Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we are joined by Grace Harry to discuss her book, the Joy Strategist, as well as her background and where she's going next. And in part two of our discussion, we'll weigh in on Jerry Seinfeld's thought that the, quote, extreme left and pc crap has killed tv comedy shows.
Hello.
Welcome to the call like I see it podcast.
I'm James Keys, and rolling with me today is a man who for years has been an aspiring force tactician Tunde Ogun. Lana Tunde. Are you ready to share with us the tricks on how to avoid falling for the dark side today?
[00:00:53] Speaker B: Uh, no, that's not what I'm gonna do today.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Keeping it a secret?
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Well, luckily. Oh, man. Well, they're gonna have to subscribe for that one. Oh, okay.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: Okay, cool. Well, luckily today we got somebody who is willing to share some important strategy today. Also joining me today is a special guest, author of the 2023 book, the Joy Strategists, former music industry executive, and a woman who is a certified mastermind when it comes to joy. Grace Harry. Grace, welcome to the show, and thank you for joining us.
[00:01:25] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. So fun.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: All right. All right. Now, before we get started, we ask if you enjoy the show. Please hit subscribe or like the show when you're on YouTube or your podcast app. By doing that, really helps us get the word out as far as the show.
Now, we're recording this on April 30, 2024. And we have a special treat today as we're joined by Grace Harry, author of the 2023 book, the Joy strategist and all around awesome lady. Now, Grace, this book we, Tunda and I have both read, it's an amazing book. So can you just get us started? Could you tell us what it's been like to bring the joy strategist into the world?
[00:02:03] Speaker C: Well, thank you. First of all, thank you for reading it, both of you. I mean, that is really the point. And the joy for me is sharing what I've learned and what I've experienced with others. And just living a life that seems so aspirational on the outside and feeling what I really felt like on the inside made me realize that we're all living in weird disguises of life and sometimes not as happy as we portray in the world. So I wrote this first for my children, because your kids do as you do, not as you say. And I'm someone who's, you know, I follow a lit path, not a life path, and always moved around. So I wanted them to get to know me. And then some friends of mine really pushed me to publish it. And I was very proud and excited, but a little heartbroken, too, realizing how many people do not want to grow. And people are very comfortable with the devil they know and are more afraid of having a new experience, even if there's potential for growth and happiness and joy and the things that we say we want, but still rather cling to the bench. So that wasn't. That was very sad and heartbreaking in one way. And then I had to realize I cannot lean into spiritual egoism. Everyone has their own journey and their own path and just leaned into what's. What I'm teaching is teaching me and continue to go down that path myself.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Interesting. Interesting. Well, there is one question I was dying to ask, and because a book like yours, you know, the concept of joy and, yes, asking people to move a little bit outside of their comfort zone is, in many respects, it's what people say they want. But it's, as you pointed out, it's almost a big ask, you know, in that sense. So what has surprised you the most about the reaction to the book that you've seen?
[00:03:42] Speaker C: What surprised me the most is that we all joke like, oh, my inner child. And I want to being childlike in different ways, but we really all are that six year old still with a bigger shell around us. And so our hearts are fragile. We're interested and we're happy to work out and be in pain or be on a new adventure and be uncomfortable, but as soon as it's around our hearts, people close and clamp that thing down instantly. And so that was.
[00:04:09] Speaker A: No, no, go ahead. I'm sorry.
[00:04:10] Speaker C: No, no, please share.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: Well, no, that was. I thought that was an interesting metaphor from the book, actually, in terms of, you know, kind of that. That youth, your youthful self, and then as you grow, and then even well meaning people help you with this kind of putting that armor around your heart, you know, that was a really excellent metaphor. And then that finding joy is, in many respects, you have to look back at who you were before a lot of that happened. Not necessarily that you have to become that, but that is a key or a kind of a good way to access the things that brought you joy before it was you, before you locked up a large part of yourself to protect it from the world, so to speak.
[00:04:51] Speaker C: Well, it's actually essential. That's the thing. It's been a little complicated for me during the pandemic and then recently with the release. There's real big stuff happening in the world. And joy seems so frivolous and light, and yet I have clients and friends. I have a very good friend, 16 times New York Times bestseller. Incredible was, you know, built a media empire in his first career out of college.
And yet as soon as he's in a big love experience, he's burning the world down because it's still all back to feeling, the safety of opening up in that way. And so we do all these things and, you know, addict ourselves in ways to numb out, whether that's food or alcohol or drugs or religion or people or.
So that was interesting to see that we will do anything to keep our hearts from feeling because those feelings connect to things from a younger time. We didn't feel in control, and we had a big emotion around our heart, and we don't ever want to feel it again, even if our manifestation, our dreams and our goals is through that work.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Well, you said the key word there, which you noted in the book as well, is control. You know, the illusion of control, you know, and we, we kind of know that we don't have control, quote, unquote, over our heart, or at least part of us does. And so we, we put that aside and try to live in spaces where we do feel like we exercise more control. So, you know, I think that you definitely did a good job in the book and kind of illustrating how that happens. And then the path that, you know, that for the brave to follow who want to kind of move away from that now we're not going to go through the whole book.
[00:06:27] Speaker C: Oh, I'm sorry.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Go ahead.
[00:06:28] Speaker C: I was just saying you can't move away from it. It'll get you eventually. It'll lean into something you care enough about to do the work. So.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. For sure. So now we're not going to go through the whole book, but there was one piece about it that tunde and I both were like, oh, wow, we really enjoyed it. And we really appreciated the metaphor as well. It's a sports metaphor from, you know, basketball. And you talked about the starting five and how the kind of the people who, you know, that you hold close in your life that do something for you or that are a part of your development or that part of your life and how this may change and so forth over the course of different times in your life. Can you speak more about that? And I know, Tunde, you had some interesting thoughts on that as well, but I want to kick it to grace first and then have you jump in on the starting five.
[00:07:12] Speaker C: Yes. Again, back to ourselves. We deem ourselves the least important over anyone else. And often, so I put it a sports metaphor because we're so passionate about sports and we care so much about the players and we understand how intense it is when they pick the best positions for winning the game. But we're also all in the game. And so if we don't realize we're amateur adults building our small to giant empires and all the ways that we feel is our duty on this planet, but we don't put teams around ourselves.
