The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty w/Tom Libby & Jesan Sorrells

2026.05.06 1:42:16

Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

0:00 1:42:16

The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty w/Tom Libby & Jesan Sorrells
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Explore how Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter delves into themes of grief, regional identity, and the challenge of preserving cultural memory in a rapidly globalizing world. Jesan Sorrells and Tom Libby discuss the impact of community traditions, the evolving role of observation in literature, and the struggle to find objective meaning amid today’s digital noise. They highlight the contrast between sincere storytelling and modern content creation, drawing leadership lessons from Welty’s keen insight into relationships and local culture.

Book Title: The Optimist’s Daughter
Author: Eudora Welty
Guests: Jesan Sorrells (Host), Tom Libby(Co-Host)

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Time Stamped Overview
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00:00 Exploring existential themes in media

10:46 Discussing a lesser-known author

14:13 Discussing influential female authors

21:13 Discussing African American Identity

24:16 Global access to regional language

28:08 Taylor Sheridan and rural storytelling

36:00 Future writers' digital observations

41:56 Funeral and community support

46:31 Laurel's perspective and social commentary

53:22 Discussing early misconceptions of truth

58:02 Muddied information and confusion

01:04:35 Boxer confronts online critic

01:09:58 Handling past failures in marketing

01:11:41 Lessons in leadership and kindness

01:15:56 Losing traditional learning methods

01:22:08 Star Wars fandom and cultural shifts

01:30:00 Generational conflicts and technology gaps

01:35:42 Observing before taking action

01:38:14 Concluding a discussion without resolution

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Closing theme composed by Brian Sanyshyn of Brian Sanyshyn Music.

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Hello, my name is Jesan Sorrells and

this is the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books podcast,

episode number 189.

Opening up with a summary of

our book today because the book that we are covering is

still under copyright, strict copyright through Vintage

International. And so we don't want to read too much from here, but we're

going to open up with a summary of an idea.

Our book today opens up with a judge,

a judge named McKelva who is

in a hospital and he is dying.

The judge is joined at his

deathbed by his wife Faye, his second wife,

Faye, and the daughter from his first marriage,

Laurel. Laurel

McKelva hand was a slender, quiet faced woman

in her middle 40s, her hair still dark.

This is a woman who as we go through the first few chapters of

our book today, we find out a little bit about.

We find out that she is a woman who has escaped her

region. She moved away and now she

has been called back. She is a woman who has a

fraught or dare I say non existent relationship

with her stepmother, Faye. And her stepmother

Fay, who is significantly younger than her own mother was,

is trying to rally the judge to come back to life.

By the way, the judge died suddenly, not because

of anything having to do with with disease,

but just having given up.

Laurel stays, of course, with the judge during the course

of this opening to this book today. And she

spent her time and read Nicholas Nickleby and

that seemed like it was endless. Matter of fact, she

read to him while he was in a coma, understanding, of course, that

coma patients can hear everything.

Once, of course, Fay enters into the

picture more. Faye attempts her own

methods to bring Judge McElva back to

life. She attempts to appeal to his masculinity,

to his Southern manhood, and of course, to his

ability to defeat disease. This

does not work and the judge passes

away anyway. This

opens the door to our action and to our movement because this

book is not about a funeral or not about a judge's death.

It is instead about everything that happens afterward and the

way in which Laurel and Faye and all of the other

characters in this book react to and respond

to in a very regional and very specifically

Southern American way to death

and to what it brings to their lives.

And so we are going to be summarizing and talking about

probably one of the better books by any female

author of the late 20th century. Today on the

show we're going to cover a book I think you should pick up, the

Optimist's Daughter by Eudora

Welty, Foreign.

Now during the most recent golden era of our

time on streaming and cable television

entertainment, several popular shows played with the trope

of the witness who documents without fully

understanding. The best shows that did this

included the Wire, the Arrested Development

and Breaking Bad. At least I think they were the best

shows. Now these comedies and dramas

were part of a 20 year long mid century effort on

television and in novels, as we are going to see in our novel

today, to leverage the tension evident when a person

observes another person's empirical actions

and is unable to determine any deep meaning

from from those actions. In essence a

witness witnessing but not understanding what

they're seeing. The challenge of

determining meaning by witnessing another person's actions is one that

was visited upon the west sharply because of the West's

inability to collectively psychologically process the existential

evil of the horrors of World War II. From the

rape of Nan King to the trials at Nuremberg, the moral challenge that

faced the west in a post war context

was how to call observable evil what it was,

and without an appeal to the existence of a spiritual transcendent authority

whose existence all parties involved in the prosecution of the war may

or may not have agreed upon. This

friction, of course, led to an increase in existential dread, the toleration

of higher levels of cultural and social absurdity as a coping mechanism,

or as cope, as the kids would say these days, and finally at the close

of the 20th century, appeals to deconstructionism, to

the power of, well, raw power.

However, the person or the society who

witnesses evil and yet is shocked into incoherence has a problem.

They do have a genuine problem, and we're going to see this in the Optimist's

Daughter today. But their problem is not a lack of belief in a

transcendent good. The problem is one of a lack of

language to ask the right questions, interpret assertions that may

be bogus, and a lack of ability to discern and then critically think through

the challenge of interpersonal horror.

The writer, essayist and journalist Joan Didion, who

we're going to cover a little bit later on this month, keyed

into this exactly when she opened her 1961 collection of essays,

which we've covered on this show before, Slouching Towards Bethlehem and we will

cover again this month about the baby boomers who

are beginning to make their own contribution to the long

thread of cultural incoherence. Post war cultural incoherence, it was going to be

in America. When she quoted in the opening

of her collection of essays from William Butner Yeats,

the Second coming, published in 1920,

and I quote, turning and turning in the widening

gyre. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things

fall apart, the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is

loosed upon the world. The blood tim tide is loosed

and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The

best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of

passionate intensity.

And that is something that we are going to see here today. We're going to

see the attempts by Eudora Weltley

and the characters that she creates to make

sense of the horror that she is seeing.

But personal horror. The horror of the death of her father

and at a much larger level, the death of a way of life

that she had known since she was born.

Leaders. Today on the show,

I'm going to start off with a fundamental belief. I think we can

describe what we're witnessing. Matter of fact, I think we have a moral duty

to do so. There is objective reality and

documenting those moral challenges does require us to make

moral judgments. But we must lead

with the idea that we can do so first.

And of course, as usual along my journey, here to

explore some of these ideas and to discuss the

challenges of the witness who documents is our regular co

host, Tom Libby. You doing

Tom? I mean, if I was doing any better,

hy, I would think I was off in la la land. I'm doing so good.

It's, it's, it's crazy.

I'm doing just fine, thank you for asking. You're doing so

good. It's a level of insanity. I. You just can't describe it. You, you know,

it's. What's that line from? From, oh, gosh,

those old ESPN this is Sports center promos. What was it? No,

not. This is Sports Center. Stuart Scott used to say this.

You cannot hold him. You can only hope to contain him. He is,

dare I say, in fuego. And actually, that might not have been Stuart Scott. That

might have been Dan Patrick. Who's one of those guys? What? I'm pretty sure it's

Patrick, but that's okay. Might have been Dan Patrick. Yeah, might have been Dan Patrick.

So we open up today with the summary of the first few

chapters of the Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Weltley.

I sent you a bunch of paperwork and a bunch of information on.

On. On wealthy. And I'm going to keep probably

mispronouncing her name. It's W E, L, T, Y.

But I, I tend to reverse the L and the T and the Y. So

forgive me, folks, but it is T Y.

That's, that's. That's her last name, the author's last name here that we're covering today.

So, Tom, we've, I kind of sent you a bunch of information about her. You're

coming in fresh to this. In looking at the information that I sent you

and looking at sort of her life, what do you think of this? What do

you think of this author? I actually, I found it

interesting at the very least. And by the way, like, I found it

even more interesting that I had never heard of her, even though she's, you know,

she won the Pulitzer in 71 with this book.

Not that I know every Pulitzer Prize winning author. I'm not suggesting that I know

all of them. But as you've seen on this in our past episodes,

even if I hadn't read the actual book we're talking about, most times I've heard

of the author, like, you know, so I found it interesting that I

actually had never heard of her. And I think before we hit the record

button, and I'm sure you're gonna get to this a little bit more in depth

in a little, a little bit later. But I think your

point about, as we were talking before you, we started the recording,

I think your point about her being a regional author kind of

matters in this ca. In, in my case, because of like, not really being from

that area of the country. She was never really

brought up in our schools or, you know, we don't really talk about her, so

to speak. Even more so I think it's interesting that,

that she was in a relatively

dominated environment, dominated by black culture,

but yet she was white. So I think that's another reason why we didn't really

talk about her up here. I think she would have gotten more attention had she

been a black author in a black dominated, you know,

region of the country. So I, again, I'm not saying she wasn't worth

it or worthy. I'm just saying that I had never heard of her before. And

I'm trying to figure out, I was trying to figure out my brain why, because

what little I like, when I started reading her,

her bio and stuff like that seemed very interesting at the

very least, like, you know, talking about, you know, she didn't, it

wasn't one of those things where she like, grew up so dirt poor that she

had to write her way out of, out of her world.

