A Conversation on How to Lead in a Post-Literate Work World

0:03 Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode number 200. That's right. This is our penultimate, such as it were, 200th episode. Now, we've covered a lot of books on this show. We've had a lot of conversations with a lot of interesting people. Folks who have brought a lot of insight to you, our listener, and brought a lot of insight to me as a host. And today, we have a collection of guest co-hosts who are rejoining us for this 200th episode to discuss a topic that I think is very important in our time, a topic that I think is critical for all of us who are readers and who are leaders.

0:56 And that is the topic of, well, literacy. What does it actually mean to be literate? What does it actually mean to have comprehension in a society that is rapidly becoming and transforming into a post-literate society? What does post-literate mean? Well, post-literate means that the average person fails to finish at least 5 books in a year. Regardless of genre, regardless of topic, regardless of interest, fails to finish. What a post-literate culture means is that individuals have the ability to read words in a book, but they don't have the attention spans in general, nor do they have the comprehension of what those words mean and the ability to bring those words and the meanings behind those words and the impact behind those words into their daily lives.

1:58 This is going to impact all of us because quite frankly, we are coming off of and we are exiting the long 20th century, which was a century of literature. If you don't believe me, think about this for a minute. Reader's Digest condensed great books between the 1950s and the 1970s, and they sold something like 30 to 50 million volumes of these condensed books. What that meant was people were actually interested not only in reading, but also appearing literate. And in a post-literate society, people aren't really that concerned with appearing literate.

2:38 They're very much concerned, however, with having opinions about things that make them sound as if they have been or are literate. This is a challenge for leaders. This is a challenge for followers. This is a challenge for all of us, not just in terms of education, in terms of comprehension, but also in terms of civic leadership, in terms of who we vote for and how we vote. Now, we don't tell people how to vote on this show, and we don't tell people why to vote. We do encourage people to think about their civic engagement.

3:15 And all civic engagement, I fundamentally believe, begins with literature. But what does that mean? And this is the question before our panel today. What does that mean in a post-literate society? So I have an august panel here, like I said, of several, several folks, and I would like to go through and have them all each introduce themselves. I have prepped them beforehand for what their introduction should look like. So you should be able to hear this on the audio and watch this on the video of this show.

3:45 Thank you. I would encourage you to check all these folks out. I will have links to all of their websites and all their resources in my show notes that are below the player of this podcast upon which you are listening. And yes, I'm hoping today that this will be a wide-ranging conversation. So I am going to start off with sort of the panel introduction

4:08 with the person who is directly to my left. Okay, I'm going to start with my upper left-hand side. side, and then he is going to pick the next person on his screen. So he needs to be looking at that right now. So the person to my left is Richard Messing. Richard's going to go ahead and introduce himself, and then he's going to pick the next person to introduce themselves, and we'll go around the room. We'll go around the panel that way and then get started with our conversation. Go ahead, Richard.

4:40 My name is Richard Messing. I'm the founder and executive director of the World Ethics Organization. Uh, this is my third, uh, opportunity to be on this amazing podcast with Hassan Sorels. Uh, the first time we discussed a book called Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. The second, uh, time we discussed the book called Leadership Lessons from the Five Books of Moses by Jonathan— Lord Jonathan, uh, Jonathan Sacks, who was the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom for 22 years. and wrote 40 books himself.

5:18 And then we're going to be talking about— in the next one, which will be before the end of the year, is a book by Melanie Phillips, who's a world-class journalist, about the decline of Western civilization and how to turn the decline around. The book is called The Builders' Stone. Thank you very much, Hasan, for giving me this opportunity to participate with these amazing people today. And I'm sure this is going to be an amazing podcast.

5:52 And the next person to introduce themselves, I select John Small.

6:03 My name is John Hill, aka Small Mountain. I run a company called Adapted Growth. We are a sales training, coaching, recruiting consultancy. I've been a guest a couple of times. It was always thrilling to come back and kind of spar with Hasan over the ideas and things that we take from the books. Most recently we did Coriolanus. We've also done Duane Geordi's Dream of Electric Sheep. And the first one I ever did with Hasan was Musashi, Book of the Five Rings, way back in the day. So excited to hop in with a bunch of other readers and hopefully get some good nuggets from my own, own to-be-read pile, which is massive and growing by the day.

6:43 I pick, let's go Tom Libby. Thanks, John. Hey, everybody, Tom Libby. I am the owner and CEO of a company called Smarketing Connect. We are a sales and marketing consulting firm. I also work on projects like Growth Graph and a couple others that kind of move around the sales and marketing atmosphere, stratosphere, I should say.

7:08 I think it was funny because you asked us to mention the last book we reviewed with each other, but the last time you and I did the podcast, we didn't review a book. We were doing Project Hail Mary and the massive impact of He-Man on the universe. But in fairness, we have also done books like The Good Earth from Pearl Buck and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. We don't always stick to the great books when it comes to

7:37 Novels. Sometimes we will do some historic fiction and things like that that we tend to talk about, because that's really the genre of reading that I prefer is historic fiction. But yeah, I'm happy to be here. I'm excited to kind of throw my 2 cents in here. As John mentioned, I'm not always right on the same page with Hasan, so sometimes it becomes very fun to debate these things. But I will pass it over to— who's to my left is Brian, is the guy to my To my side here.

8:12 Awesome. Hey, uh, so Brian Bagley, that's my name. Uh, I do, um, lots of different things. Um, I was, uh, spent several years in military service, oiling management. Um, I was a pastor for a while. Um, latest gig is, uh, Uh, in financial services. But, uh, but, uh, man, some of the, some of the podcasts we've done, Hassan, uh, been mostly religious in nature, although we did a great one on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. That was a great, uh, great conversation. Uh, When the Man Comes Around by Douglas Wilson was a good one, uh, that I really enjoyed.

8:52 Um, but there have been others, and again, just super grateful for the opportunity. Uh, and let's go with Uh, Hannah Gaila.

9:05 Hi everybody, it's Hannah and it's a pleasure to be here. Hi, Jesan, uh, good to see you again. We actually met fairly recently. I've been on different podcasts in different contexts with Hasan in the past, but the last one we discussed Dostoevsky Notes from the Underground, which was wonderful. And as you know, the conversation usually spans way over the actual topic. And I'm a big fan of Dostoevsky, hence the invite. And otherwise, in my actual life, I am a neurocoach and I'm a professor of business management.

9:53 So I have a very unique skill set, and generally speaking, clients come to me when they're high achieving and they don't feel like their brain capacity can solve whatever holds them back. And that's my specialty. And I'm very excited about today. I am deeply disturbed by the Numbers that you shared. I actually think that reading 5 books is over the top considering where we are. I think that if people read 1 book, it would still make them illiterate in a way, but even that would be a success. The numbers are horrible when you look at how many people don't read any book in a year.

10:42 But I get ahead of myself here. I'm going to call Neil, uh, as the next guest. Uh, hi everybody, Neil Kalachofsky. Uh, I'm a, uh, I guess in my background and training I'm a physicist. Um, and, uh, Hassan and I have, um, know each other professionally, um, through Growth Craft, but I've also been a guest on his podcast where we talked about G.K. Chesterton and then had a, uh, a journey that touched on J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Pink Floyd. And that was a lot of fun to kind of throw all that into a single podcast.

11:25 And finally, and the irony of this is not lost on me, I am about to publish my first book.

11:36 Given that we're discussing the death of literature in America, but That's me. And DeRolo, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. DeRolo Nixon, you're next, sir.

11:54 Can y'all hear me or no? Excellent. So this is DeRolo Nixon Jr. I'm an attorney. It's great to be back. Thank you, Hasan. Welcome to all of you. The last episode I was on was episode 196 on the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers. So I'm a I'm a federal trial lawyer, so it may not be ironic that Hasan and I like to talk about our country's founding documents a lot, as well as the 18th century's version of podcasts, right? Because that's what they were, right? A great media campaign to make sure that the Constitution passed because we were all done with those articles.

12:36 So happy to be here. Excited to talk about

12:42 I mean, I don't think literature is gonna die. And I'm sure we will talk about its elite status anyway, but it certainly doesn't bode well for freedom and for democracy to have an illiterate population. That's actually a recipe for tyranny. So great to be here.

13:02 Let's see, when I look I don't see— oh, yes, I do. So let's go with Dr. Qazi. Hey, everyone. My name is Momen Qazi. Thank you, Darrell. I am a professor of English at Tarleton State University. I have a degree in theology as well and a radio, TV, film degree. I do a weekly radio show called The Beatles and Beyond. So I really like the references to like Pink Floyd and so forth. I've done a few podcasts with Hasan. I met him in Granbury where he was the founder of the Granbury Jazz Fest. And so we know each other, you know, because of music and literacy.

13:48 And so those connections are strong. I've done a podcast with Hasan regarding Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. And then fast forward way into the— actually, go back to the beginning before Joseph Conrad. We went to Sir Alfred, Lord Tennyson and talked about his poem, great poem, Ulysses. And so we've had some great discussions. I really enjoy Hyesung's take on things. And I like, again, I think John mentioned that or maybe others as well about kind of bringing a little friction, you know, and pushback, and but all in a spirit of great dialogue and discussion.

14:38 And I thoroughly love this podcast. So I'm happy to be part of the 200th. It's awesome, you know. So thank you so much. And I'm looking forward to maybe mentioning later on

14:55 Because I teach at Tarleton State.

14:59 Every semester I teach The Odyssey. This morning in my classroom, one of my students, I kind of— she almost had a boastful tone, said, I've never finished a book in my life. And I'm like, oh, so hopefully we'll change that this semester. But yeah, it's a challenging time to be alive. Thank you, Ehsan.

15:26 To my left, both, both have spoken, so I'm gonna pick on— I think Kristin Horn is someone I've not, not heard from yet. That's right. I'm, I'm here. Thank you. I apologize if you guys hear the noise. I've got both my AC on and 2 toddlers in the room with me, so hopefully my mic is doing its job. But I'm Kristin Horn. I am a classically trained musician, but I'm also an author and Like Neil, I'm also— I think it was Neil— I'm also getting ready to publish a book, um, hopefully in the same vein, following in the, uh, tradition of Tolkien.

16:00 Um, so I write fantasy. Um, that's my favorite. Uh, in the past I have been on, uh, Jesan's podcast. We did Ender's Game first. Uh, that was a blast. Um, we've done Shakespeare's sonnets. We did Count of Monte Cristo a couple of times, and we still didn't get through it, all of it. I think the last one I was on was Mere Christianity, which was an amazing discussion. And then the next one I'm uh, on is actually Children of Huron towards the end of this year. Uh, very excited about that. Um, and yeah, as a prospective author/writer, it's, it's an interesting— that the article that he sent from The Atlantic was just thrilling to read but also incredibly depressing.

