bible anywhere it's Jesus speaking,
51:26
they write it in red letters. So that the point being, if you
51:33
want to just take the entire Bible and boil it down to its
51:35
most important pieces, it was the philosophy of Jesus and why
51:39
he came back according to the tradition to fulfill the
51:43
prophecy. And that's what he was trying to
51:45
explain. And you've had guests on that
51:47
have alluded to that in different ways.
51:51
I consider myself to be a red letter Jesus Christian because
51:56
it when you just read those words, it's beautiful and it's
51:59
poetry and it's a wonderful way to live your life.
52:03
All the other rules and stories and interpretations that are in
52:06
the Bible just make it easier for people to take those Nuggets
52:10
and fight for their own power using these rules.
52:15
And this is what we declare. And And so I think it's
52:18
refreshing, frankly, to have folks like James Talarico out on
52:21
the campaign trail as a Democrat.
52:23
I I really enjoy listening, yeah.
52:25
Yeah, I heard him on Joe Rogan. I heard him with Ezra Klein.
52:29
It's just refreshing to hear people remind folks that if
52:32
you're a Christian and you're spiritual in that regard, that
52:35
you kind of need to remember point of the Christian Church is
52:38
about Jesus, not power. You know, because that little
52:42
bumper sticker, WWJD, what would Jesus do?
52:45
I tell you, if Jesus came back right now and some of all, some
52:47
of our politics, he would not be pleased.
52:49
Right, right. Although he would act with
52:52
selfless love, sure. He might.
52:55
He might flip a few tables, He might flip a few tables like he
52:58
did in the temple, that is for sure.
53:00
Well, there's so much to unpack there.
53:03
I mean, so let me just let me just start with a couple of
53:06
things. So one, you know, I asked you
53:09
before this if you had, if you had listened to the collecting
53:12
tapes, you said. No, not yet.
53:13
I can't wait. You definitely should listen to
53:15
it. Season 1 is of all about non
53:19
speaking children and their ability to have telepathic
53:23
communication with their caretaker and you know they put
53:28
them in Faraday cages. They do all of this stuff to
53:30
like, prove it because there's a lot of skepticism, but.
53:34
Then. Oh, so this is a documentary,
53:35
Not even like a series? It's a it's a series, it's a
53:38
podcast series, but but it is being turned into a documentary
53:42
and episode. Episode 32 of this podcast, I
53:47
had Michael Collins on. He's actually making a film on
53:51
intuition and how children of a certain age especially can be
53:55
taught how to navigate consciousness.
53:58
I can't wait till. There's no doubt your baby was
54:00
doing and so so so so season 1 is about these non speaking
54:05
children and their abilities. And the final episode of that
54:08
season is about what message they have for humanity.
54:12
And it's all about love. It's really, really beautiful.
54:14
Season 2 is about all different forms of non local
54:18
consciousness, from plants to animals to energy work.
54:23
And it actually ends with these schools where children are
54:28
taught these abilities to really develop their intuition.
54:32
And it looks like they're doing like magic tricks or something.
54:35
And some people get caught up in that, but they're they're
54:39
missing the point. The point is that this is going
54:41
to fully form their ability to be intuitive, which will shape
54:46
their whole life. Who do they marry, what career
54:48
they go in? How how are they going to be of
54:50
selfless service to humanity, etcetera.
54:53
So that's that's that's point 1.2 is I just want to tell you
54:59
that in my book, love, love conquers fear.
55:04
Would you know which coming out later this year.
55:07
I actually profiled the Vatican Wow.
55:10
And it's one of the case studies like so the the last part of the
55:14
book are is on case studies. You know, why should humanity
55:18
have hope that we're going to make it into this age of
55:20
abundance for all? And the Vatican, when it comes
55:23
to AI is really leading in bringing science and
55:27
spirituality wow together. The best report I read in 2025
55:34
on AI, the one that had like the most heart, actually came out of
55:37
the Vatican, came out in January.
55:39
Well, I didn't know that, but that is I'll link.
55:41
To it in the show notes, but it's amazing.
55:44
And I see, I mean, our friend Worley, though, didn't he also
55:47
go to the Vatican about quantum? I mean, they've been doing these
55:50
kind of studies now. For he did yeah.
55:51
So they're, they're really advanced.
55:53
So so just tell people to pay attention there because it's,
55:58
it's, it's important, you know, from a spirituality standpoint
56:03
that an organization of that kind of power, you know, and
56:08
influence is putting so much out.
56:11
And, you know, the new Pope you you may have heard that he's
56:14
been quoted recently as saying you really need to see the God
56:17
and everyone doesn't matter, you know, race, religion, anything.
56:22
And so he's really a great uniter.
56:24
So that's, that's, that's kind of that's that's very exciting.
56:28
The Third Point, I just want to tell you a story because I was
56:30
really, really touched by the story about your dad.
56:33
And I've heard many stories like that since since starting this
56:37
podcast. I mean, I've made the point on
56:39
this podcast that, you know, in a different vector, last year I
56:45
heard 10 near death experience stories by very good friends,
56:50
some of them friends for 10 to 20 years, which never told me.
56:53
And it's the most transcendent experience of their entire life.
56:56
You know, I'm going to have Evan Alexander actually on the
56:58
podcast who wrote proof of heaven, which is, which is the
57:01
most amazing, you know, near death experience story.
57:05
And that book was a blockbuster success.
57:08
And he's, he's done a lot to really help humanity glimpse
57:12
what's what's in the beyond. And I had this this experience
57:19
with with my mom passing away, which was which was really just
57:26
incredible. And it ties in with bizarre
57:28
voice. So bizarre voice.
57:29
You know, we'd gone gone public. My mom had cancer and was
57:35
getting progressively worse. It we we thought that, you know,
57:40
after a year of chemo, that we were almost at the end of it,
57:43
even though it just really had, you know, ravaged her body.
57:47
You know, it's like using kind of really blunt instruments to
57:51
try to to try to fight to fight cancer.
57:54
And we were we're, we were really, really just just
58:00
distraught that it had gone stage 4.
58:03
And I was at the office. I spend a lot of time at the
58:06
hospital, but I was out the office with with bankers because
58:10
bizarre voice is doing a second IPO.
58:13
You know, the stock had traded up and the within the first six
58:16
months. And you can, you can secure more
58:19
capital for the company if that's the case, because there's
58:21
demand for the stocking of our IPO was very oversubscribed.
58:26
And, and so I'm there meeting with them and I'm, I'm driving
58:30
back to the hospital and Deborah calls me and my wife of now 29
58:33
years and Deborah says, your mom's passing away right now.
58:39
I'm going to pitch on speakerphone.
58:41
And so I'm saying my goodbyes, you know, tears streaming down
58:44
my face just like, and also just guilt, just like I can't believe
58:48
that I missed my mom's passing, you know, for you know, yes, I
58:55
have a duty as ACEO etcetera. And she she would understand but
58:59
that I wasn't there. And so I just keep keep on
59:02
driving after saying my goodbyes.
