Supernaut
Supernaut is a podcast about spirituality, sobriety, and the spectrum of self. Hosted by Beth Kelling, this show explores what it means to seek clarity, connection, and personal truth in a world that rarely slows down.
Since beginning her sobriety journey in 2020, Beth has been diving deeper into spiritual practices, emotional honesty, and all the beautiful, messy layers of identity.
Each episode opens the door to conversations about healing, growth, creativity, intuition, and everything in between — because who we are isn’t fixed, it’s a spectrum.
Beth will be joined by guests who share their own stories, perspectives, and spiritual paths — offering insight, inspiration, and the occasional cosmic detour.
Whether you’re sober-curious, spiritually inclined, or just looking to feel a little more human, you’re in the right place
Supernaut
Spark & the Anchor: Science, Spiritual Skepticism, Solar Eclipse
What does it mean to truly understand our spiritual nature while embracing scientific thinking? In this profound conversation between Beth and her nephew Deven Kelling, we journey through the fascinating landscape where belief meets reason.
Deven articulates a thoughtful agnostic perspective, explaining why he believes certainty about spiritual matters is impossible while respecting others' faith journeys. The discussion ventures into evolutionary psychology, examining how our emotions evolved as survival mechanisms long before language developed. "We are emotional beings with thoughts, not thinking beings with emotions," Deven observes, offering insight into why men and women often process emotions differently based on evolutionary advantages.
The conversation takes unexpected turns, from a heartwarming story about family solar eclipse chasing to a revealing examination of how religious institutions historically controlled social structures. Deven explains how the Catholic Church deliberately weakened traditional family inheritance patterns in medieval Europe to accumulate wealth and power—a fascinating historical perspective on how religion shaped Western family dynamics.
In one of the podcast's most vulnerable moments, Beth reveals words that Deven's friends use to describe him, collected before recording. "Charismatic/charming" tops the list, surprising Deven and highlighting how we often fail to recognize our own positive attributes. Their dialogue creates space for meaningful reflection on how we navigate both our inner and outer worlds.
Whether you're curious about the intersection of science and spirituality, fascinated by evolutionary psychology, or simply enjoy thoughtful conversations that challenge conventional thinking, this episode offers fresh perspectives on what it means to be human in our complex world. Join us for a journey that might just change how you see yourself and others.
0:00 Introduction to Devin Kelling
3:19 The Solar Eclipse Adventure
9:20 Faith, Religion, and Agnosticism
19:50 Human Evolution and Emotional Intelligence
32:20 Marriage, Family, and Religious Control
54:20 Ethics, Decision-Making, and Leadership
1:14:30 Revealing Others' Perceptions of Devin
1:24:05 Wisdom for Future Generations
Welcome to Supernaught, where we explore the inner and outer dimensions of the self. Today my guest is Devin Kelling and I'm most excited to hear from Devin on what he thinks and believes spiritually. I take a little bit from every religion and I'm not sure that he connects with any of the religions. So we will get into that. And also we're doing a new thing where I asked Devin to give me six or seven names of friends and I contacted those friends, people, coworkers, and asked them to describe him in six or seven words and then I kind of threw those words together and picked out the themes and I'm going to reveal to him his top five common themes, words that people use to describe him. Five common themes words that people use to describe him, just so he can see how the outside world views him. Not an egotistical thing, just a you know thing to see what are they going to say at my funeral.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so you can pretend like you're there.
Speaker 1:So I asked you to pick a song for us to listen to beforehand so we could get on the same wavelength.
Speaker 2:What song?
Speaker 1:did you pick?
Speaker 2:Crazy by Narl Sparkly, CeeLo Green.
Speaker 1:Why did you pick that song?
Speaker 2:Well, I wanted the high energy to get us going, but I think it's a pretty deep message about being disillusioned with. Maybe it's specific to the entertainment industry, but I like to think it's about just going out into the world and trying something and realizing that the world's not kind of what you thought it was when you're just watching it through the TV or from a back seat from home. When you get out there and actually try something, it's never what you think it's going to be. Yeah, that's the message I took from that song 10, 15 years ago and every couple of years, I think. My eyes are open now and I get slapped in the face again and it's like, ooh, who do you think you are?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't know nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was definitely high energy and I didn't think that deep into it, but now I will. Every time I hear it yeah, I like that that's good son yeah, so for those who don't know, devin and I are related.
Speaker 1:His father, steve, is my brother, who was my first guest on Supernaught, and so you and I are three and a half years apart, so you're the closest sibling that I had. We kind of we grew up pretty close to each other and um did all the kid things together. Um, that siblings do so like. Oh, we pretended to be puppies for a whole evening one time.
Speaker 2:I'm sure I made you do that, made my parents feed us and give us water on the ground. I didn't do that.
Speaker 1:We ran away together. I made you run away, pack some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I think we made it like four hours Learn how to tie our shoes. At the same time, and while I was learning time stables, you were learning division. So at what point were you like I'm smarter than this? Never thought those words okay that's nice, so the first thing I want to get into is the solar eclipse story yeah that is my favorite story of us as adults um.
Speaker 1:So I think it was probably 2021 that I had first heard what um and what the experience was like seeing a total solar eclipse, the um totality. I heard it on a podcast and I was like, oh my gosh, that is something that I need to experience. I'm not sure if I mentioned that to you or not, but it had to have been six months, nine months later, a random day that I decided to look up and see when the next total solar eclipse in the United States was and, like I said, I think this was 2021, 2022 winter, and the next one was 2024 in Texas, going right over my brother's house.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I sent a group message to my brother Mike, his wife Lindsay and son Zach saying keep April 2024 open because I'm coming down, I'm going to get the whole family to come down for the total solar eclipse. And they were like, okay, a couple hours later and you were out of state, so there was no way. You walked by my desk and saw this, but you sent a group text message to me, your wife heather, saying hey, the next total solar eclipse is going past mike's house in april 2024. We have to go.
Speaker 1:And I took that as my world, my life path, is to make sure that we get to this yeah, so I was.
Speaker 2:There's this comic website I scroll through when I'm bored. It's called XKCD. It's super random junk. One of the comics was about how seeing a 98% solar eclipse is not 98% as cool as a 100%. You know it's a spike, and then, yeah, anything less than a hundred percent is not even in the same category. So it just got me thinking and, yeah, I looked up and the next one was and it's like what a coincidence right over Texas. Looked like it was right over San Antonio and it was pretty close.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I started looking at Airbnb and started telling the whole family about it, convinced my dad to get an Airbnb that fit 20 people. So that we could all go and, of course, not everybody was able to. There was, excuse me, some life events and everything but um, yeah, I couldn't even book an Airbnb more than like 14 months out but it was, I think, 13 or 14 months out.
Speaker 1:We had it booked right next to our brother Mike's place and then it worked out great because Zach was graduating from college. So most of us went and I remember a couple days beforehand you were like um the weather is gonna be cloudy. It's probably not gonna happen, and you pointed out. You know, beth, if you really wanted us to see it, it should have just been us, but you invited the whole family.
Speaker 2:Did I say that in?
Speaker 1:a mean way. No, no, no, like I understood what you're saying.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I was like okay, yeah, good point. But then when it got closer, you guys got on board. You're like let's go to Arkansas. I started looking up a new. Airbnb and when I told my dad I'm like everybody can come, everybody can come up there, and he's like I thought you said the whole point was for the whole when I convinced him to get the Airbnb. I'm like the whole family needs to be together for this.