You're only as, you have only as much opportunity as the people around you. And yet we pick people from either. We don't want to hurt people's feelings. So people we've known a long time or our partners, friends, but we don't think about, what do I need? What does James need? What does Tunde need on a daily basis? You know, I need this kind of experience. I need to feel this way and then really putting people around us that help us continue to aspire up our particular mountain.
[00:08:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Like within a level of intentionality, you know, like intentional about that.
[00:08:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Who's your starting? I mean, you're starting five. Like, who's your, who are the players who are close enough to you to help you win, to explain things to you when you're going left or right, to not see some bigger plays around you, to not be able to understand the dynamics of the other team. There's, there's so much to that metaphor that's really true for our own lives.
[00:08:41] Speaker B: Yeah, I'll jump in here because I thought it was great grace. And I've got it here in front of me, by the way, for everyone watching on YouTube. It's a great book.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: So you were over there reading the book, man, we got grace right here.
[00:08:54] Speaker B: No, I've got, look at all these markups and highlights.
[00:08:58] Speaker C: I love that.
[00:08:59] Speaker B: Look at that. Yeah.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: So, yeah, there you go.
[00:09:01] Speaker B: I couldn't have done that in five minutes.
No, but it's a great metaphor, analogy, allegory, whatever. We can call this comparison to real life in terms of this sports description, the starting five. Because a couple things here, and you said some things already that I want to come back to, but just on this specific topic, because I quote here from your book, you say their spot on the starting five is earned, not assumed. And as a guy that played NCAA basketball and all that, it's true in sports, we don't assume that the Miami Heat or the New York Knicks or the LA Lakers, that the people on the starting five haven't earned that spot. We all know and we expect that of sports, right? And I think that it's a great point because I would have never thought of this on my own. So for you to kind of put it in our minds that, hey, our support network in our personal life, and I guess we could translate that to business and other areas, but if we just sit with your personal life, like you said, and I think the personal life is very interesting because as we are all middle aged here on the show, we have the length of experience of having accumulated various relationships over our journey. So I think, like most of us, I've got my friends from the elementary school days. I might keep in touch with one or two of them. Once a year or two, we catch up and make sure we ask about each other's parents and families. Then I got a different group from high school. I got a different group from college. I got people I met when I was early in my corporate career, my early twenties that I'm friendly with. I got people I met in my thirties. I got people in my forties. I meant. So just like a real starting five, in sports, sometimes people are rotated on and off. You see what I'm saying? And I think that's the part, Grace, that I appreciate about this part of the book is, number one, we don't know how to be our own coaches. To rotate these people on and off, that's not really something you're born knowing, you know what I mean? And that becomes emotional.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: What was that?
[00:11:03] Speaker C: Say that again.
[00:11:04] Speaker B: No, I said that's something we're not born knowing how to. How to. How to pick and choose how to be our own coach, you know what I mean? And to say that we should do.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: That, you know, like that we should be, you know, maybe this person needs.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: To be, you know, the 6th man of the year, you know, like, they. They're still a good friend, but I'm not going to count on them to be on the starting five anymore. And by the way, maybe this person has been on the bench for the last 20 years. You know, they've stepped up recently. Maybe I lost a sibling or a parent, and now all of a sudden they're coming out of nowhere. And it's an interesting thing, and I hand it back is part of the ability to recognize that also takes time. And that's where I think, like, I heard someone say an expression when I was younger and I didn't get it until I got to this age, but I was like 30. And this lady that was in her mid forties at the time, told me, you don't know who your real friends are until you turn 40.
And I remember when I turned 40, I thought about that and I understood that that's probably little bit more extreme than reality. But I understood what she meant because you need time in this journey of life, too, to, to learn these things that, you know, people come and go, but they don't necessarily got to get off the team. But some people do got to get off the team.
[00:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think the continually earning, earning it part is, is a part like the spots aren't grandfathered in. Like it's, you have to constantly be evaluating that. And the other piece, Grace, I want to throw it back to you, but the other piece, I just wanted to mention explicitly that I think the, the, it really works, you know, kind of, the analogy really works in that, in a starting five. And you, you, you made this point in the book that it's not, the expectation isn't for everybody to do the same thing. Like the expectation is that you might have, you know, if you, again with the basketball analogy, you got a point guard might be that their person's job might be to set you up, you know, or you got the center. Their person's job might be to pick you up, you know, when they need to rebound you, you know, when you slip and they're there to help. And so, but asking the center necessarily to bring it up and to be the setup person may not be the best way to go. Now, setting aside modern basketball and positionless basketball and everything, but it's just like.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: The traditional, we like nineties basketball over here where there are actual post players.
[00:13:09] Speaker C: You know, then you must be happy about what the Knicks are doing now. They finally, in 45 years, have to.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Go to the Knicks.
[00:13:16] Speaker C: I'm from New York. I can't help it. But James Tunde, I think that's the real point. This book, the joy strategist, that's not me. The joy strategist is our own hearts. We just haven't realized that we should take them off the bench and they need to play, but we just don't understand that particular player because that player is all feeling. And so, you know, maybe we're scared of AI and Allen Iverson, but he is going to put his full passion and heart into it and go on that journey. And we might not see how that journey fully plays out until the end of the game, but that's really the point there. And it's picking a team that's going to help remind you that you have an inner gps, that it's safe to trust that, that we've got you. You can play full out, you can go hard, and we got you. And so I think that's really what's important is, you know, when Tunde was saying how some people play and some people are on a bench and then you bring in new players, but the coaches are hearts.
You know, there's nothing. Our brains only keep us safe. So we don't learn how to let that be the coach, and we learn to feel it. That feels good. And we, you know, we used to be in a society of feelings. We used to before, you know, a lot of the newer religions came in with thinking and strategy and morals. We really did live in a concept of creation, the elements, nature, elders, because we were living in survival with nature. And I'm going to go off the deep end here, but you get my point, so no worries.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: I believe in the hunter gatherer lifestyle, too, but that's.
[00:14:45] Speaker C: But, you know, what they had to do is they had to intuit, you had to deal with their bison about to kill us. Is the other tribe coming close? Did I have that reaction with james? And I felt that his team, his tribe was uncomfortable with our tribe. So we have to get back to trusting ourselves enough that we, and we do that in sports. We trust that in sports, the passion, the primalness and audible.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:07] Speaker C: You know what I mean?
[00:15:09] Speaker A: That's part of the development is you have to learn to, you have to, like, in a sense, you do the repetition enough that you can learn to just, like, see the game, let the game come to you and not be thinking through the game, you know? And that's part of the, that's part of mastery of playing a sport, is to do it enough that you don't have to think about doing it.
