Candide by Francois Voltaire w/Tom Libby & Jesan Sorrells

0:02 Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the

0:05 Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast, episode

0:09 number 176,

0:14 opening up a little bit differently than maybe you are

0:17 normally used to from our book today.

0:22 In Westphalia, in the castle of my lord, The Baron of

0:26 Thunder 10tr, there was a young man whom nature had endowed with the

0:29 gentlest of characters. His face bespoke his soul. His

0:33 judgment was rather sound in his mind of the simplest. This is the reason, I

0:37 think, why he was named Tandeed.

0:41 The old servants of the house suspected that he was the son of my lord,

0:44 the baron's sister, and of a good and honorable gentleman of the neighborhood, whom

0:48 that lady never would marry, because he could prove only

0:50 71/4 and the rest of his genealogical tree had been

0:54 lost by the injuries of time. My lord,

0:58 the baron was one of the most powerful lords in Westphalia, for his castle

1:02 had a door and windows. His great hall was even adorned with a

1:06 piece of tapestry. All the dogs of his stable yards formed a pack of

1:09 hounds when necessary. His grooms were his huntsmen. The village vicar was

1:13 his grand almanor. They all called him my lord and they

1:17 laughed at the stories he told my lady.

1:20 The baroness, who weighed about 350 pounds, attracted very great

1:24 consideration by that fact and did the honors of the house with dignity that made

1:28 her even more respectable. Her daughter,

1:30 Gunde, age 17, was rosy complexioned, fresh

1:34 plump, appetizing. The baron's son appeared

1:38 in all respects worthy of his father. The tutor Panglos was the

1:42 oracle of the house, and little Candide listened to his lessons with all the

1:45 candor of his age and character.

1:49 Pangloss taught metaphysico, theologio,

1:53 cosmologo, nigolology. He proved

1:56 admirably that there was no effect without a cause,

2:00 and that in this the best of all possible worlds.

2:04 My lord, the baron's castle was the finest of castles, and my lady, the best

2:08 of all possible baronesses. It is demonstrated, he

2:11 said, that things cannot be otherwise. For everything being made for an end, everything is

2:15 necessarily for the best end. Note that noses were made to wear

2:19 spectacles. So we have spectacles. Legs are visibly instituted to be

2:22 breached, and we have breaches. Stones were formed to be cut to

2:26 make it into castles. So my lord has a very handsome castle. The greatest baron

2:30 in the province should be the best house. And pigs being made to be eaten.

2:33 We eat pork all year round. Consequently, those who have

2:37 asserted that all is well have said a foolish thing. They should have said that

2:41 all is for the best.

2:44 Candide listened attentively and believed innocently, for he thought

2:48 Mademoiselle Cunegonde extremely beautiful, though he never made

2:51 bold to tell her so. He concluded that after the happiness of

2:55 being born Baron of Thunder 10 truck, the second degree of happiness was

2:59 to be Mademoiselle Tonagande, the third to see her

3:02 every day, and the fourth to listen to Dr. Panglos, the greatest

3:06 philosopher in the province and consequently in the whole

3:09 world. One day, Cunegonde, walking to the castle in

3:13 the little wood they called the park, saw in the bushes Dr. Panglos giving a

3:17 lesson in experimental physics to her mother's chambermaid, a very pretty and very

3:20 docile little brunette. Since Mademoiselle Cunegonde had much

3:24 inclination for the sciences, she observed breathlessly the repeated experiments of

3:28 which she was a witness. She clearly saw the doctor's sufficient reason, the

3:31 effects and the causes, and returned home all agitated, all pensive,

3:35 all filled with a desire to be learned. Thinking that she might well

3:39 be the sufficient reason of young Candide, who might equally well

3:42 be hers, she met Candide on the way back to

3:46 the castle and blushed. Candide blushed too. She said good morning to him

3:50 in a faltering voice, and Candide spoke to her without knowing what he was saying.

3:54 The next day, after dinner, as everyone was leaving the table, Cunegonde and Candide found

3:58 themselves behind a screen dropped her handkerchief.

4:01 Candide picked it up. She innocently took his hand. The young man innocently

4:05 kissed the young lady's hand with a very special vivacity, sensibility

4:09 and grace. Their lips met, their eyes glowed,

4:13 their knees trembled, their hands wandered. My lord, the Baron of

4:16 Thunder Ten Troch passed near the screen, and seeing this cause and this

4:20 effect, expelled Candide from the castle with great

4:24 kicks. In the behind, Ginogande swooned. She was

4:27 slapped in the face by my lady, the Baroness, as soon as she had come

4:30 to herself and all was in consternation in the

4:33 finest, most agreeable of all

4:37 possible castles,

4:46 Absurdity and existential dread, and

4:50 the vagaries of life in institutional systems, the perils of knowledge.

4:54 These are all themes that leap forth from the short

4:58 pages of the deeply influential book we

5:01 opened Season five with just now,

5:05 a book that, despite its lack of length, more

5:09 than makes up for in deceptive depth,

5:14 proving that writing from the perspective of assuming that your audience is intelligent

5:18 enough to get the joke has always been in the wheelhouse of the

5:21 satirist, the jokester and the comic,

5:26 and, of course, those willing to wear the literary clothes

5:30 of those same folks kicking off

5:33 the Fifth season of our show, we are going to dissect

5:37 ideas and themes and solutions that for leaders that

5:41 may lead to the restoration not only of

5:44 leadership, but maybe even of, dare I say, the entirety of

5:48 Western civilization itself. From a book

5:52 listed as one of the 100 most influential books ever

5:55 written by the poet Martin Seymour Smith and literary

5:59 critic. And he of course

6:03 was also a biographer, so he knew a little bit about this fellow.

6:07 We are going to be reading

6:11 from Candide by Voltaire.

6:15 Leaders, we are past being fooled by the

6:18 promises of the Enlightenment project. We are weighed

6:22 down now in our time with ironic

6:25 detachment which is preventing us from leading with

6:28 sincerity in this not the best

6:32 possible world, but I don't think that.

6:36 But it's the only world we've got.

6:42 And of course, back for this new season

6:46 of chicanery and shenanigans and tomfoolery

6:50 along with great books is our co host,

6:55 Tom Libby, who is by the way, closing in on

6:59 being with us for 50 episodes. I just told him that before we hit record

7:02 on this. He was not aware of that. So this is episode number 44 for

7:06 Tom where he has joined us as co host. So how you doing, Tom?

7:10 How's your new year going? I am living my best life,

7:15 as. You mentioned that last year. Yeah,

7:19 I, I, I, I always, I gotta come up with a new one, right? Because

7:22 I, I used to use, I used to use living the dream. And then I'd

7:26 say I also have to remind people that nightmares are dreams too.

7:30 And then I changed it to I'm living my best life because I can't live

7:33 somebody else's. I've got to find a new one. There's got to be another version

7:37 of this somewhere that I can, that I could make up or pick up somewhere

7:40 along the lines. But overall I'm doing pretty good. Hey, son. Thank you for asking.

7:44 You should tell people that you're living in the best of all possible worlds. I

7:47 was just gonna say because that were you. What do you said? The best of

7:49 both of all possible worlds. But there's only one. We only have one to

7:53 live in. We're. Which kind of made me chuckle when you were reading the excerpt

7:57 here because I'm sitting there thinking to myself, experimental

8:01 physics in 1750. What was that? Holding up an apple and letting it go

8:04 to see what gravity does. Like what exactly

8:08 experimental physics are happening in 1750? Like,

8:12 anyway, for those of you are who are science

8:15 buffs, I'm not making that statement as a true question. I'm

8:19 sure there were plenty of actual science things. Science was happening. I'm

8:22 not. Science was happening. It just made me funny. It just made me laugh that

8:26 somebody like Voltaire would write that in, in the book. Well, and the

8:30 thing is, like, experimental physics, even in our own time, in 2026,

8:33 some what, what like 300 and some odd years later,

8:38 hasn't really advanced. Advanced much beyond that,

8:42 except now we just use mathematical models with better computers. That's all

8:45 that. Exactly, exactly. I mean, you had, you know, everybody was trying

8:49 to. Back at that time, everybody was trying to. To

8:52 copy off of. Of Isaac Newton's,

8:57 you know, sort of massive influence. And then you also had.

9:00 Which people don't understand, and this is not to make this serious, you made a

9:04 joke. It's a good one. And people

9:08 back in that time in, in the 1750s were just

9:12 beginning to sort of figure out, not that the world was round. We already

9:16 knew that Columbus had, you know, ran across the New

9:19 World, you know, by that point, but. Or what

9:23 was called the New World by that point, the North American continent. But,

9:27 but they were, they were trying to figure out at a

9:31 practical level. So there was practical. There was practical physics, there's practical mathematics, and

9:35 then there was everything else that was like, not practical. Right. And that's where

9:38 experimental physics sort of, sort of winds up at. So practical mathematics is

9:42 like, how do you get around the globe and find like the Northwest Passage, which

9:45 they still believed was a thing. Right. You know, or how do you find like

9:49 the city of El Dorado, which they talk about actually in, in here.

9:52 Right. Which they also still believe was a thing. There was enough of the

9:56 unexplored world still around the experimental physics. Sounded really

10:00 cool when you said it out loud. Yeah.

10:04 And it made girls like Cunegonde, you know, made their

10:07 bosoms heave, you know, and all those, you know, 17th century dresses.

10:14 I don't know. I don't think about that. But I'm married.

10:20 I don't know anything about that. And nor do I need to know anything about

10:23 that because I am also spoken for.

10:29 In the best of all possible worlds.

10:33 So we, we covered a lot

10:36 of information about the literary life of Francois Marie

10:39 Arouette, AKA Voltaire. In our shorts

10:43 episode that precedes this episode, which you should go back and

10:47 listen to, has the title of it, I believe,

10:51 why do. Why do business leaders read Voltaire?

10:54 Or why should they read Voltaire instead of Harvard Business Review? So I would encourage

10:58 you to go back and listen to that. And so we covered a lot of

11:01 basic information about Him. And so we're not going to go over that right now.

11:04 But what I will say is this. And it

11:08 was also one of the points that I made in that episode. I'd like to

11:11 get some of Tom's thoughts on this. Much has been written and talked about Voltaire,

11:16 particularly during his raucous life and through his death and way

11:19 past, from misappropriating quotes from his works out of

11:23 context, all the way to mangled malproisms in

11:27 the popular culture of the 20th century. I'm thinking of. There's a whole

11:31 scene in the movie Swingers where

11:34 Vince Vaugh and Jon Favro are ordering food at the breakfast

11:38 table in the casino. And Jean

11:42 Favreau, my buddy actually showed me this because I had forgotten about this. My buddy

11:44 actually showed this to me because he saw that I was reading the book.

11:49 And the, the Jon Favro orders

11:54 something off of the, off of the menu. It's like pancakes of the age of

11:58 enlightenment. And he says, he says to the waitress, I'd

12:01 like pancakes in the age of enlightenment. And then she's like, okay,

12:05 whatever. And then she takes Vince Vaughn's order and then they walk away,

12:09 right? And this is Swingers. So, like, Jon Favreau's like, in his 20s, Vince

12:12 Vaughn is in his 20s. They're all young and thin and, like, still sexy

12:16 looking. You're so money, you don't even know it. And, and,

12:21 you know, the waitress walks away. And then John Favreau goes, trying to pick up

12:25 this waitress. And like, how's she going to know a

12:28 Voltera reference? Why would I assume that a waitress would know a Volter reference? Why

12:31 did I say age of enlightenment? That's so stupid. This is also the guy who

12:35 later on in the movie has the whole scene with the, with the answering machine

12:38 where he's like recalling all the time and trying to fix the answering machine

12:42 message because he's nervous or whatever. He

12:45 doesn't have his whole thing. And, and,

12:50 and I don't know. And, and then of course, Vince Vaughn is there to like,

12:53 sort of calm him down. And Vince Vaughn goes, you know, man, don't even worry

12:55 about it. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Whatever. Like, whatever. And.

12:59 And then the waitress walks past and he tries to like, change his order or

13:02 whatever to say something different. And she goes, your pancakes will come out in a

13:05 minute. Voltaire.

13:12 Or something like that, right? Like, Voltaire would love that.

13:16 He would have loved that. Yeah, absolutely. And

13:19 the way this guy was wired,

13:23 his influence over the last, I would say

13:27 30 or 40 years has sort of begun to fade from,

13:31 fade from the, the, at least the, the dominant conscience of,

13:35 of, of the Western public. Maybe, maybe not

13:39 like his. So it's the direct link.

13:42 Maybe. But I think his work in his

13:46 personality and his thought processes were referenced so

13:49 frequently that we forget that the reference is his.

13:53 I think it's not so much that, that it's not being referenced

13:57 anymore. I just think we're forgetting the source of the reference because

14:01 as we were joking when, before we, before we hit the record button

14:05 and I had mentioned that this particular book candidate.