Speaker 1:So he's like I thought you said the whole point was for the family to be together. I'm like no, the point is the solar eclipse.
Speaker 2:So, so my group, your group, we all went up to Arkansas and it was as amazing as I heard. Yeah, yeah, I talked to him about it too separately and it was oh, I came here to be with you and with everybody, I'm like kind of came to see the solar eclipse a little bit, you know, and he's like, well, yeah, do what you want to do.
Speaker 2:All right, well, don't disown me. He's like that's, yeah, do what you want to do. I'm like, all right, well, don't disown me. He's like that's not going to be the thing that makes me disown you, yeah. So all right, we're taking off.
Speaker 1:So I felt like I became a chaser after that. But it's like. The next one is like in between Spain and whatever is above Spain.
Speaker 2:So you'd have to kind of be on a boat. You've got to be a chaser.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I really hope to see a couple more in my life, but not any of the next couple decades? I don't think yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and not only money, but time and getting out to the middle of the ocean to see it. It's weird how the paths are. Some of them are really long, like that one in 2024, but there's other eclipses that are like they don't cover the whole earth. You only see it for a few miles. It's a little strip in the middle of the ocean, not across the entire continent. It's really weird.
Speaker 1:How many minutes and seconds did we get?
Speaker 2:Was it almost two minutes?
Speaker 1:Yeah, two, or two and a half. But this next one, near Spain, is like oh, you get 30 seconds and it's like again, it could be cloudy Right. You have to like find a boat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I can't, yeah, cause the path was so long. We were lucky that we had time and could drive fast enough to find another place on the path where there was not cloudy, like, yeah, you go on these smaller ones and the entire strip, the entire strip might be cloudy and you'd be screwed. Yeah. But I remember when we were sitting there before it was even totality we were sitting on like plastic deck chairs and Gavin was five at the time. He's like Dad, the chairs are getting cold. I'm like they are getting cold. It was so weird. Just loses the radiation or something. Did you feel like it got colder?
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It was all around, just an eerie feeling I was waiting for, like wolves, to start and birds to go crazy. And it wasn't quite that much. I suppose, if you were in the middle of the woods, but we were on a lake and it was beautiful. That much, I suppose, if you're in the middle of the woods, but we were on a lake and it was beautiful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the place was perfect, but yeah, it felt like a sunset 360,. It was crazy. Then, all of a sudden, it was daytime again and you're like, okay, what do we do now? Yeah, let's get drunk.
Speaker 1:Well, speaking of that, you did go a year not drinking. Well.
Speaker 2:I had to go 54 weeks because two weeks into it I literally forgot that I wasn't drinking and I put my phone on silent. But apparently that doesn't work for alarms. Super annoying, but probably for the best, because I usually need them. 54 weeks, yeah, because I went to get some lunch with my brother. It was on like a Saturday and I ordered a beer. I got a halfway drink and I was like, well, that sucks, I guess I'll start over. Yeah, you called me.
Speaker 1:You were like I totally forgot Guess what I just did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was awful. But yeah, I had say a bad experience drinking and just decided, you know I have more fun when I don't drink. You know it's not like I go to the bar and I'm that guy that's annoyed.
Speaker 2:You know you've been to a bar sober before and you're annoyed at all the drunk people. But I don't go to the bar anyway. So it's more about drinking less at home and less with family, and that was pretty easy because save a lot of money at the liquor store and and so, um, yeah, it wasn't, it wasn't too hard for me. I know it's obviously really hard for a lot of people, but it wasn't too bad for me. And uh, I felt great, um, kind of kickstarted my weight loss. And I felt great, kind of kick-started my weight loss and I think I lost 10 pounds effortlessly in that first couple months of not drinking.
Speaker 1:So has it changed how you drink now? Are you a little bit more conscious of that?
Speaker 2:third, fourth one yeah, I've gotten drunk maybe twice since then and did not enjoy the feeling. Yeah, there've gotten drunk maybe twice since then and did not enjoy the feeling. Yeah, there's nothing. It was like getting drunk all over again at 21. Yeah, the first time I got drunk I got super sick and it was just an awful feeling. I'm never doing this again and I haven't gotten sick from drinking in the last couple of years, but no, it's not nearly as enjoyable as it used to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, going that year. If you can make it a year straight without it, then when you do, you kind of can feel it more and you're like, oh, this affects me more than I thought it did or it affects me in a different way.
Speaker 2:I enjoy being able to walk straight and think straight. Yeah, waking up feeling 100, yeah, yeah, so I don't really enjoy being drunk anymore after after the year okay okay, so, and then let's get into the bulk of it.
Speaker 1:Um, I don't know if you're atheist, agnostic. What you means, that I don't know, but it means a little bit more than that.
Speaker 2:It's like a strong I don't know. Agnostic means that I know that I don't know, and I know that you don't know and I know that you don't know. And anybody that tells me that they know I think is full of shit and I have zero interest in hearing what they have to say because I know that they don't know. That's more or less what agnostic means, and sometimes when I talk to people about it, I think they don't really realize how much I've thought about all of this. So I'm pretty pretty confident Maybe everybody is, but yeah, I'm pretty confident that I know you don't know, you know I was raised Lutheran and so sort of in my journey, so to speak, and so sort of.
Speaker 2:In my journey, so to speak, I've read, tried to read the Bible cover to cover. Some of the books are pretty hard. Numbers Don't start with numbers. That's a hard book to read and read about a lot of the historology Hist Hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, Hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, hist, Hist, hist, hist, hist. Like confirmation, you have to read a catechism. Now I was always confused why do I need a catechism if I have a Bible? Because there's a lot of stuff that people had to decide on or make up or figure out in the first, about 200 years after Christ's death, and a lot of the books of the Bible are written in that time period after Jesus died. I mean all of the Gospels. None of the books of the Bible are written in that time period after Jesus died. I mean all of the Gospels. None of the Gospels were written less than 50 years after he died. And what John was written 200 years after he died.
Speaker 1:And a catechism is all man written.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's no Gospels in there and it's all. I don't even remember from reading it, but I think it's all like explanations. There's no, um nothing in there. That's that old, like written by one of the apostles or anything. I think it's more like a glossary than anything else. But, um, I haven't read a catechism in a long time. I just remember thinking why do I need a catechism? In a long time I just remember thinking why do I need a catechism if I have a Bible? Take the Apostles' Creed, for example, all of those creeds, and probably especially the Nicene Creed also, nicene is a city when they had a conference or whatever. They all got together and decided what they thought Christ meant and all this and the result was a Nicene Creed. And I remember just spitting that out in church. You know that's every service. We had to say it, but 2,000 years ago or 1,800 years ago.
Speaker 2:That was not just something you memorized and spit out. There are people that were killed for saying that they didn't believe something that was in there.
Speaker 2:It wasn't just written to rehearse in church. It was written because this is what Bob believes and Bill believes something else. And they're fighting. And yeah, the people on the side of the 19th of the Nicene Creed won out and killed everybody else or forcibly converted them. Little questions like was Christ born God or was he? Did he become God when he was baptized, or was he always God and then was born into a human form? None of the answer to that is not in the Bible. Into a human form? The answer to that is not in the Bible. There's God so loved the world that he gave his only son. What was that? Do you remember?