59:05
And Deborah calls back 5 minutes later and she says they don't
59:11
know what's going on but she's back alive.
59:14
Like everybody's like this is like a miracle.
59:17
And then she's like, she's waiting for you.
59:20
Oh my gosh. And I get to the hospital and I
59:24
hold her hand. Deborah's holding her hand.
59:27
Chantelle, you know, my niece, Brandy Chantelle today, by the
59:30
way, on this recording is 30 years old.
59:33
So happy birthday to her. And we're all holding your hand
59:37
as she passes away. And the doctors and they're
59:40
like, if you don't believe in God, you should believe in God
59:43
now. It's that simple.
59:45
It was this, it was this, it was a spiritual experience as you
59:49
could get there. Like, you know, we that's that's
59:53
really, really unusual where someone comes back alive like
59:55
that. And that's how much my mom
59:58
loved, you know, like a big part of the reason I had so much love
1:00:01
in my heart is that. You know, she always selflessly
1:00:05
loved me and you know, bought me my first computer like allowed
1:00:10
me to do that non-stop. You know, that turned out to be,
1:00:14
you know, from age 7 on, that turned out to be the right skill
1:00:17
set at the right time. But it really was in hindsight
1:00:20
and I've seen through through psychedelic journeys that it was
1:00:23
that it really was my divine calling, my divine calling to
1:00:26
change the world for the better through technology and really
1:00:30
love conquer spheres, the metathematic of that overall.
1:00:35
But I appreciate you telling telling that story and really
1:00:38
appreciate, appreciate your heart on it.
1:00:40
And you know, I've heard many stories like that.
1:00:42
There's been many stories like that.
1:00:43
On this podcast, episode 10 with Morgan Linton, he was he was
1:00:48
talking about that. He was at a camp, and he was
1:00:50
very young, and he's like 10 years old.
1:00:53
And you just started crying uncontrollably for like an hour.
1:00:56
You just need to be alone. And that was when his
1:00:59
grandmother was passing by and that he could just feel the
1:01:03
energy, but he didn't even know, like, what he was crying about.
1:01:06
He thought like, why am I crying like this, you know?
1:01:09
So you know, when I take this idea of spirituality, and I love
1:01:13
trying to combine it as much as I can with science, me too.
1:01:16
I'm one of these people that believe you can't explain
1:01:19
science without spirituality. You actually cannot explain
1:01:22
spirituality without some idea of science.
1:01:26
And the dogmatic separation is so unnecessary.
1:01:28
Yeah, 100%. I believe they can be blended.
1:01:31
So I then from that journey of my daughter babbling going
1:01:35
forward, what could it be, this extrasensory perception?
1:01:39
And that's when I discovered the book Flatland, the Flatlander.
1:01:42
Flatlander. I forget now, but it's
1:01:44
basically. I think it's flatland, yeah.
1:01:45
Well, what if the entire world as we knew it was on a piece of
1:01:48
paper, 2 dimensional everywhere that I would look at you, I
1:01:52
would only see you as a line. You'd literally just be a line.
1:01:56
But if I took as an outside being another entity if you
1:02:01
will, and I placed my 5 fingertips on that piece of
1:02:06
paper, I would suddenly now look like 5 different people existing
1:02:13
in this flat land. All five of my fingertips would
1:02:17
appear as just a straight line. I would look like everybody
1:02:19
else. But what the people of Flatland
1:02:22
might not realize is that those fingertips are connected to this
1:02:26
larger hand. And then when I combined other
1:02:30
books about Jesus and spirituality, and then, you
1:02:33
know, the whole Beatles retreat to India and everything they
1:02:38
were trying to do to kind of discover themselves, and I
1:02:40
blended all that together. What kind of came out for me is
1:02:44
that it's not that the people of Flatland see five different
1:02:47
fingertips. It's that we are literally all
1:02:51
connected in this other dimension.
1:02:55
And that's why my friends, whenever we get to drinking or
1:02:57
whatever and tell stories and they're like Joseph, whatever
1:02:59
you do, don't bring up the 4th dimension.
1:03:01
But I love bringing it up because I guess for a long time
1:03:04
I called it the 4th dimension instead of calling it
1:03:06
spirituality because of all of the baggage from the 80s and the
1:03:10
evangelical and all the corruption.
1:03:14
But in reality, if you go back to the red letter Jesus, when he
1:03:16
talks about the fact that we are all together and I am, you know,
1:03:20
the Son, Father, Son and we are one in the Holy Trinity.
1:03:23
And we're all like when you kind of dawn on us.
1:03:25
I think what that was trying to do was try to explain to people,
1:03:30
quit killing everybody. When you kill people, you are
1:03:33
literally killing a part of yourself.
1:03:36
Of course that gets into the idea of free will and we could
1:03:39
talk about that. But I just wondered throughout
1:03:41
Flatland because what's really neat is so if you go from 2D and
1:03:44
then you say, OK, if 2D is a three-dimensional object
1:03:47
somewhere else, then in our three-dimensional world that
1:03:51
we're in, if there is 1/4 dimension, what would that look
1:03:54
like? And then the great epiphany I
1:03:56
had there was, well, if that light here in the studio hits my
1:04:01
3 dimensional hand on your couch here, it creates A2 dimensional
1:04:05
shadow. So there's a 2 dimensional
1:04:08
shadow of a three-dimensional entity coming from A4
1:04:12
dimensional light, or excuse me, in this case, 3 dimensional.
1:04:16
So if we as 3 dimensional people had a source of light in A4
1:04:24
dimension hitting us, what would you see?
1:04:27
Well, in Flatland you don't see your shadow.
1:04:29
In our three world 3 dimensional world, we can't see.
1:04:34
And that's where I'm going with this.
1:04:35
We can't see our soul that exists in the 4th dimension the
1:04:39
rest of us, because our three-dimensional body is taking
1:04:41
the place of that. Yeah, yeah.
1:04:43
But we know through quantum physics that we're all light and
1:04:46
energy at our core. And there you go.
1:04:48
So then you take. They also know that we're we're
1:04:50
mostly empty space. This chair is mostly empty.
1:04:52
Space 98% or whatever it is. But what's really cool as I let
1:04:56
my mind just kind of imagine, take it to the next level that
1:04:59
so if there's a if there's a light source, not in this
1:05:01
three-dimensional world like here in the studio, but in the
1:05:03
4th dimension, like some glowing something hitting your soul that
1:05:10
right now occupies your 3 dimensional body.
1:05:12
What if your 3 dimensional body was and you were dead?
1:05:16
Well, it could be a shadow. Your shadow is your 3
1:05:21
dimensional image of your 4 dimensional self.
1:05:25
Now obviously I didn't say it well enough.
1:05:27
It won't come out well, maybe to all of your listeners or even to
1:05:29
you as I'm speaking. But in my mind, it's just this
1:05:32
continuation of the different ways to think about
1:05:35
spirituality. Because I gotta wrestle with
1:05:38
what the heck a soul is and how it is.
1:05:41
We got all this carbon and yet we're creative and we're
1:05:44
thinking, and it goes back to again, combining spirituality
1:05:47
with science and where the two connects.