[00:15:27] Speaker C: That's it.
[00:15:27] Speaker B: Let me ask a question, grace, though, because this is great, and you said something earlier that I wrote down. Cause you talked about that we're all still our six year old selves, which I, you know, you're up my alley with all this. I do believe, based on what I've, what I've learned, being an armchair kind of quarterback on psychology, just the reading and stuff, is that. Yeah, most of us, I would say all humans are hardwired, like 80% by their 10th birthday or whatever the number, you know, and most of us are dealing with baggage from our childhood.
So if we understand that most people are in a state, like you said, of fear without realizing it, that's what I mean. Like, a lot of this can sound hokey to people listening that maybe haven't gone on some of the journeys you've gone on and have read the books and understand some of this interpersonal kind of spiritualness and potential conflict that we all deal with. So how would you advise people that are experiencing some sort of fear anxiety?
Because they know that something in their life isn't right. Like we're talking about, they've got a starting two, they don't have the five, or they've got a starting five and everybody's in the wrong position, or they just got the wrong players on the team. So how would you advise? But they're scared. That's what I mean. Like, maybe they grew up in a home where they didn't. They weren't taught how to speak and resolve conflict verbally and things like that. How would you advise someone to start approaching these feelings?
[00:16:50] Speaker C: Yeah, great question. Well, first, there's three ways to approach it. And again, know thyself, but every single one of us has one area where we are doing it. You know, it's like when I started working with this life coach, I couldn't understand what she was saying in her dialogue. It all seemed weird. And she got me to understand that sometimes we go places where we don't like the feeling or as the young people say, the vibe. We don't like the vibe. So as woo woo as all this sounds, you know that you go to someone's house, someone drags you to an event, you're like, not for me. So that's energy.
So if you can just take that little piece on his energy, then do you have, are you not having a wonderful personal relationship life, but you're killing it in business? Are you great at your job? Are you a great parent? Do you do well with your community? So you do have areas where you figured out a strategy that works. So if you can take a moment. And so when I worked with the life coach, she said, it's parenting for you. And for me, it was because I was raised by two teenagers. I didn't have a lot of specifics, so I was able to look at a blank slate a little bit and say, okay, what's important to boot camp? A future adult. So I would tell everyone, start with the areas of mastery. And yes, a lot of us don't think we have any. But if you get up in the morning and go somewhere and are able to bring food back, you've mastered something.
So to look at those places and take those. Write it down if you need to. How do I do that? What are the steps? For me to go outside every day and make enough to bring food back? Okay, let me take that and look at that. And how do I set up my relationship business? The same way. My family business? The same way. I want to volunteer. I don't know where to start. Well, let me take those same steps. It's also to start to trust yourself. A big part of the fear thing is that when we're young and we lean out in these big experiences, we get slapped down by life, by people, by thoughts, by well intended humans who, giving us their version of reality, they're.
[00:18:48] Speaker A: Imputing, they're passing their fear on to you. Like you pointed out, this could be well meaning, but they have learned and grown to be afraid of taking that risk or to showing your kind of inner self and not putting up your representative. And so they're trying to warn you to, hey, if you do this, bad things can happen. And so. But then it ends up just training you in the same way that they've been kind of socializing you in the same way that they've been socialized.
[00:19:15] Speaker C: And also, can they train you? You know, it's like the same older people who want to give love advice also come and call my kids and ask them to fix their phone. So what I'm saying is that we don't know. There's no intermediary that really understands your heart and your needs. But you and you, we often will be kinder to a boss or kinder or, better, to a lover or a spouse or a kid. So it's also that, like, I work with a lot of clients and tell them, they call and they'll say, I don't. Okay, so what would you say to your kid? Your kid came to you. They're in this scenario. What would you say to them? What would be your advice to them? And we often know it. So what my point is to this great question today. Where do people start? Start with the tools you already have. Start with the things you already know, and start to train your inner gps. You go into Uber. I once was an Uber, and the guy was arguing with me that this wasn't where I was going. It was in front of my mother's house. I knew that the gps was wrong, but they were so believing in that gps that it was unwavering. But that's what we have to do with our hearts. We got to train ourselves to be our coach, to be our own gps and learn from the steps and the things in the ways. We already have some of these skills.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And one of the things I'd add to that is being able to recognize the fear as well, because a lot of times the fear that we live with is that restricts kind of our inner self isn't debilitating fear. You know, we can all can see that, but it'll just be that it's almost like guardrails that we put up that says, we're not going to go outside of this quote unquote, corporate comfort zone because it's out there. It's something that is beyond what we, you know, we understand already or that we, you know, beyond the risks that we're used to taking. And, you know, and that's something that sometimes can be a barrier to us finding joy, you know? You know, and so, like, but it's not necessarily being able to recognize that. That it's not necessarily the fear. Like, oh, I'm afraid of heights. And so, you know, but it's like, it's just the fear of maybe meeting someone new or speaking up in a certain situation that, you know, that could actually just be keeping you. If your joy is here, it's just kind of keeping you going over there because you've put the fear in between, because just, you've learned that.
[00:21:30] Speaker C: And if this is sports, you'd be yelling at that person, what are you doing? Don't laugh. Be fearless.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: The play was run for you to go over here to the elbow, to the free throw line. Why don't you keep running over there? Yeah, that's a good.
[00:21:43] Speaker C: So don't look at fear. Look at courage. Right? The word cur, the latin root of ker, is your heart. So it's courage to tell the truth of your heart. So look at these examples. We have sports or people that reach out and take big risks. We don't have a choice. And even people who say, like you were saying to, it's not for me. Life will do it. You know, like, it'll give you an illness. It'll cancel something, or it'll remove something from your life. So we got to get on that journey. Every entertainment, every movie, every play, it's all selling the same thing. We gotta get courageous to live the life we wanna have.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: As you're saying it, the idea of having children is a great analogy to what you're saying, because I used to hear the old joke that I know I didn't invent. I think it's really old, which is if you wait for the perfect time to have kids. You'll never have kids. Cause think about it, everyone, you know, I don't have enough money. I need a bigger place and all that. But then, at least for us men, when our wife looked at us and said, I'm pregnant, I never talked to James about it. My stuff was unplanned, and this was like, what do you mean? Oh, yeah, we're pregnant. Okay, I gotta go figure it out. You know what I mean? And so. And so, you're right. When backed into a corner, a lot of times people do find, like you said, that courage. And I think that's a great point to bring that word into it, because if we focus too much on the word fear, you know, you could manifest that to continue with some people. So you have to give the balance of courage. Uh, I think is. Is great.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:11] Speaker C: And that word. I'm sorry. I just wanted to add naughtiness to the show real quick. A life coach told me what that is, is manifesting.