16:39 It was like, okay, what do we do? What do we do about this? Especially as a mother of 2 small children who thankfully I can honestly say love to read. So Yep, that's me.

16:55 And last but not least, I believe— I'm the one who forgot. I'm so sorry. I've been sitting here every time. David, I think you're— David, we'll wrap it up with you. All right. I'll be the caboose. My name is David Baumrucker. I'm a practicing psychotherapist stepping into my 8th year. I run my practice with my wife. Before I even did that, I worked as a kind of a behaviorist. We did a lot of clinical research, so studying people's behavior. And we talk about reading and focus. One stat that I just came across the other day that blew my mind was when people are on social media, 1.7 seconds is the amount of time that people take before to qualify if they're going to look at something longer or not.

17:34 Doesn't matter what kind of content. I found that to be— kind of jarred me a little bit. I imagine I have the privilege to be on several different podcasts with Hasan. I did Crime and Punishment, and then we did Orwell. I did a mashup. I cannot remember exactly which episode the last one was. Um, But, you know, and in terms of reading, I've actually not been reading for myself, but I've been reading a whole bunch of children's books because we just had my first son. And so it's been a totally different lens for me, kind of diving into the world of what that is and making sure that that's appropriate for my son.

18:07 But I'm excited to be here. Sometimes I'm aligned. Again, I think a lot of people said this really well. Sometimes I'm very much aligned. Sometimes I'm in a different planet or over there and with the conversation. So I look forward to this conversation, talking with all of you.

18:23 All right. Excellent. Excellent. Very good. We went around the horn there. Great introductions. Folks will be able to, to, to keep track and to, to monitor who's talking there. And so we're gonna follow the bouncing ball a little bit. If you're listening on audio, this will probably be a little bit of an easier thing for you to watch, a little bit of easier conversation for you to pick up on video. I would encourage you to watch the video of this. It will be on our YouTube channel. So go ahead and check that out.

18:50 But if you're following the audio, we're, we're And we're gonna try to, we're gonna try to keep this as, as clean as possible. So let's open up the door here because many of us are, are, you know, working in spaces and working in places where reading is fundamental to how we got to where it is that we are, right? Whether that's reading in psychotherapy research, whether that's reading in ethics, whether that's even reading and understanding music theory or the law. Reading got us to where we are today.

19:25 And, uh, I don't want to pick on Momen's student at all. However, I do believe that not only is she the canary in the coal mine, her attitude is the coal mine itself. We're long past the canary in the coal mine idea. We're now probably 4 miles deep and we keep digging deeper. And so I I think the question before us, and anybody on the panel can jump in to start. And again, keep your, keep your comments tight today. We have a lot of people here and a lot of different ideas. And as folks are talking, of course, take notes.

19:58 And as you hear things, you know, that you want to respond to, please, please feel free to do so. But let's start with this idea.

20:11 Well, we'll just jump in. You know me. I'm just going to go for it, right? I'm going to go for the jugular. Here we go. If we no longer believe that reading is fundamental, which we say we do, but our behavior, our cultural behavior says we don't. If we no longer believe that reading is fundamental, okay, what is a leader to do? How does a leader lead if reading is no longer fundamental? And by the way, I'm not talking about reading fiction. Let's start with the lowest-level thing. Let's start with the safety manual at work so you don't spill chemicals on yourself.

20:48 Or, you know, you don't— to Neil's career, you don't wind up opening up a black hole to like Alpha Centauri and sucking the entire Earth in because you didn't read the safety manual. Okay?

21:02 How do we lead people? How do we manage folks in our organizations and in our businesses If reading is not fundamental? I kick this out to anyone. Go ahead and start.

21:18 Sure, let's do it. So I've thought a lot about this, and I find myself in this space a lot with clients. My take is this. I think that the world we're going into is going to be prompt-based. And I think that The age of the self-directed learner is over. And so if leaders are going to lead, the leader needs to find a way to meet the people, or the people they're going to lead where they are, not where we wish they would be. And so this idea of prompt-based learning, you see it everywhere. You see it with how our social media is tuned up.

21:53 You see how people almost find themselves like a deer in the headlights when they are asked to do something intuitive. Yet the second you start to give them the kind of the what's next prompt, what's next, and you kind of cue them in, I don't get it. I'm not going to get into where I think that all comes from because I think it's a longer discussion. But I think when we think about what we're going to need to do as leaders, I think we have to fundamentally take some time to really look at going, how do I invite them into a process that I already have an intimate connection with?

22:24 Because I need to prompt them into the engagement. Because I think it's the engagement itself that's under attack. with people not reading anymore. Because again, the attention economy has made it so that everybody essentially is looking voyeuristically and they're not actually engaging. So we need to find something that actually pulls them out of that space. We need to invite them with some kind of prompt to engage with us as the leader.

22:54 Anybody can jump in. Thoughts on that?

23:00 Uh, yeah, I, um, but I just want to, uh, say that, you know, when we read something, what's actually happening is the author has something in his mind that he wants to transmit into the minds of others. So he puts it down on paper, and so that when people read it, hopefully what the author has in his mind will end up the same way in other people's minds. And so that's actually what's going on with reading. It's a way of communicating precisely what you want other people to understand about what's going on with you.

23:46 And so therefore, if people just stop reading, What's gonna happen is you're gonna have to actually just verbally tell people what's going on in your mind and explain it to them, explain it to them in detail, and have a back and forth interaction with them until you're convinced they understand what's going on in your mind, that they have the same thing in their mind that you have in your mind. So I don't— I think that that's what's going to happen. It's gonna— I mean, it happens this way anyway.

24:18 And so if people just stop reading, and people are gonna stop writing, and instead we're gonna be communicating with each other more, more that way.

24:28 I personally don't think there's anything new under the sun.

24:33 The— what writing and reading enabled us to do is to be able to put our thoughts down on paper And then we could make copies of that paper, make copies of what's in our mind, many copies, and then distribute it to massive numbers of people. That's the— that was what the invention of the printing press and writing actually enabled us to do. So we can influence many, many people in a very leveraged way. We can scale it. And so I think that just the scaling is going to be different. Then instead of books, it's going to be some other mode.

25:17 Hannah, go ahead. All right. So my take is a little different. I do agree with what Richard was saying about sort of, look, books are a medium. It's a tool how we communicate, right? Okay, fine, that has changed over the years, but that led me to bring up Marshall McLuhan's idea that the medium is the message, right? So we need to, back to David's point, remember that the medium shapes and informs the idea that is being communicated. So When the writer has time and struggles with finding the right words and, you know, like pours his heart into or her heart into the content and then the reader has the time to sort of wrestle with those ideas, etc., etc. That no longer seems to be the case.

26:21 We are in a TikTok, you know, what was it, 1.17 seconds timeframes, et cetera, et cetera. Your original question was, what is the leader to do? And to me, it leads to 2 outcomes. One, to echo what David was saying, you actually need to meet people where they are. And if your millennial, you know, or even Gen X workforce, let alone the Gen Z, is all about 1.17 seconds attention span, you have to get your messages to them and you have to communicate with them in a way that they will respond to. And to me, that means that it will lead to the outcome of storytelling becoming even more important than ever before.

27:19 That's number one. And number two, you better make sure that you are crystal clear in your message. You don't have time. You have to be really, really crisp in your thinking. Messy thinking, messy writing. You have to be very, very good at communicating. And also what that means then as a consequence is those who actually hone those skills and can communicate well, quickly, short, you know, content will get ahead of the PAG who's just consuming. So that's, that's my opening salvo. All right, Momen, you're, you're next.

28:04 Yeah, thank you. So one of the things that I like to open up a semester with at the university is to introduce Plato's introduction of Socrates in Apology. And one of the things that he says, and it's kind of a well-known quote, and it's the idea of the unexamined life not being worth living. And so what I want to do with my students is just basically say, hey, look, lots of different tribes, clans, cultures, groups have already prepackaged because they've already preexamined lots of these answers that we're all thinking about.

28:45 Who am I? Where am I from? Who are we? What is our purpose? And so on and so forth. But it's about who— where are you going to get those answers? And if you want, you can not ever read anything, and you'll just— you can just go out and accept any prepackaged answer that are very much part of our cultural discourse. Or maybe you can come up with some of your own ideas, but I think doing that requires some reading and some thinking and examining. And so that's just something I wanted to add into it is, is it as a leader, do we want to encourage our constituency to also be a leader by, by going out and perhaps thinking about the packaging that we're— that they're accepting or creating in their own lives?

29:36 Or are they going to go out and just accept the prepackage? Tom, go ahead. I just wanted to bring it back a little bit into the actual original question where Hasan was saying, what is the leader to do that, you know, with this safety manual that we're talking that we originally came up with? And I, there's a small piece of me that says, you either read it or you don't have a job. I mean, there is a certain point where we just have to put our foot down, right? And say, There are like, like consequences to actions.

30:09 And if the action is to not read a safety manual, what are we talking about here? Like the subject of this podcast we were all getting on originally, like when we were talking about like, and I know you guys started kind of dipping into the, like, you know, is the post-literature for leaders going to be a problem? And I agree with all that, sort of, sure. But the prompt, the initial question of the safety manual. Yeah. There's a piece of me that— listen, I spent 10 years in the kitchen, and if I gave somebody a safety manual about what to do and what not to do in a kitchen and they didn't read it, they're not working in my kitchen.

30:42 I don't care what their attention span is, and I don't care if it's 5 seconds or 5/10 of a second, right? So I think just kind of putting into perspective the prompt that was given to us, I think we're going beyond it real quickly, and I just want to make sure that I just kind of threw my 2 cents in there. If it is specifically about a safety manual, I don't care what their attention span is. They're reading it or they're not having a job with me. I just want to throw that in there. All right, Jon, go ahead.

31:09 I mean, to Tom's point, like, there is some ground to where I'm like, yeah, right? Like, then there's the other stuff, right? Like, I mean, a safety manual, sure, there's no reason. Now, I do think that I like trying to meet people where they are, but I think the bigger part of that is that if you're a leader, Like you can't just talk about being someone who's well-read. You need to be the example, right? Like being someone who reads a lot and talking about it with all of my clients and everything, I've gotten people to be more curious about it, right?

31:42 But for me, it goes back to like being a little kid. I was, I was a reader then and I would go ask my mom like, what does this word mean? And sometimes she didn't know the answer, but she would just say, well, if you go look it up, you will then remember it. If I just give it to you, you're not going to remember it. And then fast forwarding to whenever I started to like actually take work seriously and I started reading all these books about sales and leadership and personal development, I was working with a business partner and he had this line.

32:08 He goes, man, I wish all these business books were 1/3 as long as they are because 2/3 of it are like, here's the stories about why you should trust us. And we would have this argument that if it didn't have that Those case studies, those ideas in there, no one would learn anything from these books, right? So it was like this very interesting point we would talk about all the time that he wants the learning, but he doesn't actually want to go through the process to learn it. He just wants it to be like, like a Matrix download.