1:05:49
So, yeah, well, and, you know, quantum physics, you know, the
1:05:54
patriarchs of the field became much more spiritual as a result
1:05:58
of, of, of, of discovering things like quantum
1:06:00
entanglement. Yeah.
1:06:01
And. You know, when I read about
1:06:03
entanglement the first time? Yeah, actually, I I listen to
1:06:06
it. I'm a big audio book person.
1:06:07
I don't think I've read a book in a long time.
1:06:09
Primarily audible. Yeah, when I understood or began
1:06:13
to try to understand entanglement and how one thing
1:06:15
happened here on the other end of the universe happens at the
1:06:18
same time or is connected, I was like, OK, we we got to figure
1:06:22
this one out. Yeah, Yeah.
1:06:23
Well, and that's what, you know, I gave you my, my science
1:06:25
fiction. Yeah.
1:06:26
Thank you for the lattice. That's, that's what it's all
1:06:29
about. It's like the discovery of the
1:06:33
connective tissue that binds all things, which, you know, we only
1:06:37
know what 4% of the universe is made of.
1:06:40
We call that matter. We don't know what 96 percent
1:06:43
is. We call that dark energy and
1:06:44
dark matter. There's, there has not been a
1:06:46
reconciliation between quantum science and classical science
1:06:50
and somehow all the ancient Mystics, you know, not just
1:06:55
Christianity, like all of them, the Dao De Ching, you know, the
1:06:59
Bhagavad Gita, like all the different, you know, the Quran,
1:07:02
all the different religions. And I quote from all of them at
1:07:05
the end of the lattice discovered or knew that we are
1:07:10
all connected. Yep, like way before even the
1:07:12
language to talk about science existed to talk about something
1:07:17
like quantum physics, you know, so, so I think that that is
1:07:22
super fascinating. And, and it's, it's, it's
1:07:25
leading, I think to the the scientific discoveries are
1:07:30
leading to people turning to, well, hey, maybe these ancient
1:07:34
Mystics were actually on to something and how did they have
1:07:38
that knowledge, which is, which is really cool.
1:07:41
It's like points to the certain, you know, universal body of
1:07:45
truth. And I think something that
1:07:47
people really discount or don't think about maybe is that as we
1:07:52
have this exponential curve of AI, quantum computing, robotics,
1:07:57
brain computer interfaces, it is going to lead to more and more
1:08:02
of the discovery of what our actual reality is.
1:08:06
And that could be the ultimate unifier for humanity.
1:08:12
Because, you know, we, we worship science, You know, we're
1:08:15
taught to worship sciences is, is a, is a form of God, You
1:08:20
know, since, since, since the time we, we start school and,
1:08:24
you know, separation of church and state and all of those
1:08:27
things which, which make a lot of sense if you study, study
1:08:30
history. But the challenge of that is
1:08:33
there is a missing spiritual development.
1:08:39
And, you know, the 2 coming back together, I think is the way
1:08:45
that humanity ultimately will unite to realize that our, our
1:08:50
soul is real, that we come from this place of, of light and, you
1:08:54
know, energy. And, you know, the, the, there
1:08:58
is a psychedelic resurgence going on right now.
1:09:02
And you know, we're, we're here in the state of Texas and, and
1:09:06
it's kind of amazing that this state passed the ibogaine
1:09:12
initiative to save our vets, the ones that are really suffering
1:09:16
from PTSD, that have, you know, suicidal thoughts.
1:09:21
And I saw a documentary recently that was sent to me by, by a
1:09:26
good friend that runs a ibogaine clinic in Mexico.
1:09:31
I, I personally have, have, have not done ibogaine but, but I'm
1:09:35
not, I'm, I'm very pro ibogaine and, and I'm actually then
1:09:38
financially supporting the Americans for Ibogaine
1:09:40
initiative. We, we hosted a dinner here for
1:09:45
Governor Rick Perry and Brian Hubbard and, and it was amazing.
1:09:49
It was a really amazing initiative.
1:09:51
But but you know, we've, we've got that going on and we have
1:09:54
things like the Telepathy tapes, Dan Brown, you know, wrote The
1:09:57
Secret of Secrets. I finished last.
1:09:59
Year, yeah, I got to get into that.
1:10:00
I haven't gotten. Into that it's great.
1:10:01
All the science quoted in it is factually accurate.
1:10:05
And you know, he's done a great service for humanity and writing
1:10:09
that because, you know, he's such a famous author.
1:10:12
That book is translated already in so many languages and it'll
1:10:16
turn people on to non local consciousness, which pretty
1:10:19
quickly takes you into spirituality and, you know, the
1:10:22
existence of the soul. And, you know, we, we're really
1:10:27
having a, a, more of a curiosity and less dogmatic separation in
1:10:33
this area, which I think is really healthy and healing for
1:10:36
humanity. Yeah, in fact, that we have a
1:10:38
lot of great points. I just want to seize on the one
1:10:40
in the middle. So I was at Patriots Hall in
1:10:43
Dripping Springs at an event that Governor Rick Perry
1:10:47
attended, and he got up to leave as they leave early.
1:10:49
And I, I literally like, excuse myself and like followed him out
1:10:52
into the parking lot because I wanted to thank him for his
1:10:55
leadership on this idea of finding new ways to approach
1:11:01
understanding the brain. And psychedelics is a big part
1:11:04
of that. And the reason why I was so
1:11:06
personal for me, not only because I've lost friends in the
1:11:10
military and frankly in the civilian world due to suicide,
1:11:13
but when I was in the Army at working for the chief of staff,
1:11:16
like I mentioned earlier in the Pentagon, I was there during a
1:11:19
time when suicides were high then like they are now.
1:11:23
But we were at war then and everyone was convinced it was
1:11:26
because we were at war. So the Army commissioned a $50
1:11:29
million study with the National Institutes for Health.
1:11:33
I hope somebody go back in fact, check all this.
1:11:34
But after this huge longitudinal study, what they found out was
1:11:39
shocking, disappointing, and in some ways enlightening too,
1:11:44
which was that 30% of the people that committed suicide related
1:11:48
to the military were actually in combat infighting people
1:11:53
shooting at them. There's a middle 3rd that were
1:11:57
in a combat zone but never experienced combat.
1:12:02
I mean, which means they were in a support role or they were far
1:12:04
from the combat, but they were in a combat zone.
1:12:08
And then there was another third that he committed suicide, that
1:12:11
they never even deployed, never even left the United States or
1:12:13
never left their home base. And what they, what I took from
1:12:16
that conclusion was that there's a lot more going on.
1:12:19
And it has to do with the fragility or the brittleness, if
1:12:23
that's the word we want to use on the psyche and that some
1:12:28
people's brains, whether we talk from the spiritual standpoint or
1:12:31
from a resiliency standpoint or brain tissue interconnectivity,
1:12:38
something in there is brittle. Something in there is just too
1:12:43
rigid. And that a trauma, a blunt force
1:12:46
to it will snap it. Whereas if it is more flexible,
1:12:51
if it is more able to react to changes, whoop, you know, OK,
1:12:56
that was bad in life. That was a car accident.