She said, because you want to manifest, but you haven't done work yet, so you have all these other conversations and belief underneath. I want to be a billionaire. Oh, I don't deserve. I'm not worthy. That and all of these things that we have to untangle to actually do that.
So you live in fear, then? That's what you're doing.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: No, and I'm glad also that courage came in, because that one of the points that has been made to me for a long time in my life is just that courage is not the absence of fear. Courage and fear can both be present. Just because you're courageous doesn't mean you don't have fear. It means that you can acknowledge the fear and then continue to move in the direction, either directly through the fear or in a way that you're not letting the fear shut you down. And so, yeah, bringing courage into the conversation was very important with that, because, again, it acknowledges, like, you don't need courage if there's no fear.
Talking about courage acknowledges that there's fear, and then. But acknowledges also that, okay, well, but you're going to do what you believe that you need to do despite the existence of that fear and going above that. So it was. Oh, go ahead, go ahead.
[00:24:27] Speaker C: No, I was going to say, it's an analogy that I love, is when you take kids to great adventures or amusement park, two kids will go up to the same roller coaster. One will be a deep fear and won't be in deep excitement. Same emotion. It's just the story. We're putting on it.
[00:24:41] Speaker A: Yeah. No, for sure. And so. Well, I do want to. Before we move on from this topic, I wanted to ask you. This was such a. I would consider it a success in terms of you being able to convey a thought, a kind of mindset in a book. So what's next? Are you on to the next book, or what do you do now? You've had a long career. Like I mentioned before, you've been an executive in the music industry. So where do you see yourself going now?
[00:25:13] Speaker C: Thank you, James. The book was a little heartbreaking and that people didn't want to do work. And so I dialed it back and realized, oh, the issue is intimacy. Like, we don't. Most people spend 90% of their time talking inside their head and not outside the person they're talking to, because we're so afraid to speak and say the wrong thing, and we think that any intimacy is confrontation. And yet, during the pandemic, I had so many clients that were building their business and their big dream all of a sudden were stuck in their house next to the person they picked for a big life inside a small experience. And they were like, who the hell is that person? And so intimacy became a real focus. Like, how do we get safe enough to actually listen to ourselves or deserve what we feel like we deserve or say the things that we're scared to say? And then if you don't say those things, I'm talking to you, you're talking to me, but another conversation's happening. I'm building a whole nother thing here. I'm going to react on that. You're going to react on that. And now we don't even know each other, recognize each other anymore. And I'm not just talking about intimate, like a husband or wife or a partner. I'm talking about someone you travel with, a friend, your children, starting parents.
Yeah. And beyond anyone you're talking to around, ever. We're intimate right now. We're having a very intimate exchange. So I'm writing about that during the. This. I did a lot of podcast interviews, and this incredible executive at Anscape, Disney, Mary, said, you need your own podcast. So I made a joy cast. I did five episodes, and it was fun because I don't know why I know famous people. It's not like my thing in life. Some people are like, I don't want to know famous people, and that's great, but I seem to know a lot of interesting people in the world. And so I was like, oh, I want to. Players tribune them and have intimate conversations that people don't hear from these people. So one of the first conversations, I called Bunbi from UGK because I'd had a talk with him years ago about finding partnership. So I really love those conversations. And I want to continue talking to people like you, James, and you, Tunde, about things that they're not about your core competency, they're about your heart and on the ways that you've learned to figure that out. So those are the things I've been focusing on that are fun. Tunde is my chamber of personal chamber of commerce here at Commerce in Florida and has introduced me to some.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Going to get a business card with that.
[00:27:32] Speaker C: You need that.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: You are that.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: Hey, man, you got to work your way. You got to work your way under the starting five, man.
[00:27:37] Speaker B: Or maybe I'm clearly the personal chamber of commerce, so I'll say that's a small forward over here.
I go on the wing and shoot a three. I can slash inside, you know, for real.
[00:27:52] Speaker C: It's funny. I don't ever leave the house unless I'm going. Every time I go anywhere, my partner's like, oh, shouldn't they introduce you to someone?
But he introduced me to someone named Bonnie. And I love art, art and activism. And there's no coincidence that, you know, we had in all public schools, common schools used to have huge, thriving, robust music in our programs. And if you look at a lot of our greats that are 16 up, they got a lot of either from church or from school. They learned an instrument or they are in a choir or. So there's real advocacy in art. And so that's a big passion of mine. It always has been. When I worked in Atlanta, I worked with the Hyde museum to bring this Kara Walker experience there. So I've been literally stalking Bonnie. Like, can I work at the museum? Can I do something here? What can I do? It's hilarious. So I feel like just being more entrenched in that. I wrote this book because I'm a 10th grade high school dropout. My mom moved to Haiti when I was 16. And you needed some accreditation to go talk to kids in schools. Thank God. We don't want random people to school. So a book does it. So just moving in high schools and middle schools and college tours, like, I just want to talk to people. I want people to really understand their authority.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that's, you got to share.
You have perceived and kind of, I think, digested a lot and from a living standpoint. And so it is. It's almost your duty to share, like, now that you've really gotten a handle.
[00:29:14] Speaker C: On that, Muhammad Ali has a quote that service is the rent you pay to live here on this planet. And I think that's true.
[00:29:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's it. You know, that goes back to, like you guys were saying about the two kids going on a roller coaster. One's full of joy, one's full of fear.
That kind of quote from Muhammad Ali is a type of where, you know, we can choose kind of the reason that we're here, right? And some people can choose it that way to figure, how can I serve others and be here? And other people can say, what? How can I see what's over here and take it all for me? And I think it's that challenge. And the last thing I'll say is, I really appreciate. And this is where I think, you know, again, this, to James's point, we don't do book reports on this show, so people need to go in and get your book and read this stuff. But I really enjoy the way you kind of bring it back to having a person look at themselves. So the two things, I just point out one from the beginning of the book, when you wrote out your own eulogy, because I've seen that before as kind of like, I've even been in some executive coaching programs where they tell you to sit down and picture yourself at your funeral and, like, what's going to be said about you? And I think that's something that's kind of humbling that we don't do all the time, is say, okay, well, because that's kind of going to be your message to the world. And then the last one was near the end of the book is, would you date you?