Speaker 1:Died and gave his only son, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but those words are not super specific. To say that he sent his only son from heaven like he existed before and was sent down to become human to die on the cross, or God so loved the world that he just allowed to God decide at the time for the crucifixion that he would allow this to happen. None of those things are super precise in the Bible.
Speaker 2:It's all interpretation by people, and so you wanted it more literal, yeah, and the point I'm talking about that is, and that's why we have so many denominations and people split and stuff, and yeah, it's all way too fuzzy for me and it doesn't. I don't get the answers to my questions from it. Yeah, you know if, if my question was as simple as where did people come from? You know, which is probably the question people asked back, then you know, oh, god created people well, it'd be a reasonable answer.
Speaker 2:But the questions we have nowadays are a little more specific and, uh, you know religion doesn't have answers for the more specific questions we have. You know, scientists in a laboratory can't figure it out. Certainly wasn't written by herders and farmers thousands of years ago.
Speaker 1:And so, at what age did you start thinking this way? Was your brain like starting a question?
Speaker 2:Mid-20s.
Speaker 1:So in high school, going to church with your family, did you just not think too much about it? Or you did think about it and think that it had value.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I never questioned it. Yeah, no, I had a friend that his argument and he was he's flip flop back and forth. But in high school at one time he had an argument that was okay. So I'm born in America, or a handful of countries, and I'm Christian, but if I'm born somewhere else I'm a different religion. Well, this doesn't make any sense. How could it be true that the answers to the universe are depending on where you're born on earth doesn't make any sense. And I argued with him like they're just unlucky bastards or something like that. And you know, we are lucky to have been born into a culture that recognizes the truth. And so, yeah, I remember in high school arguing with atheists.
Speaker 2:And then, yeah, and then I kind of became an atheist sometime in my 20s and then I realized, you know, that's just as much conviction to say that you know God isn't real. Agnosticism, yeah, I kind of know the Christian God isn't real, but I don't know that because I have some proof that the Christian God doesn't exist.
Speaker 2:I have some proof that the Christian God doesn't exist. I know that because the odds that you know there's no proof that he does exist. So for him to happen to exist without any proof is like one in a trillion. You know because there's no evidence either way. Trillion, you know because there's no evidence either way. So I guess that's my, that's my proof that it doesn't exist?
Speaker 1:is that the chances are so small? Okay, yeah, because I hope I've always been clear on the show and um in our relationship that I would never try and change your mind. I would never.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm not here to be like that's the fun part is trying to change my mind.
Speaker 1:I'm not as much of a debater as you are, but I'm just so interested. You know Sure, so, like, is there more things that happen when you like? Did you get deep into? I want to learn more about this so I can make a decision for myself. And was there any key moments that was like oh, this is pushing me towards being agnostic.
Speaker 2:Oh, this is pushing me towards being agnostic. Well, I remember a time when I wanted to find or research contradictions in the Bible, to kind of show that the Bible is ridiculous. There's two stories of Jesus' childhood. There's one story where he went to Egypt. We don't really talk about that a whole lot in Missouri Synod Lutheran. I don't remember talking, I didn't even know that until I read the Gospels and read about it online.
Speaker 1:So like why are they leaving out some? That's a good reason to start questioning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you know, thinking that that was a good path to argue with people about Christianity was well, it's these contradictions in the Bible and stuff. And I've totally given up on that Because the response is oh, it's to interpret.
Speaker 1:You're like oh.
Speaker 2:I think I found this way to debate with people. They have this easy. Oh, they feel it Right.
Speaker 1:Which is what I would say.
Speaker 2:Right, which is what I would say Right, and it's yeah, it is all open to interpretation and that's. I guess I have a lot more respect for that now than I did when I was younger, because even in science, there's no such thing as truth in science thing as truth in science. It comes down to statistical probabilities and interpretations, and a statistic is not a fact is something I've learned over the years. And so there's no aspect of life, whether it's religion or science or anything else, where, um, you don't have to interpret things. And there's whole religions about how the universe isn't even real around us and it's all just made up in our head and the you know like, uh, hinduism and some of these religions.
Speaker 2:Where, uh, the real world? Oh, there's like a, there's like a curtain. We can't see it. And so they're living their whole lives to gain good karma so that when they die they go back to the real world and come back as a Brahmin instead of as an untouchable or something. But they have to go through all their life knowing that what they see around them is all just fake. The real world is behind a curtain, so everything around them they have to interpret. Well, that's kind of true for all of us. Everything is open for interpretation, and so that's not an argument I feel like I can use against Christianity or any other religion. Is finding contradictions? No, because it's all open to interpretation and this is not a good argument anymore.
Speaker 1:I think I've been thinking for a while that I mean years that we live in kind of a video game. But it wasn't until a couple weeks ago that I realized oh so the point is to win the video game. So then it's like well, what is winning?
Speaker 1:And to me, it's freedom. You know, okay, what is freedom to me? What does freedom mean? And I realized a couple of weeks ago, like it's sitting outside watching a sunset, watching the clouds, watching the stars and not worrying about anything else. And I don't know how to do that, but I already have the capacity to do that. Everybody does.
Speaker 2:So that's why I meditate To physically sit in that chair and do it, but how do you actually enjoy it Is? That the real question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and for me meditating makes that easier. So meditating is my religion, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, finding your way of getting in touch with yourself is super important, I think. And yeah, there's a lot of ways to look at what is religion. Are you actually trying to answer some question and then you're going to use that answer to boss me around? That's the sort of thing where I'm like well, I know that you don't know how. I started and no, you're not going to boss me around with your interpretation of some religion, because I don't. Well, that's what pushed me away?
Speaker 1:from the beginning was the control, and so many parts of the Bible, especially marriage to me, has became such a control thing. I obviously think marriage can be beautiful, but when it comes from the church I think that was a way to control people so that they did what they wanted them to do.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, marriage and family. So think about some cultures outside of you know, the christian west, like china and china, for example, and how much stronger family is in china than in europe and america. Um, they have this whole notion of having kin groups going back generations and owing so much more loyalty to their ancestors and their cousins than really we do here and here you might, in popular culture or whatever, you might hear it more in the context of, like Native Americans, who obviously didn't weren't influenced by Christianity, and how much more in touch they are with their ancestors and all of that and a huge reason why the Christian West doesn't have that is we used to, doesn't have that is we used to. Um, europeans did have that sort of relationship and it was broken on purpose by the catholic church, and marriage is a big part of it, inheritance is a big part of it. So, and so those, a lot of those other cultures and and Christianity.
Speaker 2:In the West you had pretty strict rules about what a family was.
Speaker 2:You know, like most common everybody's heard of it the wife leaves or the woman leaves her family to join her husband's family.
Speaker 2:That's 90% of cultures around the world where the women move from one clan to another clan and then the firstborn son gets everything, if there's anything to give. And those strict rules are what really keeps families together, because you have that anchor of a father to son down the line and then the women and the other brothers sort of being stems off of that main trunk. And I'm not saying that's morally good, you know I'm, but it was something. It was a lot easier to maintain that family discipline when you had that trunk line, versus if anybody can go anywhere and the men can join women's families and inheritance can be broken up or passed to whoever the parents want to pass the inheritance to. That main trunk line doesn't exist anymore and you have to think a lot harder about who your family is than things just sort of start to disintegrate. Things just sort of started to disintegrate and the Catholic Church introduced that to the Christian West in the 600s or 700s where inheritance could go to anyone it could go to.