1:12:58
Whoop, That was my dad dying. Whoop, that was this.
1:13:01
But if you're able to be brittle enough, excuse me, resilient
1:13:04
enough, you come back. And and that's why when I first
1:13:09
heard about the work on psychedelics, which I actually
1:13:11
heard from Austin's very own Tim Ferriss on one of his shows, I
1:13:14
was like, oh, wow, this isn't just for The Beatles.
1:13:16
This is like, you know, we're going to try to go at this.
1:13:19
So I think it's remarkable. And that's why I told Governor
1:13:21
Perry, thanks for his leadership on it.
1:13:23
Because shocker, it could be considered a political divisive
1:13:26
issue if you just talk about in terms of drugs as the potential
1:13:30
healing. And I haven't tried it yet
1:13:32
either, but I I look forward to the day when I can.
1:13:35
Yeah, well, with, with, with, I mean, just to put a fine point
1:13:40
on it, you know, the Texas House passed 50 million in funding for
1:13:43
ibogame research, which is more, I don't know if you knew this,
1:13:47
but it's more funding for psychedelic research than has
1:13:51
ever passed in history, even pre Nixon, in any state or country
1:13:57
ever. And the University of Texas, the
1:14:00
University of Texas has some kind of agreement with some of
1:14:03
these places in Mexico to be able to share data back and
1:14:06
forth, even though we can't physically do it in Austin.
1:14:09
Yeah, yeah. Now as I've I've, you know, had
1:14:11
many guests on the podcast that have covered this, including
1:14:15
Patrick Gentempo. That was episode 25 that
1:14:19
actually came out the week of Christmas where, you know, we we
1:14:23
really cover like how careful you need to be, how intentional
1:14:28
you need to be. You're going into a very sacred
1:14:31
space. You really need to trust where
1:14:34
you're going in terms of who's taking care of you, you know,
1:14:37
set in setting very much matter. Oh, yeah.
1:14:39
So. Well, you're messing with the
1:14:40
inner mechanics of your brain. Well, and, and you're visiting a
1:14:44
spiritual dimension and, and so once you actually see what's in
1:14:49
the beyond, you can Unsee it and it's and it's beautiful.
1:14:53
It you really see where we come from and, you know, people that
1:14:57
have had a near death experience, they see it even
1:14:59
more. But obviously you don't, you
1:15:03
know, want to wish for that. Yeah.
1:15:05
Well, yeah, I mean, I haven't tried.
1:15:06
One by accident. The the closest I would say I've
1:15:09
come is I got interested in this whole idea of lucid dreaming and
1:15:13
the ability of to try to control your dreams by being lucid
1:15:17
during your dreams. And I've listened for hours and
1:15:20
hours and I've done different tapes.
1:15:21
So if any of your listeners have what they consider be the best
1:15:24
tape or the best, I say tape the best YouTube video or whatever
1:15:28
to listen. Practice for that, yeah.
1:15:30
Well, I'm all ears. Well, John Mackey covered that
1:15:32
on episode 30 a bit. Yeah, I listened, but I was kind
1:15:35
of hoping, Yeah, hoping. For what it is, yeah, the if you
1:15:38
want to, we could go to a workshop.
1:15:40
I'm going to do it this year. So my theme for 2026 is all
1:15:44
about embodiment, really embodying, you know, the what I
1:15:49
learned from 20252025 was all about the inner journey.
1:15:53
But episode 16 was with Joel Schaefer, the Toltec tradition
1:15:59
and he is he he has a workshop that he does on lucid dreaming
1:16:05
and Mark Gober's been and Mark was the one that introduced me
1:16:09
to him. He was on episode 2 and one of
1:16:11
my favorite, favorite authors and great friend and moved to
1:16:14
Austin. And I think in June, I, when I
1:16:18
reached out to him in February of last year, I kind of joked
1:16:20
with him. I was like, I think this is
1:16:21
going to end up in you moving to Austin and that happened And you
1:16:26
know, he he really endorsed this workshop.
1:16:29
So it's it's one of the things I'm going to do this year.
1:16:31
That was that was a really popular episode of the podcast,
1:16:35
just deeply, deeply spiritual. And you know, Joel shared so
1:16:39
much wisdom. I, I, I'm actually looking
1:16:42
forward to doing the silent meditation at some point.
1:16:45
But everybody laughs at me, especially my girls, because
1:16:47
they're like, Dad, there's no way you could be silent for the
1:16:50
weekend, which is probably true. You, you could be, you could be
1:16:53
there. There were some people there
1:16:55
that that were extremely extroverted that I know are
1:17:01
extremely extroverted because I know them and they they did
1:17:05
great. Yeah, they did great.
1:17:07
Everybody can do it. Yeah, yeah.
1:17:08
You don't have to be an introvert to do a silent
1:17:10
meditation. But it, but it really, it will
1:17:14
give you some, some new skills for sure.
1:17:17
It it's something I would encourage.
1:17:18
It's, it's difficult. It's it's not it's not a
1:17:21
cakewalk. You know, Jon Kabat Zen was
1:17:23
joking around with us. You're going to tell people
1:17:25
about this and you're going to tell them.
1:17:27
We meditated sitting down, then we meditated walking around,
1:17:32
then we had a meal, then we did it again.
1:17:34
People are used to be like this just either sounds like bliss or
1:17:38
like. And when you tell them it was
1:17:40
hard, you know, there's like they're not going to cry for
1:17:43
you. No.
1:17:45
So you know, I really would love your lens on this AI moment.
1:17:50
Just giving, given your entrepreneurial background, your
1:17:53
tech background, you know, we definitely have that in common.
1:17:58
I the vision I have received is that this is God's final exam
1:18:04
for humanity. Not sounds super heavy and it in
1:18:07
some ways it is, but God wants us to make it.
1:18:10
And you know, we're in the exponential of exponential
1:18:14
curves and technology is a big lover for change.
1:18:18
You know, you think about the ark of humanity, you know, the
1:18:20
discovery of fire, you know, the fact we could use that
1:18:24
technology for good or bad. And we did both.
1:18:27
But ultimately, you know, we have, we're in the best time to
1:18:32
live in so many ways. You know, if you compare us to
1:18:34
100 years ago or 200 years ago, you know, it's, it's, it's like
1:18:39
an Oasis compared to those times.
1:18:43
And we've only had evolutionarily as Homo sapiens
1:18:47
electricity for .1% of our evolutionary.
1:18:49
And that. Incredible.
1:18:50
Yeah. So 99.9% of the time we didn't
1:18:52
have it. And that's why we're always
1:18:54
hijacked with with these dystopian messages because our
1:19:00
amygdala is so well developed, our fear center.
1:19:03
So we're in this exponential of exponential curve and I think
1:19:08
that abundance is inevitable if we learn how to allow love to
1:19:15
conquer fear. And again, that that is also
1:19:18
found in the spiritual root, you know, for all the traditions.