She kind of grew up middle class and kind of did her thing and went

around very well educated. And

similarly, I went, I, I, I found some similarities

between this book and her life. If you then they're not

exact, but like some of the similarities about her dad getting sick in real life

and her going back and looking at the book and the daughter going back to

her dad getting sick, like certain things. I was wondering if this was like her

interpretation of her life at a, at a. She just kind of changed it enough

that people wouldn't recognize it. Like her friends and family reading it, so to speak.

Right. So anyway. But yeah, I, I thought it was, I thought she was my,

in my, my. Like my

initial reaction to her was I would, I probably would go

back and read her at this point. Like, I think, I think it would be

interesting to see what she has to say, especially considering she wrote for,

you know, the radio station and stuff. Like some of the jobs she held. Like,

it was interesting. And then to your point, she took a very similar

career path as others and felt obligated to go into teaching,

where today you probably wouldn't do that. Right. Like a writer

just wants to be a writer and they're going to go write and they'll figure

it out along the way. They may do odds and ends jobs like, you know,

but, but a writer, as a writer. As a writer, so to speak. And,

but I don't think they had that opportunity in her era,

like back in that time frame. So she seemed like a very normal, there was,

there was a lot of normalcy to her pathways, I think is what I was

getting at like, like the. When I started reading the bio.

Yeah. She was born in, she was born in 1909 and she died in

2001, so. Only died 25 years

ago, as a matter of fact, as of July 23rd, it'll be exactly

25 years since, since she passed.

She mostly wrote short stories to kind of kick off her career

and then she gradually moved into, into larger and larger

or more, more challenging, more challenging work.

She was a photographer as well. Kind of close to my heart there a little

bit. And one of the things that, that Tom

is mentioning here, and it's a good point to mention for our, for our listeners,

is she wrote at a time and she came of age during

a time when the author William Faulkner, who was sort of

the, the powerhouse of the

cultural standard of what a regional author could be, specifically a regional

Southern, you know, American author could

actually, you know, be and do and succeed at.

He was the gold standard. His writing was the gold standard that everybody was, that

everybody was judged by.

Her peers included folks like Catherine Ann Porter, who actually

wrote, I believe, an introduction to one of her books,

Harper Lee, who we covered in episode number 109, who wrote

to Kill a Mockingbird, Zora Neale Hurston,

who, to Tom's point, African American author. We've covered

a couple of her books on this show. In episode number 100,

she, along with those other female authors, she wrote in that space that Faulkner

pioneered. And it is a space of, as I was saying before we. We hit

the record button to Tom, it is a space,

interestingly enough, of regionalism. And

I want to talk a little bit about that for just a minute, because I

think that that's part of the setup for this book, that if you're going to

read it, you've got to really understand that and really sort of imbibe

that. So if you are a

reader or a leader who has

been reading and consuming what we now call content,

books, movies, television shows, I'm sure you've noticed over

the course of the last 25 years that things have become

more homogenized, more globalized.

Now, part of that is because of the ubiquitousness

of cell phones attached to the Internet and social media.

Part of that is due to what the algorithm pushes versus what it does

not inside of those platforms and where people's eyes and ears are.

But also part of it is that

you're going to get more homogenization when

things are flattened, when content is flattened, when ideas are

flattened, and everybody seems like they're saying the same thing. And that's one of my

troubles with, with books written in the last 25, 30

years. And that's why I tend to not cover newer books on this show,

because most of them aren't saying anything that's dramatically

interesting or dramatically different than any other

book you could get. Whereas if you go back to

the Optimist's Daughter, or you go back to any

books by Zora Neil Thurston, or you go back to books written by

Katherine Ann Porter. They are not part of a global

culture. They're part of very much part of a regional perspective on.

On writing. And this is not just in the American South. You have writers that

were specific to the American Northeast. You had writers that were specific to the American

West. One writer that jumps out to me in particular is Charles

Portis, right, who wrote the book True Grit that we covered

on this show and that the movie was made out of. And even when a

book was turned into a movie, it still rang very specifically

of being of a specific region. And other folks, other

readers who lived in other regions of the United States, recognized that

author or that movie as Being part of. Part and parcel of

that region. And even to Tom's point, like, we didn't get this up

here, quote, unquote, right, because it didn't match our region.

That's all gone. All that, all that, all that,

all that differentiation has passed and now

everybody sounds like everybody else. And you don't get that with.

You don't get that with. With Welty. She said

that. That her interest was in the relationships between

individuals and their communities, and that stemmed from her natural

abilities as an observer. And she observed people

in her community. She observed people in her own place. She observed

people in her own customs and traditions, and she even

referred to folks who lived in the south as her people.

Nobody talks like that anymore, Tom. Like that's. That's all gone.

It's even a struggle for. I mean, you. You know this

as a. A proponent of the native peoples and the native

people's perspective and NATO people's voice. I mean, how hard a fight

is it to. To avoid the globalization there?

Oh, it's. It's very hard. It's very hard. I will tell you though, one thing

that surprised me. One day I met a.

I was with a person from Russia. He

was. He was here visiting for business. And when he had

said that, like, some of the.

There are descendants over there of our native.

Of our native people, and I. It. It took a second for me to

understand how in the hell that could happen. But then I remembered

like, some of the. Some of the slave trade went the other way. Right?

Like, so as the. As the black and African slaves were coming

over here, native people were being taken over to Europe as slaves.

So yeah, like, we have descendants like this. This connection over

there. So I guess to your point, when those

people start wanting to learn about the culture that they left

behind hundreds of years ago, this is, you know, similar to

maybe somebody like yourself trying to look up roots from your ancestors, et

cetera, et cetera, really is

difficult for them. It's difficult to hear, I guess, kind of

circum back circling back to what your. Your question being. It's very difficult for them

to find something so regionally located or,

you know, or it's it for us. Maybe it's tribal

affiliation. So you say, like, I know I'm this tribe, so I can go

research that particular tribe. That's fine. That's not easy.

But it's at least a. A pointed direction to what you're talking about with regional

writing. But if you're looking for like an

overarching commentary about like Say

the Southwest, whether it be Navajo or Hopi or something like that. And

you want to have like a general. There's no generalization like,

or, or not. I, I shouldn't say there's zero. But it's very difficult to

find where you can have a single author that's going to write about

several tribal affiliations in a, in a way that makes them all

make sense and makes them all true to

form and true to identity. Right. If they're using, if

they're generally using overarching terminologies and stuff like that,

somebody's going to be irritated that they wrote it that way. So

it's, you're right. It is very difficult in that sense to, to find something that's

generalized like that. Well, and I'm seeing something, and I

pointed this out this year on the show during

Black History Month when we covered African American authors. And I pointed it out last

year and I pointed it out the year before that because I've been seeing,

I haven't, not even seen. I have a suspicion, not even a

suspicion. I'm sensing the cultural wind

blowing in a particular direction. And a lot of,

a lot of African Americans aren't ready for the cultural wind to blow in this

direction, but it's going to blow this way anyway at a certain

point. And I know

from a Native perspective, we're all foreigners here. We're all visiting. Got

it, Got it. We're all, we're all invaders in your house.

I get it. I understand

among the invaders, though, there are distinctions with a difference.

And, and, and as time has gone on

over the last 25 years, because of the flattening of globalization,

because of the ubiquitousness of Internet communication,

and because of the nature of the ways in which

voice, tradition, custom, community are being

scaled up, I am

convinced that African Americans, at a certain point, and it

won't be in the next 25 years because there's still too many of us who

grow up with that designation with the dash in the middle. Yeah,

but that's going to go away. It's going to go away in 50 years. It,

it'll be probably closer to the end of my lifetime before that goes away, but

definitely in my kids lifetime that'll go away. It's, it's going to be all

flattened out and we will just be, much

to African Americans dismay in this country, we will just

be Americans. That's it.

And I don't think folks are ready for that kind of revolution. And it's, but

it's going to happen gradually. It's going to happen soon, so gradually that no one's

even going to pay attention to it. And, and I think the

seeds for that flattening are the same

seeds that don't allow. This is my last point, that

don't allow a writer like Welty, and I do think there are still

writers like her floating around. I just don't think they could

get any traction and get anywhere even with self publishing,

which was a point that you were making, you know, because I

wonder. I don't think the audience is there anymore.

I think the audience was probably barely there in the late part of the 20th

century. Probably was there more in the early 20th century when Faulkner was writing in

the late 19th century. But in the early part of the 21st century,

getting into the middle part of the century, I think that audience is going to

go away. To your point about being with somebody from Russia, you were with somebody

from Russia at a, at a networking event.

That's, that's, that's globalism. That's the triumph of globalism.

Now, what you talk about in the language you use to do business, of course,

will be English, but you're gonna have to find some way to relate

to that person. And I'm not saying that if a regional author

is writing, they can't find a way to relate to somebody from Russia. But I'm

saying that the level of internal creative strength that they will have to have

just to commit to that region is going to have to be so

high that they're not gonna. They're not gonna

get that far. Well, I think, I think it. I.