14:08 It's basically a third of the movies ever written. Like. Oh yeah, oh

14:12 yeah. If you actually go back and read this and think of it in the

14:15 context of today, you could think of at least a dozen movies

14:18 right off the top of your head. They'd be like it's the same story as

14:21 X or same story as Y or same story as Z. And I think what's

14:25 happening is that we're referencing those movie references or the books

14:29 rewritten or the books written by today's authors or more recent

14:33 authors that are still using his work as, as the focal point

14:37 or the thought. So I, to your point, I think we're losing touch with

14:40 the fact that, that he is being quoted or referenced or whatever.

14:44 Yes, but I don't think we're, I don't think we're losing

14:48 his references. If I said that, if I'm saying that right.

14:52 Yeah. And that gets to my, my other idea that he was such a rare

14:55 world bending historical talent that

15:00 you. To your point, and I think this is absolutely valid,

15:04 we, we now have reached a point where, because

15:08 look, we're going to go into a lot more of this, but

15:11 I don't know which. How many posts. We are past modernism at

15:15 this point. We're no longer postmodern. I don't know if we're post post modern

15:19 or post post post modern. Like, I don't know when that, that clicks in. Can

15:22 somebody just come up with another term, please, please, come on now. But we

15:26 are way the hell past modernity, which came directly out of the

15:30 enlightenment. And the entire. And we'll talk a little bit about this

15:33 too, but the entire Enlightenment project was built on the idea that

15:37 human reason could figure out the world.

15:42 That was a very simple way human reason, free inquiry,

15:46 could figure out the world. We actually had the brains to be able to do

15:49 that. And of course that came out of the

15:53 Reformation, which was a direct rebellion against the power of The Catholic Church

15:57 and the way that the medieval. The medieval, and of course the Renaissance,

16:01 those two, those two streams combined together to create the

16:05 Enlightenment. Right. Well, we've gotten a lot out of the

16:08 Enlightenment. And I always admit to this, like, particularly religious people

16:12 like myself, who, who, you know, have had to

16:16 struggle through the Enlightenment for the last 400 years to justify

16:20 the presence of religion.

16:24 I have to make this point to them. We've gotten a lot out of the

16:27 Enlightenment. The Enlightenment brought you, like, this podcast. That's what the

16:30 Enlightenment brought you. Free inquiry and the ability of human

16:34 reason to figure out the world. I mean, we were joking about experimental physics, but

16:37 really, like, without free inquiry, you don't get the atomic bomb.

16:41 Like, you don't get. You don't get the Internet. Without free inquiry, you don't

16:45 get the cell phones and this podcast mic and the video that we're shooting on

16:48 you. You don't get any of that. Now there are things

16:52 that are lost in that. And

16:56 Voltaire, interestingly enough, just like Shakespeare or

17:00 the Apostle Paul or Socrates or the Founding

17:03 Fathers, is a victim of his own. Is

17:07 a victim of the Enlightenment. Success. Right? To your point, the copy of the copy

17:11 of the copy of the copy. Right? Like, we, we don't even remember the

17:15 original source code anymore. We're just, We.

17:18 It was just too successful. Like, it just worked too well. And now we're in

17:22 this weird position where. And this is part of what I'm going to talk about

17:25 this year on the podcast a lot. We're in this weird position where

17:30 deconstructionism, which

17:34 also you see in movies, where you're able to take apart everything.

17:38 Okay, that's cool. But now we're at this weird middle ground where we have to

17:42 start putting things back together and we don't know how. We've lost the ability to

17:45 figure out how to put things back together that have meaning. And you and I

17:49 have talked about this even when we're talking about, you know, sort of the Native

17:51 American narratives or we talk about

17:55 political ideas or theological ideas on this show. How do we

17:59 know how to pull the ideas apart, but we don't know how to restore them

18:02 and put them back together? And the Enlightenment was the, was the root

18:06 source code of pulling things apart with human reason, but it

18:09 wasn't. There was no thing in there because they didn't think they needed

18:13 it because there were so many things that were together already. So. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

18:21 I think also Candide remains popular to your point

18:24 because of its, Its, its, its brevity. And

18:28 its wit and its satirism. Right. So like the first time I ran

18:32 across this book, I was 10 years old, maybe 11. And I banged through it

18:35 because I was like, each chapter is only like four pages.

18:43 And I remember like I was reading it, you know, over the last

18:47 couple of weeks, and I remembered. I, I sort of flashback to when I was

18:50 a kid and I remember I laughed through this. I laughed at

18:54 certain parts of this. Just the absurdity of, of certain things that were

18:57 happening. But now is a. I'm gonna be

19:01 50 in like four years now is a, you know,

19:04 mid-40s. I know, right? Mid-40s year old man. I'm looking at this

19:08 and I'm not laughing like there's humor in it. I can see the humor in

19:11 it, but I'm not laughing at it because we're way

19:15 past the absurdity. Like illustrating absurdity by being absurd, which we'll

19:18 talk about in a little bit. But like, we're on the other side of that.

19:21 And I don't know, like, we live in a meme driven world. I don't

19:25 know how we do. How we do satire anymore. Maybe that's a good question to

19:28 like sort of kick us off with. I was going to ask you, what do

19:31 you know about Voltaire and Candy? But you sort of, sort of covered that ground

19:35 a little bit. The, the, the

19:38 satirical elements of it and the absurdist elements of it are,

19:42 I think, what makes it

19:47 consistently popular among high school students. Because you first read it in high school,

19:50 right? Yeah, I was like, I think the first time I set eyes

19:54 on it, I was maybe 15. So for me, that was a long time ago,

19:58 people. Libby ain't telling you how old

20:01 he is.

20:07 Let's, let's just say it was be.

20:10 No, never mind. I won't even get. It was a long time ago.

20:14 He was, he was there when the deep magic was laid at the beginning. Of

20:17 the Internet, folks, actually, I remember the day they

20:21 announced the AT sign and what it was supposed to be for. So, you

20:24 know, you're put, you know,

20:26 h.email.com. yeah, they. They were

20:30 telling us that this new symbol was. So you get this new thing called email.

20:36 I remember that. That news. That news.

20:40 That news episode like very clearly like, like it was

20:43 yesterday.

20:47 So yeah, my kids laugh. You know, my kids laugh

20:50 because they feel at someday I will be the same

20:54 joke equivalent to did you know, And

20:58 God rest her soul, but Betty White died five years ago. And

21:02 But Betty White, at the time of her. When she. Just before she died, the

21:05 joke Was that Betty White was older than sliced bread.

21:09 So she was born before the mass produced sliced bread was actually.

21:13 So my kids joke that that's going to be me about the Internet. So. But

21:16 when I'm older, holding gray to my grandkids and great

21:20 grandkids, they'll be like, hey, he was alive before the Internet. And they're gonna go,

21:24 no way. So anyway, all right, sorry, we can move on. I

21:28 apologize. No, it's gonna be great. It's gonna be great again. You'll be able to

21:31 tell your kids. You'll be like Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. You could have

21:34 like the beard and everything. Like, you know, and you can be like, listen,

21:38 I was there when the deep magic was laid all the way. When the kid,

21:42 when the grandkids walk in the house and I demand a hug and I'll be

21:45 saying, you shall not pass, you shall

21:48 not give grandpa a hug.

21:55 Okay, so let's, let's bring this back on the rails a little bit.

22:00 Do you think? Okay, so thinking about Voltaire, think about who he was

22:03 as, as a writer, as a raconteur, as a

22:07 man about town. Internationally. He had a

22:11 hell of a biography which again, we've covered in our shorts episode.

22:16 But do you think he would have been

22:20 shocked or disappointed at the long term impact of his words

22:26 and of his writing? Because he wrote, he wrote a lot of books. I mean,

22:29 he had a big impact in his own time. Do you think he would have

22:33 been surprised that it, it lasted? That's a really good question. You know what, I

22:37 think he might have been pleasantly surprised, but still

22:42 not as surprised as I think. I, I think if I. Again,

22:46 you. We were joking a little bit before we hit the record button on the

22:49 podcast as well about how I felt this book was essentially an

22:53 autobiography. Like if you look at his actual life in the book,

22:56 there's a lot of mirroring that happens. So he's, I think one of the reasons

23:00 he wrote so well is because he wrote about things he really did know about.

23:04 Right. Like things that, you know, that, that really, that

23:07 he could speak to from a, from an experimental

23:11 experiential perspective. Right. Like he experiment, he experienced

23:15 these things. So I, I think from,

23:18 if he, if he looked back from his point historically,

23:23 were there people to your point, you, you mentioned a couple

23:26 Aripostles, Socrates, etc.

23:30 I think he would have thought because they wrote similarly

23:34 from, from their experiences and their, you know, from the

23:37 heart, so to speak. Let's just say it that way, that. And they, they had

23:41 Some lasting. Some. Some, you know, some

23:45 la. Lasting terms to that. Could he do the same thing?

23:49 I think he questioned it for himself. And I think he. I think he thought

23:53 about it. I really do. I think he thought about, like, what would I have

23:56 to do to be the next Socrates or to be the next whatever, and how

23:59 do I need to write? And can I write from that experiential

24:03 version that will give me the same stickiness. Right.

24:06 Maybe didn't use those words at that time, but I. I do think he thought

24:10 about it. And again, I think that's one of the reasons why this book in

24:13 particular, I find a lot of mirroring to his biography. If you look about

24:17 being stuck in being exiled to

24:20 England, like being in Prussia, being in like all these things,

24:24 like, where he. He was kind of forced into some of those

24:28 things, but once he got there, he made the best of it. He's like, screw

24:31 it, I'm. I'm here. I'm gonna go kiss. I'm gonna go kiss the Tsar's daughter

24:34 and you can go fry. Like. And then when he wrote the book about the

24:37 kissing the Barrett, like getting involved with the baroness's. With the Baron's daughter,

24:41 and, And I'm like, it's the same thing he wrote. He knew what he was

24:44 writing, like, so anyway. But I think

24:48 he thought about it. I think he hoped for it. I don't know if he

24:51 believed it was gonna happen. I. Obviously we can't speak to what his. What

24:55 his. What was inside is his brain. But based on the

24:58 writings and all of the. Right. I think he had an idea that if

25:02 I write this volume, if I write the. If I write this in volume

25:06 and I write enough, something's gonna stick. Yeah. So I do think.

25:09 I do think he had some sort of preconceived notion that. And again,

25:13 look at Socrates writing and Aristotle's right.

25:17 There's a lot of volume there.

25:20 I think he did have the concept, mentally, that

25:24 volume equals stickiness, volume

25:28 longevity. So we, We. We sort of. Because we're.

25:31 We're now in the backwash of. I mean, what are we. How many

25:35 years into the Internet are we now? 40, 40,

25:39 50 years into the commercial Internet. And the level of social

25:42 disruption that the commercial Internet has created in

25:46 comparison to what was before is unbelievable to us living now.

25:51 Can't. Voltaire was born

25:55 in 1694. Yeah,

25:58 1694. 1694. So he was born because

26:02 the. The printing press officially started churning.

26:06 Gutenberg started officially churning out bibles in like

26:08 1430 or something. 1450 somewhere in there.

26:13 So he was born 200 and some odd years

26:17 after the printing press and he started

26:20 writing another probably 25 years after that. So

26:26 imagine what kind of people we will have

26:31 200 years from now on the Internet. Good point.

26:36 That's sort of where my brain goes with it because I think I do,

26:39 I hold to, and I want to say this on this episode early, I do

26:43 hold to the idea that there have been probably

26:48 two or three world bending, world

26:52 changing human innovations

26:56 just in the area of science and technology. And the first one is the

27:00 book, it's the printing press. I mean Gutenberg kind

27:04 of suspected he had something that revolutionary, but he wasn't quite

27:07 sure. But without the printing press, you don't

27:11 get the Protestant Reformation, you don't get the Renaissance, you don't get

27:15 Vasari's lives of the artists. Like you don't get people knowing about who the hell

27:18 Michelangelo is, who aren't, who don't live in Italy.

27:22 You don't get for good or ill,

27:26 you don't get Columbus coming to North America. You just don't get that

27:30 because there's no curiosity then. Yeah, okay,

27:34 they wanted to compete with the Chinese, but it would have taken a. But you

27:37 could have added another 100 years onto that process which would have pushed back a

27:40 whole bunch of other things. Without the printing press, you don't get the French

27:44 Revolution for sure. You

27:47 also don't get the American Revolution without the printing press,

27:51 you don't get the British revolution which was the Industrial Revolution.

27:55 The printing press was a world bending technology.

28:00 So is the Internet. Not social media, not the

28:04 nonsense we build on top of it, not marketing ruining everything.

28:08 Which marketing marketers ruined the printing press too. They did. Marketers

28:12 ruin everything. This is what we do. I'm talking about

28:15 the core technology of being able to connect globally

28:20 with everybody if you want to and everyone

28:24 having the opportunity to have a voice. And then you could argue the Internet plus

28:27 cell phones, but that the core technology of the Internet itself,

28:32 that's one of two just like human innovations that cannot be beat.