1:19:23
So I'm just curious how you see this moment and the
1:19:26
opportunities and challenges of of this moment.
1:19:29
So I'm going to probably take the answer different than some
1:19:31
of your guests. I'm actually go all the way back
1:19:34
to the 1700s with one of my favorite characters in history,
1:19:38
and that is Benjamin Franklin, so.
1:19:41
He's my favorite entrepreneur. You just invoked my favorite
1:19:43
entrepreneur. Okay, so the reason why he's one
1:19:46
of my favorites of all time too is because here is a person who
1:19:50
lived in an age that for all of us, it's so hard to imagine how
1:19:56
hard and austere it was back then.
1:19:58
You know, it's been said and written many times.
1:20:00
I think you've talked about on some of your podcast that living
1:20:03
today, even if you're lower middle class and even what some
1:20:07
people call poor, by every metric of today, you live better
1:20:12
than almost anybody that lived in the 1700s or before because
1:20:16
of your access to medicine and care and technology, etcetera.
1:20:19
But here's Benjamin Franklin riding in his autobiography.
1:20:23
About not only is before most of his inventions by the way, about
1:20:27
how he saw the world and how he even has 1 old entry and chapter
1:20:31
about his daily ritual and and and the reason why I like to
1:20:34
bring up Benjamin Franklin first we talk about AI is a lot of new
1:20:39
technologies were developed not only by him but by his peers at
1:20:42
the time and he found ways to build on them but it was all
1:20:46
founded in a worldview first in Benjamin Franklin's case as
1:20:51
somebody who didn't take himself too seriously.
1:20:54
I mean, he was notorious in Paris and you write about some
1:20:57
of his quotes that I see or everywhere like one of my love
1:21:00
is we know there is a God because beer is good or
1:21:04
something to that effect. We.
1:21:06
Definitely had a good sense, yeah.
1:21:07
He did. And so as new technologies came,
1:21:10
Benjamin Franklin and I, we built on them.
1:21:11
But just create a nuance. So let's take it to the modern
1:21:14
day. A few years ago, my business
1:21:17
partner Brett Boyd and I wrote a book called Catalyst and I was
1:21:20
hoping. You were going to bring.
1:21:21
That up, yes. And thank you by the way for
1:21:23
being one of the people to endorse that book when we
1:21:25
started. And what we really try to get at
1:21:28
is that, and you alluded to this in the premise of your question,
1:21:30
it's not just change that impacts society, it is the rate
1:21:35
of change that really matters. And then the book, we've not
1:21:39
only breakdown in the first part how change happens and what is
1:21:42
the science behind change and how people deal with it, but
1:21:45
then we take every kind of change.
1:21:48
There is technology, transportation, energy, you name
1:21:50
it. And we break it down through two
1:21:52
lenses. One is through the lens of
1:21:55
business. How does business react to
1:21:57
change? What are the things you need to
1:21:58
think about? But the other thing we were
1:22:00
deliberate about, because I was fresh off my run for Congress
1:22:03
and I've always been very focused on, yes, great business,
1:22:08
but business does not exist in a vacuum.
1:22:10
So let's also put it through the lens of government and policy.
1:22:13
So the book is written about business and government and
1:22:16
policy together. And that is what I really wish
1:22:20
people do when they talk about AIAI by itself is a new tool,
1:22:26
but it's powerful. And if we do not look at it
1:22:28
through the lens of how business wants to use it and some of the
1:22:32
responsibilities of government, we're never going to get even
1:22:36
something close to the right solution if only one group makes
1:22:40
all the decisions. And what's really cool about AI
1:22:43
is it really could be what a lot of people thought electricity
1:22:48
was going to be. Because I love reading those
1:22:50
historical studies that are accounts that say now that we've
1:22:53
invented electricity and we have modern inventions like the
1:22:55
washing machine, people will be filled with leisure and we won't
1:22:59
know what to do. Well, we know we actually work
1:23:01
more hours per day today than we did 100 years ago.
1:23:05
And so it's that balance I think of trying to figure out you're
1:23:09
going to have a tool that's going to enable you to do good
1:23:12
things like fire. And I am such an AI optimist.
1:23:16
I am such an AI optimist that when I'm in the room with
1:23:19
pessimists, I want to pull out of them.
1:23:21
To your point about them, was it the malygdala?
1:23:24
Yeah. Yeah, the fear censor to be
1:23:27
like, what? What?
1:23:27
What about it do you not like? And I have people all the time
1:23:31
when they try to, it's like, well, you didn't write that.
1:23:34
I'm like, well, no, I didn't write those exact words, but
1:23:39
those are all my ideas. And it just edited it and helped
1:23:42
me do better at that. Or, you know, I was going to
1:23:46
come up with a title for such and such, but it did it so fast.
1:23:49
It gave me 10 ideas that it actually unlocked some things I
1:23:52
had forgotten about. So I'm an AI optimist.
1:23:55
I can't wait to see what the world's going to look like in
1:23:57
five years, 10 years, 20 years down the road.
1:23:59
We do have to have business. In an exponential curve, you're
1:24:02
really getting getting out there.
1:24:04
Yeah. You know, here we have business
1:24:08
creating and government trying to regulate smart regulations,
1:24:12
not overbearing, don't want to stifle innovation.
1:24:14
And if we have the two of them working together, like I hope to
1:24:16
be in the Texas House, and that's part of the reason why
1:24:19
I'm running for public office is I want people from business in
1:24:22
government and vice versa, because I'm a huge optimist.
1:24:26
So we can start there and take it any direction you want.
1:24:28
Yeah. Well, I mean, what is your
1:24:30
confidence level on US entering this age of abundance for all?
1:24:33
Because the way I the way I see it playing out is that this is a
1:24:39
with great power comes great responsibility.
1:24:41
I mean, is of this recording. We are just over three years
1:24:45
since the launch of chat chat PT last year.
1:24:48
You know, I covered this quite a few times when, you know, Trump
1:24:53
announced the 500 billion of funding for Stargate alongside
1:24:58
Larry Lesson Mayo, Susan and Sam Altman.
1:25:01
That was already inflation adjusted.
1:25:04
More than we spent on the Manhattan Project versus the
1:25:06
Nazis and more than we spent on the Space Race versus the
1:25:10
Russians. OK, inflation adjusted.
1:25:12
Since then, there's been around $7 trillion of additional
1:25:16
announcements made all over the world towards the race to create
1:25:21
AGI and you know which artificial general intelligence.
1:25:26
And so we are in territory here where we are spending more money
1:25:33
as humanity, time and energy for the creation of something than
1:25:39
any other point in history and globally collaborated around it.
1:25:44
And you know, part of part of this, this narrative on, you
1:25:48
know, Chinese is going to get AGI before us and then it's all
1:25:50
over for us, etcetera. This is this fear based
1:25:53
narrative. There's so much movement of
1:25:58
people that work for these companies, like in terms of
1:26:01
trade secrets that I don't think it happens that way at all.