32:36 And all of a sudden he can fly a helicopter because his eyes fluttered really quickly. And unfortunately, like, that's not it. But I do think, I do think that if you set the example, like if you talk about what you're reading, If you talk about being in book club, if you talk about challenging yourself, upskilling yourself, you can be the example that other people can do too. I think that the hollow leadership of do what I say, not as I do is going to lead to a lot of people in very uncomfortable depths.

33:01 And then they have to pass all the knowledge verbally. And we all know how bad that can be because most of— like, there's a reason why the written word is better at passing down knowledge. than the verbal word is, because we're not really great at it overall. So. Brian Bagley, you're up.

33:27 Sorry, there's been so many great comments. One, just right off the bat, Richard, just really something you said really resonated with me was that That the, the book is an author. It's an author having a conversation. And so many of the, the great books are just full of wisdom and, and

33:51 they've, they've already faced many of the challenges that we currently face. And by just shutting that off and saying, we're just— I'm not going to read this particular book or whatever, I'm just not going to read books. To me, as a, as someone who leads other people, what, what that does to me is a couple of things. Number one, I, I need to budget for the fact that if, if most of the people that I'm leading are getting everything from reels on TikTok or Facebook or whatnot, I need to budget for manipulation.

34:27 I just got to budget for that, that they're not getting the whole story, that there's going to be some— we need to have longer conversations. And, and then, you know, and be aware of, of the, of what those messages could be and just ask great— be, be better at asking questions. Follow-up questions. If someone says something, where did that come from? Help me understand that. Can you, can you draw that out for me? Where— just get them to talk and think about what they just said. Uh. Is, is really helpful.

35:02 I have 3 college-age kids at the moment, and, and we have a lot of great conversations over the phone about things that have been said by their friends, what they saw online, or some, some podcasts. You know, there have been times in history where, you know, we didn't have a lot of books. Okay. I mean, we, all we had was oral traditions. And, you know, I feel like we're in a moment where we've never had more access to more information. And yet we're back to the oral tradition, long-form podcasts.

35:31 You know, great storytelling audiobooks, which is great. All of that's wonderful. But I think we just have to realize the moment that we're in and, and, and, and see the challenges that we're up against and budget for it.

35:47 All right, David, you're up, and then Richard, and then DeRolo. Go ahead, David. Yeah, these are great, great reflections. I think the question that came to my mind was, what do we do when common sense is no longer common? And when we're talking about what leaders do, what we can do in a post-literate society, I think we need to just pause. And this is my lens, is there's a generational tribalism and Gen Z is winning the generational tribalism. We can argue all day that they're not, but they are because they control social media and they control the internet.

36:18 And when we think about what's happening, we have to pay attention to who are the kings of that social tribe. And if we are going to be leaders and we are inevitably going to have to hire in people from a lower From a different generation, then one of the things we have to be mindful of is going, if we do not do anything that has any kind of affiliation, any kind of reflection to the dominant tribe, the dominant energy of the time, then we— it feels, it feels like it's nothing more than just a conversation with ourselves then.

36:54 Because if For me, the question you were saying in the beginning, Hassan, was what are leaders to do in a post-literate world? Adapt. It's adapt or die. And I get the point where we have to draw a line. I fundamentally get that. But I go back to what I said earlier. Common sense isn't common anymore. So this idea that we're going to draw a line on the basis of what? And are we going to not have any understanding of, like, what's the middle ground? I guess what I'm trying to get is, we have to meet people at a certain point, and we have to have an expectation, and I think what we're trying to do in this conversation is trying to kind of crowd around and create a centralized arena.

37:33 Like we're trying to form an arena in this conversation about what we do. That's my takeaway, but I'll leave it there. I mean, that's just— I think there's been some great reflections, but I fundamentally think that we're up against a social hierarchy situation here, and the hierarchies are governed by generation, like the tribalism of each generation. And in my opinion, just from talking to people for thousands of hours, Gen Z is winning hands down.

38:01 All right, Richard, go ahead. You're up, and then DiRollo, and then Hannah. I'd like to suggest that the greatest leaders are the greatest teachers. In the Jewish tradition, that's definitely the case. the great rabbis were just teaching people. That's what they were doing. They were just teaching all the time. Moses said to the Jewish people when they were about to come out of— when they came out of slavery, out of Egypt, teach your children what happened here. Teach them. And so education has always been the foundation of the Jewish people.

38:40 And so, but it's very interesting You know, if we end up in a culture where people stop reading, great leaders are gonna have to teach people what they're not learning through reading. So if you have a safety manual that people aren't gonna read, if you're a leader, you better teach people how to be safe.

39:03 The other thing that's interesting that— who was it? Yeah. Mauman, you mentioned Socrates. Socrates, isn't it interesting that he was one of the greatest leaders that ever lived, but yet he didn't write anything? It was all through conversation. He taught, he was constantly teaching, constantly teaching through conversation. And so I think that's the greatest leaders are going to be, have to be great teachers. So I'll leave it, I'll leave it there. And yet we know Socrates through the one who wrote, and that was Plato, his student.

39:43 Yeah, right, right, exactly. All right, DeRolo, go ahead.

39:50 Oh, hear me? Perfect. So you can argue, Richard, that we only know of Socrates through the writing of Plato. And of course, one would wonder, you know, would we know Moses without, you know, the Torah being written, right? Um, but that's, that's just a response to what you were just saying. Uh, and I, I find it, um, a powerful insight that teaching and leadership go hand in hand, that one requires the other, that teachers, uh, at least from the 1950s to the 1970s in America, formed, uh, like a core of, of some of the most powerful leaders in America.

40:31 And thus it's fitting that as public education at least began to disintegrate from that point forward, that leadership moved elsewhere. But this is where I wanted to start. Why read at all? When I think of a manual, say for example, to tell me how to make the tech of this laptop work so I can be heard, I don't want to read anything. I want a video. And I was born in the '70s. I want a video that shows me how to do this thing that I don't like that is important so that I don't have to think, to read, to figure it out.

41:09 Now let's go to the other end of the scale. Okay. How do you learn how to do a federal trial without doing the trial yourself? You can read an excellent work about how to do trials and the various submissions you have to do, the various briefs. You can read copies of the briefs. That's all great. It's all important. But it's also important to watch a video of a federal trial because then all of a sudden certain insights click and you realize this thing that I thought was important is irrelevant.

41:38 And this other piece that I did not think was important, it's actually important. And so,

41:45 you know, I can— I mean, I'm a published author. I have a book I'm working on, a book I finished in December, a book I published in November of 2020, naturally about President Trump a week before the 2020 election. But anyway, so I can appreciate, you know, I can appreciate that writing allows you to deliberate, to take with you that conversation and mull through it, right? It's just, I think on some level with where tech has moved from Gutenberg's press to Netflix, now among the things, and actually TikTok's a better example, I think one of the things we need to think through is, okay, so we understand that we need literature.

42:35 We understand that there's— there are going to continue to be books that are published, but maybe certain aspects of knowledge are better communicated through, you know, not a soundbite because nothing really is, but that's just marketing and advocacy, a soundbite, but a video. You know, and I've, I've had jobs in the law where the training was not a manual. It was a video and it was mad boring, but it allowed them to present it here. Here's the content. Then they could ask questions. Do you have any questions about what you saw?

43:09 Okay, go through that next, next, next. So that's my 2 cents on that.

43:18 Hannah, go ahead. All right, I raised my hand and I had so many comments, but I'll try to tie it together. First of all, I think Richard was talking about the teachers, and to me it's like, yeah, sure, yes, teachers, we, we need that, and that's where essentially the leaders are now, the teachers. But then That teacher isn't just dispensing wisdom. The key is in the discernment, in the decision, okay, what is important and what isn't? And then they have to meet the students where the students are.

44:03 I think that David was talking about it, and it's everything. I mean, I have a teenager at home, and I will tell you, if it is a book like this, if it's interesting, he's gonna read it. And if it's, you know, boring but it's this big, he's not gonna touch it. Videos are so much better and for many things. And, you know, we might be looking at the time when very few people will read books. We're gonna have like a Harpsichord situation here when that's like a niche, unique, kind of like a quirky Oh, you know, she reads, hahaha.

44:42 But really, majority of people will be learning through very different means. And AI is here to stay. And, you know, the question is how we're going to leverage it. I think that to the point of who said it just before me, Dorolo, you said, you know, like not only videos, but also just living through and learning behaviorally. That is, would people— where people learn the best and deepest, but also then what kind of training or discovery we put in front of them, that's where the leaders have the biggest kind of leverage.

45:28 And I think that going back to, well, you're the ones who are The older generation carries the torch of the wisdom and knowledge and all of that. But then I need to know— I'm going back to my earlier point about clarity— I need to know what in this federal trial is a roadblock, what could be complicated, what can trip you. And I want you to do this, to sit in front of this mad boring video to actually get it. Like, there's so much content that the selection, the filtering, and understanding what gets through and why— like, you need to know this because it looks like a footnote, but it's gonna break you.

46:20 That is the role of the more wise, you know, more experienced person on the team. That should be the leader. There were like 15 other notes, but I'm gonna let other people go. Don't worry. I'll have you all back on the remainder of this year. So any notes that you have, hold onto them for other books that you're showing up for, because we're, this is gonna set the table. This kind of conversation is gonna set the table for where we're going, not only for the remainder of this year, but also for, um, a good chunk of, uh, of season 6.

46:50 And wait till you see the season 6 book list. You'll understand exactly why I'm bringing this up now. Uh, Kristen, go ahead. I just wanted to speak to, uh, maybe this is top of mind both as a— I was up until recently a music teacher, and then I've, you know, I've got 2 toddlers here, but I was thinking a lot about expectations is what came to mind. Um, and our— I maybe I shouldn't say our generation, there's people much older than I am. I'm a millennial. But I think it comes down to expectations and what, what do we expect people to be able to know how to do.

47:27 I think that's just what it comes down to, and that is what's changing. And then somebody said it here before, because that is good leadership, is you adapt, but you, you meet people where they're at and you help them rise. Um, I think that might be, um, kind of a follow-up question, is, is how, how do we start to approach that? And I really love what Hannah has been saying about engaging them, or engaging people, followers, whatever. But this, it can lead to a lot of frustration, this disconnect between what our expectations and their expectations.

48:07 And then they don't even know, people who don't read, they don't know what they don't know. Right? And they don't know what they can't do. And we're just looking at them being like, why can't you do this? This is like, everybody used to be able to do this. And they're frustrated because they're like, nobody my age knows how to do this. And so we're just mad at each other. And so I think that might be the bridge that leaders really need to look at and start to engage. I also loved some of the comments that David has been making.