28:37 And so I wonder to your point,

28:41 like I think Voltaire did have an idea that things were

28:45 going to be sticky. I agree with you about that. But I don't know if

28:48 he thought they were going to be sticky across time.

28:53 No, that, no, that's, that's the, the argument I'm making. I think he, I think

28:57 he at least had the foresight of it. He. It had to

29:01 have been, it had to be in, it had to be bouncing in his brain

29:03 around there somewhere. Just the sheer volume that he wrote. Yeah. Right.

29:06 Because you know when you write at that volume,

29:10 something's gonna stick. Right. Like that's the whole like the. Into your point

29:13 about like the Internet today. Think about, think about

29:17 a guy like Joe Rogan, right? Yeah. How many podcast episodes has that

29:21 guy recorded? Right. When, when the Inter. 100 years from

29:25 now, when Joe Rogan's long gone, are people still going to be

29:28 list going back and listening to Joe Rogan's podcast? Possibly.

29:32 Just the sheer volume of it makes people think there's some value

29:36 there. Right. Like, so there. That's what I'm getting at. Like, and I, and I

29:39 think that today we think about legacy differently because of that,

29:43 because we know it's a lot easier in Voltaire's

29:47 time. You had to have something published for it to be to

29:51 that. To get to what I'm talking about being like, he wrote

29:55 so much so often, so the volume that he wrote, someone still had to publish

29:58 it. And that, that costs money. Today's world in the Internet, you don't

30:02 need that kind of money to get your stuff out on the Internet. You can

30:06 own that. You can own some sort of domain. What is

30:09 it? Hostling or bleepaddy? Whatever. You can go get a.

30:13 For eight bucks a year or whatever, and you own that domain. You can put

30:16 whatever you want on it. If you just start pumping it full of content and

30:20 catches wind of it 100 years from now, like, oh my God, look at the

30:23 volume of this up. And they re. Something's gonna. Something in there will stick to

30:26 something. Like you just. It's just inevitable at this point. So it's interesting that

30:30 you brought up Joe Rogan as the Voltaire of our time. I didn't

30:34 call him that. Hold on, timeout,

30:37 timeout. I did not call him that. I was just using

30:41 his, his. The, the, the relation

30:44 to. The relation to volume, that's all. Yeah, yeah, the relationship.

30:48 I understand the, the volume. The person putting on the

30:52 volume of our time. Yeah. So I did, I looked up the AI, looked it

30:55 up on Google and the Google AI overview says, and I quote,

30:59 as of early January 2026, there are over

31:02 2,690 episodes of the Joe Rogan experience.

31:06 There you go. Then there's a bunch of other gobbledygook after that which we don't

31:10 care about. And he's going to be recording it for the next 20 years. So

31:12 God only knows where he's going to land. Right. God only knows where he's Going

31:15 to land. That's all. That's all I was getting at. He might crack 5,000 episodes.

31:19 He may. I

31:23 would not be surprised if he did. So again, that's my

31:27 point. Right? So 100 years from now, somebody's going to be looking up content,

31:31 content creators from the early 20s, you know, the early

31:34 2000s. Joe Rogan's name is going to pop up because of the volume.

31:39 Like, who's going to beat that volume at this point? It's, it's going to

31:43 be insanity. But that's what I was. Okay, but. Oh,

31:47 we'll get to that. Okay, so this now, this now gets into like the core

31:50 ideas of Candide, which are illustrating absurdity. Sure. Because

31:54 this is. It's absurd to think that the guy

32:00 who was on Just Shoot. Not Just Shoot me. No. News Radio,

32:04 who took shots to the face on news radio and hosted Fear Factor.

32:10 Okay, we'll have enough, well produced enough volume of

32:13 podcasts on this revolutionary technology called the Internet

32:17 to be referenced 150 years from now

32:21 as the avatar

32:25 of the public voice of people in the

32:29 early 21st century. See, and this is again, what

32:32 you're talking. Voltaire would love the, the absurdity to this.

32:37 I think, I think he would love the conversation right now. Like, he would be

32:40 like, yes, I think that this is just. This

32:44 is, this might just be absurd enough to happen.

32:50 Back to the book, back to Candide

32:54 by Voltaire. We're going to pick up with chapter two here. Again. Remember, they're short

32:58 chapters, so, like, you can like, they're literally like four pages, maybe even

33:02 three. Like, literally, like bang through it in like 10 minutes. This is

33:06 an afternoon read, so let's find out what happened to Candide

33:09 after he got kicked out of the the best of all possible castles in

33:13 the best of all possible worlds. Chapter 2. What became of

33:17 Candide among the Bulgarians? Candide, expelled

33:21 from the earthly paradise, walked for a long time without knowing where,

33:24 weeping, raising his eyes to heaven, turning them often towards

33:28 the finest of castles which enclose the beautiful future. Baroness. He

33:31 lay down to sleep without supper in the midst of the fields between two furrows.

33:35 The snow was falling in fat flakes. The next day, Candide,

33:39 frozen, dragged himself toward the neighboring town which was named

33:43 Valder Berghoff Trach Nickdorf. With no money,

33:47 dying of hunger and fatigue, he stopped sadly at the door of an inn. Two

33:50 men dressed in blue noticed him. Comrade. Oh,

33:54 said one, there's a very well built young man and he's of the

33:58 right height. They advanced toward Candide and very civilly invited him

34:02 to dinner. Gentlemen, said Candide, with charming

34:05 modesty, you do me great honor, but I haven't the money to pay my bill.

34:09 Ah, sir, said one of the men in blue, persons of your figure and merit

34:13 never pay for anything. Aren't you 5ft 5? Yes,

34:16 gentlemen, that is my height, he said with a bow. Ah, sir, sit down to

34:20 the table. Not only will we pay your expenses, but we will never allow a

34:23 man like you to lack money. Men are made only to help one another.

34:27 You are right, said Candide. That is what Monsieur Panglos always told

34:31 me, and I clearly see that all this is for the best.

34:35 They urge him to accept a few crowns. He takes them and wants to make

34:39 on a promissory note. They want none. They all sit down to his table.

34:43 Don't you love tenderly? Oh, yes, he replied, I love

34:47 Mademoiselle Cunegonde tenderly. No,

34:51 said one of the gentlemen, we are asking you whether you do not tenderly love

34:55 the King of the Bulgarians. Not at all, he said,

34:59 for I have never seen him what? He is the most charming

35:02 of kings. And you must drink to his health. Oh, most gladly,

35:06 gentlemen. And he drinks. That is sufficient. They say to him,

35:10 you are now the prop, the support, the defender, the hero of the

35:13 Bulgarians. Your fortune is made and your glory is assured.

35:17 They immediately put irons on his legs, and they take him to the regiment.

35:22 They make him turn right. Turn left. Raise the ramrod. Return the ramrod.

35:26 Take aim. Fire. March on double. And they

35:30 give him 30 strokes with a stick. The next day he drills a little less

35:33 badly, and he gets only 20 strokes. The day after they give him only 10.

35:37 And he is regarded as a prodigy by his comrades.

35:41 Indeed, completely stupefied, could not yet understand too

35:44 well how he was a hero. He took it into his head one fine spring

35:48 day to go for a stroll, walking straight ahead, believing that it was the privilege

35:51 of the race of humans, as of the race of animals, to use their legs

35:54 as they please. He had not gone two

35:58 leagues when up came four other heroes, six feet tall.

36:01 They overtake him, they bind him, and they put him in a dungeon.

36:05 He was asked juridictiously, which he liked better,

36:09 to be beaten 36 times by the whole regiment, or to receive 12 lead bullets

36:12 at once in his brain. In vain he told them that the will is

36:16 free and that he wanted neither of these. He had to make a choice.

36:21 By virtue of the gift of God, that is called liberty. He decided to run

36:25 the gauntlet 36 times. He did it twice.

36:29 The regiment was made up of 2,000 men that gave him

36:32 4,000 strokes of the ramrod which laid open his muscles and nerves from the nape

36:36 of his neck to his rump. As they were about to proceed to the third

36:39 run, Candide, at the end of his rope, asked him as a favor to be

36:43 kind enough to smash into his head. He obtained this favorite.

36:46 They bandage his eyes, they make him kneel. At that moment the king of the

36:50 Bulgarians passes, inquires about the victim's crimes. And since this king was a man of

36:53 great genius, he understood from all he learned about Candide that this was

36:57 a young metaphysician, very ignorant of the ways of this world. And he

37:01 granted him his pardon with a clemency that will be praised in all

37:05 newspapers and in all ages. A worthy surgeon cured

37:08 Candide in three weeks with the emollients prescribed by

37:12 disor or disorides. There it is. He already

37:16 had a little bit of skin and could walk when the king of the Bulgarians

37:19 gave battle to the king of the Albarians,

37:22 close quote. So

37:26 Candide was in the army now. Not behind a plow.

37:30 You dig in a ditch. Son of a. You're in the

37:34 army now.

37:39 This is, this is a prime example. This is why I picked chapter two

37:44 of illustrating Absurdity by being Absurd. So to

37:47 Tom's point about Voltaire's biography, Voltaire did run across the

37:51 King of Prussia. And at that time in Europe, Prussia was its

37:54 own independent nation state. Prussia had not run across.

37:58 Well, they hadn't yet gotten to the point

38:02 where they were willing to wage wars against everybody

38:06 else on the continent in order to unite Germany into one,

38:10 into one nation state. Although Frederick the Great was sort of

38:13 the precursor to some things that were going to

38:17 happen later on in the very

38:21 war torn early 19th century.

38:26 Voltaire saw all this coming. And of course he was witness

38:29 to the marching, the turning, the lifting of the ramrod,

38:33 the lowering of the ramrod, and wondered, of course, where all of this would

38:37 lead. He understood that the best way to skewer the

38:41 present was to demonstrate the massive gap between what was idealized

38:44 and what was reality. And all of the characters in

38:48 this book, from Candide to Mademoiselle

38:52 Cunegonde, there's going to be a blind old maid that you're going to

38:55 meet in a minute. Maybe we won't get there today, but all

38:59 these characters in the book, even the characters in El

39:02 Dorado, lived through absurd situations that Voltaire

39:06 saw in real life. They experienced war, social strife,

39:10 Natural disasters. This book was published right around the

39:13 time when an earthquake occurred in

39:17 lisbon, Portugal, in 1750.

39:23 And in Lisbon, apparently this was like one of the biggest earthquakes that had

39:26 ever occurred on the European continent and killed a whole bunch of people. I think

39:30 it's something like. I'm gonna have to check the number, but I think it was

39:33 somewhere between like 30 and 50,000 people died in this earthquake. And

39:36 Voltaire was, was. Was taken aback by

39:40 this, right, because there were many people

39:44 talk about philosophy and the Enlightenment. There were many people who were exploring

39:47 all kinds of philosophical ideas during the Enlightenment

39:51 that were attempting to, of course, get away from the religious wars that were also

39:55 ravaging Europe at that point. And. And one of

39:59 the ideas was this idea of optimism,

40:02 this idea that we are living in the best possible world. And of course, Voltaire

40:06 thought that was absurd. He said, if we're living in the best possible world, how

40:09 is it that all these people died in this earthquake in Lisbon? Or if we're

40:12 living in the best possible world, how is it that people are forced into marching

40:16 in regiment to serve a king? That might be crazy. If we're living in

40:20 the best possible world, how is it that we

40:23 still have social strife and we still have. We still

40:27 have rulers who are tyrants, right? And by the way,

40:31 Voltaire was a monarchist.

40:35 He was a monarchist. So what that means is,

40:39 by the way, as a monarchist, he saw the divisions in French

40:43 society as being examples of absurdity and then of

40:46 themselves. So French society was. Was divided into three

40:50 parts. There were folks who supported the monarchy and supported the

40:53 aristocracy. Louis the 15th and all those folks and all

40:57 of his precursors, Louis XIV, Louis the 13th, you know,

41:01 what's her name? With. Let the. Let there. Let there be cake, all that, Right?

41:04 Okay. Then you had

41:08 the noble class, right? And the noble class

41:11 included landowners and included intellectuals

41:15 like Voltaire, Rousseau

41:19 and Diderot and all those other guys who would wind

41:23 up later on. And. And Voltaire did know some of those folks would

41:26 later on wind up laying the foundations of the French Revolution. So

41:30 you had your. Your nobles and your intellectuals, right, Your landowners. And then the

41:34 third area of society that you had was what

41:38 was. What was. Well, the third area of society was the church. And so the

41:41 church owned property. We often forget in our modern times, because

41:45 France is so secular

41:49 after being. After having the religion smacked out of it during two world

41:53 wars, that France was once a

41:56 heavily Catholic country and the

42:00 Catholic church owned a lot of property in France.