It's interesting that you say that because I think there's some language things too, that

matter. Meaning. Like. Like to your point, right? The

globalization of even, like, lingo,

right? For example, like up here in New England, for some strange

reason, people use the word wicked for everything, right? Wicked cool,

wicked bad, wicked ugly, wicked beautiful, whatever. It doesn't matter. It's like an

adjective that goes with everything. So if you're a writer from New England

and you're writing things like that and somebody from Russia picks it up

to your point about global flattening, it's not lost on them

anymore. They could just look it up. Like, what does New England mean when they

say wicked? Like, and then they. Now they start understanding our lingo

to the point where it's not a regional writer anymore. Like, I, I'm agreeing with

you, but I'm using, like, a very specific example of how so people

can understand what you mean by this is like, like when you.

When I remember as a kid when I read certain things, there was no

Internet for me to look up what it meant. I just had to move on

and say, oh, that must be a regional thing down there or up there, over

there, or whatever it is. And I, I went and tried to interpret

it myself and moved on, but I didn't feel like I was a part

of that culture, a part of that region. Whereas

today people would do that. I, I can tell you, I know

people, I know people personally that would just look something up and then all of

a sudden adopt it and be like, oh, and wait, no, this is something they

only say in Texas. Like, why would you say that? You know what I mean?

But you read it in the book somewhere that you like the book, so now

you're going to use it. Or they say things in England. There

are certain words that they use in England that are very frowned upon here. And

I'm not gonna say them, but there's one particular one that pops into

my head very frequently that when they say it over in England, I'm just like,

oh, my God. And. But again, I go back to. If you

read that from. We might take it as offensive where they don't

like. And that's that global, that flattening globalization that you're talking about,

where now people can just absorb whatever that

culture is in that book, in that writing, and it's no longer a

regional writing. Right? Like the definition of regional

writing is, to your point about the dash. And it's going to go away.

I think it's gone already. There might be, there might be some proud. There might

be a little proudness. Like if you go back to. I thought for sure we're

going to avoid it on this episode, but we're not. If you go back to

the film industry and like the, like the, the

filming of episodic television, whether it's

streaming or network, there is a certain sense of

pride with visualization of it. Meaning, like when I see

the cityscape of Boston in a show that's kind of cool, and I

like that. And I can, I can start associating my. Like, I

can feel the world like it's my world, right? Like, but,

but that's a visualization because as soon as they start talking and they

butcher the Boston accent, and I think it's so overplayed and I'm like,

nobody from Boston speaks. Speaks like that. What are you doing? Like,

like, there's like, like they over accentuate the

Boston access. Boston accent for for

effect. Right. So, but, but. So there's. I

still think there's some pridefulness in that regionality

of certain things when it comes to, like film and, and, and

in, in recording television. But I think in the writing it's different

because you don't have that visual aspect of. I think that I

would agree with you if you're talking about. And maybe this is

the next major sort of division, right? So we,

we've, we talked about in our. In

our most recent episode where we

covered. What was the last one we did. I can't remember. We

do so many episodes, but the, the last

episode that we did, a couple.

Never mind. I just lost it. I just had it. Because we recorded it twice.

We did. We recorded it twice exactly. Because we forgot to press the record button.

But we. I made a point in there that I think needs

to be revisited. And the point is that.

Or not a point, but I made an observation, right. I think

that the division between. Oh, yeah, because you were talking

about Taylor Sheridan's myth of not being able to, you

know, sell a story that occurs in a rural area

to, to television and movie executives, Right? Because

they've committed, according to him, since the

1970s, to only showing

stories that come from an urban area or based in urban

environments. Right? Now, whether that's psychological

manipulation, a psyop, as the kids say these days, or not,

that's a whole other thing all together. We're not talking about it in that context.

I'm bringing that up to say that I

wonder or to mention or to wonder if the

next great divide is not at a regional level in the United

States. Maybe the next great divide is because you brought up

Boston, right? So Boston is fundamentally different

as a city than where I

live in north central Texas. I live in a very

rural. What would be considered by folks who are in

Boston, it would be considered to be a very rural area. Now, it's

not that rural to me, but

it seems that way to people. The

stories that are in rural areas

and the stories that are in urban areas, I think that's the next

great dividend. And, and, and I wonder, just as I

did in that episode where we're talking about this point a little bit further,

I wonder if the next great sort of creative

strength is going to come from. From a writer

or an author in a rural area who's going to say, no, I'm committed to

this rural area east of Eden. That's what we're talking about it. I'm committed

to this rural area and I Don't care what you all are doing in the

city. That's interesting, but the next time you film my stuff,

you're not going to see a skyscraper in Boston. Like, that's not what I write

for. I don't write for the skyscrapers in Boston. I think that's already happening and

I don't think you're realizing that it's happening. It's not the style or

the, it's genre driven. If you think about this for a second,

most like a tremendous amount of horror movies start in

urban America. Like they start in those urban environments. Most

crime dramas end up in cities. Like

so. Yeah. If you think about Last Cabin on the Left and like all these

other like, horror, like horror movies, they're all in these like

little rural suburban neighborhoods. You don't see a

horror movie in downtown New York City, like, like in Manhattan or. Right.

Like, or in downtown Boston. Those are, those are crime. Those are

crime movies or gang movies. Like, I think it's already

happening. I think it's just happening by the genre instead of the authors, that's all.

Okay, Okay. I mean, and you may, and you know what? You might have something

there. Maybe, maybe this does descend into genre because I don't,

I, I. Human

creativity is too powerful to be bound up for too long.

Right. It's just, it's, it's like, it's like you're trying

to. It's like you're trying to dam up a raging river. Right.

You know, the Chinese tried to damn the Yangi, the Yellow river, and it didn't

work because it's, it's a river. Like, it's, it's a force of

nature. It just is. And that's what human creativity is. It's a

force of nature. And so if you dam it up

in tamping down regionalism, right, for the last 25

years, it's going to pop up in. Maybe to your point,

all those people who would have gone regional are going now into genres,

right? Because they can, they could play a little bit more. They could play a

little bit more or in there. Well, they could play to an audience that

understands. Right. Like that's instead of a regional understanding.

It's a, it's a, like, instead of like southeastern

United States regional, it's now it's either inner city

or suburban or rural. And anybody who lives in those

environments will get it. Like they'll, they'll understand those, that, that, that

the writing. Well, I wonder if it's also because one of the things that Welty

did And we'll get back to the book here in just a moment, folks. But

one of the things that Welty did really well is she observed, right? She said

that all of her writing was based on observation, observation

of people in her communities, observation of place.

Place was hugely important to her, right? This

place, this geographical

designation has meaning, right? It's not, it's not value

neutral. It has meaning here. And of course, being a

Southern American, it's interesting that I'm reading this book

or that I read this book now and that we're talking about this on the

podcast, because one of my older daughters is my older daughter. My

oldest daughter not older. My oldest daughter is.

She's writing a paper for college right now for her American history

class around the Civil War. So we've been talking a lot about the Civil War

in my household, right? And been sort of

laying out to her, laying out for her with Proximate

and the, the first order, second order, third order causes were for the war. Da

da da da da. And one of the points that I make to her, and

it is a point that I think Welty would appreciate along with Faulkner

and Zora Neale Hurston and Katherine Ann Porter, all

the Harper Lee, I mean, To Kill a Mockingbird. Come on. Like,

one of my favorite books of all time. Exactly. The

reason why those books are so powerful is because they tap

directly into the plot place of the south in its own

psychological conception of itself, which is, of course,

all the things that we know about the American, the American South.

I wonder if there is a. I

wonder if one of the other factors that we're. That we're, that we're,

we're seeing in creatives is

that lack of observation. Like, I wonder how sharply people observe things

anymore, right? So, like, if I was going to write a book about

Carl Hiason, I'll use him as an example. Carl Hiaasen,

he was a mystery writer back in the day, and he

wrote mystery novels that were based in Miami,

Florida, or in Florida just in general, right.

He knew Florida. When I would read Carl Hiaasen

mysteries and I read a whole bunch of them when I was like

late teens, early 20s. I like banged through a whole bunch of them and then

I like jumped off of that train and went to something else. I've heard a

Carl. I haven't thought about Carl hiason in like 25 years. Good Lord.

But, but he was a specifically Floridian writer.

You could tell that he understood Florida. He knew

Florida. He observed Florida. He

also attained national prominence from selling books about Florida.

So selling literally. And Weldy Welty would appreciate this. The

myth of Florida to people in like South Dakota,

the myth of Florida to people in like Idaho who are never going

to go to Florida or the myth of Florida to people in New

York City who when they would retire would like to

go and experience the reality of Florida in the middle of

that state. So

Carl Hiason in the mystery genre, the detective

genre, the crime genre, was an

author who captured all that regional flavor from his

observations. Just like Welting captured regional observations

and was able to turn that into, into dramas and short stories.

I think that's a strength that modern authors are missing. I don't,

I wonder how many of them are on their phones too much.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you got it. You got it. You got to put the

phone down and look around, right? Like this is what we tell leaders. Like, you

got to put the phone down and look around. Like, does that, does that

lead into the observations?