I think that's a profound question because I used to ask that as a business owner. Like, would I hire myself or would I go work for myself? And, you know, but I never thought to ask, like, would I go date myself? Because that's a whole different personal set of questions and way to look at it. So, I mean, I hope that I would say really thinking that, yeah, I would date myself. But if you really felt like I wouldn't date me, you probably got to continue to look inward and figure out why that answer is that way. So I wanted to just let the audience know that the book is great for those kind of gems and enlightenment for your own self.
[00:31:10] Speaker C: I also wanted to say it's not even like, would I date myself? Am I hot? It's really more that I find that.
[00:31:15] Speaker B: People, I didn't assume it was that.
[00:31:17] Speaker C: No, I know what people do. Like, I'm hot. Like, yeah, I'm blah, blah, blah. You know? But really what's interesting is I'll get people to write these long lists. It has to be this, they have to be that. And then I always start with, okay, great, get on checking off each one of those things that you also are in mastery around because we magnify each other. It's like, I meet these women all the time recently, these executives who are now, they're like, man suck, but they don't want to acknowledge that the person they're attracting is them because they haven't done enough work to not be that person in truth. So it's part, it's that too.
[00:31:54] Speaker B: That's interesting.
[00:31:56] Speaker C: You want that person, so be that person.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: Yeah. No, you mentioned in the book energy attracts. Like, energy attracts.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: And as you guys identified, that takes courage to be that person. So it's a. Yeah, the whole, well.
[00:32:11] Speaker A: Yeah, and you got it.
A lot of times people talk about what they want. But I actually explained this to my, I was talking to my daughter about this yesterday. Like, what you want is really defined by what you're willing to work for, you know? And so implicit in what we're talking about now is, okay, well, these are all the things that you say you want. Well, do you really want them? If you really want them, then you will put yourself in a, you know, or you will make yourself someone who, you know, who draws that or who brings that out, if those are things you really want, you know? And so that that's kind of the gauge on, you know, because you could say you want anything. You could just, oh, yeah, I want this. I want that, you know, yada, yada, yada. But what are those things? Do you really want to the extent that you're willing to actually do something in order to try to bring to yourself.
[00:32:53] Speaker C: That's right. And look at, honestly, you know, I have all these weird stories around money. And when I look at my childhood around money, you know, I had a single mother who's created all these businesses doing the very best she can, and she's killing it. You know what I mean? She's 16. She had a child, and also she had a black child in the seventies. It was a hard thing to be navigating. And so we learned that, okay, we had money, we went out and big dinner and did all this fun stuff, and then we didn't. So it's like really learning, you know, self love and all the stuff people talk about, it's also about financial literacy. It's about mental literacy. Self love is not just I take a bath and I'm hot. It's really taking good care of yourself on every level. So. Yeah.
[00:33:34] Speaker A: Cool. Cool. Well, we definitely appreciate, you know, the. Well, one, we appreciate you bringing this book into the world and we appreciate you joining us. You know, on this show. We're going to wrap our part one of our discussion right now. Thank, thank you to the audience for joining us. Part two of this week's discussion will be coming up shortly. So, you know, please check that out as well. And grace, again, thank you very much. And we hope that you join us on part two.
[00:33:58] Speaker C: I hope so. Yeah. Please have me. I'm coming.
[00:34:01] Speaker A: Oh, great. All right. Well, then that's a treat for the audience. Then we will have grace with us on part two as well. So we'll see you then.
All right. Our second topic today we wanted to react to, Jerry Seinfeld had some comments recently about how the extreme left and just the pc kind of culture is really taking its toll and undermining comedy. And you speaking more. So, like sitcoms, comedy, tv shows. So tunde, I wanted to ask you, do you think he has a point or do you think comedians maybe are soft now, you know, and they just don't want to take the heat, so to speak? That comes with pushing the envelope sometimes.
[00:34:40] Speaker B: That's a good question, the way you set it up. I'll probably say, like most things in life, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
He's probably, there's probably some truth to that. I think just alluding back to part one, Grace made a point, something called spiritual egoism, she mentioned, and I feel like I would say, seeing Jerry Seinfeld's point and saying that he's correct, I think there's a lot of that going on in today's world with social media and the way we all, everyone is, their ego is leading the day. And if they're upset about something and all that, they just want to spew it to the world. And I think it does create kind of a chilling effect on many people who would have things to say and maybe some things that would be funny. So, so I do think that's a reality. But I take issue with, I think something I see in our culture more and more, it's like this constant beating up on the left. And I'm somebody that doesn't consider myself like that, left or left wing. I'm more of a centrist type of person.
[00:35:47] Speaker A: Yeah, you're famously, famously a registered independent. No ways happens.
[00:35:51] Speaker B: But, um. But, no, but, but this idea that because I look at the left, people that are aggressive on the left about wanting, maybe cancel culture and all this, I don't see them different than people that have been aggressive for my whole life on the right. I mean, to me, um, you know, it was, it was, it was the christian right that would have had a problem with Eddie Murphy's stand up, delirious or raw, or George Carlin or Richard Pryor or those kind of comedians back in the day. So I don't. I just take this. I just feel like in the last couple of years, everything is blamed, being blamed on this magical and mythical left, which I don't really know where they are. It seems like just a lot of people are complaining and canceling everyone else in our society. And it's almost like the left has become like the Jews in a sense, like anti semitism, that we're just going to blame this on everything on that, even though no one can really point to this nebulous left that somehow exists out there. So, you know, that's why I say they'd probably choose somewhere in the middle in today's world.
[00:36:51] Speaker A: Okay, Grace. Grace, what are your thoughts?
[00:36:54] Speaker C: You know what I find interesting?
We are in a country that was created because people didn't like the staunch, specific way you had to live your life in another place. So we went out and we risked our lives, some people did, and to find a place where people could be free.