42:04 They fought a forward movement

42:08 against the Protestant Reformation that was kind of coming out of

42:11 Germany and specifically Prussia, interestingly enough,

42:15 Lutheranism, Calvinism, all of that was coming out of Germany and

42:19 Switzerland, the area that would later on become Germany and

42:22 Switzerland. They were fighting a, a front,

42:26 a front robust, you know,

42:29 crusade level action against all of that. And of course, this was an era

42:33 where popes out of Italy had, well, they had

42:36 armies and they used them. So this is the historical

42:40 context that Voltaire is in. And he's looking at all this and he's saying, this

42:43 is absurd. If this is the best possible world, what the hell are we

42:46 doing? And he writes Candide from that perspective.

42:51 Voltaire believed that we had to be cynical about the absurdity of the world around

42:54 us if we would ever find the moral courage to confront it and change it.

42:59 This is why it's worthwhile as a reader,

43:03 as a leader to read Voltaire rather than Harvard Business Review,

43:07 because think about the world that we are in today. The world that we are

43:10 in is equally as absurd,

43:14 perhaps more at scale, I think Voltaire would say, than

43:18 it was during the, during the time that between

43:21 1694 and the publishing of Candeep. And Voltaire was walking around

43:24 observing things. And it begs the question. No, not

43:28 begs the question, but it opens up the question which we were going to talk

43:31 about Tom, about here. How

43:34 can leaders, right,

43:38 expose and face the absurdity

43:42 just of the day to day ways they have to lead? And we've never actually

43:46 talked about this on this podcast. I was realizing that when I was reading Candide.

43:50 Like we've never actually talked in real terms about the

43:53 absurdities of leadership. We've kind of talked about dichotomies,

43:57 but there are some literal absurdities that are in leadership. An

44:00 easy one to think about is we have these HR policies and procedures that

44:04 we've created. Maybe the founder of the company has created them, or maybe the executive

44:08 board has come up with them or whatever. And

44:12 then there's this thing that happens that's outside of the

44:17 boundaries that are set by those policies. But it's

44:20 not unethical, it's not immoral, and it's not illegal. Just

44:24 outside the boundaries. And if we were in any other

44:28 possible circumstance, we would just kind of ignore this and leave it alone.

44:32 But we can't because it's in our business and we

44:35 haven't. We. I don't think we've ever talked about that, that, that situation, those kinds

44:39 of situations. And so how do leaders, what can leaders take from Candide in order

44:43 to handle that? I

44:46 think So I don't know it, it's so funny that

44:50 you, you word it like that because I was, I had, I, as I

44:54 was thinking of the excerpt you read and some of the commentary that you had.

44:57 And I already had some things in my brain that now don't apply. So I'm

45:00 not sure I'm, when I'm gonna say that or if I'm going to say any

45:02 of that stuff. But, but, but

45:06 I, I think to your point, right, like

45:10 I don't think there's anybody when, when leaders are

45:14 true leaders, when they are faced with a problem, they try to solve it. So

45:17 to your point about you've got all these policies and things that, that you

45:21 deem as your HR playbook or your HR

45:26 employee handbook or whatever, and if you've come across something that

45:29 doesn't get addressed in there, how do you like, to

45:33 your point, do you ignore it? Do you just let it go? Leaders are not

45:36 going to just let it go. That's just not, it's not in their DNA, right?

45:39 So they're going, they're going to try to find

45:43 a place in their employee handbook that they can slightly

45:47 modify to include it so they can address it, so they can handle it and

45:50 so they can move on, or they're just going to add a

45:54 chapter in their handbook to address it. Now

45:57 that being said, that's the, that's the practicality of it. That's, that's the way,

46:01 right? That's the way leaders are, are built, right? They're gonna, they're

46:05 problem solvers. They're going to look at a problem, they're going to solve it. This,

46:08 this thing is not in our employee handbook, but we need to address

46:12 it. And even if somebody says but do we have to address it? It's not

46:15 in the employee handbook. And they're going to go, if it, if it, if it

46:18 happens in the confines of our company, it needs to be in the employee handbook,

46:22 right? Like so the fact that it happened, and I think it goes back

46:26 to Voltaire's thinking, which is

46:30 think in provability, in fact, in

46:34 factualities. Don't think in ideals and ideas,

46:38 right? That, like, that's one of the foundations of his writing, which is like

46:42 you should be judging something based on what you can see, feel, touch, hear,

46:46 smell, whatever, not on ideas. An idea is

46:50 not, is not something that you should throw all of your whimsic,

46:53 your whim into, right? Like so, same, same

46:57 scenario here. So if leaders think like that, that they're thinking

47:01 practic from a Practical standpoint. And they want to see provability.

47:05 Things that can be, you know, things that can be

47:08 touched, smelled, saw, heard. What I like you can

47:12 prove that it exists. Right. Then they're going to fix

47:15 it. They're gonna. They're gonna. They're gonna. They're gonna inevitably rewrite the

47:19 employee handbook. So. So we are. Yes, they are going to rewrite the

47:23 employee handbook. And, and you're talking about. So Voltaire.

47:27 Voltaire loved divisions and classes in

47:30 society. He was a classicist in a way that we can't understand. Right.

47:34 So he, he believed in.

47:40 Yes. He believed that, like, all human beings were

47:43 equal in sort of the John Lockean way of thinking about freedom that the

47:47 Founding Fathers would eventually codify and like the Constitution and the

47:51 Declaration of it. He believed in all that. He would have. He would have clapped

47:54 for all of that. Right? He would have seen America as like the

47:58 pinnacle end of the Enlightenment project. That's how he

48:01 would have viewed the American founding. If he'd been alive long enough to. To sort

48:04 of see. Because he died in 17.

48:09 When did he die? He died in

48:10 1778. So

48:14 he died, what, two years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

48:18 And so he didn't get to see the like, the like

48:22 fulfillment of that, but he would have clapped for that. Okay,

48:28 but he was also a monarchist and he believed in kings

48:32 and he believed in classes. He's. He's quoted as saying, I. I

48:36 do. Did see this in his Wikipedia biography, and I reconfirmed it in other places,

48:40 but he did believe that the masses. Democracy couldn't

48:43 work because the masses were idiots, basically.

48:47 Our forefathers felt the same way. That's why they invented the electoral college. I'm just

48:51 saying. I'm just saying. I'm just saying, like, there's is. This is the thing. Right?

48:54 And so. So he believed in a class system. Right.

48:59 Now you're talking about

49:03 a distinction between, at a class level, between

49:07 what is practical and pragmatic

49:10 versus what

49:14 we see and idealize in business.

49:19 Right. And so there's. There's a dis. And by the way, we're on the other

49:22 side of, like, existential dread. So we're on the other side of, like, Camus, who

49:26 we've covered on this podcast. We're on the other side of deconstructionism. We're just going

49:29 to tear everything down. And Durinian deconstructionism. We're on the other

49:33 side of moral relativism. Well, you know, if it feels like it's Your truth, Do

49:36 it. It's fine. By the way, Voltaire would have rejected all that crap.

49:40 He would have said, if it feels good. What does that even mean? I have

49:43 no idea. Yeah, he would have yelled it. He would have yelled at Jacques

49:47 Derrida in French and told him he was a moron, you know, and then like,

49:50 run away. Actually, he might not have run

49:54 away. Those old boys, they actually knew how to duel. He would have challenged him

49:57 to a duel. Like, he did challenge somebody to a duel. I

50:01 believe he did, if I remember correctly. I. I'm trying

50:04 to remember who it was now. It was like, it was when he was in

50:07 Prussia. It had something to do with the Prussian king's daughter.

50:11 Yes. And the way that I can't remember now who he.

50:15 It doesn't matter. But to your point, he wasn't backing down for people because

50:18 principal met. Your name meant something at that point in history,

50:22 Right. You were not going to do anything to muddy your name. And if it

50:25 meant to defend yourself against, it didn't matter who.

50:30 Didn't matter. So. So we're, we're past all that, right?

50:34 Our names don't mean anything. One of the great lines in, like, Pulp Fiction,

50:38 when Bruce Willis is getting on the, getting on the bike and the girl is

50:41 behind him and she's like. Or not the girl. Like, it's not that scene. There's

50:45 one other scene in there where she's like, what's your name? And he's like, my

50:47 name is blah, blah, blah, blah, or whatever. And she's like, what does that mean?

50:50 He goes, we're Americans, baby. Our names don't mean anything. Yeah, there

50:54 you go. It's. Yeah, like Voltaire would be

50:57 stunned to the point of disgusted at that, that entire, like,

51:01 worldview, right? Because it did mean something.

51:05 So my question is, my clarifying question with all that there is.

51:10 If we have the pragmatism, which I don't disagree with you, I think, I

51:14 think leaders are pragmatic, but I also think leaders are, like,

51:18 trapped in this environment of absurdity where.

51:22 So for instance, I once had an employee, and this was long

51:25 before COVID and George Floyd

51:29 and any of that. I once had an employee who shall remain nameless

51:33 if he's listening to this, to this podcast, but he'll know who he is. When

51:36 I mentioned this, this incident, who wanted to go and protest

51:40 in like, some anti racism rally, okay?

51:44 And this was way back. This is before anything happened with COVID This is years

51:47 ago, like 2017, 2018, back then.

51:52 And I sat him down. Because there's nothing in that. In my

51:55 employee manual about any of that. Because I couldn't have. I couldn't.

52:00 It was only after I developed a relationship with him that I understood where his

52:04 political leanings were. And so it made sense

52:08 to me that he would go in that direction. Right. And I literally

52:12 had to sit him down and I had to say, listen,

52:16 there's nothing about this in our handbook.

52:21 So I'm going to. This seems very idealistic to me.

52:25 And you want to change the world. Actually, I think it was 2016.

52:29 That's right. Because he was a Bernie bro. That's right. That's right.

52:33 He was a Bernie bro. That's right. And he wanted to go to, like, a

52:36 rally that was going to turn into some shenanigans in Portland

52:40 at the time. That's what it was. I remember now. And I literally looked at

52:43 him and I said, I don't care about your politics.

52:47 That has absolutely nothing to do with the work that you do here. I don't

52:50 care that you go protest. That's your freedom of speech. That has nothing to do

52:54 with what you do here. However, I do care

52:58 because it was a small team. I mean, we were under 25 people. I do

53:01 care that if you get in trouble and you call me,

53:05 I can't come bail you out. Like, I'm

53:09 not doing that. That's a step too far. And

53:13 when you come here, if you have been in jail,

53:19 that's a problem. You. You don't work here. You don't work

53:23 here anymore. Yeah,

53:28 that's an absurd. To me, that was an absurd situation.

53:32 That was a candid level of absurdity because I couldn't

53:36 under. Number one, I couldn't understand what he was trying to accomplish. But because I

53:39 thought the fix was in already, which it turned out I was right. But.

53:43 But. But

53:47 because I'm just older and I just seen more. Right. But.

53:52 But it illustrated to me

53:56 the absurdity of dealing with things that are outside of the

53:59 boundaries. Right. That you might be faced with as a leader.

54:02 And I literally had to sit there. I couldn't laugh at him because

54:06 I really did. I wanted to crack up and be like, this is so obvious.

54:10 How can you. How could you not figure this out? And the absurdity

54:13 was in that he was idealistically

54:17 oriented in this direction so genuinely that he couldn't

54:20 see the absurdity himself. And that's what I think leaders struggle with.

54:28 Even more so now on the other side of 2020, because there's all kinds of

54:31 things that have occurred on the other side of 2020 that I, I couldn't even

54:33 imagine in 2016. Oh my God. If you had told me like back in

54:37 2016 that we would have like all of

54:41 the things we had post George Floyd and post Covet and all of the kinds

54:44 of absurdities that have, that have just, we've just sort of like shrugged our shoulders

54:48 10 years later and just sort of been like, yeah, okay, that's reality now.

54:52 I'd have been like, what? Yeah, I would not have believed you either, honestly.

54:55 And that's the absurdity part that I think Voltaire is pointing out with Candy.

54:59 That's why I think saturation works. That's why

55:03 memes work across the Internet. And what's amazing to me is people can't figure

55:07 out why memes work le. And I'm not just talking

55:11 about like regular people, like people who, we have titles

55:14 and we call them politicians and policymakers are

55:18 absolutely flummoxed by meme culture on the Internet.

55:23 Well, until the 20 something, until the 20 somethings are running for Congress,

55:28 it won't like we will. None of the next generation after the,

55:31 the, the, the politicians that are in power, right, the next

55:35 generation behind them are still not going to have an idea behind that. They're not

55:38 going to have a clue either. It's going to be, it's going to be two

55:42 generations, three generations away when we start, when you start seeing

55:45 politicians leverage that stuff. Yeah, the absurdity will

55:49 disappear, right? Like that's, that's really what it gets to

55:52 Voltaire's point, right? The absurdity won't disappear. The absurdity will go to a higher

55:56 level because I don't think the absurdity can disappear. Okay,

56:00 so it might not, but the absurdity that you and I are thinking of right

56:03 now will disappear. It'll be something else is my point. It'll be

56:07 more, it'll be less, it'll be different, whatever, but it'll, it'll, it'll morph into something

56:11 else is I guess, my point. But

56:14 as we have said on this podcast a thousand times at this

56:18 point. That the more 44 times, the more. Things change, the more things

56:22 stay the same. Right? So this is this what I don't think

56:25 Voltaire would think this is anything new. Like everything like what

56:29 you're talking about and how he approached the world, the thought about the world, how

56:32 he was, he was even, even self contradicting at some points with the,

56:36 the way that he viewed the, the world versus his

56:39 thoughts on monarchies and, and, and classism and stuff like that.