I wonder if our next generation of writers are going to do what you're

asking them to do, but it's going to be through the lens of their phone,

right? So like all of their observations are gonna come from tick tock or Instagram

or Facebook, whatever, like whichever the, whichever the flavor

is. But. And, and you're gonna start

seeing books written in that

instead of, I guess goes back to your point about. Instead of like the flattening

of the, this global globalization. Flattening globalization thing is

because now they're going to be seeing everything they see on their tick tock talk

is from all over the place. So there's not one universal

like you're just talking about the gentleman writing from Florida

or in Welties, you know, writing from the, the South.

It's, it's going to be maybe, maybe, maybe

that's what it is, right? They're observing. They're still observing. Listen, if

you, you're gonna, you're observing whether you think you are or not, whether you're registering

it in your brain is observing, observing or whether you're like whether you understand

that that's what's happening or not is not the is is

you. It is happening. You're. You are definitely. Now if you're always

observing this right then people are going to start writing

about what's in the little box instead of the

regions of the world. Well, one of the ironies of our time, both of, both

of us are film guys and we'll go back to the book after I make

this point. One of the ironies of our time is as the phone has become

more ubiquitous as a physical object in our lives,

the integration of the communication and the physical object of the phone

into movies and television, which

basically have overtaken the novel and have killed it, I think.

Not the book, by the way, just the novel. Right.

Those tools, the phone, that phone is

an object, but also the phone is a communication tool. The struggle

that, the struggle that film people have had to integrate that

into stories has been kind of amazing to me. Kind of funny. Yeah,

it's kind of amazing because it's like

the analogy that I can make is how often do you see someone

in a horror movie? You talked about horror movies. Okay, how often

do you see someone in a horror movie go to the bathroom?

Not because something horrible is about to happen, but just like, because people have to

go to the bathroom. Or, or. My favorite part is when this thing does come

into play in a horror movie, it's all of a sudden out of Service. Like,

we have 99. We have 99.9 of this coverage around

our country, folks. But yet inevitably, you are in a dead zone

when you're in a horror movie.

It's my favorite part of the horror movie. That's true. That's true. And you could,

and you could time it almost to like the beginning of the second act. Like

the, the second act kicks in and then all of a sudden we're in a

dead zone. You're like, really? Like, Sprint has 100% coverage. What are you talking

about? There's no dead zones. Just call somebody. There's no dead zones in the United

States anymore. I mean, come on. I mean, I mean, maybe there are. I'm not,

you know, whatever, but they're, they're very few and far between. You know, there's a,

there's, there's a 15. Not even a 15. There is a 10 minute dead zone

between where I live in Dallas, Fort Worth and

it. And it doesn't even, it's not even dead. It goes from, it goes from.

What do you call it? It goes from a 5 bar

5G down to like 1 bar 1G. So

I can still like stream an audiobook. And I've

done that before. I just can't have a phone call. Hey, son. I can drive.

I can drive from New York City. From New York

City, which is four and a half hours south of my home. Yep. I

can drive from. I can drive from New York City past my home,

drive all the way up to Portland, Maine, which is another two hours

north of My home and never hit a dead zone, not

once. See, that's. Yeah, I mean, but that's

inevitably. I think they're getting clever

to it now though, because every once in a while you'll watch a horror movie

where the phone doesn't work and they'll be like, oh, there's some interference. Like

something's happening to the. Yeah, okay, so. So it's not a dead zone anymore, but

some, you know, the cell tower's down because the

electrical storm or some jack wagon stuff.

By the way, h. By the way, we will actually,

at the end of our episode today, we're gonna have a little bit of an

extra bonus because Tom and I are going to talk about Project Hail Mary because

I have some, we have some thoughts on that. I have some thoughts on movies.

So if we have some time at the end of our episode, we'll do that

today. Okay. So going to book two. So Optimus Daughter is

divided up into, into four books, right? Sort of an old

classic, sort of novelist's approach. And so we're going to go into, we're going to

head into and summarize a little bit of book two. So book two opens up

with, with a funeral. Right?

Now I am a big fan of

funerals. Pause

in literary works. Because a funeral is a place

where we can not

only play with an understanding as an author or as a,

as a, as an audience member or as a reader, as

a witness. Right? We can play with perceptions of

reality, but we also get to play with things that are existential.

Themes that are existential, like life and death, themes

of renewal and redemption, themes of forgiveness and reconciliation.

And of course, when a funeral occurs in real life, as

it does in a novel, as when it does in a novel,

everybody who is at the funeral, well,

everybody doesn't need to be there. So in book two, we

open up with Laurel McKelva

returning to her father's home. And

all six of her bridesmaids from her wedding that she had had years

ago show up. And these six bridesmaids

begin to help her navigate the funeral

process. The community shows up to help her

bury her father, the judge.

Now the interesting thing

about these six women is that they

are the ones who hold the memories

of the community. And it's interesting, so

wealthy Welty sits on, on an observation here

that women, and by the way, Welty was born in

1909. So she, she saw and

grew up in a pre feminist world

in the south and then

matured and had her career in a post

feminism world in the south

feminism doesn't enter into this book. That's a warning, by the

way, for some of you who are looking for it. So if you're, if you're

reading this book and you're looking for that, that doesn't, it doesn't enter

in here. Except.

Not even. Except it enters in, in one. I

shouldn't say it. Interest in it. It glides across the top in one

fashion. And how Laurel, the character Laurel talks about leaving the south

and going to Chicago where she got married at, at

the beginning of the beginning of World War II.

But, but Laurel is comforted by these six

bridesmaids and by the way, they swoop in and they do

everything they can to help her. Now with that

it there of course, is gossiping, backbiting,

conversations that we would consider to be more feminine coded

and more female coded that do occur in this part of the

book. But there's also the giving of food and the preparation

of meals. There's the turning down of the bed.

And the. The African American maid

returns who used to work with the judge and who helped raise

Laurel, returns to, of course, help her

during her time of need. This is the coming

together of community in the second part of the

Optimist's Daughter. Now, a couple of other things

happen in here too. So there's, there's Fay, the

judge's second wife, Laurel's stepmother, such as it were.

And Faye's family comes

in to the narrative in part two. And Faye's

family is from Texas.

They are not from Alabama. No, not from Mississippi. And they're not from Georgia. They

are from Texas. And there is a distinct

regional flavor given to them, as I often say,

about conflicts that happen across the world. We in the United States don't

know the difference between XYZ ethnic group and ABC ethnic group,

but they know the difference. Same thing here,

people in the American South. They know the difference between folks from Georgia,

Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas

and Texas. And yes, I can tell you, living in Texas, they all talk dirty

about each other. Absolutely. Still

these days, states do still

matter. And in this narrative it matters as well,

because the family of Fay rushes in and

behaves as one of my old

ex girlfriends. Back in the day, their mother would have said to me, they behave

like a bunch of wood ticks.

Some old school terminology there.

Finally, there are the men who help

bury the judge, the judge's male friends

and the judge's male friends. The men in part two of the

Optimist's Daughter behave in a fashion

that is old School, Southern patriarchy. They

run around, they do the things they're supposed to do, they listen to the women

when they need to. And then when they can scatter off and not take any

responsibility, they scatter off and not take any responsibility. There's a

whole, there's a whole sequence in there of one of the judge's friends.

I don't want to ruin it for you. Go, go read the book. But one

of the judge's friends going and getting some lemonade for his wife,

who literally berates him into going and getting the lemonade and, and then coming

back and he delivers the lemonade and then he runs outside to go smoke

cigars. And Laurel observes this as a, as a

witness, both of those, both as a witness of the new

generation, the next generation that's beginning to come in and is, is observing and judging

this old school behavior, but also as someone who grew

up in that behavior and finds comfort in it during her time of need,

when she's mourning her, her father.

Welty hits on something in here, in the second part of the book that Joan

Didion also hit on another point that her and Didion, you know, sort

of, sort of share where she's writing

part two of this novel. And at one level it operates as

a regional documentary of behaviors of people in the south

during that time around funerals, but it also

writes, she also engages with it at a social

documentary level. She's making some social commentary on what she's

seeing and what she's, what she's thinking about. And I think this is where

Welty's genius is. I think this is what won her the Pulitzer Prize because

she's doing the social documentary without being heavy handed.

She's not being judgmental. She's merely saying, this

is what we saw. This is, this is the way that it was.

And you make a judgment about it

now in our time, everyone documents everything. We talked about that extensively

in the first part of the show with the phones and everything else, from every

small aspect of their personal lives to the larger social moments of our culture.

But no one ever stops to ask what

documenting and making and sharing all of this quote unquote content

actually means matter of fact. I think that historians of the future

300 years from now are going to wonder at the flood

of irrelevancy that we have created.

And I think they're going to be, they're going to be choked. They're not going

to know what to do. They're not going to know how to sift out meaning.