And yet what's so interesting is that we are turning into the most unfree place because it's not okay to have opinions about certain things or to feel certain things. And yet how is there expansion? And how do we really connect back with each other if we don't start to know each other, understand each other from empathy? And, you know, I, being 54, was raised at a time where having a platform meant that there was a responsibility, right? What does Spider man say? With great power comes great responsibility. And so where do we get to hear things that are different than our reality? We know that when you go online, our algorithms all stick us now in these very specific perspectives of life, where do we expand? Where do we hear other things if we're not traveling? If you think going to Las Vegas and going to the Luxor and the New York hotel, the Bellagio, is traveling the world, then you may be getting a very specific experience of that. And it all really hit such a strange. It was such a strange perspective. I was at the oscars with Questlove when the whole Will Smith and Chris Rock thing happened. And it was so interesting to me because musicians don't do that anymore. They used to do that. They used to sing songs about things. I mean, not all, but most, but we're now in a world we're in the Handmaiden's tale. We're in. I don't know if you've seen that new show that the Game of Thrones people created, the three bodies or whatever about happening. And so it's like we want to live in a place where we can be, quote unquote free. Then we have to be okay and safe and secure enough in our own self to hear opposing opinions. We have to be secure enough as people to understand that two opposing forces can both be true. And we're moving into a very solo, singular perspective of life here in this country. And so what I feel like Jerry Seinfeld is saying is that it's, yeah, maybe people are soft. Maybe they don't want death threats in their house. Maybe they're worried about their families. Maybe even when they go to shows, there are people waiting outside to be violent, which is what I've noticed with some comedians recently. It is actually dangerous.
[00:39:21] Speaker A: Chappelle got attacked on stage.
Chappelle, he got attacked on stage.
[00:39:26] Speaker C: That's what I'm saying. And so, but what I'm saying is that we need equally people to say in the world, you know, let's look at that from this place. It doesn't respect those people. What's happening in that place is terrible. But also, hey, with some laughter and some levity, have you looked at yourself? Have you looked at this thing from all sides, you know, of the situation? And if we are getting rid of, we're not going to. In my day, we had shows like Archie Bunker and shows that were really politically, what's the word when you, when someone can't speak?
[00:40:01] Speaker B: Polarizing, politically incorrect or okay, not even.
[00:40:04] Speaker C: Incorrect, because it wasn't. The idea of the show was to say incorrect things to get you to see and feel into what your version of that was. I felt like right now, animation is the only place where people are now taking real risks and saying things that are complicated. Maybe because that art form is so soft and seeming so. I agree with, with Seinfeld in that we have to be bolder in our expression so that we can teach each other, guide each other, see each other, know each other. And if we continue to censor to the point where we just stay in our own heads and speak internally and never share.
We're creating a world that we're not gonna be so comfortable living in. I was gonna say down the road, but now.
[00:40:47] Speaker A: Now, yeah. Well, I think implicit in what you said, I think, is the answer to this. And that is, you know, this is a place that was created with explicitly in mind of this freedom of speech. And, hey, you can, we're not going to have this overly restrictive way. Well, see, what we have to recognize from that is that kind of the normal, the humans kind of by default, tend to want to restrict people from saying things that they don't like. Like, we wouldn't need freedom of speech if the, the inclination of people in power was to let people say what they wanted to say. Like, the only reason why you need freedom of speech is because we know through from history that people in power will want to restrict people from saying things even, not necessarily even that's the opposite of them or that opposes them, but even that questions them. And so I think what we're seeing here, though, is Seinfeld's raising a good point, but I think the point is better taken on the executives, that the executives don't want to create content, don't want to greenlight content. That pushes the envelope. And they're making different calculus than the comedians. The comedians. It doesn't seem like we have a problem with comedians actually saying things that are, but that are kind of controversial. But it seems like, well, maybe. I mean, but I think that might be overblown because I don't think, I think Lenny Bruce, you know, I think George Cohen, those guys faced a lot of, whether we got, they got explicit death threats, we don't know because media was different than it is now, but they were out a lot of heat, you know, from society and other comedians, any comedians pushing the envelope. I think implicit in the concept of pushing the envelope, you know, you're going to get some heat. The extent of the heat may be worse in our modern society, or the ability for a crazy person to actually communicate something to a comedian now may be better. You know, so maybe they can do that. But I think really what it is is that there is a non risk taking from a commercial standpoint issue that may be hitting us more quickly. Like, hey, we're, if you say anything that is remotely kind of, you know, controversial, we don't even want to platform it because we don't want, you know, complaints going here, complaints going there. I just don't know that that's new. I mean, like, I think back to the Super bowl and the Janet Jackson thing. And it's like after that, you know, like the CB's is doing pennants for years, you know, because all these people complained about the, you know, the nipple, nipple gate or whatever. And so I think that that might be a natural inclination. What may be different, though, is that instead of conservative executives that they're worried about now, they're worried about executives that are progressive saying, hey, we don't want you to make a joke about this person or make a joke about that person. It's like, well, hold up. The conservatives don't want us to say this stuff. The progressives don't want us to say this stuff. So what are we supposed to say? So it seems like he might be acknowledging that, you know, like basically the walls are getting closed in.
[00:43:39] Speaker C: I think James, too, that we, it is a different time. I think we have in the last four years have watched leadership tell us to take matters into our own hands and take matters into our own hands at any cost. And so, yes, a George Carlin may have had a, had a death threat or Richard Pryor or we can keep going back, you know, but now there is real authority and permission to take bodily harm to somebody and that will make someone think differently. And I do know a lot of these comedians very well, and they are taking that into consideration. Recording artists working in the music industry for so long, what got greenlit and what didn't was usually the most negatively facing concepts of how we should be as people that always got funded. Things that we're empowering or speaking out or galvanizing independence. We're not funded.
[00:44:32] Speaker A: So your point about, let me throw this in real quick. I'm sorry, but this is from the inside, by the way, again, grace, it was a music industry executive. Like people like Tunde Avaya and I have said, like, oh, yes, they wouldn't green like the positive message. They would only do it like. But no, you're actually speaking on authority on this. You're not just kind of spitballing. So I just wanted to throw that in.
[00:44:51] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:44:52] Speaker A: You know what you're talking about here.
[00:44:53] Speaker C: For 30 years, I worked with some of the biggest artists in the music industry, running creative and marketing and digital. And that was always my thing. I want you to be the artist, push the envelope, speak your heart. Like the biggest stars in the world and whatever your medium of art is are the ones who do push forward with their own concept and pioneer a new idea. Are we willing to kill that completely and that's really what I'm saying. It's like the left and right, like Tundi was saying and all these different, really what you have now is we don't fact check. We don't have, there's nothing that's no, there's no concrete information. So it's just who is the biggest influencer, speaking things that potentially are dangerous? Dangerous to the way we, our children are able to express their truth, and dangerous physically, and dangerous to the way that we're continuing to move and who we put in office and who we put in power based on this concept of controlling the narrative and controlling people's dialogue. And I think it's a much bigger macro issue than just, are comedians funny? Are they scared? Or it's more like, where do you want to live and how do we want to live? And are we okay in six years? That besides to your own spouse, don't say shit because it's dangerous in the world.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: And even to your own spouse, if you've got a smart device in your house, you better be careful saying what you think then.