Speaker 1:Is my phone playing? Yeah?
Speaker 2:The inheritance could go to anyone, it could go to any of the children, it could go to the widow, and that just broke that trunk line. So, without those hard rules, their primary goal was to be able to get their hands on more inheritance. And it's not necessarily that widows or second children were more likely, it was just by more likely to donate to the church. It was just by saying, okay, we don't have to follow these hard rules anymore, you can all do whatever you want Then. Well, whatever you want is a lot more likely to include the church. So that's how they gained a lot of their wealth in the early days and they ended up owning like a quarter or a third of the land in Europe. The church was crazy rich. The Pope at one point had the emperor of the the Holy Roman Emperor, I think had to come groveling barefoot on his knees to the Pope to ask for forgiveness. And you know the Pope had armies at times. You know the Crusades, the Pope had armies. And Cesare Borgio is a famous general of the Pope, his uncle or somebody who was Pope, and he fought wars on his behalf and kept the realm together.
Speaker 2:To use, like game of thrones types words, um, you know they wielded serious power, and a lot of that was through breaking the family, as you'd see it when you look at native americans or some asian cultures like that.
Speaker 2:And another part of it is that personal relationship with God that it preaches. You know, instead of families acting as tight units like, no, you don't need your family, you can have that personal relationship with God or personal relationship with the church, who will show you how to be, how to be with God and really inspiring the individualism that we have in our society, that you don't see in in some of those other cultures. That's all stems from the church trying to connect with individual people rather than letting those people, um, be tighter in their, in their families, um and other. You know, governments have tried to do it too, because they recognize the, the power of that. Just nobody's done it better than the church, or did it better than the church, you know, over a thousand years ago now, and yeah, because, like the quran is less strict, less harsh on women than the bible.
Speaker 1:I believe women um when they, if they got a divorce, they would not get their dowry back. They would basically be stoned to death. When the quran, they got their dowry back, um, but same type of control. Do you know much about Islam?
Speaker 2:No, no I don't.
Speaker 1:I just remember learning about it when everybody was so against them Because obviously there's radicals, and Christians have killed more people than any other religion. So when people feel like the muslims are, you know, so evil, it's like um actually read into it and see that there's a lot of ways that they aren't as radical as christians yeah, no, that's all.
Speaker 2:That's all political. I believe it's a search for a fight for dignity. You know, the Middle East hasn't had a lot of dignity in the last hundred years, basically being a plaything of the advanced countries that want oil and want to exert power over those areas and not showing respect for all of those people. And so radical Islam is sort of a call to get our dignity back, and it's channeled in horrible ways. But I think that's what it is at its core is we've been disrespected, and that's a completely independent thing from economic prosperity or something. You know. We can all get richer together, but we can't all be at the top of the respect hierarchy.
Speaker 2:The best that you can do is sort of try to flatten things out, and you know a lot of people that identify with jihadists and all of that. They feel like they've been put under somebody else and so they're attacking us because they feel like we've been nudging them down for decades or centuries and they want to fight their way back. And it's horrible what some people do to try to claim their dignity. But I think that's what it's all about. It doesn't have anything to do with religion. Religion is just the catalyst or the thing that they can point to, to say you know, we are all Muslims, come together with your Muslim brothers and sisters and let's fight for our common dignity.
Speaker 2:And it would be just as easy to say hey, we all have brown eyes. The brown-eyed people of the world have been stomped on for too long. Let's all get together. It doesn't make any difference whether it's religion or something else that people can identify by. And yeah, there's horrible things in the Bible. In the Bible too, so I do know a little bit about the history of Islam. Is that Muhammad was a chiefly a political figure, um, he united the tribes of Saudi Arabia, um, and had some very, uh, successful military campaigns after the United. Nobody fights better than tribes and nomads and farmers.
Speaker 1:People who are living off the land already.
Speaker 2:Yeah, living off the land they're used to moving around. Yeah, once you get into agriculture and sort of settle down just as a society, you get less good at war. You know, I'm really bad at war. I got a lot of fluff and agricultural societies, just as if I was going to go fight with somebody that was even a Minnesotan 100 years ago or grandpa's age. If I went back to 60 years ago, pretty much anybody around me could kick my ass because they just lived that different lifestyle.
Speaker 2:Well, even back then, the difference between the nomads and the agricultural city people there was a huge difference like that. And so throughout history it seems like whenever tribesmen like that got together, they were able to win some serious wars. Genghis Khan and the Mongols were the same way. They were just tribesmen, herdsmen. Genghis got them together to fight a common cause and they beat everybody they encountered and that's why they spread so far. Just another example. But yeah, so Muhammad united the tribes and essentially spread Islam through conquering. So I guess there was a little bit of violence there, but his message was also of unity and coming together. So while he spoke a lot about unity, they spread that unifying message through violence.
Speaker 2:But Christians have done the same thing. And christianity, you know, jesus was I don't want to say the wrong word, but uh, he was born, you know, 50 years ish or so after um, romans took over in jerusalem and israel and judea and palestine I don't know what all those words exactly mean, but uh, that area and uh, we're taking the dignity of israelites and jews and um, exerting control over them and taking away their autonomy. And there were a lot of people like Jesus, saying that the Romans don't have the right to boss us around. We're just as good as they are. And preaching a message to bring the jews together to fight back and um, and so if you, if you can read the bible from that lens of jesus was trying to call people together to recognize dignity in themselves, it reads a little bit different, I think. And, yeah, the Romans just looked at him as a terrorist because he's bringing people together to fight back against authority. I mean, that's what he was doing.
Speaker 1:Was Marcus Aurelius, before or after Jesus, I don't know. I've just been learning about him and when he became the Roman Empire, the first thing he did was make his stepbrother not even his blood his stepbrother co-emperor blood his stepbrother co-emperor, because he was so different than him.
Speaker 2:Oh he wanted to have the contrast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or because he knew those different strengths. Yeah, so.
Speaker 2:I have to imagine that would have been after. I think Marcus Aurelius was a big Stoic.
Speaker 1:Yep, like one of the first, yeah, his book Med of the first yeah. His book Meditations I just bought.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I read that a few years ago.
Speaker 1:Did you get much out of it?
Speaker 2:I think I read another book about Stoicism and I think it's really interesting, but I think that other book was so badly written that I was just turned off of it.
Speaker 1:But he wasn't meaning for it to be a book, this was just his diary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, this was a different book and that book was just horribly written. It just kind of turned me off the whole thing and I moved on. Yeah, so I should go back to that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just bought it three packs. Borrow it from you after you're done. Yeah, yeah, yeah After you're done.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, have you learned much about socialism?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Since getting into it.
Speaker 1:Just started, a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, no, I don't know that much about. Marcus, really other than that?
Speaker 1:Okay, so science. I told you maybe we'd name this episode science. It's like magic but real. Right, your brain has it always gravitated towards logic and scientific facts and stuff like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so. I don't know if it's gravitating towards it or just being lazy. You know, the way people work is just too damn hard for me, too damn hard. So, yeah, I'm just wired to follow these concrete steps and being able to follow a path to get from one place, to get from from one place to the other, through through logic, kind of like you said. And yeah, yeah, science works a lot better for me than than some other ways of approaching things. But then I also say you, you don't know how to do something unless you know how to do it at least two ways. Um, and it's, it's amazing in science where there's two ways to get to the same conclusion. Like, if I throw a ball, how is it going to travel through the?