56:43 And some of, some of his writings would, would literally talk about

56:47 how that was absurd even as to one. One

56:51 human being to rule. Overall, he thought that was absurd, but

56:54 yet supported it. So like. So I think, I think he would.

56:58 I, I do think they're, they're. If he were alive today, I think there would

57:02 be things that he would look at us and go, no duh. Like

57:07 that's the five year old Voltaire. No duh.

57:11 How do you guys not see that this is normal? Like this is a, this

57:14 is exactly what you should have expected. Like so well,

57:17 and maybe that's the part of the continuing strength of him because he,

57:21 he hits on something that so, so you know, in the list

57:25 of notables that I mentioned along with Voltaire, which he would object to

57:29 being placed next to the person that I placed him with. But

57:32 I'm alive and Voltaire is dead. So,

57:36 so, so you know, Voltaire, the apostle Paul,

57:41 Shakespeare, Plato,

57:45 um, St. Augustine, the people that even people

57:48 that we've read on this show, I mean we've read all those guys on this

57:51 show. Show, right. They all

57:56 touched on or were able to grasp

58:01 something about a corner of reality that

58:05 to your point, the masses say no duh

58:09 or whatever and sort of move past,

58:14 but they focused in on that and said no,

58:17 you need to pay attention to this. And that's the power of Voltaire.

58:21 That's why Voltaire has lasted across time along with all those other folks. And

58:25 just like those other folks, he will continue to

58:29 either be referenced. I don't know about being read, I'm still not convinced on that.

58:32 But he'll be referenced forever and ever. And not forever,

58:36 but for a long, long time. I think it's gonna take a long time for

58:39 the water to go out on guys like that.

58:43 And where that relates to leaders and leadership I think is

58:47 in that leaders have to

58:51 understand that. I think they're playing on a longer timeline than

58:54 just. And we haven't really talked about this either, but maybe

58:58 this year we will more. They have to play on a longer timeline than just

59:02 the quarterly timeline.

59:05 So I go back to my, my, my story with, you

59:09 know, my former employee. Like that

59:13 person I had, I had a lot

59:17 of impact in that person's life. And

59:21 that person looked up to me and, and

59:24 admired me. Right. And looked at me as a figure to be admired.

59:28 Right. How much impact I had across that person's lifetime,

59:32 I have no idea. But I do know that for, you know, a very

59:36 specific narrow window of about.

59:40 Yeah. Five to six years. Like, that person was like, hey,

59:43 hey, son. What do you think? You know? And I think it goes back

59:47 to that idea of being able to treat his

59:51 absurdity as serious rather than as something to be laughed at or something to

59:55 be satirized. It's become content now. It's,

59:58 congratulations, it's podcast content now. But, like.

1:00:02 That'S how you know you've made it. See, before you had to be

1:00:06 quoted in a book. Now you become podcast fodder, and you've made

1:00:10 it. More absurdity.

1:00:16 So instead of saying the more things change, the more things stay the same, we're

1:00:19 gonna have to come up with another phrase that we can honor Voltaire with. Like,

1:00:22 the more absurd. The more absurd something seems, the more likely it

1:00:26 makes sense. Sense, or the more likely it is more

1:00:29 likely. I don't know. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it

1:00:32 out. Well, this is why. This is why this is the first book we're covering

1:00:35 in the first episode of this year, because this lays the foundation for where we're

1:00:38 gonna go. Exactly. All right. By the way, I did

1:00:42 look up the. The Lisbon earthquake. So

1:00:46 I want to kind of grab this information, and we're going to be doing a

1:00:50 little bit more of this this year also, since I do have my. I do

1:00:53 have my phone attached to the Internet. Wait, we're gonna. We're gonna fact check on.

1:00:55 Right on the podcast. Right on the pod. That's amazing. A little bit more

1:00:59 of that. Joan, eat your heart out. I'm gonna stop being so lazy.

1:01:07 So the Lisbon earthquake occurred in 1755

1:01:11 and occurred on the morning of Saturday, November 1, the Feast of All Saints,

1:01:16 around 9:40 local time. So that was. That's a big Catholic. That's a

1:01:19 big Catholic holiday. And it

1:01:23 was a 8.5 to, um, 9.0

1:01:28 earthquake. So it was a big earthquake,

1:01:32 and it killed 30,000. 30,000 people

1:01:36 and apparently

1:01:39 created a. A tsunami that was

1:01:43 about 20ft high at Lisbon and

1:01:45 65ft high at Cadiz, Spain, which is a little bit more

1:01:49 inland. Modern research indicates that the main

1:01:53 seismic source was faulting of the seafloor along the

1:01:56 tectonic plate boundaries of the mid Atlantic. So, yeah,

1:02:01 and Voltaire said about that. He

1:02:05 lamented the destruction of Lisbon in the earthquake. Again, this is according to

1:02:09 the AI The AI here on. On Google

1:02:12 and criticized the philosophers who thought that, quote, all's well with the world,

1:02:16 and the religious folks who thought that it was, quote, unquote, God's will.

1:02:22 So he, he. He hit to the both his left and his right, which was

1:02:25 typical for Voltaire.

1:02:30 Speaking of the Lisbon earthquake, we're going to go to chapter six in

1:02:33 Candide. Back to the book. This is

1:02:37 going to be real short. It's literally two pair, two paragraphs. It's ridiculous how

1:02:41 short chapter six is. This is why I picked it for my

1:02:44 mid. My mid. My mid. Episode transition here. All right.

1:02:48 After the earthquake. So this is chapter six. How they held

1:02:52 a fine auto defe to prevent earthquake and how Candide was

1:02:55 flogged after the earthquake which had destroyed three quarters of

1:02:59 Lisbon. The country's wise men found no more efficacious means of preventing

1:03:03 total ruin than to give the people a fine auto da fe.

1:03:07 It was decided by the University of Coimbra that the spectacle of a few

1:03:10 persons burned by slow fire in great ceremony is an

1:03:14 infallible secret for keeping the earth from quaking. That's

1:03:18 the absurdity that he was pointing out.

1:03:22 They had consequently seized a Biscayan, convicted of having married his

1:03:25 bleepchild's bleepmother and two

1:03:28 Portuguese who, when eating a chicken, had taken out the bacon.

1:03:32 By the way, there's a note in this. The reason that they picked the two

1:03:36 Portuguese who, when eating a chicken, had taken out the bacon was because the taking

1:03:40 out of the bacon thus showed that they were Jews and still

1:03:43 secretly faithful to Judaism.

1:03:48 After dinner, back to the book. After dinner they came and bound Dr.

1:03:52 Panglos and his disciple Candide, the one for having spoken and the other for

1:03:56 having listened, with an air of approbation. Both were taken

1:04:00 separately into extremely cool apartments in which one was never bothered by the

1:04:03 sun. By the way, those are prison cells.

1:04:07 A week later, they were each clad in a sanbenito and

1:04:11 their heads were adorned with paper miters. Candide's miter and San

1:04:14 Benito were painted with flames upside down, with devils that had neither tails nor

1:04:18 claws. But Panglos devils wore claws and tails, and his flames were right

1:04:22 side up. Thus dressed, they marched in procession and heard a very pathetic

1:04:26 sermon followed by some beautiful music in a droning, plain song.

1:04:31 Candide was flogged in time to the singing. The Biscayan and the two

1:04:34 men who wouldn't eat the bacon were burned and Panglos was hanged, although this

1:04:38 is not the custom. On the same day, the earthquaked again with a

1:04:42 fearful crash. Candide, terrified,

1:04:45 dumbfounded, bewildered, bleeding and quivering all over, said to himself,

1:04:49 if this is the best of all possible worlds, then what are the others? I

1:04:52 could let it pass if I had only been Flogged. If only I had been

1:04:56 flogged. That happened also with the Bulgarians. But, oh, my dear Panglos,

1:04:59 greatest of all philosophers, was it necessary that I see you hanged without knowing

1:05:03 why? Oh, my dear Anabaptist, best of all men,

1:05:07 was it necessary that you be drowned in the port? Oh, Mademoiselle

1:05:10 Cune, pearl of young ladies, was it necessary that your belly be

1:05:14 slit open? By the way, that had happened earlier. He

1:05:18 was going back, barely supporting himself, preached at, flogged, absolved

1:05:22 and blessed, when an old woman accosted him and said, my

1:05:25 son, take courage, follow me.

1:05:31 By the way, there's one other thing you note. Every time there's a new character

1:05:35 introduced, the level of absurdity, the ratchet of absurdity

1:05:39 goes up higher. So the. The old lady.

1:05:44 The old lady proves to have a story that I cannot read on air, by

1:05:48 the way, but it is a story that is quite,

1:05:51 quite shocking to modern ears.

1:05:56 Even I was surprised when I read it. I was like, oh, they actually wrote

1:05:59 this down? Well, I guess all these kinds of things were happening on a regular,

1:06:02 so it wasn't a surprise to anyone. Which

1:06:05 this leads into sort of my. My Act Two

1:06:09 idea here. So,

1:06:13 remember I said earlier in the show that.

1:06:17 That we've become enlightened. Right. And we're at the end. I. I personally believe, and

1:06:21 I'm not the only person to say this, I personally believe that we're at the

1:06:24 end of the Enlightenment project. This doesn't mean that we're not discovering new things

1:06:28 or that we're. We're at the end of, like, human

1:06:31 invention. I don't. I wouldn't be so bold as to take that position,

1:06:35 although Peter Thiel has taken that position. There's been several people to say

1:06:39 that the human race has invented what it will invent at this point. Now it's

1:06:42 just building a better mouth. Mousetrap. Right, right, right. Several. Several people believe that. Several

1:06:46 people believe that. And I think that that's a bunch of

1:06:49 nonsense. And not just a little

1:06:53 nonsense, like a lot of nonsense. Actually, there's a book that we're going to read,

1:06:56 our second book this year. We're going to be reading a book by

1:07:00 Francis Bacon called the Great Installation. And

1:07:04 it's. It's going to be

1:07:08 interesting because Bacon believed, and he was

1:07:12 roughly a. A.

1:07:16 What do you call it? Not a peer, but he was operating at the same

1:07:19 time that Voltaire was operating, except in England. And

1:07:22 Bacon was a person who believed that we actually could

1:07:26 resuscitate, we could renew the world,

1:07:29 we could take actual knowledge and scientific

1:07:33 theory and we could remake the world

1:07:37 into something else. And he believed, as

1:07:41 many do who say, that we've reached the pinnacle of

1:07:44 human enlightenment and that we have no further to

1:07:48 go. He would say to

1:07:52 those folks that what we've reached is the peak

1:07:55 of mediocrity, actually, and that just by building a better

1:07:59 mousetrap, we're just being more and more mediocre. And Peter

1:08:02 Thiel, by the way, believes some of this, but then sometimes you'll get him in

1:08:05 other interviews, he believes other things. Right, so. Or he'll say other things in

1:08:09 answer to the interview's question. So I

1:08:13 personally don't hold to that. But I do think that the project of the

1:08:16 Enlightenment, which was a project that was believed, that was based

1:08:20 on, again, the principles of free inquiry and

1:08:24 free human reason, I do think that project is at a close.

1:08:29 I think we are going to have human innovation, but it's going to be

1:08:33 built on different principles. And I think that's the direction we're going. And we just

1:08:37 don't know what those principles are because no one's laid them out for us yet,

1:08:41 because we're all still trying to go back to the Enlightenment because we're like, oh,

1:08:44 human reason, that's like the best thing for us to use. Well,

1:08:48 you know, at some point, you do have to look around and realize the

1:08:52 limits of human reason. And I think

1:08:56 we have reached that point, particularly in America, where we're starting to look

1:08:59 around and go, what are the limits of human reason here? You know, what are

1:09:03 the limits? Where are the boundaries? And that's a good question to ask because

1:09:07 I think that that ultimately opens. Allows you to find a new door

1:09:11 into a new place that you didn't. You didn't know existed. But it takes a

1:09:15 long time. It's not something that happens at the speed of a tweet.

1:09:18 Yeah, you know,

1:09:22 I think the challenges that are in our era, particularly the challenges for leadership in

1:09:26 this era that's also partially circling, looking for that new door,

1:09:30 are challenges in competence and meaning. But I also think the challenges

1:09:33 of courage. And then, of course, there's the tactical areas

1:09:37 of leadership and succession and mentoring and coaching and

1:09:40 supervision. We for sure, and I've

1:09:44 already said this, we for sure know more about the world materially and

1:09:48 scientifically than even people in Voltaire's time did. However,

1:09:52 we know a hell of a lot less about people and their motivations than people

1:09:55 in Voltaire's time did. And we ignore empirical evidence.