48:43 But there's a gap that we need to bridge for sure. And I think that might be the how that we're all kind of like trying to tackle. But also, you know, this thing that is so near and dear to all of our hearts is this reading, these books that have meant so much to us. Books were my best friend growing up. I didn't— I was very shy. I was introverted. I didn't make friends. I just had my books. And so that's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about passing it on to my kids. But reading the article that you sent us, it was like, oh, I hadn't even really put together that reading is what allowed me to do that.

49:19 And so, um, to some of these other folks' point is communicating that.

49:25 What does reading get you? It's a marketing thing, right? I think there's at least one marketer here, right? It's a marketing thing. You got to tell people this is what reading gets you. And if you don't do it, this is what's going to— and, and the one of the things that people are so frustrated about is we do a lot of reading. Uh, it was— there was, there was something you said at the very beginning, and I was like, we gotta define that because, um, again, the article you sent, we read more than ever, but we read— it's all short form and not always well thought out and often inflammatory and Very one-sided.

50:03 So the longer form, the things that really require the deeper thought, contemplation, that's disappearing. There's no room for it. Not in TikTok when you have a second to make an impression.

50:19 Where am I going with this?

50:24 The benefits, I think, I think that's part of what is being lost is the Again, I hadn't even thought about exactly what, what all does reading do for me. That might be a starting point is just really starting to communicate over and over and over again, using things like TikTok and being like, hey, if you do not read, this is what you're going to learn. These are the dangers. Here's all the benefits that reading gets you. Let's find something that will engage you in a reading. And then, I don't know, maybe offer some letter ladders.

50:58 laddering, right? Give people the reading content where they can— where what they can enjoy and engage with, and then give them a step up, and then give them a step up. Because we, we often go to Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, and if you can't read that— Dostoevsky— if you can't read that, well then you're not a reader and oh well. And I think a lot of people, especially younger, even people my age— I, I have personal friends who've been like, well I don't get it, and I never have. And so I'm just not gonna try.

51:28 So I guess I'm not a reader. I guess reading is not for me. Um, and so there is— there's, uh, somebody else mentioned middle ground. I think there needs to be a middle ground, finding something. That was my one issue with that article, is she talked about one of the bestsellers. And you know what, I didn't love the sentence that, that the Romantasy Bestseller that she mentioned. I didn't love that sentence either. Um, but be careful about looking down or criticizing too hard, because at least they're reading.

52:05 And if they're reading, that is some common ground, no matter what they're reading. And if you criticize that too hard, you'll lose them completely.

52:17 All right, cool. Thank you, Kristen. Momen, Dr. Kazi. Yeah, thank you. There's so many great comments that people have made, and, but I keep coming back to what Tom said of, if they don't read, they're fired. You know what I mean? Like, I think there is a pragmatic element to it. But anyway, let's come back to a big conversation that just recently occurred and And then when I asked my students if they had seen the film The Odyssey directed by Christopher Nolan, absolutely the entire room, their hands were down.

52:54 In other words, nobody over the summer, all my students, none of them went to go see that film. They could have cared less. But boy, all my friends and all the people in my generation and all the people my age, it was such a big debate. Even Emily Wilson, the translator that Christopher Nolan was inspired by to do his version of that film or that story, kind of dissed the movie in some ways, not the cinematic aspect of it but the writing part of it. What I was going to say about The Odyssey is there's this entire conversation, this dialogue, heated back and forth, people just fighting to the you know, like down to their nails about it, you know, and, and there's an entire other generation that could have cared less even about the movie, not just the book by Homer.

53:43 So, and then who is Homer? That's a whole different conversation. My point is, is the director of the film, Christopher Nolan, he was inspired by a translation that focused a lot on PTSD. If you're even involved or interested in that conversation, The person who got to kind of direct that conversation and trailblaze in a way a new way of thinking of Odysseus, it was Christopher Nolan who was a reader, who is a reader, right? And so the thing is, is if you go to the film and you watch the movie and you don't know Homer, boy, there's a lot he left out and even some things he rewrote and The ending is Tennyson's, and it's sort of like there's a whole lot of stuff that a really informed person is going to say, well, that's not quite Homer, but that's definitely not a Greek way of thinking about certain aspects of heroism and so forth, or being brilliant and clever or complicated or a man of twists and turns.

54:53 And but at least Christopher Nolan is the one who, as a leader, is reframing the narrative or even rewriting the story in some way, right? And then Emily Wilson comes along and kind of disses him, but is grateful for all the books that got sold. But I don't know who read them, but it could— what might— you know, hopefully they'll read Emily Wilson this semester. My bigger point there is,

55:24 the people who have read The Odyssey are gonna go to that movie and think, oh my goodness, this is wonderful, but boy, he sure left a lot out, right? Mm-hmm. And then it happens that way with every great, you know, like whether it be a Lord of the Rings adaptation or a Silmarillion adaptation on Amazon Prime or whatever, someone always says, well, the book was better. Well, it's because we got to see all the, the extra details and all that inner texture and nuance. And so whenever we're leaders, of course, are readers, but then what do we want to communicate to our students that they're just missing out on so much of the story if they're not also readers themselves?

56:11 Thank you, Mauman. Tom, go ahead. Yeah, so I wanted to— I was a little abrupt, I guess, when my first comments came up because I wanted to be clear here. I'm not just saying read this or die. Like, it's not read this or you're fired. I wanted to make sure that you guys understand that I would go through the whys. I would compromise. I would go through that process of trying to get them to understand. Then if they didn't read it, they'd fire me. I want to be clear on that, number one. Number two, I think Richard brought up a couple of really nice points with the oral histories and And oral histories, I think there are cultures out there that still leverage them really, really, really well.

56:51 And they're not required anybody to read anything about their oral histories, but yet expect— their expectations to their youth are very different than what our expectations in general society are to our youth when it comes to that kind of stuff. And then lastly, not lastly, but Darula, I think one of the things that you said is probably the most vital and important things that anyone has said so far, which is You either have to lead by example, learn by example, or learn by doing. And all of that, none of that really can be done on whether or not you are or are not reading, or whether you are or are not watching a book, watching a video.

57:26 So some of it is just you have to do it, and you have to take the advice from somebody who's been there and done that before you and do it. The last thing— that was the last thing about the comments. Now, my new comment here is, I think the one thing that we're missing out on that we don't are not emphasizing enough that what literature gave us that needs to be either replaced with something else or reemphasized through literature is the value of critical thinking. It's really about critical thinking more than anything else, because you can get critical thinking through oral histories.

57:57 You can get critical thinking through video and movies and tutorials and all that stuff that we're talking about. You can get all of that. But somebody else had mentioned something about the expectation. I think, Kristen, it was you. Like, I think that's The, the degree of difference between our setting our expectations of what we can teach and what we can learn versus what the critical thinking aspects are of it from the material that we're leveraging to do that. I think that's where the biggest gap is, and I think it would sadden me to think that it— that if literature was lost, we would lose that critical thinking skill.

58:32 But I have this weird feeling that, that They're just figuring out a way to replace it. It's not so much that, that the— it's the medium that we're all holding on to that might lose its ground, but it's not— it's— we're trying to figure out other ways to get critical thinking through the process. And David, I would love— I'm not going to bring it up here, but I would love to debate you on this whole Gen Z thing winning, because I'm a father of a bunch of Gen Zers, and I don't think they're winning anything.

59:01 I'm just being very Honest. I, I, I, all of my kids are Gen Z. All of their friends are Gen Z. I am around them all the time. I don't think they're winning anything. And we can debate that another time, but I would love to, I'd love to talk with you about it more in depth. Right. I will set up, uh, I will set up side quests. We'll do a little side quest. Maybe we'll do some extra, some extra bonus episodes during the year. Please send me your, uh, send me your, your hot takes. I want to have hot take episodes.

59:29 You know, you open, you Look at Tom making, giving me new content, new things for, new things for clipping on YouTube Shorts and TikTok. All right. Don't put it on TikTok that I think TikTok, the Gen Z is losing this battle. Don't put that on TikTok. Well, we'll go viral. That'll be a thing. We'll go viral. John, go ahead. Well, I was, I was thinking about what DeRolo said a second ago about how like on certain things he wants a video and I was like, Okay, you know, like this past weekend my coffee grinder broke, and so I'm, I'm deep into YouTube land trying to figure out how to break this thing apart so I can get the right part and do this thing.

1:00:05 And I was like, okay, wait a minute, wait a minute. But here's, here's the thing that I come back to: I had to go watch that video because I didn't know enough about troubleshooting that specific kind of electronics with that kind of stuff. And so because I'm missing the foundational knowledge, I have to go Right. So if you're not reading, if you don't have a base level understanding of the thing that you're trying to get good at, right? And I love like the musical theory stuff, right? Hasan and I originally connected because of martial arts, right?

1:00:35 You are not going to get good at martial arts from reading a book. I promise it's not going to happen. I've also been a poker player. You're not going to get good at poker just from reading a book or being in sales, right? But if you read enough, And you have some conceptual understanding, some discernment, then the books become actually really, really helpful, right? So I think part of the problem, and this is maybe opening up a can of worms, is the transactional nature. This might come back down to expectations of read this, it's going to make you better.

1:01:03 Be a reader so that way you will be the, the kind of professional person you want to be. But just thinking of like, oh my God, I got to read this book, is probably putting it on a level to where expectations are never going to meet up to those, to the, to that level. And we're forest for the trees kind of situation. Being a reader means that you can figure anything out, you can go upskill yourself and everything else like that. But I think a lot of people get stuck on read this and then you're going to be great.

1:01:28 And I think that transactional nature is ruining most of what I think this hobby has become for all of us here, because it didn't start out with that tit-for-tat kind of situation. That's all I got.

1:01:43 Richard, and then Neil. Go ahead, Richard. I wanted to make, actually follow on what Tom was talking about, critical thinking. 20 years ago, when I pivoted and took a new direction for my career and my life, I started to write a book. I didn't know if I could write a book. I'm still writing that same book, by the way. And, but what happened was I started eventually realizing that the writing of the book was actually

1:02:18 part of the way I think. It's like my thinking process was accelerated by writing the book because if I couldn't write down my thoughts, I couldn't articulate it in writing, then I wasn't clear. I, I had to be able to write it down in order to be— to know that what I, what I was thinking about and developing in my mind was actually clear, it made sense. So I think that, uh, that, that's what's going on. So when people are writing, they're thinking. It's a part of the thinking process. And if people— and therefore it's very valuable if you can write something down and what you've written down is valuable because you put an enormous amount of thought in it and you've developed this, this, this whatever it is you develop in your mind and you're able to write it down and then other people are reading it and it provides value for them.

1:03:12 You're not gonna get that value unless you read the thing. And it's gonna be very difficult in my, I think you just, there's just not another medium where you can actually develop one's thoughts and thinking in any other way other than writing it, than writing. I just don't know what other medium there is like this. And so I think what's happening is technology is dumbing down our youth. Because if our youth, if they're not, if the youth aren't writing, and they're not reading, and they're just into these short video clips, and these— then they're not really developing their intellect.