And I think they will come to the conclusion that we, we didn't know how

to do it either. And I don't think that that'll be, I don't think that'll

be a check mark plus for us. I don't, don't think that's going to be

a good thing. So Tom and I were talking about

something that I want to bring up here in a little bit of a different

context. Previously we were talking about this book and getting

ready to prepare for the show. A couple days ago we were talking about this,

the issue of disinterested journalists. And Tom was going on a little bit of a

rant about journalism. I don't know if he's going to revisit this here,

but Welty sort of behaves like an anthropologist and a journalist and

a social commentator without

she mastered journalistic. Just like Joan Didion early

in her career, not later. Later Didion got wackadoo a little bit

on this. But, but early in her career they

both mastered, and they were both of the same generation,

mastered the idea of that disinterested journalist

where you couldn't sense what their biases were.

And now we live in a world where everybody's a

marketer all the time. We're all marketing all the time.

Whether we want to be marketing or not, we're marketing all the time. Even I

am marketing right now. I cannot help it. We are all

marketers now,

but no one seems to know what meaning we can grasp from this.

So I'm going to use optimist daughter and the funeral and all that that

I just set up. There is a setup for this question. Question, Tom, if.

What does all of this mean? I'm going to ask you the existential question. What

does all of this mean? Give, give us some meaning for all of

this. That way at least we'll have something on the

Internet that Maybe will survive 300 years from now that

can be found. Because I'm, I'm, I'm not yelling nearly as loudly with my voice

as I could be. That maybe in some quiet

corner of the Internet some historian 300 years from now will find and they'll go,

Tom Libby. Got it.

Good luck to them. I mean, I'm not sure. I mean, you know, all I

got right now are some opinions and as you know, they're pretty strong

this case because I, you know,

kind of like you're leading, leading to here. There is a

major difference in what you just described as

wealthy's writing style, which is

observational, no bias. I'M just going to tell you what I'm

seeing. And that just doesn't seem to exist anymore. And

because journalism has turned into marketing. And

one of my frustrations, as we were talking, as you alluded to as we were

talking the other day, I cannot find

anywhere anymore where I can just get factual data.

Right. Just give me what. Folks, listen, we all know what's

going on around the world right now. We have wars in Iran, we have Israel

doing this, Ukraine and Russia having this fight, et cetera, et cetera. We know that

there's, there's turbulence in the world.

But I want to know what the turbulence is stemming from

without somebody giving me their, to your point, their

bias. Whether you, and again, whether you

are, whether you are, whether you stand behind

our current, current administration blind

faithfully, or you are on the other side and you hate him,

you hate the administration with the passion of a thousand sons. I

don't care which side of the coin you are, you're on, but give me factual

reasons why you stand on that side of the coin. And

nobody does it. Nobody is giving us

factual information. Why are bombs being dropped

here or there? Well, this happened, then that happened, then this happened, then that

happened. The bombs dropped. Okay, now it's up to me

to determine what side of the coin I, I fall on because

of the, the factual data. If you have a

hundred. This, this goes to me, this goes directly to

the heart of a problem that I was told when I was very, very young.

When I was very, very young. Somebody asked me, one of my elders at the

time asked me, me if I understood the difference between right and wrong.

What's the difference between not right and wrong, True,

true or false? Sorry, what is the difference between true or false? And I

said, well, one is right and one is wrong. And they said, no, it's the

majority. If the majority of people

think something is true, then you are going to start believing it's true. Whether it

is or not, it's the, the, the true or false, it lies

with the majority. And, and that, that's kind of what I'm

seeing with journalism. If enough journalists say this is happening this way,

then we all just follow that leader. It's very rare that you find somebody trying

to buck the system not because you have alternate views,

just because you want to hear factual information. It's very

strange to me that, that you know, and again, I'm not saying I

believe that, by the way, that the truth, the difference between the difference between true

and false or the difference between between right and wrong is the majority. I, I

understand that is not, that is not how you should be living your life.

I get that. But that was said to me when I was a young kid

that had no other, I had no other point of reference to

understand the dynamics that they were talking about. So it's like it was the

easiest version of that explanation to me as I grew

older and I started understanding what they meant by that. That was

the shock, that was the shocking awe for me. Like that's what I was like,

oh, they're right. But it's not, it's not truly the

definition of right and wrong or the definition of

true or false. It is just people tend to lead

or follow like sheep to that, that majority.

The like. It's very rare that you find somebody that says, we're not gonna anyway

to go back now circle this back. Because in my

opinion, journalists are marketers in a sense. They

just need the clip clicks. Right? Like so they will say and do

wherever the majority leads them because they want all the clicks, because

that's their job survival at this point. They're not being, they're

not being hired by CNN or Fox News or ABC or

whomever. They're not getting hired by any of those people to

just dragnet it. Right. Like dragnet just the

facts, man. No, they want clicks, which means you have to do

something or say something to drive those clicks. You are marketing

your opinions or your biases. The.

That's the only way for they, for them to survive. The problem is that is

now leaking and seeping into everyday life because of

these things. Yep. So

now, now whether you speak loud or not,

you're going to basically be judged by the number of clicks you get on this

web, on this podcast. Podcast, or a number of downloads you have on this podcast.

So your success or failure is going to be based on the number of downloads,

not on the quality of the content. Because you could have the best podcast

in the market right now. And if you don't have enough downloads to justify

that statement, you're not making it. So,

so I will say this. I. I do have the best. I do have

the best podcast in the market right now. You are part of the best podcast

in the market right now. And then you're right, I don't have enough downloads to

justify that. You're exactly correct.

And this is why

on the other side of the idea

that we are all marketers is

also the idea that, or, or not the

idea, but the, the fact that

for lack of a better idea,

the Idea that marketing ruins everything, right?

And it's not that the Internet was this like, you know, pristine

sort of virginal territory with no bad actors.

That's never been the Internet. Tom. Tom and I both

been. We've both been here since. Since the dark

magic. The rails for the dark magic were originally laid. We've been around here for

a while. It was never.

Oh, I just saw today that that

ask.com finally just shut down, right? I was like, oh, really? I didn't even know.

Yeah, I didn't know that was still rolling. Good Lord.

But my point is that human beings are going

to be bad. Human beings are going to be good. This is. This is. This

is just sort of the human nature kind of thing, right? The.

The challenge we have is. And. And Tom, you named

it correctly, the challenge we have is if the vast majority

is pursuing clicks and behaving in a way where they are only

pursuing marketing outcomes, then of course they're going to be

biased. Now, with that being said, my oldest son is in

journalism, and I will tell you that the way he writes

is not a way that. That, that pursues clicks.

He's actually trying to get to maybe not capital

T truth, but just the facts. Right now there are

people who believe that his pursuit, because they

have been so warped. And this is the thing on. This is the other side

effect. They have been so warped by people who

are pursuing clicks, they're running after him going,

well, you had to be pursuing clicks to say this thing about me, even though

it was factual. You had to be pursuing clicks because that's the only way that

someone would bring up this factual. Right. That even remotely bring up this factual thing.

Thing. Right? Which. Which of course

leads to an inability

of the audience who is observing this

and reading this and trying to discuss out what is

not true. Again, I'm not using that word on purpose. What

is factual from what is opinion to be confused.

And so you have the people who don't like what's happening

muddying the waters. You have the people who

are manipulating the system muddying the

water. And then you have people who are

seeking to navigate the waters, like myself or my

son, in a way that neither muddies them nor. Nor

further causes problems, who can't get traction no matter how loudly

we yell. Which, by the way, I'm of the opinion that. And I'll just

sort of preface this a little bit. This is sort of how I'm going to

end today. I'm of the. I'm of the ability. I'm of the thought process now

that actually speaking quieter is probably better rather than

yelling louder. But, but that's, that's, that's for a little

bit later on. So I know I saw you sort of have that. You sort

of had that, had that, had that response. Because this is, this is what, this

is what is happening. And it's still at the end of the day.

And, and, you know,

people want to know what all this means. We want to know what it means.

Not necessarily. Like, you picked. You pick something big, right? You pick like

Ukraine and Iran, and these are big things. Yeah. Okay. Because

there are things everybody knows. I'm less interested in what those

things mean, and I'm more interested in. In what.

I'm more interested in what the tax abatement

promises mean for my community

around data centers. Which has nothing to do with anything

that you're doing in Boston. Right. It has everything to do

with what's happening in my local community. I want to know what that means.

And Facebook, even Facebook

muddies the waters of that meaning. I can't get

meaning on that because you know what the people. And again, it's,

it's, it's a smaller microcosm of a much larger thing at scale that you're

seeing with larger international events. So we've scaled

down that sort of marketing behavior to the

average person, and that's been deleterious, that's been damaging to our culture.

That's why we can't communicate about the same things. Yeah, no,

and you're right, I, again, I, I use something because, you know, people

listening to this podcast are listening from all over the place. So I was trying

to find something universal. Right? Like that everybody on the planet

could put their fingertip on if they wanted to. Yeah. Fact still remains the

same, though, because I agree with you too. Like, if I'm looking at, like, you

know, we have a, A thing up here. You know, we have a special prop,

what's called Prop 2 and a half, right? Like, there's a, there's a. There's this

automatic trigger that your town could pull. It's

called a. A property tax of 2 1/2 percent. So it's an automatic prop

2 1/2 increase. If they need revenue

for something now, they can only pull the trigger, like X so many number of

years. Like it's like once every five years or something like that.