Speaker 2:air well, there's only one answer. There's only one way it's going to travel, but there are at least three different ways that you can calculate it, and I don't work with it enough to remember and be able to explain all three different ways, but I watch YouTube videos about it and I have at one time in my life understood how they all worked. But yeah, there's only one way that ball's going to travel. Versus you throw a person through the air and there's a million ways they could react and that's just too much for me yeah, because you've self-proclaimed not to be a people person before, so that goes into that.
Speaker 1:But you are the one who pointed out to me that we are emotional beings with thoughts, not thinking beings with emotions sure so kind of funny there, that yeah yeah, well, I'm a huge you know 100 believer in in evolution.
Speaker 2:um, we came from little microbes, uh, billions of years ago. And so think about the first way, or how did they react to the world and what would cause them to react? And then, what are all the different ways that we can interact with the world and what can cause us to react and how do we react? So we think back to one of the first things is sensing that there's a chemical in the water and then somehow trying to move in the opposite direction of where you think that chemical is coming from. Well, that's our sense of smell. We've had a sense of smell for longer than any other sense, for longer than any other sense, and our feelings are one way that our nervous system tells us, helps us figure out how to behave, how to react. So that little microbe senses that there's ammonia or something horrible in the water and tries to swim back the other way. Well, that little microbe doesn't know what ammonia is. It doesn't know why it's swimming the other way. It has some sort of mechanical feature in its little arms that say, when you detect ammonia in this direction, swivel your arm this way and paddle the ammonia and that will propel you in the opposite direction. It's just like a sunflower. A sunflower doesn't know why it points towards the sun. There's just a mechanical elastic thing in its stem where, when the sun shines on it, it shrinks so that the head turns towards the sun. So we have those automatic reactions in our body. You smack your knee and it pops up. Your sense of balance is kind of like that, like you don't have to think in your brain about how to balance. It's all in your brain stem, in the back of your head. Um, when you burn your finger, your brain literally does not process that. It's processed in the back, the bottom part of your brain, your brain stem to pull it away, right. So we have all these ways of sensing danger or sensing the world around us and reacting to them, and feelings is one of those.
Speaker 2:It's too complicated for your brain to put into words why you feel sad, so it just says you feel sad and then you know how to react. You know how to act when you're sad. It's after the fact that you try to put that into words. But there's no reason you have to, and there's a lot of times that we can't and little kids can't, you know, try to get a little kid to tell you why they're sad? And they say they shrug or whatever.
Speaker 2:And you know, I know I get frustrated like no, you have to explain it to me. Well, there's no reason to believe that they can. It's just too complicated and you're evolutionarily thinking. Your brain doesn't have to explain everything to you in a way that you can understand through words. It just has to say, oh, I've encountered this situation before, or I know what the situation is around me. The best way for you to react here is to get pity from the people around you, so you need to start crying and look down, and so I'm going to make you feel sad, so you do that. Or the best way to react in this situation is to hit somebody. I'm not going to explain to you why, but I know that's the answer, so it's just going to make you mad.
Speaker 2:There's probably reasons why we get sad other than pity.
Speaker 1:Why is it that men go more towards the aggression emotion and women more towards the cry and sad emotion?
Speaker 2:Well, look at other mammals, where you've got elephants. A herd of elephants is females with some young males, females with some young males, and the men are basically roaming around by themselves. Right, that is our base nature. You know we've come a long ways with you know we were talking about Christianity or the church kind of broke the family. So obviously, even thousands of years ago, we came together to be more tight-knit, with men and women living together and having big families and tribes and clans and everything, but there's still not even a piece of us.
Speaker 2:but still a big part of that is women need more social cohesion than men, because women have babies and men don't. And men can have multiple sexual partners at the same time, um, and have multiple children at the same time with with multiple partners and, and women can't, Um, and so a big part of that is that, uh, you know, look at these other species, and not that humans could or should act this way, but it's an extreme example to kind of educate us on why we're a little bit that way. You know, other animals are at this at like at a 10, and then we look at humans and we're at it at a 1. And it wouldn't be good for us to turn to a two.
Speaker 1:you know we're good at a one, but we're looking at extreme example to kind of understand you know what it means, um, because I just always find it funny when, oh, women are so emotional. Okay, anger is an emotion also men are so emotional too.
Speaker 2:So just as much devon as I can't help when I cry just as much as you can't help when you get angry.
Speaker 1:I can't help when I cry. I'm not trying to manipulate you. It's not a conscious thing.
Speaker 2:Well, when men get angry and punch people, that is a form of manipulation, but in the moment you're not trying to manipulate are you?
Speaker 1:You're just going with your instincts. You're just letting your instincts control you, just like the tears do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just like the tears do. Yeah, um, no, it's, it's. Yeah, I think women, women get sad because being sad brings people together and, um, but men don't need to. They maybe need to know how to be independent.
Speaker 1:They need to know how to like go out and hunt for a couple of days by themselves, and they're going to have to use anger in those moments to kill the lion coming at them.
Speaker 2:Right, I think men are more likely to get angry because being dominant for men has more value than being dominant for women. Being dominant for women, um, you know, if one woman in a group could dominate and it obviously does happen all the time, and I'm not a woman, so I don't understand those dynamics a hundred percent but, um, for a woman to dominate another over a group of women doesn't mean that she gets to have all the babies, because she can only have one one a year, right? Uh, for a man to dominate over a group means that he gets to have all the babies, like the freaking elephant seals, um, right. So again, that's a 10 and we're, we're, we're good at a one. Um, in that, in that direction. But that's, that's the honest truth. And so I think, for there's a lot more motivation in men to dominate over other men versus women, have a lot more motivation, to you know, have teamwork and socially co cohere better because they work together better because they work together and men obviously get a lot of benefit from working together also, but only when there's a common enemy, when there's
Speaker 2:no common enemy. It's mostly who can dominate. There's a saying apparently me against my brother, me and my brother against our cousin, and us and our cousin against a stranger. And so men need to come together and get a lot of benefits from coming together to battle other groups, but I think it's a huge part of our nature to dominate the other men in our immediate vicinity, and I think anger facilitates that a lot better than sadness or other emotions.
Speaker 2:But yeah, like you said, it's not in the moment that you know that you're doing that and your brain doesn't have the time or the energy to explain it to you why you're angry. Hey, devin, you need to get angry right now and punch this guy to show your dominance so that you can breed as woman. No, like that. If I knew my brain was telling me that, I'd say well, you know, that doesn't work in 21st century society. And yeah, but uh, hundreds or thousands of years ago, um, yeah, or a hundred thousand years ago, when you didn't even have language, your body, your brain couldn't explain it to you because they didn't even talk.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, it communicated that through through your emotions. Um, so yeah, are we thinking animals that uh feel or feeling animals that think? Well that feel or feeling animals that think Well. We've stood upright and been pretty intelligent for hundreds of thousands of years before we had language, so pretty impossible to be thinking animals with feelings unless we didn't have feelings 200,000 years ago. Yeah, because they certainly didn't think through their problems.
Speaker 1:What do you think about like? Do you think we came from primates?
Speaker 2:Yeah 100%.