1:04:00 And eventually society is going to realize this, and, uh, there are going to be those that are not going to read and they're just going to look at videos, and, and then it's going to be like 2 different classes. It's going to be an intellectual class, and then there's going to be those who aren't intellectual. Thank you, Richard. Neil, you're up, and then DeRolo and Brian and Dave. Yeah, John, I figured out the problem, by the way. Critical thinking. The frequency of your voice and the frequency of my air conditioner in the corner there are actually kind of the same, because I could hear everyone else, but I couldn't hear you.

1:04:39 So I shut off the AC, and you came through loud and clear, sir. So no problem. So I guess the original question was, what's the role of a leader in the post-literate world? And one of the things that I find interesting about this discussion is that there seems to be this acceptance that the electronic culture, social media, is here to stay and that we have to live with that. And I'm going to challenge that to say, I don't think so. I think there's actually a coming crisis in the online culture, and it's coming fast.

1:05:15 And I think in like maybe the next 3 to 10 years, and the crisis is gonna be one essentially driven— so someone said AI is here to stay. It is. And that's the problem. The problem is that fundamentally, eventually you will not be able to trust almost any communication that comes to you electronically. Am I really on this call? You don't know, right? Hey, Hasan's met me once, right? But you don't actually know. I could be an avatar, right, having this conversation. I would sound like this. I would look like this, right?

1:05:49 And so to me, the job of the leader— and I, I don't have the answer, and I don't think anyone on this call has the answer— but is to navigate to whatever is waiting on the far side of that. And something on the far side is going to require books. Because when you consume a book, it is fundamentally different from consuming electronic media in terms of the way your brain engages with it, in terms of how it fits into, you know, everything else. I didn't see a YouTube video that said, hey, the issue with why you're not hearing John correctly is, you know, the AC in the corner.

1:06:28 I just kind of went back to some basic, you know, understanding I'm sure I read in a physics book 35 years ago and said, oh, that's probably what it is. And it turned out actually that that's what it is. But the, the, the main thing I just want— yeah, uh, I just want to, uh, sort of, uh, communicate is I don't think that where The job, I'll say this, I think the job of the leader is to plan for the post-electronic culture world where we can no longer trust anything that comes to us electronically.

1:07:06 And I think there will be some kind of crisis and it's eventually, you know, maybe when you simply cannot have an electronic communication that you can rely on at all. It's going to be bad for a while, by the way. It's going to be sort of like the collapse of the Roman Empire, and there'll be some kind of bizarre dark age that, that, uh, follows it. But I think on the far side— so I think the, the job of the leader is to try to craft whatever is on the far side of that collapse. But I think you can see it.

1:07:42 Hmm. You can see it. I think partly the anxiety levels you see in people are driven by the fact that they don't know what to believe about anything anymore. Well, you know, well, you know, Neil, leadership is the— it's not the solve for anxiety. But leaders are in the role of, to your point, crafting a vision. And if leaders aren't doing the reading and doing the work to craft that vision, and don't even know, quite frankly, the right questions to ask, even to begin to craft that vision. Well, as it says in a book older than, and one that we've referenced even on here, without a vision, the people perish, right?

1:08:26 And I would not be, I am not the first person to say that. So, all right. Oh, and by the way, you'll never really know if I'm not an AI. You'll never really know. That's the point. That's true. DeRollo, You're up. Go ahead. And then Brian, Dave, Momen, and Hannah. Go ahead, DeRolo.

1:08:49 Wave your hand around. Do the thing with the audio. There you go.

1:08:55 Working audio. Perfect. Thank you, audio. There's like some kind of box around it that tells me the sound is working, and I'm colorblind, so I won't tell you what color it is because I don't know. Anyway, first, so Tom, I think it was Mr. Hill and Professor Kabili-Gala who who, who, um, came up with those insights you were talking about. Um, what— so I'm gonna pivot from that. I just wanted to state that because I think it's important. Um, what I find interesting is many of us had a college experience where we were reading these books, and because I went to school in the '90s, we were reading books.

1:09:30 It was not— we weren't reading stuff on a computer. But then you're sitting in a cafe with others and you're debating ideas, you're talking about things. You're drinking some kind of beverage, hot, cold, or both, and, um, you're having these lively discussions about ideas. And I just wonder, um, as we depart from or move past a literate culture, um, is it merely coincidental that also children, right, college students, whatever you want to call them, aren't meeting in cafes and debating ideas? Or if they are meeting in cafes, they're meeting in cafes like this, right?

1:10:08 Even for the people right across the table, right? And so that lively exchange of humanity, right? Ideas, views, emotions, saliva, sweat, odors, right? That, that's— Odors. That, that's not happening. And I, I don't think it's, it's merely coincidental. I think it's causative right now. I think, and I can live with the bias, of course, because I'm a humanities guy, right? I have a degree in English lit, and I write for a living and argue stuff. I'm an attorney, right? I'm always dealing with words and have to write things.

1:10:50 But, um, how does math work when you can't read? How do you learn physics when you can't Read and then show your work, you know, because I think that the professor who accepts that you can do the complex equations in your head and then spit out the answer and allows that needs to be fired, you know, like she needs to lose her job. And, or she just needs to say, okay, good, write it down. Show me, show me how you got from this equation we gave you to the answer. And so, you know, Reading enables us to solve more and more complex problems.

1:11:29 And so, as we move from that to— forget about just information on TikTok— as we move from that to just people are consuming content on TikTok, um, I, I just think the ideas that we can handle will just get dumbed down. And I think just like the Atlantic piece, which is here on the other computer over there, that's what I was looking at. Points out, you know,

1:11:56 just the complexity of the ideas we can handle evaporates. And so we're more susceptible to believe things like all policy problems are capable of being solved with a basic common sense solution or compromise. There's millions, tens of millions of Americans who think that that is true. And I mean, I've done politics. It's not true. It's false. The wool is being pulled over the eyes of those newly minted voters. And that's dangerous because they will accept that conclusion. Listen to someone try to explain or read in a newspaper someone trying to explain to them, no, this is actually Very complex.

1:12:45 That's, for example, is the reason why we have 2 major political parties, because we still can't agree on this, this, this, this, this. I just think that they're less likely to accept that and more likely to accept a demagogue. And so one of the principal points I keep asserting is that the post-literate world is one where tyranny is easier to assert over greater amounts of people.

1:13:15 Definitely agree with that.

1:13:18 David, and then Momin, Hannah, and then John. Go ahead, Dave. Yeah, again, great point. I want, I want to go back to— I mean, one aside, I'm with Neil on the, uh, social media death. I think that Gen Z is having their Timothy Leary moment right now, um, because 25% of them have dumb phones and Just a fun aside. But we're thinking about how do you bridge the gap? I think we're having that. That was my thing I was thinking on. So much of my job is about psychoeducation. People know what they don't want to feel, but they don't know how to get there.

1:13:52 That's 99% of my job. And a lot of what it is is helping people get out of recipe knowledge. Like, they know there's an engine in the car, but they don't know how the engine works. Well, we do that with mental health. We do that with psychology. We do a So to do that, you have to— and I'm with Richard here— writing, there's something to writing. And so to get people to start journaling about their thoughts helps them gain the ability to forecast their feelings. And so to get them to have more dynamic engagements with themselves journaling, I take the time to find very unique excerpts from things like Napoleon Hill's Outwitting the Devil.

1:14:29 To Carl Jung, to Jim Rohn, you name it. I find all these little excerpts that are very, very provocative, and I'll send them homework and they get this. And then we spend time in session talking about the interpretation, about how this is relatable. And this is why I'm bringing this up. I think that to me is the magic bullet here. Finding a way to make it relatable seems to be the thread that we're all talking about, is we don't know how to relate. Something that has been so transformative or so maybe eye-opening to us.

1:15:01 Yet at the same time, for Gen Z, and why I made the comment earlier about just the generational tribalism, I think it was what Dr. Kwasi, you were saying about no one in your class saw The Odyssey. Well, no one in the Gen Z sphere, the leaders of that sphere said it was cool. So the mob doesn't go to see it. So it's not a relatable function. And so I think when we're talking about how do we lead, I think there's a big piece of this. And, you know, someone mentioned critical thinking. Absolutely.

1:15:31 You have to make critical thinking relatable. And so you have to find ways to give them almost like a buffet, like a sampler platter of all these small little things that in my world is I'm trying to see what you grab onto. I'm trying to see what actually stimulates you. And then I'm going to double down on that. Because if that's the vehicle that takes us there, let's go. And we're going to use that, the thing that's going to pioneer our way forward. And then from that, we build. That becomes our trunk and we build branches off of it.

1:15:58 But I think that that's where leadership has to go on some level, is that we have to find something that's very relatable to use as the vehicle. And we kind of have to take a shotgun approach to say, I'm going to give you a whole bunch of different things, and I hope one or two of these things resonates with you. Then we're going to clear the table and I'm going to go, okay, those two things. Now we've got what we're going to do, and now let's move forward. And it doesn't matter where we start. We're going to go visit everything, but let's just figure out where you want to start.

1:16:22 And that's the point I was making earlier about meeting them where they are.

1:16:27 Excellent. Thanks, Dave. Brian, you, you unfortunately tapped out and then you unmuted yourself, but I'm going to go to you and then, Momen, I'm going to go to you. Okay, so Brian, go ahead and don't tap yourself out. There we go. There we go. Now my hand's down. Hey, no, I I— so many things, guys, have been said so good. Um, I just— to kind of pile on, I think what some of these, um, some of the challenges— I, I think a lot of this is just emphasizes like local relationships are going to be so important.

1:17:03 Like, like how does a leader exercise influence? And the, the, the sheer volume of content that's out there on, on literature. Like, I mean, commentaries people do like ours, like this one, the, the curated list of books is amazing. But there's a lot of— there's a lot of content out there on, on these books. And how do you know which ones are worthwhile? I mean, who has integrity, who doesn't? And I think it's going to be a lot of Um, local relationships are going to be so important going forward.

1:17:40 You know, that, that kind of that dark age that somebody was talking about, I, I can see it coming. The way that you get through it is it's, it's the people in your neighborhood. You gotta know them. Go over, you know, take them a plate of cookies. I don't know, talk to them. Yeah, you know, there you go, new tribe, whatever. But, but like, but, and then, and then in that, that's where you exert your influence. Okay? That's where you begin to ask the questions. And, and I think a leader in that setting is going to be able to like help curate and gatekeep some things.

1:18:15 Okay, like there's going to be, there's going to be an alpha that rises in that bunch. Okay, who is that going to be? If you're the leader, then, then help, help be the gatekeeper. The problem is, you know, ABC, NBC, CBS, those gatekeepers are gone. Like they're like, there's, you know, information is just free flow these days. And so, and some of it's great, some of it's terrible, some of it's just decent. Okay, fine. And so, you know, I think there is some— we got to plan for this post-election, this post-electronic culture.