1:26:05
I think, you know, someone creates AGI the next week,
1:26:08
someone else creates a version of AGI and we're getting closer
1:26:13
and closer to that moment. And so, you know, we're we're
1:26:17
going to have this ability to manifest abundance.
1:26:20
We can't imagine, you know, as I've covered on the podcast,
1:26:24
people should really watch the episode, which on Kadinda, I
1:26:27
can't can't remember that episode, but we're talking.
1:26:29
About, you know, that's the only episode number you don't know.
1:26:32
I've been super impressed that you knew every name and every
1:26:34
number. Finally we got.
1:26:36
Y'all, Yeah, well, I see it might be episode 8 if I'm
1:26:38
guessing right, it's episode 8. But but he, you know, he's,
1:26:43
he's, he's from Africa and from Kenya and talks about energy
1:26:49
abundance and he's a great, great human being, really good
1:26:52
friend. And, you know, there, there's
1:26:56
books out now like here comes the sun, where if we just had 18
1:27:01
seconds of the sun's rays that fall on the earth, if we could
1:27:04
capture that through material science breakthrough, we would
1:27:08
power the world's energy needs for over a year.
1:27:11
And you know, it's like God put the big fusion, you know, light
1:27:15
bulb in the sky saying it's there for you.
1:27:18
You just need to figure it out, you know, plug in.
1:27:22
And I think that we're going to figure that out in the next 10
1:27:25
years. And so if you, if you think
1:27:28
about energy abundance, you can desalinate all you want.
1:27:32
Like you just there, there's so many things that unlocks in
1:27:36
terms of true abundance that I think it's inevitable that we
1:27:42
create abundance if we don't use the technology.
1:27:46
This great great power to continue to play the 0 sum fear
1:27:51
based scarcity mindset game that again, we're programmed around,
1:27:57
you know? There are plenty of people that
1:27:58
believe your gain is my loss and that is something I spend so
1:28:02
much time trying to push back on.
1:28:04
Yeah. So I mean, how do you, what's
1:28:06
your confidence that we're going to make?
1:28:07
It so my confidence is 99% OK and the only.
1:28:11
Reason I've been 95 on the. Podcast.
1:28:13
The only reason why it's not 1% is I am a huge fan of the comedy
1:28:18
movie Idiocracy. Have you seen the movie?
1:28:20
I have. And for the viewers who haven't
1:28:22
seen it, it basically just says, well, if we have all this
1:28:25
abundance, are we going to use it for good or just to be total
1:28:29
lazy idiots? And that's the only reason why
1:28:33
I'm not 100%, because we have, as a species, as an adaptive
1:28:37
living Organism, overcome so many things.
1:28:40
The very reason why you and I are sitting here on the couch
1:28:42
today is for all the parts of our genetics that organisms got
1:28:47
right and got wrong. So that's why I'm 99% optimistic
1:28:51
we're going to be fine going through this.
1:28:53
Will there be bumps? Absolutely.
1:28:55
Will there be tragedy? Absolutely.
1:28:58
We're good as humans today. Making tragedy with or without
1:29:01
AIAI just may enable those with evil intentions to do it more,
1:29:07
faster, stronger it. Will it will enable that?
1:29:10
Yeah. But but, but if if most of
1:29:12
humanity is good, then most of humanity will use it in a way to
1:29:16
predict that it people are going to use it for that.
1:29:18
And that's why we're 99. That's why I'm absolutely 99%
1:29:22
bullish on this opportunity. I would love to get to a point
1:29:25
where leisure is more of a light, a part of our lifestyle.
1:29:29
I mean, I wish people could retire earlier.
1:29:32
I wish we, especially the United States and I never quite
1:29:35
understand those that make fun of cultures that have a month
1:29:38
long mandatory vacation in the summer.
1:29:40
I'm like I wish we all had mandatory month long but that's
1:29:44
a different topic for a different day.
1:29:46
But now I remain optimistic on it.
1:29:48
Well, actually, I mean it is it is a is a topic for today
1:29:51
because you know, in love conquers fear.
1:29:53
Like a couple of case studies I have in the book are Costa Rica,
1:29:58
which is 9999% just renewable energy, you know, doesn't have a
1:30:03
military chose to use the money they would have put in a
1:30:07
military to create education for everyone.
1:30:10
And, and it's, it's, it's GDP per person is way above most
1:30:15
countries in that region and it's extremely renewable.
1:30:19
Another is Bhutan, where we just went over, over the, over the
1:30:24
winter break and you know, that country is deeply Buddhist.
1:30:28
It's all about contentment. It's a, it's a, it's a beautiful
1:30:32
place and really can be a model for part of society.
1:30:37
And it's funny, like one of the biggest pushbacks I get from
1:30:39
people like us that are like really ambitious entrepreneurial
1:30:43
types is Fred, are you saying once we get to abundance like
1:30:47
that, it's going to be, you know, mostly, you know, some
1:30:52
part of society is like Bhutan and just sitting around
1:30:55
meditating and stuff like that's a bad thing.
1:30:58
And I'm, and I always say, well, first of all, wouldn't that be
1:31:02
nice if people could make that choice and be more communal,
1:31:06
like, you know, really focus on contentment with each other and
1:31:10
having real deep connection with each other like they do there.
1:31:14
But I'm like #2 you're thinking too small.
1:31:17
Like, you know, it's not just abundance on Earth.
1:31:20
Like we if we don't destroy ourselves and we become the
1:31:24
species in the universe where love conquered fear, then God
1:31:31
then grants us access to the rest of the universe.
1:31:35
And as far as we know, it is as infinite as infinite gets.
1:31:40
You know, I was talking to you about a trip to Infinity in
1:31:42
Netflix documentary I've been watching which are which I
1:31:46
recommend. And you know, it's it's
1:31:49
completely it. I mean the the ambitious among
1:31:52
us. Let's go out there and explore
1:31:54
that. Let's find out actually what the
1:31:57
barriers to physics are. Can we can we conquer faster and
1:32:01
lightspeed travel. These are all these are all
1:32:02
these types of things I cover in the lattice where we do unite
1:32:06
because the protagonist, Dr. Alexander Bliss scientifically
1:32:10
proves how we're all connected. So I think that I think that
1:32:16
abundances upon us and I think the way it's going to play out,
1:32:21
my prediction is we're going to, you know, this, there's, there's
1:32:24
a lot of darkness right now too. And a great book is The
1:32:28
Alchemist. That's where the line it's
1:32:30
always Darkest before the Dawn comes from.
1:32:33
And it's a book you could read every 10 years.
1:32:35
There's just layers and layers of wisdom in it.
1:32:37
It's amazing. But I think the way it's going
1:32:40
to play out is we're going to write up that exponential of
1:32:43
exponential curves. We're going to be able to see
1:32:45
the end of disease. We're going to be able to see
1:32:47
energy abundance. We're going to be able to see,
1:32:49
wow, like this can be humanity's greatest moment.
1:32:53
And I think there's going to be bottoms up pressure to demand
1:32:57
that. And I think tops down more and
1:33:00
more leaders will start to have a hardship to be like, yeah,
1:33:04
like, let's choose that instead of death and destruction.