1:09:59 It's right in front of our eyes in favor of scientific theories about

1:10:02 human nature that very often prove to be mere myths. And

1:10:06 then we get mad when people don't live out the myths.

1:10:10 Case in point, every riot you've ever seen

1:10:13 lately about any political act,

1:10:18 and I'll just leave that there.

1:10:22 Technological wizardry has allowed us to hide from facing the hard truths about

1:10:26 leading people and Candide. This is another reason why you should probably read

1:10:30 it. Candide is about facing hard truths presented, of course, in a way that

1:10:33 illustrates the absurdity of those truths, but it cannot tell us how to

1:10:37 solve that absurdity. He cannot tell us how to resolve it.

1:10:41 Voltaire merely shrugs his shoulders sort of rhetorically at the end of

1:10:45 Candide and sort of leaves us to our own devices.

1:10:49 And as a person who is a religious person and also

1:10:52 a philosophical person, but also a practical, pragmatic person,

1:10:57 this will not do for me.

1:11:04 There are hard problems to solve in leadership. Tom and I mentioned some of them

1:11:08 already. Competence, meaning courage. Those are hard problems

1:11:11 to solve because they're so individualized.

1:11:16 How can leaders have the courage to actually face those hard problems and

1:11:20 solve them? Oh, goodness

1:11:24 gracious. So how. How

1:11:27 can they get the courage? My,

1:11:31 my. One of the things that. And I.

1:11:35 I've always had this thing like leaders

1:11:38 aren't born, they're created. Right? So

1:11:42 if you. If you're. If you're not willing

1:11:46 to face the hardest challenges, if you're not willing

1:11:49 to. To make hard decisions, are you really a leader?

1:11:53 Can you. Should you be considered a leader? Are we missing. Are

1:11:57 we missing out on a secondary title or a secondary role of

1:12:01 somebody that we should be calling them instead of the leader, so to speak.

1:12:05 Because I think that's. I think that's where those people fall. Right.

1:12:08 Maybe they're. They're somebody who needs somebody above them to say,

1:12:12 you know, pat them on the head and say, what you did was, okay, I'll

1:12:15 take it from here. Because I really do want to lead people. I really

1:12:19 do want to help people secure, succeed. I really do want to be the person

1:12:23 somebody comes to with their challenges. I want people to come to me with their

1:12:26 problems. You don't seem to be that person. Right. So

1:12:30 when you. So can they build up to it? Sure. Because I do still believe

1:12:34 that leaders are made and not born, so somebody may not be ready for it.

1:12:38 This goes directly to a problem that I was talking to a

1:12:41 colleague of mine last week about. It wasn't on this podcast, believe it or not,

1:12:45 Jeson, what we were talking about. Was the

1:12:49 fact that, like, the question that was handed to me was,

1:12:54 did you ever work for someplace that promoted you with

1:12:57 training behind the promotion? Or were

1:13:01 you just given the promotion and expected to lead people because

1:13:05 you knew how to do a job that you were doing? In the current state

1:13:08 of state of affairs, I think that is the underlying

1:13:12 problem. We take. I'll just take my area of expertise. For

1:13:15 example, we take a salesperson. You'll

1:13:19 say you have a group of 10 salespeople. Your

1:13:22 sales manager leaves, gets fired, quits, whatever. And

1:13:26 the instinct is to say, let's take our number one guy or gal

1:13:30 and make them the sales manager. Because the thought process is they can make

1:13:33 everybody else as good as them. And that is the furthest from the truth I

1:13:37 have ever heard in my entire life. Because what makes a

1:13:41 really good sales leader and what makes a really good salesperson are

1:13:44 two different things. Are we going to promote that person?

1:13:48 First of all, we're going to ask that person. You're going

1:13:52 to half the time in those environments where it's only one team. I'm not talking

1:13:55 about giant corporations. I'm talking about a small company. One sales

1:13:59 team they're going to take. They're basically going to say, hey, son, you're our number

1:14:03 one rep. The sales manager just quit. So you're the manager now. Have a nice

1:14:06 day. There's no conversation or

1:14:10 interview process or whatever because if they went through an

1:14:13 interview process of like, say, the top three salespeople, they

1:14:17 might uncover that the third best salesperson

1:14:21 is number three because they spend 25% of their time

1:14:24 helping everybody else, making everybody else on the team

1:14:28 better, Taking the last, the bottom guy or girl on the sales

1:14:32 team and trying to coach them up, trying to help them, trying to give them

1:14:35 some, like some confidence booster or whatever. Now, whether

1:14:39 they success or fail at that is not their job. But they do it because

1:14:42 they want other people around them to be successful. Now

1:14:45 you take that person at number three, make them the sales

1:14:49 manager. Now guess what happens? Your entire sales team just

1:14:52 uplifts because they're going to take the worst sales team, the worst

1:14:56 salesperson on that team and try to make them better. The number one

1:15:00 person will not do that. The number one person will be like, well, you suck.

1:15:03 I'm just going to replace you, right? So again, I, I go back

1:15:07 to, like, some of the absurdities here are

1:15:11 companies will promote and have expectations

1:15:15 without training, without conversation, without.

1:15:18 They'll just hope and pray that this person is going to do a good job.

1:15:21 You know, by the way, I would say 8 out of 10 times that person

1:15:25 gets fired because they suck as a manager instead of just getting

1:15:28 demoted and put them back where they belong. So there are, there are salespeople out

1:15:32 there that never want to be sales managers. They just want to do their job

1:15:35 and go home because they're really bleepdamn good at it. You know what?

1:15:38 If you own that company, let that person do that.

1:15:42 Why. Why are you going to take your best salesperson out of the field?

1:15:46 That makes no sense anyway. So go back to what the

1:15:51 part of this, the courage part comes from the person who

1:15:54 wants it in the first place. Yeah. Okay. You

1:15:58 can't force courage onto people. That doesn't exist. And you've seen that.

1:16:02 Oh, yeah, sometimes through humanity. But

1:16:05 courage comes from the most unlikely places at the most unlikely

1:16:09 times, which is where we get some of the. Most.

1:16:14 Honorable movies out of World War II, stories out of

1:16:17 Vietnam. That stuff comes from real courage. If you

1:16:21 want that person leading your company then,

1:16:25 or if that person starts a company, they're going to have the courage

1:16:29 to face the hard, the hard questions. You don't have to teach them that. It

1:16:32 comes, it comes from that experience of, I either do this or

1:16:36 I die. Which is why, by the way, there's a lot of companies that will

1:16:39 go out of their way to hire military veterans. A lot of companies I know

1:16:42 will go out of their way for that because they know that they've been in

1:16:45 some situations that they've had to make hard decisions or

1:16:49 follow hard orders, but still follow them well. Okay,

1:16:53 so. But we, we confuse the. We often confuse, I think,

1:16:57 in. To your point about military. Okay. We covered war by

1:17:00 Sebastian Younger last year. Right

1:17:04 in. And, and one of the things that we. That I noted

1:17:08 when I was talking about that book with, with John Hill,

1:17:11 AKA Small Mountain, is that

1:17:16 I always have to put that in. But one of the things I noted with

1:17:19 that was that

1:17:23 we always say courage is not the absence of fear. Right. It's doing what you're

1:17:26 afraid of anyway in spite of it. Right.

1:17:30 Okay, so. But, but we also don't make a

1:17:33 distinction. And by the way, Brene Brown says that courage is a heart.

1:17:38 And I agree. It is in. It is in the emotions, it's in the feelings.

1:17:41 It's not. It's not a reasoning. I can't reason your way into courage. Okay. I

1:17:45 agree with both of those postures. Right.

1:17:48 I think we still don't know. We still merge

1:17:52 together moral courage and physical

1:17:55 courage. So physical courage

1:17:59 is. Physical courage always comes last this is

1:18:03 one of the things that I am an hour and

1:18:06 15, almost hours, 16 minutes in. Now I'm going to mention jiu jitsu. This is

1:18:10 something that comes in. I mean, we, we, we offered

1:18:14 up movies really quick. So we did, you know, it's fine.

1:18:18 That's right. So this is something you learn in jiu jitsu, right? So

1:18:22 I can have the physical courage to step out on the

1:18:25 mat. But that only comes to your point about training.

1:18:29 That only comes with training. During which time in

1:18:33 training I have had to face my lack of moral

1:18:36 courage in going and getting a hard role with

1:18:40 somebody who I may not particularly like or who

1:18:45 I just don't like their posture towards the game. Right. It's not that I

1:18:48 know that they're going to submit me or that I'm afraid that I'm going to

1:18:51 get hit in the face or get choked out. It's not about any of that.

1:18:54 It's about, do I have the moral courage to

1:18:58 confront before the physical courage even shows up.

1:19:04 And we confuse those two things together all the time. And so we hire military

1:19:07 veterans. And I agree, there are certain, I mean, I'm in

1:19:11 Texas. A lot of firms in Texas chase

1:19:14 military veterans. Texas is very military veteran friendly.

1:19:18 Texas employers are very military veteran friendly. They want those

1:19:21 people because they confuse, I think,

1:19:25 the physical courage with the moral courage. You go talk to any military

1:19:29 veteran, man, you know what? They don't talk about the physical courage

1:19:33 part. If you ever go talk to any of those guys one on one, you

1:19:36 know what they talk about? They talk about the moral

1:19:40 complexity, right? Of what it is they did. How do

1:19:44 you live with the emotional courage? How do you live with that

1:19:48 thing that, not only how you live that thing that you did, but how did

1:19:50 you make that emotional decision to get in there and get after it

1:19:54 when XYZ thing was happening to your friend?

1:19:58 That's a moral act. That's not a physical act. The physical thing is last.

1:20:02 And we, we, we, we, we, we reverse the order because we don't understand

1:20:05 causality. We don't understand cause and effect. But I also, but I

1:20:09 also think, going back to the training part of it, I also think that the

1:20:12 moral, like what you're talking about is true, but training helps you prepare

1:20:16 for that. Yes, the more again, back to your

1:20:20 jiu jitsu analogy. You get on that mat because

1:20:23 you have confidence in your training. You are able to face

1:20:27 those moral judgments and that moral compass of yours because you have

1:20:31 training and confidence in your training. The same thing could apply to

1:20:34 Leadership, Right. We expect leaders to just be leaders. How many times have you

1:20:38 heard, well, just go do it, or just go do it. Like, if you don't

1:20:41 have the mental muscle memory to do it, then

1:20:45 how the hell are you supposed to. We just inherently want a sales manager

1:20:49 to know how to hire and fire salespeople without ever having to show them how

1:20:52 to do it. That doesn't make any sense. There's. There's a

1:20:56 lackluster. There's a lackluster attempt at

1:21:00 building leaders, and we don't do that. We

1:21:03 don't build leaders. We, we want leaders to just show

1:21:07 up. Right. So how can leaders get the courage? Well, if

1:21:11 you happen to be the leader of a company, then you need an outside

1:21:14 source. You need to go find somebody who can help you train to be a

1:21:17 better leader. A coach. Coach, a mentor, something like that.

1:21:21 Somebody to bounce ideas off of, somebody to run things through. Because if you don't,

1:21:24 and you just think you're going to do it on your own, if you are

1:21:27 really good at it, God bless you. You are, you're. You're.

1:21:31 You have a gift that most people do not have because most people need to

1:21:34 be shown the way and how to do those things, including the

1:21:38 military. Why do you think we have ranks? You are a private before you're a

1:21:41 sergeant. You're a sergeant before you're a lieutenant. They, There's a reason for that

1:21:45 because we need to train you up to get there. Well, and

1:21:49 we, and we laud the military. But even there, like, they struggle with.

1:21:52 Depending upon which branch you go into or which branch you

1:21:56 advance in. Even there, they struggle with

1:22:02 political

1:22:05 individuals who have more tactical understanding of how to

1:22:09 politically advance in a ranking versus moral courage in

1:22:13 advancing in a rank. Right? Absolutely. So even, even they struggle with

1:22:17 the training gaps there. Right. So,

1:22:20 yeah, and then we, we keep. Using the military as an example. But that, that

1:22:23 example exists in companies too. Like. Oh yeah, think of, think of any big

1:22:27 company you want. I've worked for. I've worked for several, and I shouldn't say several.

1:22:31 I've worked for one Fortune 100 company and, and several Fortune

1:22:35 500 companies. But even in the Fortune 100 company you go

1:22:38 from, they hire you at the entry level. They call it entry level for a

1:22:42 reason. Like you go from here to here to here to here. And then

1:22:46 this one particular company I work for, which I really enjoyed working for,

1:22:50 was one of the rare cases where I was a salesperson, got promoted to

1:22:54 a sales manager. I could not take hold of my Sales team until I went

1:22:57 through their training program. Right, right. So. So this is a thing

1:23:01 that I'm a partisan for. I mean, you know me, I'm a partisan for training.