1:18:52 And I think being intimately involved in your local school board, your local city council, Like, that's where change is going to happen or be— or sanity preserved. Bowman, you're up.

1:19:12 So I just want to say how much I appreciate everyone's comments again, and I especially appreciated Neil's optimism. He kept on referring to the future. I want to say that dystopia is already here, but, you know, Anyway, I'm in the trenches now. I mean, I think I'm in the maybe the last part of my career. I've been teaching in the university for 36 years, and so I'm kind of like near the end of a very long career, but I'm there, and I want you all to be assured that professors, at least in the English department at the Tarleton State, we are encouraging people to have those conversations across tables, in person, with people, with a book, taking notes, and doing all those things that a lot of us remember doing back in the '80s or the '90s, whatever, in the 20th century.

1:20:19 The biggest issue, though, is, and it keeps coming back to this notion of critical thinking, If people don't have

1:20:28 the initial skill set, then AI is just gonna replace and they're not gonna know how to discern between excellent, good, or crap, right? And so what we're doing even now in 2026 at the university level, and I know a lot of people are bashing universities now, but we are still, many of us, fighting the good fight. And that is trying to get people to think, read, and write, not generatively with AI or ChatGPT, but also, I mean, literally using their minds. And ultimately, the whole point, and whether you're a musician or a poet, and by the way, I didn't know we were, you know, pushing our books, but I wrote one back and it's called Migratory Words.

1:21:17 The issue is the life of the mind, imagination. And, you know, whether you're reading the, the, the Pentateuch, or whether you're reading the Bible, the Quran, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, or Machiavelli's The Prince, man, it's so amazing when your mind can go to town on what's going on in those words that are written down. So I just wanted to come back to that and assure you and our audience who listens to a great podcast like yours, Hasan, and that is it's still happening. There are people who are fighting the good fight.

1:21:54 And yes, it feels like the dystopia, the future is now, but we're, we're trying to hold on. And I think that's one of the reasons that your message and the whole lessons on leadership from great books and classical literature is so important still. It's about the life of the mind.

1:22:15 Imagination. Hannah, go ahead. Thanks. I think it's my turn, and I will push back and say possibly preposterous, um, thing, but I actually, um, don't think that for the non-readers, for the Gen Z, for beta, who— whoever you want to— the people who are not reading The issue is, or the goal isn't the life of the mind. It isn't. It is for you, maybe. It is for me. I love being on the walk and thinking about— I read this fantastic passage 2 days ago and I still think about what that means. For most people, I think going back to what David was saying, and actually Kristen was saying it earlier too, it's the pricing versus value.

1:23:06 Show them the value. What's What's in it for me? That's what I want to know, right? And so for younger people or for those who are currently not reading, what's in it is that in that small community— and like my kid, going on walks, talking to friends, being in real world really has a huge value, an increasing value, and they are picking up on that. But when you have that small group of friends, They need to, um, they need to know what the books, what the great books are good for them. And the answer is, oh, you want to make a friend?

1:23:44 This is what you do. Oh, that friend betrayed you? Read this. All of these very practical things. And I think that it was, Kristen, like, we need to start with the, with the ladders. We need to start with the smaller blocks. And the number one building block for them is A, showing the value first, like, hey, I got here because blah blah blah blah blah, or like, when you have this problem, this is the answer. That's critical. And then secondly, when you have— and I have classrooms of students who you put them at the round table and say discuss, and they don't know what to do because they don't know how to ask questions.

1:24:26 So the moment we start with the building blocks, I would say, ask the right questions. And that goes back to the leaders. Like, what questions do we need to ask? And there are, you know, hundreds and thousands of books on questions that leaders should be asking and then communicating to their teams. Like, okay, what's in it for us? How does it apply to me? What does that mean for my department? All of these things so that students, kids understand that the art of getting from not knowing to knowing is asking questions.

1:25:07 That to me is where we're kind of failing because we have been doing a lot of the dump of data and dump of information, But now what is not exactly what we spend a lot of time talking about. And I think that is where we need to kind of go back to. At least I would like to. And I'm just saying, that's what we're doing in English classes still. That's what's happening on Wednesday. As a matter of fact, you just took my syllabus right up. All right, great. John, go ahead. And then Richard, you're up.

1:25:43 The part that I think was really interesting, um, and you and I talked a little bit about this on our, on our last podcast episode, right? That reading with other people. Like, I dropped out of college before I really hit a place to where I was going out and, you know, finding minds to sit in front of and to share ideas with, right? But I was reading during that time. I was just reading for personal pleasure. I was a sci-fi fantasy nerd. And then what happened was me and a group of friends that I was training martial arts with we created a science fiction book club, which is about the nerdiest thing you can possibly imagine.

1:26:16 A bunch of kung fu guys reading science fiction fantasy books. But it was so helpful because until that point, I never really had to go in and defend why a book was garbage through my own interpretation of it and stuff like this. And I can remember the book that I hated the most, right? I was reading this book and I'm about to bail. I'm about to bail because I'm my God, this book is just garbage. Like, oh God, like, who would write this thing? And then the thing I was like, wait a minute, I've been wrong enough by this point to where I'm like, let's just finish this.

1:26:48 Let's withhold some of my own judgment and let's go have the conversation. Because thankfully, one of the guys in this book club was and is a professor of English at TCC. So am I really going to argue with him, like, like about some of these things. Like, I mean, there's the realm of taste and preference, and then there's the realm about if it's good or not, you know. So go read with people who, who you care about enough that you're not just going to dismiss their opinion out of turn because they're dumb or a different generation and stuff like that.

1:27:20 I think that that's such a, such a major part of it. And I, I forgot who brought that up, but I'm glad that other people are talking about this because like, go read with friends. That you really gotta show up in a certain way if you're gonna debate the topics of the book. Because this one book now, I'm never gonna read it again, promise. Like, I'm just never gonna slog through it again. But I have such a warm place in my memories of that book because of the conversation that I had about it and knowing that I'm gonna have to go talk about why I hated it so much while also being open to the idea that maybe I'm just the person not on the And I think that's such an important part.

1:27:56 The book, because it's over here in the chat, it's a book called Light by M. John Harrison. And it is a very weird book. Like, I won't ruin it for anybody, but my wife even read it, and she's a big reader as well. And about halfway through the book, she just started cursing about this book because it was so off-putting to her as well, which was like a note, like a note in my favor. I'm going to be honest about it, but I was still like, but wait, my friends had some really great things to say about it, right?

1:28:24 So go read with other people. It'll make you just better, right, about talking about why you liked it and why you didn't. And I think that matters. Thanks, John. And, um, and to John's point, listen, I have been saying to anybody who will listen to me lately, having things in common with people is easy. Everybody likes ice cream. Everybody likes sunny days. Everybody likes, you know, puppies and kittens. That's easy. What's hard is finding things you dislike in common. That's what's difficult. Oh, I really dislike that.

1:28:58 And, oh, I really dislike that. Oh, I never knew that. Oh my gosh. And now we can unite around our dislikes. Very hard to do in a really meaningful way. But we've been talking about— and I love how DeRolo brought this up— local nature and and, and, and, and engaging with folks in local community. I also think we've been talking about, I think we've been talking about what's in it for me. Right. Not just, not just at a tribal generational level, but also at an interpersonal level. What's in it for us?

1:29:28 The power of video and what video can do for us. And what does that video look like in relation to other ways of communicating and, and getting ideas across? Before I go to Richard, yes, I see you have your hand up. Before I go to Richard, I want to make a point here, and I've been making it on the podcast lately, and I think it's relevant for— to drop into this moment as we begin to turn the corner and wrap up. And thank you all for participating. This has been a great conversation. We've thrown a lot of things in here.

1:29:57 We've created a bouillabaisse or a goulash, and folks are going to have to think through this and move through this. And so I want to thank you all for your contributions. The idea that I'd like to bring, though, to the table here as we close is, I think one of the things that we've gotten to here is that books allow us to solve problems at scale. Really difficult problems. Yes, there's an oral tradition, but an oral tradition dies out, right? Or it hits a ceiling at a certain point, right? And what a literary tradition does Good, bad, ugly, or indifferent, is that it allows us to solve larger problems at scale because what books do is they smuggle ideas across time.

1:30:46 They smuggle really good ideas. So Plato writes down Socrates' ideas, and we're still talking about them over 2,500 years later. Uh, we can argue about a translation of the Odyssey. But we're still reading fundamentally the Odyssey, even if we're reading it in chunks, even if we're reading it in 1.8-second long clips. You know, we're still consuming the Odyssey, right? We're still doing that. The idea, right, of freedom or the ideas of democracy, Lockean ideas. Somebody mentioned— Dr. Kwasi mentioned Machiavelli.

1:31:28 Machiavellian ideas. Neil is in a C.S. Lewis group. C.S. Lewis has been smuggling ideas across time for the last back half of the entire back half of the 20th century to people who would never have looked at apologetics or theology before. Books smuggle ideas across time. This is hugely powerful, and we are in a moment where we are forgetting the importance of this. And I think that that is actually also what we are mourning here a little bit in this conversation, because how do you smuggle an idea, particularly an idea that can cause a society or a people to scale to greatness?

1:32:12 How do you do that and go past the ceiling of the oral tradition? What's the tool you do for that effectively? And by the way, I'm not opposed to— well, I'm not opposed in principle to artificial intelligence or the internet. I think the internet is probably the most transformational communication tool human beings have developed since the printing press. Let me go down on record as saying that this is the most transformational tool we've developed. I was joking with my kids one time, probably a couple of weeks ago, and I said, if I would ever have the ability to go 500 years into the future, The very first question, if I were Rip Van Winkle and I was like, go to sleep now and wake up 500 years from now, the very first question I would ask is, are there still crappy people on the internet?

1:32:56 Like, are we still using it for that? Or have we solved that problem 500 years from now? Or is it like worse? Like, that'd be my, literally my very first question upon waking up. Not, you know, do I have a great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandkid? Not any of that. Just have we solved the internet problem? Did we fix that? Because we're at the beginning of a revolution right now. And the same conversations we're having about the internet and about reading and about literature, these were the same conversations that people had when the printing press first hit ground, about the oral tradition and about people's memories and knowledge and about what this new technology of the printing press was going to do to people's memory.

1:33:40 And what's going to do to people's knowledge and what's going to do to the oral tradition. These were the— we're having the exact same conversations, just about a different technological medium. So we're at the beginning of a revolution, not at the end. And it's good for us to have these conversations and to record them and put them on the internet. That way people can see them and can remember what was lost or even celebrate what was gained.