But. And I don't remember all the details to that, but the point is, to

your point, when they pull that trigger and you want to know why, like, okay,

what's going on that you need the revenue, like for the city. Like, you're

like, you're abatement problem. I'm like, we can't find like,

oh, there was, you know, a school blew up or not blew up, but

you know what I mean? Like, they needed to expand a school or they needed

to pay for whatever, whatever it was. And you want to be able to

justify it. And you can almost never find. But to your point, Facebook

forums and all this stuff are just people throwing mud at each other. Like, well,

you know, and then of course, every once in a while you get the, you

try to get the voice of reason in those groups that say, hey guys, stop.

You guys are neighbors. Stop throwing mud at each other. When you realize that

the government can do this whether you want them to or not.

That's why they call it a prop two and a half override. Like, they, they,

they can just do it and you're just asking them for why

out of. And they're going to tell you out of the nicety, not out of

the requirement. Like, there's no requirement that says they have to tell us what the

money is for. For. But every government official does just because they know we can

vote them out. Right? Like, if you don't tell us what it's for, we're going

to vote you out next. The next election, you're gone. So they tell us.

But they're finding that information is literally like finding

a needle in a pile of needles. Never mind the haystack, it's

like a needle in a pile of needles and you just don't, don't know which

one you're grabbing onto to try to figure out what the hell's going on. So

again, I agree with you that it's like the muddying of the water is

not. And by the way, we're not picking on journalists here because to, to

your point, with this, this, you know, Facebook forum situation

or Facebook group posts, whatever you're talking about, it's not

just journalists, it's everybody. Like, people will say something in those

forums just to get reactions from people. Correct?

They're not saying it because they're trying to add to the conversation or they're trying

to clarify something. People will throw comments in there just

to see how people react. And that's

not helpful. Stop that, guys.

Like, it's not helpful. And that's even before we've gotten to the

trolls and the bad actors and the bot farms that are offshore

that are, that are mucking around in our internal infrastructure. And by

the way, where we're mucking around with our trolls and our bot farms in our

country, in other countries, infrastructure. Because everybody's doing it to everybody

else, right? This isn't just something the Iranians happen to be doing or the

Russians happen to be doing, where the Chinese and the North Koreans happen to be

doing. The United States is doing it, the British are doing it,

you know, the French are doing it. The first world, the first

world, whatever that may mean. The first world nations are doing it to the

third world nations. Everybody's doing it to everybody. This, this is,

this is the problem. And there's no meaning behind it. To your point,

Tom, it's just trolling. It's getting a

reaction to get a reaction. It's.

I'm not saying, I'm just saying. And then go ahead and saying the thing

and then, you know, they just walk away, like I, I,

something some. Was it today? Might have been today,

maybe it was a couple days ago, in preparation for this podcast, but

apparently somebody ran their mouth in England online about some

boxer or something. And the boxer, like, actually showed up to their house, like,

found out where this person lived, because of course, you know, everybody could be doxed

on the Internet and like showed up to this person's house and was

like, you're gonna say that to my face? And the guy's like, oh. You know.

And apparently there was like a whole like commercial ad campaign about

this. Like, don't say the things on the Internet that you. And of course they

use it because there's no free speech laws in the UK and

it's libel and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there was a larger sort of

of state cultural apparatus behind this thing.

And those kinds of

things work other places. The reason they don't work here is because we have this

thing called the First Amendment. And as Dave Chappelle infamously said,

the reason the Second Amendment follows on the First Amendment is because you're free to

say whatever it is you want to say in this country. Government can't stop you.

But here's the but. You're gonna need a

gun.

If you run your mouth that hard.

I still don't think we've underst. We know what it means. We haven't really

figured that out. I think maybe we got close to something

with your idea of perception, and maybe that's the thing for leaders here, is,

you know, we can talk about perception equaling

truth and what other people observe, but if

you're observing something as a leader, that makes no sense. I Think it is

incumbent upon you to go and figure out what that thing is

and why it makes no sense. I also think it's incumbent on

us to. And this is why I started with the funeral.

I think it's incumbent on us to revisit and re

rebuild traditions and structures and

customs because we've talked a lot about the Internet and social

media. One of the other knock on effects of those tools is

that it's convinced us that we can just sort of float along above things

and just not be impacted by them. And that's

a lie. That, that's a lie. And Welty, you know,

doesn't believe that the culture that she came out of didn't believe that. Tradition

was the thing that grounded you. Community was the thing that grounded you.

Family and, and even,

even, I mean, nature. Like in part three of this book,

it opens up with Laurel and her six

bridesmaids who have come back to her house after they've cleaned out the Texas

clan and everybody's gone home and the funeral's over.

And yes, I did use the word clan. Clean them all out. Right.

And. And the six bridesmaids come over

and they're all helping her garden and they're gossiping

and talking in the garden. Right? And it's just six ladies

talking in the garden to Laurel. And there's such, there's. There's. One of the things

that's interesting about parts two and three of this book is there's such a sense

of community. Like at first I was like, oh, I'm reading this. It

is a man. You know, men perceive community differently than women

do. And how that grows is different than how it grows among

women. But you could definitely see that like

Eudora had sat down with. Not even

sat down, had seen women behave like this.

Older women behave like this and pass along these traditions and

engage with the nature, such as it were, you know, in the

garden bed and use that engagement as a way to grow

relationships between people. And by the way, they're still gossiping the way the

people gossip on Facebook. That's not gone away. But it was only

the six of them. It wasn't at scale. And everybody in the neighborhood wasn't trolling

in. That's the fundamental difference.

Yeah, the anchoring to small dramas and small things.

So let me talk about these women for just a second. The

characters of Faye, Laurel and the four.

The four. Four of the six bridesmaids who stuck around. Mrs.

Pease, Ms. Adele, Ms. Tennyson and Tish, they

all hold memories of the Past, and that's in part three. Is, is,

is. It's all about the past memories of the judge, the past memories of

Laurel when she was a child. It's kind of this attempt by these

bridesmaids, these friends of hers, to build Laurel back

up after the funeral had happened. And that's what great

tight knit communities do for people. And that's the thing that we're missing by

thinking that we could float above it.

You're a person, Tom, who, not only out of your cultural tradition,

but I think just how you're wired, the way you've talked, and we've never actually

directly talked about this, but I do think the cultural memory is very important for

you, just how you're naturally wired.

Unfortunately, it's not. It's not. I think

that that's again, one of those things that's either dying

or maybe needs to be renewed.

But I do think it's important for leaders to hold cultural memory. So how do

we, how do leaders do that? Not just in an organizational

structure, but how do leaders do that in general? How do they,

how do they hold memories? Like, how do they connect with

people and do that? What is, maybe some ways that they can do that? Because

that's, that's something that definitely jumps out at you from the optimist's daughter.

I think there's, I think there's an awful lot to actually unpack there because

I think it, it matters from which angle you're looking at the business

itself. Meaning like so for example,

when you're talking about sales and marketing, you have to have a pretty short

memory and not allow the, not

allow the mistakes of the past to hold you in fear of

trying to advance the future. Meaning like so just to give you an example,

like I, I, you know, you encounter somebody who is, got a new

product on online or whatever, and you're suggesting they do maybe

a social media campaign or something like that, and they go, no, no, time out.

I tried social media. It didn't work. We're not doing social media.

And that, that, that memory of them failing at social media

is not allowing to them to realize that social media

today is not the same as it was 15 years ago. Right.

Like, so there are ways and mechanisms and levers to pull there

that didn't exist 15 years ago and that you should revisit this.

But the holding on to those memories stop them from doing so. So

it stops them from progressing into thinking that. Now on the flip side,

there's. I was again, I was told,

I remember working for as very young, I was probably in my early

20s and I was working for this senior VP

level person and this guy was just super nice, like super

nice all the time, even when he had to discipline

like, like enforce a disciplinary action, whether it's

putting somebody on a pip or whatever, right. But he was always just genuinely

nice about it. He genuinely cared about

you, you as a person, not you as an employee. Well,

he did still carries you as an important. But he went be. It went beyond

caring about you as an employee and it went into the,

the realm of caring about you as a person. And I asked him one day

because again, as you know me, I'm trying to learn everywhere I can for

I asked him, I was like why, why is it important for you to do

that? And it had nothing to do with like it was just being

inquisitive, right? And he said, well, you've got to be really nice

to people on the way up because you're going to see them again on the

way to down. So I may be a regional VP

of sales and mar, like you know, sales now it's like but 10,

20 years from now when I'm obsolete, I might have to go get a

job from that person that I just put on a pip that now

they're the VP of sales and marketing and now I would need a job from

them and they're going to remember that I was a human being to them first.

So that theory of like remember, remember things

on the way up because you're going to see them again on the way down.

That was very impactful to me when I was a young guy, like when I

was learning some of the about when I was learning about leadership, that,

that put a peg in a place where I don't think a lot of

people actually took from like that wasn't

everybody's instinct to do that is, you know, to be nice to somebody on

the way up because you're going to see them on the way down. So I

think again, depending on which facet of business you're looking at, I think all, all

of these things have.