[00:46:07] Speaker B: Hold on. I'm talking into a microphone now. I just realized that somebody's listening, but, um. No, but this is, this is where Grace, I think you're onto something, and I think you're right that this is bigger than just, I think, like, like James, you mentioned that the canary in the coal mine is really what the comedians are, because they're, they're a symbol of where our society has gone that.
[00:46:31] Speaker A: Live on the edge like that. That's their kind of their role. So, you know, if they're like the.
[00:46:36] Speaker B: Trap, you know, but it's, it's symbolism of the fact. And this is where, again, going back to his term, I've used in the past where leadership's important. And I think, Grace, that's what you're alluding to is we have lived now for almost a decade with leadership nationally. And it's not just one person or one group. It's like we live in Florida when our governor was running for president. He said when he wins his presidency, when he thought he was going to win, what he was going to do on day one was slit the throat of all the federal employees. You know, and that's the thing is like this type of language that we didn't used to hear from politicians, you know, I think Ronald Reagan to, you know, Barack Obama in my lifetime, that arc of presidents that I think when they asked, what are you gonna do when you get to office? They probably had something really positive to say, and they were gonna do great for the american people and all this stuff. Today's leaders are, you know, slitting the throat. They wanna slit throats. And we got a governor in North Dakota that's bragging about shooting her dog. You know, so there's this air of violence from the top that I think leadership's important when people see the leaders in their society behaving to this kind of, hey, I don't like it, so I'm going to do something physical to deal with it, then. Yeah. Then if I don't like what you're saying, because you're a comedian and I feel offended because you said something against either some celebrity or politician I like, or you said something about some way of life that I like, then I do feel that it's my right. And to James's point, with the ability for all of this easier communication, that maybe that person has a, you know, profile on Instagram or Twitter or whatever that people can get to that person. Because I'm sure in 1980, if somebody didn't like Eddie Murphy's delirious or George Carlin stand up, it was hard to get to him. You know, at best, you could write a letter to their publicist office or something.
[00:48:30] Speaker A: And so to the network or something like that, but not to their home. Not. It wouldn't go to them personally, directly.
[00:48:35] Speaker B: Yeah, well, and that's, and that's. And then I'll get off my soapbox here. But that's, that's my only issue, really, with this whole thing. Like, with Seinfeld leading it. Oh, the left.
[00:48:43] Speaker A: The left.
[00:48:44] Speaker B: Because then it makes me think, like, again, I live in a state where we just got done banning 1400 books from public school because, you know, somebody had an issue with something about Frederick Douglass or something. You know what I mean? And it's. So what is this always saying that only one side does this cancel stuff. It's, it's like you say, great. It's permeating our society. But we still have this. We allow people to have this mythology of this left that I don't know where they are. Like, they seem to not have much power, but so much power.
[00:49:14] Speaker A: Oh, go ahead. Go ahead.
[00:49:15] Speaker C: No, just was saying we allow them by not speaking ourselves.
[00:49:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:18] Speaker C: You know, it's like we look at everything from such a superficial level, but we don't take things back and say, how's this going to affect us down the line? And do we want this?
[00:49:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:26] Speaker A: Yeah. But I think the idea that the silos that were mentioned briefly, but just kind of how the way we get information, we get information in a way that it's curated for us. And what that does is condition us to only expect to see things that we like or we agree with, and it does create this reaction. There seems to be a larger, more out of proportional reaction people are having. And I agree with you, Tunde, that it's not, this isn't a partisan or a issue of someone on some side of a political spectrum. This seems to be a societal issue that we're having where when people are forced to hear things they don't want to hear. Because algorithms don't make you see anything you don't want to hear. So you get conditioned to not see. Not, not you don't want to see. You don't see or hear anything you don't want to hear. So when you do, it's like, oh, my God, this is the greatest offense ever. Combine that with the idea we have an anger problem in our society right now. And I don't know what it's from. You can look at it even from a political standpoint, the politicians that resonate most are the ones that project the most anger. That's why you have politicians out there trying to find ways to show how angry they are, how mean they are, because that seems to resonate with people. And, you know, like, we're seeing that in many ways, or the idea of being stoic right now is seen as a liability. If you're stoic, if you're measured, then from a political standpoint, people are, like, lukewarm about that at best. And so I do they go back to the canary in a coal mine thing. I do think that the underlying point that the idea that creativity may be being stifled right now because society, society's reaction to things that they don't like is becoming more extreme, is really the takeaway we need to have here. And to your point, tunde, this isn't something we need to take away and say, oh, well, if we just get this side of our discussion under control, don't have it like, no, from a societal standpoint, there needs to be some way, and maybe this comes from leadership. Like you said, leadership is important to where people can take a step back and realize that everything they're dealing with is not the end of the world. Everything they disagree with, not the end of the world. And live and let live can kind of re permeate. And I don't know how we get there from here, because amping people up is generally the way that you get people's attention and keep people's attention now. And that seems to be what primarily what our media game is about right now.
[00:51:46] Speaker C: I think, too, that we're, you know, we're. We're also dancing around the bigger thing. I watched this documentary during the pandemic, Woodstock 99, and it was fascinating because I got to see who are the people that would do some of the things that we've been seeing the last few months. So what this documentary was, was a bunch of kids who hadn't really gone through anything. No war, no nothing. They were all the first kids who kind of were raised in the suburbs, and they were angry that they had nothing to be angry about. And when you look at, when you really realize what's happening, the issue with the books in the schools, the what's happening with the laws being changed, it's an extinction issue. We're facing an extinction concept, and the people who do not want to be extinct are the ones who are the being the most loud. And where did the anger come from? James, if you want to just humor yourself, just cut around that documentary, the Woodstock 99, and see these people. See the people who are the ones who are really gravitating towards the anger and the dramatic response because they want to feel something. They want to feel empowered. They want to feel like they lead. They don't want to feel what they're having purpose right now, which is that nobody cares. Yeah.