1:33:08
Because, you know, we're we're playing around now with tools
1:33:13
that you give, you give AI another three years.
1:33:16
Like just imagine that, you know, in terms of in terms of
1:33:20
how exponential this curve is. Yeah, like every week of tech
1:33:23
progress to me feels like a year 10 years ago.
1:33:26
Oh, I mean, I, I'm using AI 10 to 15 times a day for so many
1:33:32
different things and different projects.
1:33:35
And then I'll be talking to a neighbor friend at a local bar,
1:33:38
whatever mentioned in Chachi BT or whatever tool I'm using.
1:33:41
He's like, I don't use it. Like, why?
1:33:44
Like I don't need it. I'm like, OK, I get it, but have
1:33:48
you tried it? And then once you try it, you
1:33:51
see all the different ways in my opinion can streamline what
1:33:54
you're doing. It will speed that approach
1:33:57
towards abundance that you're talking about.
1:33:58
But there's a lot of people that just don't want to be on that
1:34:01
cutting edge. There's a there's a lot of
1:34:02
people that they don't know what they're missing because they
1:34:06
haven't been trained. It just sounds technical like,
1:34:09
like a good way to frame it is if you could ask a machine to
1:34:18
tell you the answer to a question that's trained on all
1:34:21
of humanity's content, from spiritual tax to scientific tax
1:34:26
to everything, you know, what would you ask?
1:34:30
And you know, as I covered on on episode 10 with Morgan, you
1:34:35
know, we're talking about little because that that episode was
1:34:37
all about AI powered engineering.
1:34:39
And, and I was probing with him to be like, how would just the
1:34:42
layperson use it, right? And he gave me an example of his
1:34:45
dad, who is a he, he collects some Japanese scrolls and it was
1:34:54
his hobby. Like to use it to make his hobby
1:34:57
better. But yeah, I mean, using it, I, I
1:35:01
use it multiple times a day as well.
1:35:04
Anything I'm curious about, it's amazing.
1:35:06
Like like what would you ask? You know, if I had to your
1:35:09
point, this ability to ask a tool that had infinite
1:35:12
knowledge, I would start with one simple question, which is
1:35:16
what is my wife thinking? And I say that humorously only
1:35:21
in the sense that. Wife.
1:35:22
Yeah. Yeah, exactly is if I could
1:35:25
better understand people and I can better understand
1:35:29
motivations, I could overcome my shortcomings.
1:35:33
See, these are my shortcomings. Why I don't remember to ask
1:35:36
about this? It is my shortcoming that I'm
1:35:39
not thoughtful enough to remember to ask about how that
1:35:41
went. These are my shortcuts.
1:35:43
So even though I say it in a humorous way, what is my wife
1:35:46
thinking? I would love to have a tool that
1:35:49
just makes me more thoughtful as a person because you know, you,
1:35:54
we talked about this earlier about society and people and
1:35:58
evolution, but I'm a firm believer that we evolved as pack
1:36:03
animals. We belong to each other.
1:36:06
We like being with other humans. And at the same time, some
1:36:10
people are just really better at being with others.
1:36:12
And one of the things I would use this infinite tool for is
1:36:16
just to better connect and meet with people where they are and
1:36:20
to understand them. Because 9 out of 10 times the
1:36:23
times I get in trouble are the times that I don't understand
1:36:25
what the other person is doing, thinking, saying, or seeing it
1:36:28
from their eyes. That's where I'd start.
1:36:30
Yeah, and I, I actually actually use it in that way.
1:36:33
Really like, Oh yeah. Like like when, when a friend
1:36:37
shares something, you know, kind of provocative on Facebook, a
1:36:41
lot of times I'm, I, I ask it to dissect that interesting take
1:36:46
that, you know, copy it and ask it be dissected.
1:36:50
And, you know, for, for, for really anything.
1:36:53
It could be political, it could be a scientific breakthrough.
1:36:57
Sometimes, you know, it tells me actually that that story is, is
1:37:01
not true. And then I'll inform them
1:37:04
privately. I don't want to there's, I'm not
1:37:07
trying to provoke them, you know, publicly and troll them.
1:37:10
So I'll just like privately tell them, Hey, you know, that
1:37:12
scientific breakthrough. It's really that's, that's
1:37:14
really, it's, it's like there were so many inferences there
1:37:17
that it really isn't there yet, but I hope it gets there.
1:37:23
But you know that you can use it.
1:37:25
I mean, you could, you could use it right now to you know, the
1:37:29
men are from Mars, women are from Venus book, right?
1:37:31
You could use it right now to say, like, what are the main
1:37:33
takeaways from that book? And can you create a, you know,
1:37:37
two week daily course that takes 15 minutes a day to just train
1:37:42
me to be a better husband? One of my favorite books in that
1:37:46
genre was The Five Love Languages.
1:37:47
I don't know if you ever got into that.
1:37:49
That is a good book. That's a really, really good
1:37:50
book. So I'd love to love to close
1:37:54
with. What is your greatest hope for
1:37:57
Texas is someone running and and again, I'm so, so happy running.
1:38:02
You know, we need more people like you that are rational and
1:38:06
so capable and and and and just have such a good heart running.
1:38:12
So I'm very, very proud, you know, to support as we did last
1:38:16
time. But the I'm curious, you know,
1:38:20
what is your greatest hope for Texas?
1:38:21
And then what is your greatest hope for humanity overall?
1:38:25
So first of all, you know, humorously, but I mean this
1:38:27
seriously, we need to figure out a way to create some kind of a
1:38:30
love conquer sphere ticket, caucus or party, if you know
1:38:35
what I mean, where people who are tired of the noise, tired of
1:38:39
the exhaustion can better meet people where they are.
1:38:43
But to your point, TX. So I was not born in Texas, but
1:38:47
I got here as fast as I could after I graduated from West
1:38:49
Point, met my wife on the very first day I was here.
1:38:53
In our 20 years in the Army, 10 of them were here at assignments
1:38:57
in Texas. And what I fell in love with
1:38:59
about Texas is this idea. And we talked about Willie
1:39:03
Nelson's with it. Hippies and the Cowboys get
1:39:05
together. But Texas, though, also is a
1:39:08
microcosm of all the myth misfits of so many different
1:39:13
groups, ages and stages in American history.
1:39:17
And one whole great example of that, of course, is anybody who
1:39:21
came over in the Bering Straits, all the indigenous peoples that
1:39:24
eventually kind of made it. And then they got to the Hill
1:39:26
Country and they said, hey, I kind of like it here.
1:39:29
And then you have even groups in the 1840s, all the German
1:39:32
influence that came in when they were leaving the problems in
1:39:35
Germany at the time. And then you have in the laters,
1:39:38
you know, actually before that, in the 1700 and 1800s, you had
1:39:41
all kinds of people who fled the colonies because they got too
1:39:45
busy. They jumped over Appalachia,
1:39:47
settled in Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and then still came
1:39:51
out to Georgia. And then, of course, you had the
1:39:53
people that were dragged here as slaves.