They hold water, right? Like there's something to be said about

letting memories go versus hanging on to the like all of it

matters. Like, and it's not a simple box to put everything in that

says you should learn this from memories and then move on, right?

Like it's not that simple. And I think that we as people

sometimes want something wrapped nice and neat in a little package

and we say, okay, this is how we do something we learn that we move

on to learn something else in this particular case, and holding on to

memories. Memories are so impactful to us that.

That there are lessons to learn and there are lessons to unlearn because of

them. And you need to be able to kind of go back to the well

multiple times in order to kind of indicate what you're supposed to

do next. Like, the past will teach us for sure. You and

I have talked about this so many times about, like, the past

repeating itself. The more things change, the more things stay the same. If you have

those memories rooted in that, in that past, then you can go back to that

well over and over to try to teach yourself how to anticipate

things, how to have predict. We have

predictive analytics built into us based on our past.

Based on our past, we can predict how we're going to react to a future

event. Like that's. We have a built in, you know, predictive.

So memories allow us to use that. Memories are what allow us

to use that predictive analytics on the inside. Now, real quick, from a

cultural perspective, though, I think

there are things getting lost that once

they are gone, are going to be so missed

that we're not going to understand why we even miss them. I'll give you

an example of. And this is going to be. This will be

a little behind the curtain here. So for any of you who are listening, who

happen to be native, I really. I apologize for giving away some of our

secrets. But this one, I think is important because it directly

goes to what you're talking about here. My daughter and I were at a

powwow yesterday and we were observing. Her and I were just observing a few things

and we were observing some of the younger dancers and

how there used

to be. And my daughter has. My daughter is only 24, and she has

memories of this. When you wanted to be a particular style of

dancer, there was a particular way

that you would go and ask somebody to teach

you. And today nobody's really doing that because

they're all online now. And they just can watch the steps and learn the

steps, and they can, but they're not learning the meaning behind the dance.

They're not learning. They're not learning that value that

there's this intrinsic value to understanding

how to ask somebody for help. That

from our culture is literally

vital. It's like the root. It is the root of the

culture of being able to look at an elder or look at somebody old,

like, ask. There's a mechanism there that you're supposed to

leverage. So that that elder knows that

you're sincere in wanting to learn. And

the sincerity of the want is going by

the wayside because we have just such easy access to the footwork

or to the steps or the styles or the regalia styles

that match the footwork. And we can just look it up on YouTube and watch

a few steps and learn how to dance and just go. And I

think that's heart wrenching to me that

the memories of how to ask, how to be

asked, the honor, the honor it has for somebody to come

to you and ask you to that, that,

that being missing from the cultural perspective

is terrifying to me. And my daughter

still has memories of being taught those things

and she's watching younger dancers that are just

not being taught that. And it hurts her heart at

24. So again,

what leaders can take from some of these memories, especially if you're talking from the

cultural perspective. Stop. Stop allowing them to

do this. Stop allowing them to use that as a

cultural reference point. You have

this deep rooted ancestral culture

that is going to be gone if you don't hold on to it. Now that

being said, there's this small, like this

little woodpecker thing inside me that bangs my brain every once in a while that

says, just remember your culture is a living, breathing thing and it will

adapt and move forward. That that's the way it's supposed to happen. But

there are just certain things that just

cannot be forgotten. That. To your point about holding on to the

memories, I absolutely refuse to let those memories

go. Refuse. And, and I'm

starting to be viewed as an elder in our culture. And I'm not. I don't,

I do not think of myself as an elder. I am certainly not old enough.

Although my kids think I am. I'm not. I am not.

I find there are elders that are, that I still go to

for a lot of guidance. I still ask a lot of questions to. I

still ask and I ask in very particular ways the way that I'm talking about

and they appreciate the fact that I still do that. So when I have

grandkids, you bet your damn bottom dollar my grandkids are gonna

learn that. And I don't care what cell phone they have in front of them.

If they don't do it the right way, they're gonna have to. Gonna. They're. They're

going to contend with me. So it's.

Anyway, I, I can go on and on. Like I said, I think there is

a lot to unpack with this one because I think this one is really really

important. This is huge because.

The solution. Let me go to a solution.

Maybe I don't know. Or trade off, I don't know. I, I think, I think

the trade off is to your point and I think you hit on it correctly.

The trade off is,

it's a trade off between the advancement of culture

and the gatekeeping of tradition.

Yes. And by the way, thank you for sharing

that. I appreciate that, that, that was a little bit behind the curtain.

I, I didn't ask for that. But it's a great example of, of

what we're, what we're talking about here. I

think, I think that trade off

has been made in the direction of

advancing culture for benefit and gain.

And we could talk about what those benefits are, what those gains are. But I

think too often in the last 25 years,

particularly sharply. And by the way, that trade off has always been

made. That's always been sort of the tension. I think what's happened in the

last 25 years is that trade off has been made more and more often in

the direction of

progress, whatever the hell that may mean,

versus gatekeeping tradition. And I'm going to use a

popular culture example of this. So we're recording this today.

The date of this recording, not the date of the release of this episode.

The day of the recording of this episode is May 4, 2026.

Star Wars Day. May the fourth be with you. Yeah.

Okay. Now I'm not

going to go on, on and on about Star Wars. Not going to do

that. I could, I could do an entire series

of shows on Star Wars. I'm a Star wars guy.

George Lucas did not gatekeep

that franchise correctly. And

when he made the trade off between

progressing a vision of story

in order to maybe get paid or maybe he was

tired, whatever the entity he sold

it to, Disney then proceeded to make all the wrong trade

offs, removed the boundaries and the borders.

And to your point, I love how you've mentioned this about permission. This is

genius. Disney believe they didn't have to

ask the permission of the elders of strangers. Star Wars. And the elders of Star

wars weren't George Lucas. The ones who held the cultural memory of

Star wars were the fans. Yeah, the original

geek fans that watched those movies. And,

and, and were a subculture of culture.

And yeah. Was it majority males? Were they majority white? Were they

majority dopey dudes who couldn't get dates? Yeah, absolutely.

That's, that's who the Star wars fans are. They're dirty, smelly, video

game gaming, tabletop gaming dudes who can't get dates. Yes.

Okay, so what, they're the elders, though, to make the, to make

the parallel here. They're the ones that hold the memory of what Star

wars was and Disney was like, nope, we don't care because we got to go

get this new audience over here. We have to progress the culture. This has

happened consistently in popular cultural properties over

the last 25 years. And then when the people

who hold the cultural value, who were never asked what their

opinion was, when they riot online,

then somehow they're the problem. They're toxic.

They're the issue. Now, I want to be very clear.

I am not minimizing what Tom is saying at all. What he

gave is a very high example.

I think the exact same thing that Tom is talking about is what's happened is

what's happening everywhere else in our culture too. I don't think that this is, this

is an outlier thing. And that's a real problem

for me. It's a problem for me too. And to your

point, when, but when you say something about it, you're, you're like, you're old

fashioned and you're not, you know, you get labeled all kinds of weird things

and I don't even care if, if, if troublemaker or, you know,

dissident. I don't, I wouldn't care about those. But I don't like when it

comes back to you as being too stiff and too,

too, too, too wrapped up in the old ways. You don't like, you

don't, you don't like, you can't see the future. Like, stop. You're

opposed to progress. Yeah. Like, especially,

again, especially in my culture, I laugh when I say that. I'm like, I use

AI more than anybody. Like, like, trust me

when I tell you it's not because I don't want to see the futuristic part

of the world. That's not what it is. But there, to your point, there,

there needs to be some, I think there needs to be guardrails in place where

this stuff doesn't happen on a regular basis. I just think it's, it's

unfair. It's unfair to the people that

matter. And to your point, it's the elder generation. That elder generation is, is the

ones that, that matter in those cases. It's also the use of, and this

is where technology as a tool, tool is now

neutral because it's not the technology's problem. Yeah. So

the technology of the phone and YouTube

disconnected. To your point that the mechanics

of being able to do the

traditional dances correctly from the meaning of the

traditional dances that was held by the elders at. At a. At a.

If I may use the term, a pow wow. Right. Okay.

That separation was facilitated by technology.

And if it hadn't been YouTube plus the phone, it had been something

else that would have made. That would have separated those things. Right. Okay.

Now, with that being said, I think of

the line from Jurassic park, the original Jurassic park, the. The great Ian

Malcolm line. You

were. Your scientists were so worried about whether or not they could,

they didn't stop to think about whether or not they should. Yeah,

our technologists were so worried about whether or not they could. Our

marketers were so worried about whether or not they could. The people who were

tearing down cultural guardrails like Disney, I'm looking at you, were

so worried about whether or not they could, they didn't stop

to think about whether or not they should. And every time

someone causes, calls, pause and says, should we be doing

this? They're getting the dirty end of the stick. And that's that. That's my

opposition. That's my opposition. You know, the,

the should we do this? People, they're not enemies of progress.