[00:52:59] Speaker A: Feel purpose. Like, if the Tunde references Maslow's hierarchy a lot. And, like, if all of these things that we really need to worry about, like, if you live in a war zone, these aren't the kind of things you worry about. But if you don't live in a war zone and kind of, you can go to the store and the shelves are full and, you know, all this other stuff, you almost. You manufacture things to worry about because you kind of almost need that from a purpose standpoint.
[00:53:21] Speaker C: That's exactly.
[00:53:22] Speaker B: And actually, to Grace's point, from actually, when part one, when we were talking about your book, when we were talking about, I mean, I didn't think about this being more of a serious illusion to the idea of hunter gatherer societies when people were more in tune with nature and the things were more egalitarian because they had to be. And the societies were smaller. I mean, think about it. Human beings evolved to deal with all that stuff, to be in the woods and to understand all these smells and noises and how the animals are and all they deal with threats and all that. And that's my concern, actually, about where we're going as humanity, which is as we become more and more automated and productivity. Like, I was just watching something last night about kind of the future stuff and what scientists thinks are coming. And really most scientists or futurists believe that we will have self driving cars at some point in the next hundred years and at the whole grid and all that. And I was just thinking about, that's going to be another thing. What do you do with all these people that are taxi drivers, Uber drivers, all that. And that's what I'm thinking. Like, when human beings just have nothing to do and we have all this time, look at what we've already done with that.
[00:54:31] Speaker A: We'll figure out something that.
[00:54:33] Speaker B: No, that's what I mean. We manufacture more stress. That's the sad part, you know, and so it's like you give us rope, we're not building beautiful knots and tie and all that. We keep hanging ourselves as a society. And so I just, you know, that's what I'm saying. I'm based on this conversation now. I'm very definitely glass half empty. James.
[00:54:51] Speaker A: Oh, no, not pessimistic. Tune day. I thought you were going to say, say, I thought you were going to go, you know, based on our earlier conversation, that fear, you know, leads to anger, and anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. That was. I figured that would be your wheelhouse. But I do want to wrap up, Grace. Go ahead.
You didn't have that one for us today? Not today, but for the final word, I wanted to give it to you, Grace, but we're going to wrap up. So. Yeah, just the final word. Thoughts on this and just the overall societal issues we're speaking on.
[00:55:19] Speaker C: I actually think it is positive. I think that we had to get this upset. We had a president in office and all of a sudden everybody was like, oh, barbecues. And we didn't do anything. And that's what we're all looking for. Someone else has it. But when we look at other times, when problems seem more simple, oh, it's a, I need a union, I need support because I'm working 17 hours. I'm making a dollar. The garbage truck is not picking up. Our, you know, our issues were very community and basic. I feel like we need this level of turmoil to get off our asses and start to really look and create and go back to grassroots leadership, adopt a human, go spend time in a school. We're all complaining, but we're not doing the things that we actually can do. We all could go once a week to a local elementary school that's not resourced and talk to kids about leadership. We all can do things that doesn't seem like it changes the needle, but it does. You know, there's this. I read this book, and it was saying about racism specifically, and I'll stop talking. And they were saying how when kids are born, they're that first boot camp because we're a species that has to learn how to walk and stuff, not like other species who know how to do that already. One of the things we have to learn is who's our people instantly. So if you only have one kind of person in your house, your children are going to only think that that person is safe. And so creating situations that open kids up. And during the pandemic, we saw a lot of these kids challenging their very linear thinking parents by their own experience. And so today there is stuff to do. It's like getting safe in our hearts. It's like supporting people. The way Seinfeld is saying that, speak out and not saying that is the way, but saying, is that a way? And looking at things in a way that we all have empathy, we all can fill each other with safety and know that our highest is for us all to be.
[00:57:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And I like the positive message because while, yes, we look back at problems and things that societies have dealt with and say, oh, well, that didn't seem as complex as now, but at the time, I'm sure that seemed even more insurmountable than it does now. You know, like, there are, there are more tools for us to impact the world and. Yeah, but I think you're right. It really is. It's an individual thing. I always say that, you know, from a democracy standpoint, you get the democracy that you deserve, you know, because it requires constant effort, constant work. Like, if you want somebody else to do it, you don't want a democracy. That's how it works. And I think from a societal standpoint, that's what we're here now. And I think you're right as far as the answer. One, it is to. To allow yourself to not, or to be more open minded, you know, in terms of not necessarily what you're going to believe, but what is allowed to be said. And then to, you know, kind of being involved, you know, like, and not all, everybody just goes to their own kind of corner and just stays in there and just waits to see what happens next, so to speak.
[00:58:02] Speaker C: Get off the bench.
[00:58:03] Speaker B: Or you could just complain.
[00:58:04] Speaker A: Yeah, get into the starting pot, or.
[00:58:07] Speaker B: You can just complain, I said, or you could just complain about everything.
[00:58:10] Speaker C: So what we're doing that now, where.
[00:58:11] Speaker B: Is it doing for us? No, I'm saying that's, that's what a lot of people are. No, but that's what I mean. That's what a lot of people are going to default to saying it, grace. No, but as you're saying about, like, the leadership, I'm just thinking about the elementary school near my house. I'm thinking, yeah, I'm sure for everyone like us, that would say, yeah, that's cool, you know, go be part of your community. Go talk to kids at elementary school. There's going to be somebody. That's why. Because we lived through this in this state. That's what amazed me, is how many people would then probably say, I don't want that guy in there indoctrinating my kids. You know what I mean? Like, there's, there's always this counter, you know? And that's kind of going back to your point about this spiritual egoism that everyone is like, you know, oh, it's got to be the way I see it, or else it's like I'm just going to blow it up. I'm going to, I don't want to be around it, so.
[00:58:54] Speaker A: And that's the challenge of pluralism, you know, I honestly, I mean, that, that's the challenge.
[00:58:58] Speaker B: You see, I'm going to get you guys to glass half empty status. Like me. He's got to deal with that. He got to deal with that on every show.
[00:59:07] Speaker A: Sometimes it's glass half full tune day. Sometimes it's like, I never know which one I'm going to get. You know, it's either going to be optimistic or pessimistic tune day, so. Well, maybe, maybe I can see grace is optimistic, so maybe we'll get you on by the end of the day. So now we appreciate everybody for joining us on this episode of call. Like I see it, we appreciate grace, you, for you contributing to the show and bringing your insight and your thoughts with you. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. And until next time, I'm James Keys.
[00:59:39] Speaker B: I'm tune to Evan. Lana.
[00:59:42] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
I'm.