1:23:04 I believe in training. Sure. We have an entire business

1:23:08 built around training. You know, you can go check out our

1:23:11 advisory group, bjdad advisor group.com. you go check out all that. You go check out

1:23:14 Leadership Toolbox. You can go check out HSCD Publishing. We believe in training.

1:23:18 Yeah.

1:23:22 I don't know. And this is not a question we have to ask now or

1:23:25 something we have to explore because we want to turn our corner here a little

1:23:28 bit because we're getting ready to close. But one of the things that we are

1:23:31 going to focus on. This is why I listed, you know, succession, mentoring, coaching,

1:23:35 supervision. This is why I listed these things. Because at a fundamental level,

1:23:40 if your company isn't set up. No, not even set up. If

1:23:44 the, if the idea of training being a nice to have

1:23:49 is a thing, you will

1:23:52 consistently fail in promotions. Yeah. Of people. And

1:23:56 you will consistently set up situations that are going to be

1:24:00 absurd for ground level managers and

1:24:04 supervisors. Just straight up absurdity.

1:24:07 Voltaire level absurdity. Like it'll be literary, what

1:24:11 you'll be setting up. What you'll be setting up. It'll be literary worthy.

1:24:15 Literary worthy, that's right. You know,

1:24:18 and, and the thing is the, the ground level, the

1:24:22 tactical guys and girls, you know, women and men

1:24:25 in organizations,

1:24:29 don't comment on the absurdity because

1:24:32 it's become part of the culture. Yeah, right, agree.

1:24:36 And that's the, that's the real, one of the real leadership

1:24:40 problems. But I think, I think the other thing too. I think the other thing

1:24:43 too. Some of the areas that you're talking, like if in my

1:24:47 brain, you don't become a Fortune 100 company and have those kinds of problems.

1:24:51 Problems like I don't think you can grow that big and

1:24:55 have that level of gap where your, your ground level

1:24:58 troops, so to speak, have no support mechanism built, have no

1:25:02 training built in. You kind of have to. In order to get there. You kind

1:25:05 of have to. What I'm worried about is the smaller companies that to your point,

1:25:09 they don't. Because they, they, they think that they're gonna, they're very

1:25:13 block and tackle. Right. Meaning, like, right, we're not going to face that problem until

1:25:16 it's actually a problem. We're going to ignore that until it becomes hurtful to our

1:25:20 company. We're doing 20 million, we're doing 50 million and

1:25:24 we're okay. But until that becomes a real like in your face kind of problem.

1:25:28 Which is basically to your question just a few minutes ago, which is how to.

1:25:31 How do leaders get the courage to face the reality? The. One of the problems

1:25:35 is we're talking about those size companies. There's no

1:25:38 hierarchy where the actual owner of the leader of the

1:25:42 company can take a step up, away and say, yeah, I can. Now I can

1:25:45 view my company from this holistic, this holistic approach to vanity.

1:25:49 And I can take these pieces and do, do this like piece by

1:25:53 piece and really judge it. Really take the, Take the bull by the horns and

1:25:57 have the courage to look inward into my. It doesn't happen because

1:26:01 they don't feel like they can do that. There's not enough layers for them to

1:26:04 do that. And you're to your point about how do you get

1:26:08 them to do that? You can't. Like, they have to

1:26:11 want. There has to be a want and a desire to do that on their

1:26:15 part to be better. Or more importantly, from a leadership

1:26:18 perspective, there has to be a desire on their part to want

1:26:22 to make their employees better. And if all they're worried about is their

1:26:26 employees performing a function, it won't work.

1:26:29 You have to want your employees, your employees to be better.

1:26:34 It wasn't, it was, it was one of the major players. Like,

1:26:38 it was like a Richard Branson or somebody like somebody like that basically said

1:26:43 if you treat your employees a certain way, they won't leave. They won't want

1:26:47 to leave. So the idea of continuing to train them should never

1:26:50 be a problem. Finding opportunities to train them

1:26:54 and, and find training that they want to do, find ways to make them better,

1:26:58 find ways to increase their, their value to the company. Because if they

1:27:01 leave, you're not going to be sad by the, by them leaving. You're

1:27:05 going to be proud that when they walk out, they're going to be a particular

1:27:08 kind of employee to the next person. I can't. I, I was

1:27:12 somebody. I, it was somebody famous. Mark Cuban, Richard Branson was one, guys.

1:27:15 But like, the thought behind it makes sense.

1:27:19 The thought behind it makes sense is my point.

1:27:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I, I think that we are, we're in a.

1:27:31 There's a bunch of different things in there that we're going to explore over the

1:27:33 course of the next, over the course of the season. And I agree.

1:27:36 I think we also have.

1:27:40 Maybe the question isn't how do we get them to get the courage to face

1:27:44 reality. Maybe that isn't the question. Maybe the question is

1:27:47 more like how do we prompt those kinds of leaders in

1:27:51 those 20 to 50 million dollar a year, you know, revenue

1:27:54 businesses who don't feel as though they can step away.

1:27:58 Right. How do we prompt them to step

1:28:02 away? Because we're moving in the direction

1:28:06 and to sort of close around this, this point a little bit before we move

1:28:10 on. But we're moving in the direction of, we're moving

1:28:13 away from instruction

1:28:17 delivery based thinking and we're moving more

1:28:21 in the direction of prompt based thinking. And

1:28:25 partially that's because of AI, but it's also because of the nature

1:28:29 of how we engage with our technological

1:28:32 tools that then, in a virtuous or

1:28:36 unvirtuous circle, depending upon your perspective, changes our

1:28:39 brains in how we react with other human beings. And it

1:28:43 takes the lag time is huge. Right? But it does eventually show

1:28:47 up. So for instance, we didn't have as much social

1:28:51 anxiety in the 1990s when every teenager didn't have a cell

1:28:54 phone. Now we've got social anxiety up the wazoo and we've only

1:28:58 had cell phones at scale for about the last 20 years.

1:29:02 It took 20 years for that feedback loop to get

1:29:06 built. I think we're at the beginning of building a new

1:29:09 feedback loop, but I think that feedback loop has to be around prompting.

1:29:13 Right? How do we prompt leaders? How do we, how do we encourage them? That's

1:29:16 part of what this podcast does, but it's also part of what short form video

1:29:19 does and other other forms of content delivery that are out there because

1:29:23 everybody's trying to experiment with this while they're not using those terms. Well,

1:29:27 I hope, I hope part of what this podcast does is

1:29:30 gives people the ability to think outside the box. Right? Like, think about the, just

1:29:34 the title of this podcast, Leadership Lessons from the Great Books. Who would have thought

1:29:38 taught to go read the Great Gatsby or Voltaire's

1:29:41 Candy and find actual leadership lessons out of a fictional

1:29:45 book that somebody wrote 200 years ago. Right? Like this.

1:29:49 I think you're, I think, I love, I love being a guest on this podcast

1:29:52 for that reason. It gives people the freedom, the ability, the

1:29:56 encouragement to look for these lessons outside of normal

1:30:00 parameters. Look outside the box. Not everything you

1:30:03 learn is going to be in this, right?

1:30:07 Not everything that you, not everything that you want to learn is going to be

1:30:11 in a technology format like. Right? It's okay. And I, I said

1:30:15 the same thing to, I say the same thing to, to small business owners all

1:30:18 the time. There's a reason that every athlete on the planet has a coach.

1:30:22 I Don't care who you are. LeBron James has a coach. Michael Jordan had a

1:30:25 coach. Wayne Gretzky had a coach. Tom Brady had a coach. At every level they

1:30:29 played at, they had a coach. Coach. Yep. If your company

1:30:33 is at 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 million and you want to continue

1:30:37 to grow and you think you have all the answers, you're sadly

1:30:40 mistaken. Yeah, you, you yourself as

1:30:44 a business. Why do we think business owners that are

1:30:48 successful at this level don't need more

1:30:52 coaching? They don't need more people to bounce ideas off. They don't need people

1:30:55 outside of their organization to talk to through problems.

1:31:00 We need to encourage that out like, we need to encourage that. Small

1:31:03 business owners need to know that it's normal. There's, it's not

1:31:07 audacity, it's not a flagrant use of money.

1:31:11 It's normal to go find and hire a coach, go get somebody. You can pay

1:31:14 a few hundred thousand, you know, a few hundred. A few thousand dollars a

1:31:18 month or whatever and, and get some real world experience that's

1:31:21 beyond you. Well, it, it has to be, it has to be perceived as

1:31:25 at a. Unfortunately, because we've monetized everything

1:31:29 out to the nth degree. You know, there has to have an. ROI in the

1:31:32 business. I get it. You know, and I, I roll my eyes there. You

1:31:36 folks can't see that on the audio because I, I do think there are things

1:31:39 that are outside of the roi, and I understand that,

1:31:43 that like, we have to be ruthlessly focused on everything inside of the

1:31:47 roi because if we're not, we might get distracted and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

1:31:49 blah, blah, blah, blah. But what happens if, what happens if

1:31:53 spending that $3,000 a month on a business coach just made you a better leader?

1:31:57 The ROI is not tangible. Like, it's not. You can't put your hands on a

1:32:00 direct impact like. Right. But I will tell you,

1:32:04 if you're, if your bottom line goes up year over year and you

1:32:08 don't attribute it to having that business coach, there's something wrong with you. Right,

1:32:12 right. Yeah. No, exactly. Yeah. No, but you're, you're, but you're, I'm telling you,

1:32:15 you're going to, you're going to attribute it to. Well, our,

1:32:19 our, our bottom line is up year over year because we

1:32:23 made changes to this process. We increased the budget to this marketing

1:32:26 campaign. We did. You're going to give it a, you're going to give it a

1:32:29 value to something that you physically did, but not remember

1:32:33 that you bounced all those ideas off your business coach and he helped you ideate

1:32:36 through what all the pros and cons and ups and downs and what could happen.

1:32:40 You made your decision based on real world information,

1:32:44 but the physical change in your business is what caused the roi, Right?

1:32:49 It blows my mind that. And that's another absurdity.

1:32:53 Exactly. That's another absurdity. Okay,

1:32:58 let's turn the corner, let's go into, let's round the corner here.

1:33:01 Let's start our close. Part

1:33:05 of one thing that also goes along with absurdity is the idea

1:33:09 of if we can't solve the problem, right, because maybe the

1:33:12 problem's too big. Maybe we don't have

1:33:16 access to the owners of those 20 to 30 to 50 million

1:33:20 dollar a year businesses. Maybe we don't have the interest in coaching them. Maybe we

1:33:23 don't have the skills to coach. Right. Or

1:33:27 maybe we're a person who to Tom's earlier point,

1:33:30 just wants to be a leader who shows up, does their work and goes home

1:33:34 and has a title maybe or the status of leader, but doesn't really have to,

1:33:37 don't really have to put in like any of the, any of the, any of

1:33:40 the, the hard work, any of the elbow grease

1:33:45 alongside those kinds of phenomena or part of that

1:33:48 phenomena. And this comes out of World War II actually is the phenomena

1:33:52 of ironic detachment. And

1:33:56 we started exploring this idea a little bit towards the end of last year

1:34:00 with Ernest Hemingway with A Farewell to Arms. We kind of talked

1:34:04 about this a little bit with Libby Younger, a little bit in War by Sebastian

1:34:07 Younger, which I already referenced. We kind of talked about a little bit with George

1:34:11 Orwell in 1984, the Big Panel show that we had.

1:34:17 I've come to this thesis over the course of

1:34:21 the last couple of years and part of it is a generational

1:34:25 thesis that's initially how I started it, but now I think it's actually something that's

1:34:28 a more broader cultural thing. And I want to

1:34:32 explore a little bit of this with Tom as we close because I think, I

1:34:35 think Voltaire would have told, would have told us to watch out for this.

1:34:39 So Voltaire begins Candide with

1:34:43 hang loss, you know, postulating to Candide the

1:34:46 philosopher that this is the best of all possible worlds. It's a species of

1:34:50 optimism, right? Voltaire never

1:34:53 dismisses, he satirizes

1:34:57 that position of optimism and he lampoons it through

1:35:00 satire, but he doesn't fail to take it

1:35:04 seriously, nor does he commit the other

1:35:08 sin which we have committed in our time. He doesn't separate from it

1:35:12 emotionally and just sort of shrug his shoulders and say, to

1:35:15 paraphrase from the great band of the 1990s, Nirvana. Oh, well, whatever,

1:35:19 nevermind. He doesn't say that either. He

1:35:23 doesn't allow himself to be ironically

1:35:26 detached from critiquing that optimism

1:35:29 because he wants not the optimism to change.

1:35:33 He doesn't care about that. He wants the world to change.

1:35:37 And he actually believes that, that his writing can do something.