1:34:09 Richard, I'm going to let you begin and go final thoughts because we're going to wrap up here. I want to be cognizant of everyone's time. I want to thank you for, for giving me a bit of your time today. This has been great. Hopefully, you're all exchanging LinkedIn profiles and connections all in the chat. If folks, if you're watching it on video, you've seen me crack up a few times just because the chat is very lively. People are, people are talking and engaging, which is great. So, Richard, I'm gonna let you go ahead and do our final thoughts, and then you can go around the horn just like we opened.

1:34:40 Just go to the person next to you and call on them, and then we'll go around. Richard, go ahead. Hey, Hasan, first I want to thank you very much for doing this, but I also want to thank you for your, your last comments, because when you spoke about what books do is to bring thoughts and ideas smuggled them through time. And you talked about the Odyssey, and you talked about some other books.

1:35:08 The number one most widely read book that's ever been written, and it's still the most widely read book that's ever been written, is the 5 Books of Moses, is the Old Testament. That book was written 3,500 years ago. And that book first talked about a guy called Abraham who lived approximately 500 years before that. And to this day, half the population of this planet claims that Abraham is their forefather. Now, if we're going to learn about how to, you know, how people get influenced, how to influence people, we probably should learn about Abraham because this is a guy who just was a guy.

1:35:54 He looked at— he looked around the— he looked around society, looked around his, his, his culture, is that— and he thought there was something wrong. And he decided he's going to carve a new path. He's going to leave everything behind and start all over again. He didn't have a— he didn't have a big army. He didn't have— he wasn't like super wealthy. He, he just had a vision. He just committed himself to discover what life's all about. And then he taught it to his son, and then he saw it, taught it to his sons, and then it just grew.

1:36:30 And then eventually the Bible showed up and told that story.

1:36:37 So I think that there's no question about it that the people who are going to be the most influential people the leaders. I mean, I can't think of a better leader than Abraham. He was the most influential person that ever lived and still is. It's going to be somebody who decides, you know, there's something wrong going on here and we have to carve a new path. And he has to figure out how to teach it.

1:37:05 And it was eventually written down so that other people can learn it. And I think if people don't learn how to write and read and make that a major part of what they're doing on a regular basis, not a lot of progress is going to be made. AI is probably the most dangerous thing that's ever been invented. And unless people understand what the dangers are of AI, It could also be the greatest thing that was ever invented as well.

1:37:42 It's going to be a wild ride. That's for sure.

1:37:50 Thank you, Richard. Why don't you pick who's next?

1:37:55 Neil, on your screen.

1:37:59 What am I— am I summing up? Is that the idea? You're summing up. Yeah, you're helping us around the corner. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, I'll sum up with a couple of very recent anecdotes. So, Haysan, you know the work that I do. I was talking to a potential client recently and I used the term Catch-22 and they had no idea what I was talking about. Never heard the term. Never had no idea. I had to explain it to them, right? And then the other one, I think maybe the group will get a small kick out of this, is I'm not an online guy.

1:38:32 I'm not involved in any social media, but there was a recent Wall Street Journal article that happened to be about a law firm where I have some family members that work there. And I was reading through the comments and at the bottom, you knew there was going to be one about, you know, the comment was King Lear had it right, meaning, you know, the famous Shakespearean quote, the first thing we do is kill all the lawyers. And I made one My first comment ever, which was, A, that's not King Lear, it's Henry VI.

1:39:02 And secondly, the guy who's talking is a bad guy, right? Shakespeare was not saying, hey, here's a great idea, right? You know, so it goes to the, you know, man, someone decided to get on the internet and make a comment thinking that they were, you know, I guess sagely quoting Shakespeare, and they got Not only the play wrong, they actually got the whole point wrong, which is Shakespeare was trying to say this is a very bad idea. And again, for the lawyers on this call, I just want to say, especially, I thought it was an especially bad idea.

1:39:44 So I guess I'll just, besides relating those 2 anecdotes, I'll just say say, I am basically an optimist by nature, and I mentioned C.S. Lewis earlier, and C.S. Lewis has, I think, a fantastic book called That Hideous Strength, which is the 3rd in his trilogy. And in that, most of the heroes in that book are doing nothing. They're just living regular lives while evil rises and falls around them. And there was at one point actually where one of the characters in the book says, what are we doing? raising vegetables here.

1:40:22 You know, I mean, in what way are we, you know, fighting the great moral fight of our time? And, uh, I, I'm not gonna be able to quote the exact response here off the cuff on this call, but essentially the, the leader of the group, whose name is Ransom, says, you were doing what you were supposed to be doing. You were obeying and you were keeping the faith. And I think one thing we all share on this call is we all have faith in books. Whatever those books are, we all share that faith. And I believe, I have to, maybe this is the optimist in me, that reading and books will survive the tsunami of social media.

1:41:00 Maybe because social media will ultimately collapse on itself, or it will just find its own value proposition and people will go back to it. And someone on this call, and forgive me, I don't remember who, just cited that Some of Gen Z or some of the younger generation are moving away from social media. They're moving away from smartphones. I have 2 children. One is 30 and my daughter is 26, and she has completely divorced herself from social media for that reason. She finds it depressing and anxiety-driven.

1:41:30 So that's a data point of 2 amongst the 9 billion people on this planet. And that— I'll yield the— Microphone to John. You're to my right, John, so you're up next.

1:41:43 Um, I think for me, uh, I do get a little too zoomed in, so it's helpful to hear how like Moomin has been doing this for a very long time. And there's always been people that don't read. There just is, right? So the idea that everyone is going to become a reader, we've never really had that, right? But I think The thing that I am kind of just like sitting here thinking about is like the reason why I read now is to keep upskilling myself, to keep learning new things, right? And I kind of take this idea that if— that it's a little egoic to think that I'm the only person that's going through any problem state season that I come across, right?

1:42:26 There is an example, and it might not be exact, But there's an example out there that's close enough that if I'm willing to pick up a book, slog through maybe some paragraphs I don't like, I don't have to recreate the wheel from zero. I can find someone that's been somewhere close to this. And as a guy who works for himself and likes to work for himself, doesn't want to go back to work for someone else— I've done that, not my jam— like, learn for your own development, learn for your own skill set at a bare minimum.

1:42:53 Otherwise, you're always going to have to go and work for someone else and make do with what they're willing to give to you.

1:43:01 Let's go. I'm curious as to David's wrapping up thoughts on this. Yeah. I take kind of the Wonder Twins, Wonder Friends kind of approach to this, meaning that I think that even in this group right now, I can tell that there are some people who are large consumers of knowledge and there are people who are really good at are good at applying knowledge. And I think there's some people that are really good at delivering knowledge. And I think when we think about the future or like, what are we going to do as leaders, it seems like there has to be some kind of roundtable formation amongst— and I think that maybe that's also what John was saying earlier about the local, like a local level of that.

1:43:40 But finding other people who are leaders and really tapping into their skill set, we can't all be everything. So finding those of us who have unique qualifications, skill sets. Like, for instance, Hasan has the ability to put this together. He is a facilitator. And I think that that's a skill set that is very, very powerful. I think those people, again, who are teachers, very powerful. Those people who are just also contrarian, these are all powerful things we need that go into this kind of roundtable of leadership.

1:44:11 And I think that, I guess, from my perspective, it feels like that's what's the future needs. The future needs these, almost like we need to clap together. We need to find a way to organize ourselves so that whether it's a unit of things and we all find ways to either create a product or create some kind of thing that is across the internet, or it's very face-to-face and it's very literal and it's very local, I think both are very powerful. But that to me is what the thing that I just take away when looking at all the notes I took during this conversation, it's very much about that.

1:44:44 There's so many different unique insights, and I think that finding ways to bring them all together is kind of like the sum of the parts transcends. It very much has this very much magnifier effect. I think that's what I would like to see personally about just not just for what I can do for myself with other people, but I think it'd be wonderful to see that kind of sprout up around the United States as kind of just almost like maybe a movement or an organization for people who are older, kind of coming together and then disseminating that stuff into the future.

1:45:19 Awesome. Thanks, Dave. Who would you like to go to next for closing thoughts?

1:45:28 Let's go to Hannah. My apologies.

1:45:32 I almost felt like I could read your lips, and it sounded Or looked like me. I'll start with a shout out to Neil. I am on a huge C.S. Lewis kick and have been through the trilogy, and just, just the idea that somebody writes a sci-fi in 1942, and it's just— it's that right there is why we should keep reading, just because it's so amazing. I wanted to maybe say 2 things. One, I— 3 things. One, I really enjoyed this conversation and it gave me a lot of food for thought, and I know that I will be processing in the next few days and kind of things will come back and come up.

1:46:22 So I want to thank all of the participants, and Hazan, a huge thank you to you for organizing and bringing us together. That's one. 2, I think that we talked a lot about what books communicate and what ideas are from, as Richard said, Abraham through history. We talked about Socrates, mentioned Shakespeare, and I think that we talk about ideas But what John mentioned just now, I thought was so critical because I think that's the bridge to the new generation. It also captures how you feel. The way you feel, where, like, that is at the, at the, you know, core for so many people.

1:47:17 That's how they discover literature in the first place because they feel like crap and they think that they're the only ones who ever experienced this. And this is the first time it ever happened in the history of mankind. And I think that understanding that this is a human experience and the books are the medium, how we have been communicating this human experience, is what can bring people back to a certain degree. I have a very contrarian idea as well, which is I think that ultimately we want to know what the who the other person is, and books are somewhat filtered in many ways.

1:48:00 And I think that the rise of the reality TV and now TikTok, where you're watching people just being themselves, I think that the reason why it has such an appeal is because it gets to this very thing of I want to know what my human experience versus your human— like, I want to know your human experience as unfiltered as possible. And so, and the last thing was, I really think that we might be looking at the books becoming sort of a niche, and we might be coming to a point where we don't read anymore because we communicate nonverbally and we're just chipped and elevated humans and/or augmented humans.

1:48:56 And I hope that it will take a couple decades before we get there because I really like the books, but I also think that it's not bad to think about it and to just give it a try even intellectually to see what would that look like because I think it is possible. And that's my closing depressing idea.

1:49:20 No, you're fine, Hannah. Go ahead, pick who can go next. Of course, I forgot. I'm going to go to Kristin.

1:49:30 Okay. I guess my closing comments are, first of all, I definitely feel like I'm the dumbest person in this room, but it has been so wonderful sitting here and just absorbing everybody's perspective and Um, it's good on the first— that's not meant to— that comment is not meant to be like fishing. I wasn't fishing for comments. I think that is something that people probably my age and most of us maybe don't do often enough. So I'm very, very grateful to have been here, and I hope that everybody that is listening to this podcast is feeling just as enriched.