Speaker 1:And so, okay, I think maybe our primate ancestors were roaming around and kept finding psilocybin and kept consciously regrouping their brains in collective groups. What?
Speaker 2:do you think?
Speaker 1:about that and that's how, like, they became more conscious. Yeah.
Speaker 2:My interpretation of that would be more like inspired breakthroughs in technology. And for those people, using a stick to fish ants out of a hole is technology. I think it's a super interesting and super valid point that mushrooms do exist and people did find them. I don't think that okay. So if I am 20 years old, this many years ago I've already got kids and now I eat some mushrooms. Even if I rewire my brain, it doesn't rewire my kids' brains, even if I take them young enough that I haven't had kids yet. Even if it rewired my brain, it's not going to pass through to my kids anyway, unless it rewires my sperm somehow.
Speaker 1:Unless we're more of frequency and energy and it can be passed on non-physically.
Speaker 2:Which I would call technology, energy, and it can be passed on non-physically, which I would call technology. Um, you know, there's you can look out at, at animals where, um, mostly in the higher mammals, uh, like whales, killer whales, uh, big example um polar bears, and I'm sure lots, sure lots of other animals where parents or the mothers raise the children, raise the babies, and the mothers teach them things. There's some animals where, like an octopus, the mother's dead by the time they're even hatched, or turtles, the parents and the mother don't teach them anything. There's no at all by instinct or by feelings, but, um, and most mammals, uh, as much of the animal's behavior comes from things that they're taught by their mother, by their parents, as what just comes naturally through instinct. And so if, yeah, I take mushrooms and I have this inspired idea to put wheels on an axle, hell, yeah, I'm passing that down to my kids. So, yeah, maybe it's different words that we use, but I would just be calling it technology.
Speaker 1:Well, the reason I have my guests pick a song that we listen to before the episode starts to get on the same brain wave is because I read a book called Super Communicators about how they brought up how monkeys in different zoos.
Speaker 1:You teach a group of monkeys something in one zoo and another zoo across the state, across the country, will all of a sudden start doing the same thing. So there's some kind of collective consciousness there. I think there's other smaller organisms maybe that do the same type of thing that I've read studies on. So that's where the song came in mind, mind, and that's why it's fun watching movies together, because you're like you know, if you're together watching it, you just kind of collectively have the same brain waves. What else did it say about brain waves? Um, like they did a study, they asked a group of people something and they all had different answers, but they had them listen to the same song and they asked them the questions again and somehow they got all the questions right, or some something like that.
Speaker 2:I'm so bad at remembering things like I can remember the essence of it, but not the facts yeah, so well, um, one example of something like that was if you show people something gross, they're more likely to have conservative opinions after seeing that gross thing. I won't go any further into what that means about our brains when we're feeling more conservative sometimes than we are other times.
Speaker 2:What's happening there? But no 100%. Whoever told the story of teaching monkeys one place meant the monkey somewhere else did it. I'd just be like you're full of shit, but I've been known to be wrong, but that would be my instinct. But definitely getting in the same brainwave by listening to the same song or watching movies together, how do you make a nation? Let's go bigger picture. How do you make a nation? You've got to get everybody speaking the same language. You have to have a basis of education where everybody knows the same stories, sings, the same songs, until you build the culture right. And then, once you have that culture, everything works more efficiently because you build trust between one another. You know how much? For absolutely no reason at all. If you run into a Minnesotan in New York, you're going to trust them more than anybody else around you.
Speaker 1:The person might be a total piece of shit, but you feel like you have some common ground with this person.
Speaker 2:We're attracted to what's familiar. Yeah, so getting on the same brainwave. Yeah, it could be as acute and and specific as you and I listen to the same song when we get started for the day, but it is 100% also as big as speaking the same language and, you know, knowing the same stories and and growing up with the same songs and stuff that everybody knows and, um, even though it's like the same word, choices, because there's a million different ways to say everything in English.
Speaker 2:And just the synonyms. Which synonym we choose to use? There's a lot of value there.
Speaker 1:Well, kelsey and Levi were just talking about being out on the pipeline. In a season Somebody new will come in and have some phrase or some way to talk and by the end of the season everybody is new will come in and have some phrase or some way, by the end of the season, everybody is saying that phrase or that, that word. You know, we all start to talk like each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it builds a community. Yeah, it's super important. Um, yeah, big picture again, like it's a super nerd. There's, I take.
Speaker 2:I had to take ethics in college and I thought the professor was. It wasn't a professor, it was an instructor. He was a piece of shit. But you know, I learned about the three ways of making ethical decisions.
Speaker 2:So ethics is all about how do you make decisions, moral decisions, whether there isn't a right or wrong answer. And the three basic ways of going about it are ask somebody in charge, think about the consequences of it or think about what's the virtuous thing to do. You know rules of thumb, things like that. So an example of that last way of virtue would be honest. So I'm going to take the honest path. I'm going to make my decision based on being honest. But then that's not enough, because what if it's Nazis knocking on your door? You're not going to be honest with them about the Jew living in your basement. Going based off of an authority figure has its own problems too. You'd make the wrong decision if you saw the people knocking on your door as an authority figure. So maybe you want to go with. What are the consequences of how you're going to answer their questions Might be the best route there, but any scenario you can think of all three of these different ways of figuring out the answer.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe your authority is your rabbi and your rabbi says keep your mouth shut. Maybe you're listening to an authority figure is the right thing to do there. Maybe you're listening to an authority figure is the right thing to do there. And so when I was in my early 20s, I thought consequentialism, thinking through what the consequences of my decision are going to be, is going to be. That's obviously. Anybody does anything but thing else is just dumb because that's obviously the best answer. And it took me a long time to realize I'm not that fucking smart to be able to see every angle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah to figure out the consequences of your actions. Yeah, that's ludicrous. Yeah, you could spend a lifetime on one thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, finding more angles yeah and and end up getting it wrong. Um, um. So yeah, it took me a long time. I eventually realized that that it's not the way to live an ethical life. It's a hundred percent depend on you know the consequences and you know, I still think it's probably a good idea to think about you know what's going to happen based on, on your decisions.
Speaker 2:but you have to use virtues. Think about the things you care about. Another word for virtues would be like what's another word my values? Is honesty one of my values? Or is hard work one of my values? And making decisions based on that? But the big positive point in the third or in another way of making decisions um, you know, going based off of an authority figure is if you have the same authority figure as me, we're a lot more likely to trust each other. If I think that you're going to sit and think through every decision and I'm going to sit and I'm going to think through every decision, I don't have that much confidence that we're going to come to the same answer. But if I know that you look to Bob for answers and I know that I look to Bob for answers, then we're more likely to trust each other. And bring around to what we were talking to earlier. Religion is the number one source of all of that.
Speaker 1:It feels good to trust. You can just relax a little bit if you can trust the people around you and if you all have the same authority.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so being in a community, if you're christian, and being in a community of christians, uh, everybody trusts each other just a little bit more. It's, uh, it's, it's grease in the wheels, yeah, uh, of working together and in modern society doesn't have that, even if you live in a place that a lot of people share the same religion. We've got like four major denominations and more of us. We're not even all you know. We have the Catholics and the Lutherans and the Presbyterians and the Baptists and the.