1:39:55
So you have all different people that came here.
1:39:59
And yet, Texas managed to form its own identity, and from its
1:40:03
own shared history. Love to claim that they're one
1:40:07
of the only countries. Texas was a Republic before it
1:40:10
was a state inside the United States.
1:40:12
And that entrepreneurial spirit. Then when you blended in all of
1:40:16
the oil wildcatters of the early 1900s, you have this cocktail,
1:40:20
this recipe, this Stew, if you will, for great things.
1:40:25
And I'm not surprised at all that now it's one of the fastest
1:40:28
growing states in the country. I'm not surprised at all.
1:40:30
It is one of the strongest economies in the world.
1:40:34
I'm not surprised at all that it is literally the crossroads of
1:40:37
America where and I say crossroads like this direction,
1:40:41
but it's now going to be crossroads of the of America
1:40:44
with all the work in the space industry.
1:40:46
That's why I'm thrilled to be a Co founder of the space
1:40:49
workforce incubator for Texas. So I hear this mantra in
1:40:52
politics all the time, Let Texas be Texas.
1:40:56
And they often will put that in a negative spin as if the rest
1:41:01
of the world is influencing them in bringing the values they
1:41:03
don't share to Texas. But I want to say, yes, let
1:41:07
Texas be Texas. We are a state full of people
1:41:11
who of different eras, different places.
1:41:14
I mean, Houston alone speaks more languages in Houston than
1:41:19
any place in the United States except for one tiny little part
1:41:22
of New York City. And that's something to be
1:41:24
celebrated. We have some of the best
1:41:26
universities. We have much of the best sports.
1:41:29
And a town like Austin, it's a 365 day out of the year city.
1:41:34
That's why I love Texas. That's why I'm optimistic for
1:41:37
Texas. But we've got to learn to work
1:41:39
together better. We've got to remember that we
1:41:41
have far more in common than that what separates us, and that
1:41:46
your success should be my success too, and that your
1:41:50
success does not mean you're taking something from me.
1:41:53
I believe, like James Tallarico, because we share an
1:41:57
international border, it should have a welcome mat but a lock on
1:42:00
the door. You just got to make sure you
1:42:02
know who's coming through and if we just can get along a little
1:42:06
bit better like that. A guy like me, boots, blue jeans
1:42:10
and, you know, beer bottles. As I often describe myself, I
1:42:14
fit in here really well, and I want others to fit in well.
1:42:18
But here's what I'm worried about.
1:42:20
My daughter and her wife left Texas.
1:42:24
They left Texas because they don't feel welcome and they
1:42:28
don't feel safe anymore. What I'm also worried about, my
1:42:31
daughter, who is my middle daughter's, a kindergarten
1:42:33
teacher for five years. She loved those littles, loved
1:42:37
them, but she left teaching because this state doesn't do
1:42:41
enough for our public school teachers and it doesn't provide
1:42:44
the resources for the school itself and accountability for
1:42:48
schools that aren't doing right. And so she had to leave
1:42:50
teaching. That breaks my heart.
1:42:52
And and a colleague and friend I got to know for years, Jay
1:42:55
Hartzell, who has been easily one of the best universe
1:43:00
university professors in presidents anybody's ever had,
1:43:05
president of University of Texas.
1:43:06
He hired me in to help with military and government and
1:43:09
military and veteran affairs related activities, but he left
1:43:12
the university because there's too much politics in our
1:43:17
universities now. I want to let universities be a
1:43:21
place where thinkers think big ideas and take the politics out
1:43:25
of it. Now that's multi level just
1:43:27
because it's left politics and right politics.
1:43:29
I want all of them to either be in and be discussed or out in
1:43:34
terms of their influence, not one hand in, one hand out.
1:43:37
So while I'm as optimistic as ever for Texas, there are things
1:43:41
that concern me, like my daughter's like like Jay
1:43:44
Hartzell and him leaving and University State of Education
1:43:46
and healthcare. We talked about that's why I'm
1:43:48
leaving the private sector, which I enjoy.
1:43:51
We've had a lot of great success and I'm going into the fray.
1:43:54
And trust me, fray is an understatement.
1:43:56
We're talking about the discourse in our politics today
1:44:00
to try to remind people that we have far more in common than
1:44:02
that. What separates us, to quote on
1:44:05
what you're doing with love Conquers fear that we really all
1:44:07
are one in many levels, and that's what I'm trying to work
1:44:10
on. Great.
1:44:11
And for humanity, it sounds like you.
1:44:13
And for humanity on that, Ditto. I'm even more bullish on
1:44:17
humanity. Yeah, Yeah.
1:44:18
Well, I really appreciate your heart, brother, and thanks,
1:44:21
Brett. Super excited you're running
1:44:22
and, you know, hope you, you win.
1:44:25
Early voting starts in Texas February 17th.
1:44:28
And like we said about Marjorie and Renee working on March
1:44:30
matters, Yeah, this election, whether you're Democrat,
1:44:33
independent, Republican, yeah, will March 3rd will determine
1:44:36
who represents W Austin. Yeah, Yeah, Here in the state of
1:44:39
Texas. Yeah.
1:44:40
Yeah. Well, I'll be helping on that
1:44:41
front. Thank you very much.
1:44:42
Thanks so much. Man, appreciate it, really
1:44:44
appreciate it. Yeah, So thanks everybody for
1:44:46
tuning in to another episode of Love Conquers Fear.
1:44:50
I mean, I want to share something personal with with you
1:44:53
all. So I woke up today, you know,
1:44:55
very, very tough day. We have a dog named Esther, who
1:45:01
is 16 years old, about to be 16 in a week.
1:45:05
And unfortunately, she's passing away today.
1:45:07
So this has been a this been a tough day.
1:45:10
Our daughter right now is flying in from from where she goes to
1:45:15
college at Tulane. So she dropped everything and,
1:45:19
and unfortunately she's she's she's to the point where we're
1:45:25
going to have to put her asleep. So it's going to be a, a really
1:45:29
moving moment to be there with her.
1:45:32
I remember when our dog Onyx passed away.
1:45:35
She was she was also 16 and we did this, but you know, it's if
1:45:42
if you haven't, if you haven't read the book Signs by Laura
1:45:45
Lynn Jackson, you're moved by Joseph's story, you know, with
1:45:49
his dad, you know, animal send signs to and you know, this is
1:45:54
I'll be looking for the signs from from Esther.
1:45:56
But I just want to want to say she was amazing dog and did a
1:46:01
lot for us over the years. Just gave a lot of love and
1:46:06
we're going to miss her a lot in the hurt household.
1:46:08
But thanks again for all the love you you're all giving me
1:46:12
out there, the heart shift that you're explaining that you're
1:46:15
having, you know, the books you're tuning into and keep it
1:46:19
coming. You know, thanks.
1:46:21
Thanks for all of your support. As I've said many times, I'm
1:46:23
self funding this. This is my love letter to
1:46:25
humanity and my hope that we all make it to this beautiful age of
1:46:30
abundance for all. Thank you.