1:50:10 Um, I guess I would close though with a plea, and it just kind of goes back to the one of the few— I think the one thing that I said or felt like I needed to contribute is, is don't, um, don't look down on other people. Don't— oh, if somebody tells you they don't read, if somebody says they haven't read a book this year, if somebody says they've never finished a book, if somebody says

1:50:39 anything along those lines, please do not sneer at them. Please don't look down on them. Please don't turn your nose up. Whatever it is, whatever it is, this, um, I'm better than you because I'm reading— that's not, that's not anybody's here. I don't think that's, that's not the point of this conversation. One of the reasons that books are— we want to fight so much for books is because of how enriching they are. And so ask a question instead. Use that opportunity to become the leader that invites them to read something.

1:51:22 Again, whatever it is, wherever they're starting, however small the start is, if it's a children's picture book, If it's, um, oh my gosh, C.S. Lewis, Chronicles of Narnia, if it's The Hobbit, if it's whatever it is, invite them. Meet them where they're at. Invite them to join with you and experience what we know to be so valuable. But yeah, use that opportunity to become the leader yourself and just ask that question. Ask a question. Don't, don't talk down to them. Don't say you should be reading this many books because that, again, that expectation for someone who's never finished a book, has graduated high school and has never finished a book, is in college and never finished a book.

1:52:13 Don't— that just— it's a mountain that's too high for them. So this is where really every person, every single person has an opportunity to be a leader and help the tide to rise all boats.

1:52:33 Awesome. Thank you, Kristin. Go ahead and pick who goes next.

1:52:37 I forgot again. Um, DeRollo. Can't hear.

1:52:51 Can't hear. Can't hear you.

1:52:59 He'll go in a minute. Hold on.

1:53:03 Oh, perfect. Oh, there it is. All I had to do was do a circle motion saying go on to somebody else, and then the tech comes on. Oh, you know, this was a new computer last year, right? Exactly. I'm— thank you. Thank you, Kristen, because I wanted to speak in response to what you said, because I want to nuance it, because I— there's a way in which I disagree and agree at the same time, which sounds like I'm not taking a position. But basically, I think you're right to say, don't make these people feel bad that they don't read.

1:53:42 At the same time, I think reading makes humans better. I think we become better humans by reading. And so we need to invite them, like you were saying, we need to invite them into this experience that we're having, right? That allows for cafe culture and literary societies, that allows for increased political understanding, that allows for not just work but more complex work. Because I may say, hey, show a video, but if we're talking about how to repair the control rods in a nuclear reactor, that person better be able to read, whoever he or she is, and you're not watching a video to show you how to do that.

1:54:19 You know, you get it, you get the physics, you know how to do it, or we have a big problem. And so I think that reading is an essential way that humans just become and do better. And so we need to figure out how to encourage— leaders need to figure out how to encourage and lead those around us into more reading. Therefore, y'all keep reading, keep talking about what you're reading. Okay, start a book club. Put actually challenging books in the book club. One of the things that Hasan will tell you that I love doing on the podcast is he will say, we won't talk about X. I love talking about whatever X is.

1:54:55 I love doing that because I think it's important. I think driving an idea to the place where now there is disagreement is what's necessary. And also, you know, this is to respond to something that Hannah brought up, you know. One of the problems with reality TV is that there's so many people certainly connected to Hollywood and being put in these shows who just live terribly. And so instead of watching the ideal, the heroic, right, we're watching the banal and we're finding that entertaining. And then first we're laughing and whatever.

1:55:32 But what's happening is we're normalizing their nonsense. Instead of being shown, here's a model that's challenging, you know, like, why don't they do a reality show of Mother Teresa? We'd all be crying. We'd feel terrible and look at what she did and say, wow, that's amazing. And then look at ourselves and say, I got some work to do, right? And it's just like reading allows us to do these things and to get to a place where we can say, hey, look, this is how we tackle complex problems. Like, We cannot do that without reading, so we need to be about that.

1:56:08 Thank you.

1:56:11 All right, you get to pick who goes next. Oh, excellent. Tom, have you spoken or no? No, sir, not yet. Excellent. I was gonna say, I was perfectly okay going last, though. If you want to go Mormon, I'm fine with that. It's up to you. All right, so for me, first things first, again, like everybody has already said this, Hasan, and you've You probably invited so many of us on here so you could hear the words thank you to Hassan so many times. I know that you're like that. So, totally kidding. He's not like that.

1:56:39 But, but no, but I do want to thank you very much. I think being a part of— and as Kristen, to your, to your statement too, I, I feel, I always feel humbled when I'm in a room like this full of very, very intellectual people. And coming from somebody, as, as John had mentioned, going to college and not finishing his degree. I never went in the first place. So when I get into a room like this with very, very intelligent people, it's very humbling to me to realize that I can have conversations with them.

1:57:07 And most of them probably don't know that I didn't go to college. But anyway, but that's not the point. The point is that education to me is very important. Education to me is very valuable, whether you go to college or not. I think it's one of the things that the— as a species, and when we talk about what elevates us from other species. It's not the ability to learn and educate ourselves. Other species do that. It's the willingness and desire to continue it after we've already learned certain things.

1:57:39 Like, we learn so much and we want to continue learning beyond the simple survival tactics. The reason I say all of that is because in my heart of hearts, I believe books are the easiest way and the fastest way to do that. Because you can learn pretty much any topic you want. The nuclear rods that Darullo are talking about. Sure. If I, not a nuclear engineer, wanted to go understand what he was just talking about and where those nuclear rods— I can go find a book and read it. I may not be able to physically go do it, but at least have a better understanding of what Darullo is talking about when he's talking about nuclear reactors or nuclear rods.

1:58:17 Same, same understanding with any of you guys and the principles that you're talking about. And, you know, when Richard's talking about Abraham, I've never read anything about Abraham, but if I wanted to, I can now go from this conversation and say, I really want to learn and understand what Richard was talking about Abraham. I can go educate myself. I can go find a book and learn those topics that are there. So, I think it's not going to be a niche hobby, is the term that I think— I believe the Atlantic article was talking about.

1:58:52 I don't believe it's going to be a niche hobby, but I do think it's gonna be a differentiator of educated people. And again, I'm not talking about people who go to college or don't go to college. That's not relevant to me. I'm talking about people who educate themselves and continue to educate themselves, continue elevating themselves in a thought process that goes beyond the knowledge they have today. And I think books are always going to be a medium to do that, regardless of whether or not the percentage goes down from 40 to 20 or 20 to 10.

1:59:21 At some point, it will go as low as it's going to go, and it will stay there or get better from there. So I just think, and again, I thank you for having me on here. I think everybody's comments were awesome. And David, I hope you got that. Like, I wasn't trying to be the contrarian. I was just trying to make, you know, be I needed to make it worth something for the listeners to not just hear all of us boast about the same thing over and over. I had to throw something in there to make it sound a little different.

1:59:51 So I just picked on your topic. So I appreciate the fact that you're a very good sport about it. So thank you.

1:59:58 And now, Dr. Kwasi, you're the last one. Saved the best for last. So go for it. Oh, no, no, no. I find it very odd that we saved the English professor for last, by the way. Talking about— yeah, I thought that was kind of interesting.

2:00:12 Serendipity. I put it in the chat, but I'll say it out loud for those who aren't reading the chat, the podcast listeners. There's a quote by Walter Ong, a very noted sociologist who, who wrote about orality versus or and literacy. And he said, basically, the reason that we write is not to remember, but to forget.

2:00:35 And that way you can write something down, you can go away from it, you can abstract, you can think about it, and you can come back to it. So I just think it's— it is, it's a remarkable tool. The technology of writing, of literacy, is one of the most— well, it's, you know, like there's fire, there's the wheel, there's reading, you know, and literacy. I want to celebrate Richard Messing's idea about Abraham, you know, who wrote nothing. But then, you know, of course, later on, Jewish writers did write down what happened with Abraham and then Moses.

2:01:11 But 1,000, 1,000-plus years before that was a writer who wrote in the same region. And he wrote in cuneiform. And we got the Poem of Gilgamesh, the Epic of Gilgamesh. And it's a great book. And I just want to give a shout out if anyone ever wants to read maybe the first book that's written in the Western culture. It's called The Epic of Gilgamesh, and it's, it's amazing. And it says a lot about friendship. Can you put it in the chat? Sure. Yeah, The Epic of Gilgamesh. And, and I love the others that are writing, talking about and celebrating C.S.

2:01:46 Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. And, oh, I mean, just so, so great. I love The Great Divorce. Maybe one of these days we can talk about that, Hasan, the Great Divorce or the problem of pain. But to end, my wrap-up, I think, are just a couple of clichés. One of them I love reading because it combats the dangers of univocality. I love heteroglossia. I love polyvocality. You know, I love the idea that, you know, writing can push back against there's just one right answer. You know, it gives us lots of perspectives.

2:02:23 I loved what was said earlier. I think it was by Hannah, and that is the idea of, you know, asking lots of questions. I think whether you are reading a billboard, whether you are reading someone's clothing, whether you are reading someone's body language, whether you are reading a book, the bridge from observing something to then interpreting something is to ask a lot of questions. And, and then ultimately, I believe that not only are readers leaders, but I think, and we all agree, leaders are readers.

2:02:59 Thanks, Hyesung. Thank you, Malcolm. Put it in the chat, please. Oh, yes, I will. Yes. Yeah, he'll put Epic of Gilgamesh in the, in the chat. We will also be reading the Epic of Gilgamesh next year. Oh, on the podcast. Yeah, I'm gonna kind of drop— you might have already found your co-host for that one. I think I might have. Yeah, I think I'm gonna put your name on the list, gonna pre-populate. Please do. I teach it every semester. So yeah, we love having folks come on who know these works at an even deeper level even than I do or than others and really kind of pulling things from them in order to Well, in order to bring those ideas forward once again across time.

2:03:45 We've had several folks drop off, but that's okay. I would like to thank everybody who participated in this conversation for our 200th episode of the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books Podcast. I encourage you to go out and connect with all these folks that you've heard today. You heard all their intros all the way at the back at the beginning of the episode. And of course, I will We will have links to all of their LinkedIn profiles and ways to get in contact with them as guests on this show.

2:04:14 You also have the opportunity to go back and listen to previous episodes of them on this show and check those out and those conversations that we've been having. Finally, I would like to thank you, the listener. Look, there's no way I would have done this show for 200 episodes without somebody listening to me talking about it somewhere. Uh, you walk up to me in real life, you have conversations with me when I'm, well, when I'm in random places in my local community and even further than my local community.

2:04:42 And, uh, please keep doing that. Please keep telling me what you think of the show. Please keep commenting. Please keep liking. Please keep subscribing. And please keep recommending this podcast to not only all the readers in your life, but also, uh, to paraphrase and to jump off what Kristen said here. In her closing comments, to those folks who are intimidated by reading. This is an easy way to get involved with a book. It's a little, little, little bite, a little snippet of something that allows you to go into the book at a deeper level and tie it to your own leadership life.

2:05:17 Once again, I'd like to thank everybody who was on the show today. And as usual with that, well, we're out.