1:35:41 His, his satirical observations, his pointing out an

1:35:44 illustrated absurdity by being absurd. He actually believes that that can actually

1:35:48 say, do something. And he believes it

1:35:51 sincerely. Post World

1:35:55 War II in the west, we've been robbed of our ability to be sincere. And

1:35:58 it's become an increasing problem over the course of

1:36:02 multiple generations, from the boomers all the way down through my

1:36:05 generation, Gen X, my generation has sharpened

1:36:09 that sense of ironic detachment to a sharp point. Now,

1:36:13 part of that is because we're the generation that was the first

1:36:17 latchkey kids. We went through divorce, social, social

1:36:20 strife at like an individual level, not a, not an

1:36:24 institutional over their level, but like a actual real

1:36:27 lived level. And ironic detachment is a nice anchor, but it's also,

1:36:31 it's also shield Right, because it protects you. You don't get emotionally involved.

1:36:35 Oh, you don't want to change. Okay, whatever. I'm going to go over here and

1:36:38 do this thing. You don't want to listen to me, you don't want to take

1:36:41 my, you don't want to take my coaching advice at $3,000 a month. Okay, whatever.

1:36:45 I'm going to cash a check and I'm going to go to the next thing,

1:36:48 you know. You, you don't want to, you don't

1:36:52 want to help me, I don't know, build houses in Patagonia.

1:36:55 Okay, whatever. I'm going to go to Patagonia. I'm going to build houses.

1:36:59 As a generation, we have sharpened this to a fine point. This is almost. We

1:37:03 don't even think about it anymore. The

1:37:06 generations behind us, the millennials and the Gen zers

1:37:10 specifically, took that to its logical

1:37:13 conclusion. And now they just want to burn everything down and have chaos.

1:37:18 Because that's where ironic detachment gets you. Because if it's all, well, whatever, then

1:37:22 leadership can be burned down, culture can be burned down,

1:37:26 politics can be burned down. All that exists then is

1:37:30 anarchy and man against man and every man for themselves. Because it

1:37:33 doesn't matter. I, I don't think Gen Z, you know, be careful what you wish

1:37:37 for, because they are not ready for every man for himself. But you know what

1:37:41 I think Gen X is our, We Wouldn't

1:37:44 be like, bring it. Right, Exactly. Because. Because we're the

1:37:48 granddaddies of ironic detachment. Okay, Bring it. Yeah, that's fine. Let's. Let's.

1:37:52 As I sometimes joke with my kids, that line from Tombstone, that great line where

1:37:55 Kurt Russell hits a very fat Billy Bob Thornton in the bar,

1:37:59 right, when he's beating the horse or whatever, he says, go ahead. You go ahead

1:38:03 and you pull that smoke wagon and you watch what happens.

1:38:08 And that's the position of Gen X, See? Like,

1:38:12 yeah. So Gen X, we're the F. We're the F around and find out, right?

1:38:15 Like, bingo. Yes. Like, we were the whole command. You know what?

1:38:19 You want to come at me? I don't. Whatever. Right? And then Gen

1:38:23 Z, they want to do that, but when the *bleep* hits the fan, excuse my

1:38:26 language, they're like, oh, they. They like.

1:38:30 They kind of shrink away and move. Like. Whereas we. We go. If we

1:38:34 make a mistake, we like, okay, here's a good example. And take

1:38:38 the. The fighting out of it. No, no, taking fighting

1:38:42 in back into it. Right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. You're on the street, you're in a

1:38:45 bar. You and your wife are in a bar. Guy says something to her, does

1:38:47 something to her, whatever. You step to him, he punches you in the mouth, you

1:38:50 get knocked out. You're still going home with your wife, by the way. Oh,

1:38:54 yeah. But your wife has a different level of respect for you because

1:38:58 you stood up for her, right? Win or lose, win or lose, win, lose

1:39:02 or draw, your wife is like, I'm. You know, you shouldn't have done that. You're

1:39:05 an idiot. You got knocked out. But I love you because you stood up for

1:39:08 me. It's me. And then we're in the

1:39:12 back of our minds going, *bleep* damn it, I shouldn't have done that. Like, we

1:39:14 always think about it after, right? Like, that guy was twice my size. That guy.

1:39:18 Like, that guy knew his. Whatever. Gen Z.

1:39:22 First of all, they're not stepping to anyone like that. Or if

1:39:26 they do, they back down real fast. Because I notice even, like, even my

1:39:29 own son. Now, just for the record here, I am not

1:39:33 a big dude. My son is 6 foot 3, 300 pounds. He could probably step

1:39:37 on me really fast and not even think twice about it. But

1:39:41 if I really sharply come back at him, he's like, oh,

1:39:45 I'm sorry. I didn't mean that way. Like, he just backs down right away, right?

1:39:48 Yeah. And then. And then even if they don't and they get smacked in the

1:39:51 mouth or they get put down it was, it's, it's still not their fault,

1:39:55 right? Like, oh, well, that guy shouldn't have done that. He still shouldn't.

1:39:59 He's still wrong. No, that's not how that works. You got

1:40:03 punched in the mouth. You just take your licks and go home. You don't just

1:40:06 now, you don't, you don't turn around and say, yeah, but,

1:40:10 yeah, but, yeah, but like, I don't, I don't understand it. So that

1:40:14 thing, that thing that we have as our

1:40:17 generation has aged and this is again, this is part of the thesis that I

1:40:20 came to towards the end of next year and we're going to explore a lot

1:40:22 of this this year. I came to the conclusion that

1:40:26 that was really good when we were young and it was

1:40:30 really useful when we were in our 20s and in our 20s. Yeah, yeah,

1:40:34 it was really useful. But now we've entered

1:40:37 generationally and societally a place where people

1:40:41 who are in our age cohort 45 to

1:40:44 64 or 46 to 65 in that cohort did

1:40:48 classic Gen Z cohort. We are now in leadership positions. An

1:40:52 ironic detachment doesn't work in leadership. Yeah,

1:40:56 I agree. And the thing that we need, and this is going to

1:40:59 be really hard for all of us, and this is why

1:41:03 I kind of stuttered when I said Western civilization. Maybe the podcast could say Western

1:41:07 civilization. Why I get embarrassed about it because you have to be

1:41:11 sincere and sincerity requires

1:41:16 a certain level of emotional connection to the thing.

1:41:20 Can I just say, like, where you. Can be hurt, by the way, that's a

1:41:23 huge thing where you can be hurt. Go ahead. Like, to me, the emotion

1:41:27 that is most missing, like, it's not, it's not even, it's

1:41:30 empathy. Right. The ability to be empathetic,

1:41:34 I think is totally missing in, in a lot of what we're talking about.

1:41:38 Right? Like, and I think to your point, our generation, it's not that

1:41:41 we don't, we want to be empathetic, but if we find it

1:41:45 difficult to be empathetic because it's like, it's, it's

1:41:49 almost like one of those like, scenarios where again, if you think about our

1:41:53 generation dealing with Gen Z, that's like a perfect example because,

1:41:57 because Gen Z has this and they can go research anything they

1:42:01 want. They think they know everything. And our generation is looking at them going, you

1:42:04 haven't lived through anything yet. How do you think you know that?

1:42:07 Right? Like that. So it's hard for us to empathize with a, with

1:42:11 a 20 something these days. Right? Well, and we have. And

1:42:15 we have a huge generation in between Gen Z and us, which

1:42:19 the millennials who shall go nameless for this, for this moment, for the first time

1:42:22 in their entire existence. Yeah. For the first. The first time. The

1:42:26 millennials are not the. We're not vilifying them, leaving them alone. We're leaving them alone

1:42:30 for this game. Go ahead. Sorry. Who are also.

1:42:34 They are what I call. Or what would be called in, if you were looking

1:42:38 at generational. Generational theory.

1:42:42 Generational cycle theory, which is where the idea of the fourth attorney

1:42:45 comes about or the high. Or whatever. Right.

1:42:49 Strauss and how. Right. All that kind of stuff. They are

1:42:53 the generation who is the hero generation. They're the

1:42:56 generation who, for lack of a better term,

1:43:00 are sincere and do want to run off and be a hero

1:43:04 and do want to save the world. Right. These are the people

1:43:08 between, you know, the oldest, the youngest end is

1:43:12 like 34, 35 now, you know,

1:43:15 coming into their mid-40s, who

1:43:19 have had a little life. Right? They have. They have a little life. I gotta.

1:43:22 Gotta give that to them as a. As a. Is it a younger Gen Z

1:43:25 or. I got to give to him. Our younger Gen Xer. Got to give it

1:43:27 to him. They've got a little life. Right. They've had a few knocks around. They're

1:43:31 a little bit. They got the little bitter sort of patina on them a little

1:43:34 bit. Yeah. But they still have hope that the

1:43:38 future will work out. That's because they haven't hit their late 40s yet. Yes,

1:43:42 true. But they. But they also. This ironic

1:43:45 detachment again. But they also have that genuine. That

1:43:49 genuine necessary.

1:43:54 And so we are in a unique position, I think, as leaders. This is something,

1:43:57 again, that we're going to explore the podcast as a theme this season through our

1:44:01 books. We have an opportunity, and I think

1:44:04 this is going to be really hard for us as. So this is my challenge

1:44:08 to all my Gen X leaders out there.

1:44:13 Ironic detachment is an anchor and it's weighing us down.

1:44:17 I think the fact is, if we don't get our crap together, we're not going

1:44:21 to experience a Gen X president. Not going to happen. We're

1:44:24 going to get skipped right over. We're going to

1:44:28 maybe have another boomer, but it's going to be a boomer. A young

1:44:32 boomer like Gavin Newsom is a young boomer. It's going to be like a boomer

1:44:35 like that versus like a J.D. vance, who's a millennial through and through. J.D. vance

1:44:39 is a millennial through and through. And that's that's, that's. Those are two perfect

1:44:42 examples right now in the political zeitgeist in America. Trump is a boomer.

1:44:46 Please. That, that's, that's, that's. That. And there are no

1:44:50 gen Zers right now that are. That are even politically

1:44:53 savvy at this point. They're just too young a generation. So we will,

1:44:57 if we don't get our crap together and cut away this

1:45:01 ironic detachment and actually get sincere about something and actually

1:45:05 care about something. This is where Marco Rubio as a political actor is so

1:45:08 interesting to me, because on the one hand, he plays the boomer game,

1:45:12 which we all did, by the way. We're all. We all did that very well.

1:45:16 But you can see in moments where he's not

1:45:19 thinking the camera is looking at him, where he's like,

1:45:23 okay, yeah, yeah, okay. He chose

1:45:27 the company line. But you can tell every once in a while he's like, what

1:45:30 the f. What the. Right, Right. And this is. And this is a guy who

1:45:33 was called Little Hands. Marco, everybody forgets about this in Trump's

1:45:37 first run to the presidency and got blown off the

1:45:40 stage. I think he genuinely learned. What

1:45:44 the hell? Tulsi Gabbard's another example of a Gen Xer.

1:45:48 Genuinely learned. Like, this is. Okay, okay, fine,

1:45:51 if Gen X, actually. And also, it's a basis of numbers, right?

1:45:55 We're the smallest generation between the two mountains of the boomers and the

1:45:59 millennials. So just on a numbers basis, we won't get one,

1:46:02 but we really won't get one if we don't get our crap

1:46:06 together. We actually. This is the clarion call. I'm putting

1:46:10 it out here at the end of this podcast. We were a generation that

1:46:14 was raised in absurdity, and we've become so inured

1:46:18 to absurdity that through ironic detachment and

1:46:21 through irony and through cynicism, quite frankly, you saw this a little bit in A

1:46:25 Farewell to Arms. We've sort of sharpened that to a point to protect ourselves

1:46:29 so we don't get hurt. In order to be sincere, to your point, we have

1:46:33 to be empathetic, which means we have to unharden our hearts.

1:46:36 And I think that's going to be really hard for us as leaders. But that's

1:46:39 a challenge. And the books, the great books can help us do that.

1:46:42 So. So I know we're going to. We're going to wrap this up in a

1:46:45 second, right? So just for, just for. Just

1:46:49 for hoots and hollers, I did something because you said that

1:46:52 this year you're going to do a little bit more fact checking on the, on

1:46:55 the, you know, because you, you put up a couple times. So just for fun,

1:46:59 I pulled up and I asked Gemini to tell

1:47:03 me what the Leadership Lessons from Candid would be and

1:47:07 summarize it for me. Right. So I'm not going to read the whole summary, but

1:47:09 I want to tell you and you, you tell me how many of these we

1:47:12 actually hit and this will be funny. Okay. One is

1:47:16 leaders should focus on tangible, productive work they can control rather

1:47:19 than worry about global unchangeable

1:47:23 problems, reject blind optimism and dogma,

1:47:27 adaptability over entitlement, value of experience

1:47:31 and knowledge and empathy and humanity in

1:47:34 humanism. So according to Gemini, we hit just about

1:47:38 all of those. I think that's pretty

1:47:42 funny, actually. That's actually, that's actually pretty good. So in other

1:47:46 words, we are the AI Hay, we are. No, I'm just

1:47:49 kidding.

1:47:54 We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna bring our hard. We're gonna crack

1:47:58 our hard Gen X shells and let the light

1:48:02 from our hearts shine out this season.

1:48:05 Season number five on the Leadership Lessons from the Great

1:48:09 Books podcast. But with that,

1:48:18 It.