Speaker 2:Methodists, and so does that mean that I still, if you're a Christian, you still trust all these people a little bit more than you would if they were non-Christians, but not quite as much as you would if they were the same synod in the same denomination as you. I don't know how all that works, but historically it's been a huge factor in getting people to work together. Is that just increased trust factor of knowing that you and I look to the same authority in our decision-making, in the same decision-making process?
Speaker 1:How are they so smart back then to know how to control us like this?
Speaker 2:We're probably being controlled a lot more than we think we are and, um, uh, if we knew how much we're being controlled right now, what we're talking about right now would seem pretty pathetic in terms of in terms of, uh, control over society.
Speaker 1:Yeah, every podcast that I watch that I think like, oh, you know, they're breaking free from from society by thinking this way. I'm like, okay, but is this all set up to make us think? You know, I like I have a hard time trusting anybody saying anything these days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you mentioned break free from society a couple months ago. It was like how long has it been since you could just say F it and walk into the wilderness and just say I'm breaking free from society. You know, the Mormons did it in the mid-1800s. They were being persecuted. The pilgrims obviously did it. They were being persecuted. The Pilgrims obviously did it. They had to fight with the natives when they got here, but as recently as the. I don't know anything about the history of the Amish.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I don't think they pay taxes I don't know, but they can't just walk off and start their own society. It kind of feels like they have it over in Mud Lake, but as recently as the Mormons in the 1800s they were getting persecuted in Pennsylvania or wherever they were and said screw you guys. And walked off out west. And nowadays there's literally not any piece of land you can go to that isn't claimed by somebody as their land.
Speaker 2:I just think that's weird if you can get yourself to the moon. I think there's an international treaty saying that you can't claim the moon as your own. So no country claims the moon, but good luck getting there. Um yeah, and you can't just go out to a national park because government had it's worse there than if you just snuck onto, uh, some rancher, you might get shot. Um yeah, there's literally nowhere on earth you can just say you know, if you want to say, screw society, I'm getting out of here you'd be hosed remember that movie and book into the wild that came out in my early 20s.
Speaker 1:I was like obsessed with doing that for years. I would never survive. I did watch man versus wild for years too. Right had such an urge to do it. I haven't thought about that for a long time, though, so you could probably do it as a single person. You could go out to the Alaskan frontier or something Right yeah. But you can't really bring a group.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it'd be tough. Yeah, how legit is that? Like the Alaskan bush people or whatever, I don't even know. Is it like no rules out there, or is there police around somewhere? I mean, yeah, I guess there's probably places where you can be pretty far away, but, yeah, do they have to, like, get the deed to that property that they're on, or are they just out in no man's land? Maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's some no man's land.
Speaker 1:You just walk out and claim it as your own, but it certainly doesn't feel like it right, right, well, um, I hope that you come on as often as you want to to talk. I want to learn more about evolution, or about the values that we were talking about. Sure, I like talking to you about everything, but let's get to revealing your top words.
Speaker 2:Oh, geez, I'm nervous and again.
Speaker 1:So I'm doing this because I think that we have a hard time seeing the good in ourselves. So I thought maybe if we can hear from other people how they see us some good things, then maybe we'll start to believe it. So I'm going to start doing this with every guest. You really went with friends from your past. I was surprised. These were all people from college from quite a while ago, and one of them you even wrote I don't know if they remember me and one of them you even wrote I don't know if they remember me and one of them you wrote I think she hates me.
Speaker 2:So that was really great well, I didn't want to put too much people that were just gonna flatter me. Try to mix it up.
Speaker 1:They're not gonna know they didn't. They emailed me, so you don't know who said what right um what do? You think you talk? If you had to guess, what do you think your top? If you had to guess, what do you think your top word would be?
Speaker 2:Um, people do never shut up about how smart they think I am, so I'm sure that's in there in the top three.
Speaker 1:I thought that um intellectual, intelligent would be your top word as well, but it ended up being very surprising.
Speaker 2:Oh, all right. Charismatic slash charming okay, yeah, never okay.
Speaker 1:Now you're surprising me yeah, that was um the word you would describe the most, and mischievous was thrown in there that I thought I would put in that category. But yeah, everybody that wrote back said charismatic, slash, charming.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Then you were repeatedly described as someone who others look to in tough times Leader, dependable, resilient, unflappable which I had to look that up, and it means someone who stays calm and composed even under pressure or in stressful situations. Okay, is that surprising?
Speaker 2:I was just thinking about the. A lot of times I do think I do a good job, but I was laughing at myself. My buddies got their hands on some firecrackers and stuff Turned out to be a way bigger boom than anybody was expecting and I kind of forgot that we were in California at the time because there was weed all over the house and I'm like freaking out, like okay, we need to hide this, we need to like okay, we need to hide this, we need to like prepare. So I was like you know, if we had been in Oklahoma or Kansas, I'd probably have been the guy, I'd have been the man because I was ready, like here's what we're going to do, but in California, with these guys, I was just the panicker.
Speaker 2:I guess so it could depend on the overreactor.
Speaker 1:Keeping everybody extra safe, though, yeah.
Speaker 2:Could, uh, could, kind of depend on the situation there, um, where I think it's an emergency but everybody else. It doesn't happen too often, though, where I think it's an emergency and everybody else is like no dude, you just gotta chill, it's all good.
Speaker 1:Well, I thought about your wife Heather. She extra doesn't like storms. And you know. So this is why her soul picked your soul because you are unfat. What is the word Unflappable?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that could be yeah.
Speaker 1:Third word, then, was your mental sharpness, intelligence, technological, articulate savvy. That was the theme. And then it goes to your emotional depth with compassion, caring, honest and thoughtful. And finally, the last theme is that you are unafraid to carve your own way with words like curious, progressive and independent. To carve your own way with words like curious, progressive and independent. So I threw it all together and asked AI to define you in one sentence through all this and it said you're the guy who's got the spark and the anchor.
Speaker 2:Spark and the anchor. Well, that's interesting well, that's interesting.
Speaker 1:So for your number one word, um charismatic. When do you?
Speaker 2:think you're able to be the most charismatic.
Speaker 1:When does it?
Speaker 2:come easiest to you in front of an audience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like uh yeah, you're like should I tell the story, or do you want?
Speaker 2:to tell the story of uh at. Where was that? Um, what the history center story at um. I want to say city hall, but it wasn't city hall, it was uh it was at Friday's for the chamber chamber chamber of more.
Speaker 1:That was escaping me, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Um, so that's when I'm at my most charismatic. So, uh, for our listeners. Like the history, center has gone through some rough times I'm sure a lot of them have and they won an award. Do you remember what the award was? Was it the editor's pick or something like that?
Speaker 1:uh, the president's pick uh, and nobody was there to receive it and they knew you had worked on the board. So they were like, do you want to?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, so I, I had been and this is a whole story in itself, um, but I had been volunteering and was on the board at the history Center years before this, and so I ended up accepting the award and talking about the History Center and how much it needs the community to help out to preserve our history, and it's a real tearjerker.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you just threw it out so fast and your pauses are at the right time, like, and you're basically said if, if this doesn't get funding, the books aren't just, they don't just go to the courthouse, they get thrown in the dumpster. All everything from the history center, yeah and yeah there was gaps and tears, and yeah, you did it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, so that's probably when I'm at my most charismatic. Um is when I have I have an audience and talking to a bunch of people and I have a purpose that I'm really trying to uh, accomplish. Um, one-on-one, small talk, I'm probably the least charismatic person. I've had girlfriends yell at me for embarrassing them in front of their friends because I'm so bad at small talk. How could you not get along with Johnny? He's the best guy ever.