They understand that when you separate the mechanics of a thing from the

meaning of the thing, the meaning always goes away and the

mechanics stay. But now they're hollow.

Now, question for you as follow up to this said

your daughter's 24. My oldest daughter's

21. My

second oldest daughter is 15. Get ready to be

16 in about a spin of a minute, about a month and a half. That

girl's going to be 16 years old, by the way. I just signed up to,

like, be her parent instructor, which. You can do that in Texas. Be her parent

instructor for driving lessons. Yeah. Good. This is going to be good times.

In the under 25s.

I think we can take heart.

I think they're sick of the. The technical

disconnects. I think they're sick of the surgery. They don't

like what they've been left with. They don't like the technique without meaning.

I think you can take heart, Tom. I think that that

will be the generation that will bring you the grandchildren,

and that generation will tell you those grandchildren will tell their

kids. You shut your mouth and you listen to Tom. Yeah.

Put that crap down and you shut up and listen to him. Well,

I don't want to. This is old and boring. You don't get a vote.

Be quiet.

That's not. That's not a. That's not. I don't know how she'll approach it.

But I sense that if she's anything like my daughter, there's a lot

of folks in that, as they call them, the zoomers. There's a lot of folks

in Generation Z that want that,

that they want those two things clicked back together because they've been through the,

the disintermediation with technology. They've been through the trade off.

They understand what's at the other end of the trade off. Like I talk about

myself as an African American who was born on the other side of the civil

rights movement. I saw what happened on the other side of the civil rights movement.

I would. Jim Crow wasn't great. Let me be

very clear. Okay. And

the legal function as a technology of the

Civil Rights act disconnected the

techniques from meaning in black community, which is why black

community has particularly underclass. Black community has

floated anklelessly in worse and worse ways for the

last 50, 60 years. My generation didn't have enough

power, nor were there enough of us to click those two things back together.

And then the cultural flattening started. And

I say these things and people don't even understand what I'm talking about. Right, right.

It's, it's already gone. It's, it's too far gone. We, we have to go to,

in my case, we have to go to the future because the past is just

too far gone. We, we can't get back to the

way Thomas Soul was raised and educated. We,

we can't get to a, we can't get back to a pre civil rights conception

of African American existence in this country. We can't get there.

The way the bridge is, the bridge is burned. It's gone.

And so you're correct in defending that. And I think your

daughter on the other side of that and other folks in her generation

are going to be the ones that are going to do the yeoman's work of,

of making sure that, that, that, that gets, that it gets maintained.

At least I get that sense. I hope so. I, I hope you're right. And

to your point, I mean, I, I get that, I get that feeling from,

from, you know, kids, her age group as well, because again, they're the ones that

are going to start having kids in the near future. But some of the

teenagers that are a little younger than her like that, 14 to 6,

14 to 17, I don't get that sense from them. Yeah,

well, well, there's always so, so millennials. Millennials. And the

millennials and the Gen Z are going to have

an out andout street war socially that's already starting

because, and this is, this is how it always goes, right?

And then whoever's coming up behind Gen Z, Gen Alpha, they're going to have

an out andout social street war. Like it's just going to, it's just going to

happen because of the nature of how

technology has speeded up the, the progression between

generations. And the technological, which we brought up last time we talked in east of

Eden, the technological separations now that matter more than generational or

even historical. Right? So the 14 year old

doesn't understand why they can't go to YouTube. They, they, they, they literally do not

understand the question. Like it doesn't. You could bring it to them.

They would be shocked at even having to consider that. That would open up new

parallels of, of stuff in their brain.

Whereas, you know, the 24 year old, only 10 years

older goes, oh, I know what we've lost, or I

recognize what we've lost. You know, so

gatekeeping, gatekeeping is huge. And I think, I think we've got a.

I think everybody in the United States has. I think every cultural and subcultural

group in the United States, and not just in the United States, but also I

think other places around the world kind of get this a little bit better even

than we do. But you have to culturally gatekeep, otherwise

you can't, you can't protect, to your point, what's valuable.

Okay. Rounding the corner. Don't

want to talk about Project Hail Mary. I want to wrap up this book. This

book is great. Go pick up the Optimist's daughter

in book four of the Optimist's Daughter. Book four is actually one long chapter,

so don't be surprised it's not divided up into different chapter pieces. And book

four is about the confrontation between

Laurel, the, the judge's daughter, and

Faye, the stepmother, the young stepmother.

And they get into, they get into a fight over

a breadboard. A breadboard that was Laurel's

mother's breadboard. A breadboard that has specific

meaning because it's part of the estate. Right.

That's going directly to Laurel. And

one of the things that's interesting in this

is that Laurel wins the fight.

And actually this was in the review that I sent to you from the New

York Times. I don't know if you had a chance to read that, Tom, but

Laurel wins this fight because Faye doesn't actually understand

what she's fighting over. Faye only

understands that to my point that I was just

making earlier. She only understands that she

doesn't understand and she doesn't even know the right

questions to ask. And so Laurel wins

by not fighting. Laurel wins by

in essence abandoning her, not her roots, but

abandoning the thing in order to pursue something

higher. And then she gets on a train and goes back to

Chicago.

One of the points that I like to make at our close here today is

that.

Eudora Welty and, and, and what she was writing about in the Optimist

Daughter her entire career. And I think Tom and I have kind of covered this

really, really well today. So go pick up Optimus. His daughter.

Eudora Welty really was sincere in

what she was trying to do. She was trying to make a sincere representation of

people that she observed mythologies that

she believed in or maybe that she did not, maybe not that she

believed in. I don't know if she believed in them or not. And that's a

great thing. I don't know if she believed in them or not. She presented them

though, as if she did, which is genius. That's how that's where her real talent

was, was she presented tradition and custom as things

that anchor people to reality into meaning.

And that those things, when you lose them, when

you are disintermediated from them, as Tom has brought up, you

really do lose something. It's not just about breadboards

or in Tom's case, footwork, or in my case education

in a pre civil rights black America. It's not just about

those things. It's about the things that they

mean and the way they anchor to us, to the world and us

to meaning. And Welty got all that, but she could only write about it

in a sincere kind of way. You and I have

talked about this on the show before, Tom. I think that for Gen

X, sincerity is one of those things we're going to have to pick up.

You and I are both firmly in that generation. We're the generation of

cynics and ironic detachment. I've said that before

on this show and I don't think that works

like I see the passion which you're talking about, what you were observing,

that's sincere. When I talk about the things I talk about on the show,

this is sincere. I couldn't do this show without sincerity. Wealthy couldn't

write her book without sincerity. And sincerity is not

cringe. It's not even cringe worthy. It's the thing we

actually need, need to

get where we need to go. I

know we didn't talk specifically about specific pieces in the book, but final thoughts

on the Optimist Daughter. What can leaders learn from this. Tom, what.

What should we all take from. From our conversation today, even?

Well, I've used this phrase on the show before,

and I think it was something that we kind of joked around a little bit

here and there, but I think it applies here as well. Again, when

I. Some of the leadership training that I've had in

the past, one of my favorite parts of it was,

you have heard a hundred times in your life, don't just stand there, do

something right? So they. People want action when things are happening,

when in reality. And I think this leads back to what she was doing

is don't just do something, stand there right? Like

so observe. Make sure you completely understand what's

going on before you just jump in to answer questions or jump in to answer

or give solutions or anything like that. I think into your point with

her observation skills, I think leaders

can learn from those observation skills. Being

able to objectively view something without

bias, without predetermined, without allowing certain

things to influence your thought processes,

I think it's. I think it's a talent that you need to

hone. It's not inherent. Like, you don't just get this

automatically. I think it's something that she probably learned over the years. And when

we were talking about her bio earlier, if you thought about, think about what she

did for work, how her education was, it

taught her to be that observant. And I think even if

you are not, if you don't have access to those teachings directly,

then you should just go look for them. You should be observant as to what's

going on. Make sure you know and understand the. All

of the details and happenings around you before

you start making those decisions. I think that lesson is all over

this. Like, anyway, that's my

take out of it, anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well. And you know

what? Like, the challenging of determining meaning, as

we brought up at the begin, I brought up at the beginning of this episode,

from what you're watching other people do, is a challenge that dogged

us through the 20th century. It dogged us at a

social level, dogged us at a cultural level. And we're going to explore

more of this in A Book of Common Prayer by Joan Didion and Sting towards

Bethlehem. We're going to cover both of her books. We're also going to visit a

17th century novel and talk

about that as well. Because the challenge of observation, the challenge of being

able to determine meaning, the challenge of being able to sift that as an

observer is huge, I think for all

of us. Because we do spend a lot of time

observing the world now

in those rectangular devices that we have in our hands.

Yeah. All right. Well, Tom and I didn't

resolve anything today, and I'm actually glad about that, actually. Normally, I was like, well,

we should have resolved something. Now we didn't resolve anything. We brought up a bunch

of different points, and you know what? I'm fine with that. So

I want to thank Tom for coming. Oh, go ahead. In the. In the. In

the words of CNC Music Factory, we gave you things to make you go,

hm, CNC Music

Factory. With that, well, we're out.