Speaker 2:I'm like did I do something wrong? I was just sitting there. Yeah, total lump on the log or whatever the word is, but I think at work.
Speaker 1:You're very charismatic on one-on-one and I it must be, because as soon as that purpose, as soon as that fire is letting, you know, as soon as there's something to talk to the person about that you're passionate about, it comes out. Yeah, it's all about if I have a purpose and what I'm talking about yeah, I haven't heard you say it for a long long time anything about going into politics, but with all these top themes, you know, maybe you should start thinking about that again.
Speaker 2:The charisma yeah, make politics boring again, and then I'll get into it. It's way too much. Yeah, it's way too crazy right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. Yeah, especially with the wanting a family life just focusing on your kids. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So what do you do right now that you hope that your grandkids do when they're your age?
Speaker 2:I'll read every day, learn something new every day. You know, like I was talking about I mentioned very early in our talk is that every once in a while you think you got things figured out and then you realize you're a total dumbass and don't know anything. Um, and you know how, no matter how old you are, you look at yourself five years ago and think, oh, what a kid that guy was. Uh, I could think I'm a grown up adult now. Well, you want to make as big a leaps as possible.
Speaker 2:You know you don't ever want to look back and say or think that you're the same person that you were a year ago. Um, just keep working to keep getting better. And it's a short life, just keep working to keep getting better.
Speaker 1:It's a short life.
Speaker 2:You only get so long. My goal is to know everything by about 70. I've got a lot of work to do. Then you get close. Yeah, then I'll coast. No, but it takes a lot of work to keep trying to improve yourself all the time so that you can look back at yourself and say, yeah, I'm a bigger, more grown-up, more mature person than I was a year ago or a couple years ago. And I think the only way you can do that is by learning every day. So I hope they do that.
Speaker 1:And what do you do that you hope that they don't do? Is there any vices that you have? Anything you're trying to kick?
Speaker 2:I hope they take their time in everything they do. You know I still get excited more often than I wish I did. You know, excitement is good, but I still get too excited every once in a while and jump in and run my mouth about something that I'm excited about and then a week later I'm like I don't really care about that anymore. People are using my words against me. That I said in a moment of excitement, and so I hope they know to keep their mouth shut until they're sure about what they want to say, because there's nothing worse than your own words being used against you when you're.
Speaker 2:It's like your words when you're drunk. You don't want them used against you. You don't want your words against you when you're. It's like your words when you're drunk. You don't want them used against you. You don't want your words against you when you're excited either. You gotta keep them all shut a little bit until you really understand what it is the ideas that are going through your head and have an opportunity to evaluate them before spitting them out and then realizing ah's, that's actually not that important yeah, that's smart pause pause, take a breath, take a beat I've been able to catch myself and pause in a lot of situations for the last few weeks because I've been meditating so much lately.
Speaker 1:But that doesn't mean I always it. It's funny because I'll take the pause, but then I'll be like fuck it, I'm doing it anyway.
Speaker 2:But it's like.
Speaker 1:Is this the first step, though, to then take the pause first, and then, eventually, I'll be able to make the right decision. Hope so. I hope so. I'm on the pause chain now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's spitting out stuff that people use against you later or other things where you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube or whatever an employee or or, um, anybody that looks up to you. Now you're afraid, you have to be afraid that they're not gonna speak their truth because they already know what your opinion is. Um, so that's another place where I feel like I've got to keep my mouth shut until I know what everybody around me thinks.
Speaker 2:Um, because I can never trust the opinion once I say what mine is um, so there's a lot of reasons to uh really be aware of of what you're talking about before you. Before you say things, let's say uh, louis the 14th. So louis the 16th is the one that got his head lobbed off.
Speaker 1:So his grandpa.
Speaker 2:So his grandpa or great uncle or something like that, louis XV in between them, I think he slept around a bit but was pretty much inconsequential as a king. Louis XIV was the Sun King. He built Versailles Immense personal power. He built for Psy immense personal power as far as what he said went. And by the end of his reign he didn't say much because he knew that just what we're talking about now, um, as soon as he said anything, uh, nobody would contradict him, um, and everybody would hang on every word and be, the most important thing uh, that happened that day is is whatever louis was talking about. And so by the end of the reign, pretty much all he said in front of more than a couple of people was I shall see, and you know it's a little bit sad. You can't have an open, honest conversation when you're that powerful.
Speaker 2:And that was one of the ways that he sort of kept things working around him when he, either on purpose or accidentally, accumulated that much power and that much influence on the people around him. It's definitely on purpose, I shouldn't say on purpose or accidentally, but you know, once he cultivated that, I think it was probably a double-edged sword or an unintended consequence of he couldn't even express his opinion anymore, because yeah, it sounds boring if everybody's agreeing with you and you can never hear other opinions yeah, so when people would come and talk to him about business, he basically just had to sit there and the straighter and stare as he could and listen, and listen, and then had to go retreat back to his office or whatever to mull things over on paper or something I don't know.
Speaker 2:But yeah, he'd say, I shall see. And then he would write a very deliberate report, or whatever he did, and hand it off to the person to execute it. And I think about that a lot as far as running my mouth and just saying too much.
Speaker 2:I don't want to get to the point where I'm saying I shall see and never talking to anybody. But you have to kind of figure out that right balance of of. You know, maybe be careful of your image to not get to the point where you can't say anything. I don't know what the I don't know what the lesson is to take from it, but but, uh, there's one, there it's. I think it's an important story to know, for leaders to know. Oh, there's a, yeah, double-edged sword there. If you do say your opinion that you're.
Speaker 1:There's a double-edged sword there. If you do say your opinion, that you're making sure the people around you know that, it's okay, delicately, let them know that it's okay for them to have a different opinion.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, which you can't do in the moment. You have to cultivate that over time.
Speaker 1:Building the trust.
Speaker 2:Building the trust. You know, I know somebody that. I know somebody that whenever he asks a tough question, he follows it with I'm not accusing, I'm just asking it's like well, why do you feel like you have to say that?
Speaker 2:And it's not effective, because by the time somebody feels accused, saying I'm not accusing, it's too late this particular person. I don't think they have to say it, I think they say it out of a abundance of caution, but it makes me think. You know, you have to make sure the people around you know that you're just investigating and they have to know your personality and trust you before you go oh not accusing.
Speaker 2:So your communication is not always just in the moment. It has to be constant and consistent and you have to deliberate show the world that you have a curious, yeah heart, yeah, I don't have to unpack in the world, see, and this is why science is just so much easier you don't have to think about any of those things you don't have to think about nothing like that.
Speaker 2:Have I built up the bank account of trust with this person enough to be frank, or do I have to speak delicately? You don't have to do that with a microscope not that I've ever done any science with a microscope before any last thoughts you want to end with okay, awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, I hope you had fun I did. Thank you, love you, love you too not, comes from the greek word sailor and means voyager or traveler. Like an astronaut searching the stars, a supernaut is one searching the inner and outer worlds of self, navigating life, consciousness and reality, striving for betterment. The paradox is that seeking and striving can create more unrest and more unhappiness. So, while calm seas may not make great sailors, I plan to explore the idea of light rescuing darkness instead of fighting it.